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This chapter takes up the treatment of the simple tenses, past, present, future, and the progressive. Tense is treated as introducing a restricted indexical quantifier over times which binds an implicit argument place in tensed verbs. It is also argued that the progressive is not properly treated as a tense of the verb from which it is derived.

In this chapter I consider a challenging set of data: the dependencies from a future verbal form. So far, I have proposed that in Italian and English, both DAR languages, an embedded context requires that the subject's coordinate be syntactically represented. The contexts depending from a future seem to constitute a systematic exception, in that the interpretation obtained presents some anomalies that do not conform to DAR contexts. The aim of this chapter is to show that as soon as we enlarge the empirical basis, considering for instance the compatibility of the embedded verbal with temporal locutions of various kinds, the picture changes and turns out not to be exceptional any longer.

The Hungarian language has a remarkably straightforward tense system, having only two morphologically marked tenses: Past and nonpast. To refer to the future tense, the nonpast tense form of the future auxiliary verb fog “will” may be used together with the infinitival form of the main verb. Future tense is also achieved with the help of the adverb majd “then,” later (on) in combination with the nonpast tense. In such constructions, a “preverb” appears immediately before the finite verb. This chapter examines the existential tense in Hungarian, with an emphasis on preverbs; considers how the existential tense corresponds to the English perfect tense; and proposes a semantics for the existential tense.

This chapter lays bare some of the difficulties and intricacies that often remain implicit in the literature on future tense(s). After outlining some foundational issues concerning the definition of ‘tense’ as distinct from ‘aspect’ and ‘modality’, this chapter examines criteria for deciding if a given language has a future tense. More fundamentally, the chapter considers whether there is justification for the very category of ‘future tense’ as part of the linguist’s descriptive repertoire. To achieve these goals, the chapter reviews some of the relevant literature from such fields as traditional linguistics, formal semantics, and the philosophy of language and also assesses to what extent work in cognitive psychology confirms that referring to future time is in essence different from referring to the past. The chapter concludes by explaining why a book such as Future Times, Future Tenses is timely, and by sketching all the contributions to the volume.

This chapter considers three well-known cases of ‘grammaticalization’ regarding the development of future-tense constructions in English, Romance, and Greek. It argues that the change consists in the loss of movement of verbal element to a higher functional position; in the new grammars, the verbal element is merged directly in the functional position, not merging there via copying and subsequent deletion of the lower element. Grammaticalization-type changes of this kind follow a ‘path’, which is structurally defined along Cinque's (1999) universal hierarchy of functional categories in the clause structure.

Most of the sigmatic infinitives (type impetrāssere ‘to achieve’) occur in accusative and infinitive constructions with future time reference. Since in this constellation they could be replaced not only by future infinitives, but also by present infinitives, their precise meaning remains unclear. There is one instance of a sigmatic infinitive after the modal verb posse (‘to be able to’). While the sigmatic infinitive could only be replaced by a present tense infinitive here, the conclusion cannot be that all sigmatic infinitives are inherently present-tense infinitives; the token, clearly employed to mark a higher register, could be a ‘false archaism’.

This chapter investigates the acquisition of future temporal reference in child language within the framework of the emergence of the ‘Event time’ and the ‘Reference time’ temporal systems and within a cross-linguistic perspective. The chapter probes the developmental language–thought relationship between the emergence of the event time and the reference time systems in the child’s language and the child’s capacity for autobiographical memory and ‘episodic future thinking’. An argument for a precocious understanding of the deictic relations of the child’s tense morphology is presented. Further, the chapter explains how children acquire the capacity to establish reference time at relatively remote locations away from speech time creating a complex system of temporal reference. These accomplishments in child language are linked to the conceptual capacity for past and future time travel, re-experiencing and pre-experiencing episodic representations. The potential relevance of the Whorfian hypothesis as it applies to child language and future temporal reference is explored.

Chapter 5 discusses the merger of copular is and bið into a single suppletive paradigm in Middle English. Old English is is shown typically to encode present states of specific subjects, and identification. Bið encodes future situations and generic statements with future validity. Importantly, the high frequency of statements about kinds, instead of individuals, made plural forms of bið more conspicuous than those of is. Balance is lost in late Old English, when [shall Inf] grammaticalized as a new marker of the future. Bið’s futurity sense eroded, and confusion with is arose. Their distribution was reanalyzed, guided by their number asymmetry: bið was restricted to plural and is to singular number.

