In my (college) grammar classes, I usually tell students that the
primary distinction in English verbs is between Real and Unreal, with
present vs. past being a subdistinction of Real, and modals marking
various kinds of Unreal. Future is typically presented as a kind of
Unreal, although it can be cast as Real (via the simple present) if the
speaker is very sure about it ("I leave for Washington tomorrow"). All
of that's an oversimplification, of course, but I warn them about that.

 

And a side note about the degree to which people get invested in the
tense system terminology: Years ago, I had a colleague who, although
quite intelligent and very good with Latin, Greek, and several other
languages, reacted to the idea that "will isn't really a future tense"
with obvious anger (not disagreement - anger). Being a linguist, I of
course launched into the argument that there is no apparent difference
in the grammatical behavior of will vs. the other modals, like might.
The immediate retort was that there is a fundamental obvious difference:
will is a future tense marker and the other modals aren't.  I was never
able to break him out of that argument loop, or to get him to see that
it was a loop -but I strongly suspected he would spot a circular
argument anywhere else but in that particular case. Maybe it's just that
the label system is so counterintuitive that once we've spent an
enormous amount of effort learning it, we don't want to threaten the
investment. 

 

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English

Central Michigan University

 

 

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Carol Morrison
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 10:06 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Does English have a future tense?

 

I was taught in college that there is no future tense in English.
According to my college text, Analyzing English Grammar, by Klammer,
Schulz, & Volpe, "There is no future tense morpheme in English, no affix
that can be attached to a verb to indicate that the action will take
place in the future. Simple future time must be expressed by other words
in the sentence" (180). The following examples are given of how to
express the future:

 

1) Modals

I shall be out of town next week.

Larry definitely will be at the party.

 

2) Present Tense + Adverbial Modifiers

The class ends at 11:00.

Leave a message when you call.

Susan is leaving for New York on Thursday. 

 

It does seem odd that there is no tense marker for the future. I wonder
if one reason is that you can't mark a tense for something that is yet
to come or hasn't happened yet: for a time, place, and situation that is
yet to be determined.

 

Carol     

"STAHLKE, HERBERT F" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

	We have discussed once or twice whether English has a future
tense.  Here's a link to an article titled "The Lord which was and is"
by Geoffrey Pullum on Language Log that briefly reviews a considerable
range of data involve "will" and other constructions and their meanings.
Pullum is coauthor with Rodney Huddleston of The Cambridge Grammar of
the English Langauge.

	 

	http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/

	 

	Scroll down till you find the title.

	 

	Herb

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