Drawing on the literature of the anthropology of futurity, this chapter engages with the articulations of hope evinced by those who desired to build the Maitreya Project statue. The chapter looks at some techniques of ritual forecasting in Tibetan Buddhism, such as oracles and casting divinations, and how these were deployed in service of the promotion of the MPI statue. The chapter also deconstructs administrative projections and missives directed at the public, and how momentum was constructed in the service of fundraising. I argue that the “future tense,” the culturally articulated gap between what is and what informants are striving towards, is a useful analytical frame for the anthropology of futurity.

The question of whether there are any future-tensed fictional truths is considered. Le Poidevin takes some fictions to be ones in which the future is fixed. Shakespeare’s Macbeth, for example, is, according to Le Poidevin, a fiction in which it is true at the time the weird sisters first speak to Macbeth that Macbeth will be king. By looking closely at Macbeth and its themes of foreknowledge and prophecy, it is argued that there is an appearance of fixity in Macbeth (and similar cases) but that this is not generated by the fictional future itself being fixed. The chapter shows how the notion of a quasi-miracle helps in a full explanation of how the appearance of fixity is generated. Further, it is argued that this gives a better account of how audiences should approach the play.

This chapter studies Ulpian’s prose style and helps to establish which of the works attributed to him are genuine and which texts attributed to others are in fact his. His style is clear, simple, consistent, and personal. It is distinctively an oral style, unusual among legal writers, informed by experience of teaching and dictating to a secretary. Short words and clauses are preferred. There are many introductory and connective phrases, as there are in speaking, and traditional written word orders is often inverted. The future tense is favoured. The first person singular is used a great deal, and sometimes the first person plural.

This chapter contributes new evidence from Greek and Italian showing that the future tense, despite its name, does not belong to the notional category of tense. They analyze Greek and Italian future morphemes as modal operators, with the force of necessity, and with the ability to associate with both metaphysical and epistemic modal bases, thus resulting in future and epistemic readings respectively. In Greek and in Italian, future morphemes can be used with purely epistemic readings. The authors define the category epistemic future. They then address the issue of weakness of future and must, and argue that there are two dimensions of weakness. The first has to do with nonveridicality. The so-called evidential component of must, therefore, is merely a reflex of the fact that it does not entail knowledge of p. At the same time, The authors argue that universal modals are biased. All modals that come with ordering sources are biased, therefore stronger than mere possibility modals. This analysis renders universal epistemic modals both strong (because they are biased) and weak (because they are nonveridical). Regarding the future, it becomes clear that the future as a notional category of tense is redundant.

The Quechuan languages of the Central Andes have a dedicated Imperative Mood paradigm featuring personal reference marking for all subject endings except first person. Non-canonical third person subject forms are part of this paradigm. Although there is a formal overlap between Future Tense and Imperative in marking of the first person inclusive subject, the former can be used in questions or be accompanied by validation markers, whereas the latter cannot. In imperative constructions negation is indicated in the same way as in other moods, except that it requires the presence of the prohibitive adverb ama, instead of plain negative mana. Conversely, ama can also be used in non-Imperative environments to express a mild or indirect command. It can be argued that Quechuan languages have two competing ways of indicating prohibition: Imperative structures with regular negation marking and obligatory presence of ama, and non-Imperative structures where ama introduces a prohibitive connotation.

Sub-Saharan Africa is an area for which hardly any earlier written documents are available. The student of African languages is therefore at a disadvantage when it comes to reconstructing processes of grammaticalization. That this is nevertheless possible has been demonstrated in a number of studies, using a conjunction of internal reconstruction and diachronic typological generalizations as a tool. After presenting an overview of the state of the art in grammaticalization studies in African languages, the present chapter is concerned with a more theoretical issue, namely the question of how grammaticalization processes arise. To this end, two contrasting hypotheses are discussed, namely the ‘parallel reduction’ and the ‘meaning-first’ hypotheses. Evidence from African languages suggests that it is the second hypothesis that is correct, but that both hypotheses nevertheless have their place in a framework of grammaticalization.

With the revived interest in variation there has been growing readiness to incorporate competing motivations into linguistic theory‐building. Previous work (Mondorf 2009a) has shown that English comparatives are a showcase of grammatical variation, in which what looks like competing motivations at first glance turns out to be an emergent division of labour between synthetic and analytic means of expressing comparison. Analyticity is resorted to if explicitness is required because of an increased processing effort. Syntheticity is preferred in easy‐to‐process environments. This chapter discusses whether this claim extends to other synthetic–analytic contrasts: Spanish future alternation (comeré vs. voy a comer), English future alternation (She'll stay vs. She's going to stay), English genitive alternation (the topic's relevance vs. the relevance of the topic), English mood alternation (if he agree‐Ø vs. if he should agree) or German past tense alternation (sie brauchte…vs. sie hat…gebraucht), etc.