Abstract
There are two closely-related ways of talking about the future in English, the will-future and the futurate. The constructions are not interchangeable, because the futurate involves some kind of plan, schedule, control, or pattern of events, while the will-future is not so restricted. This restriction on the futurate is familiar and has been discussed by grammarians at least since Jespersen 1931. Less familiarly, the futurate does not fit neatly into a general syntactic-semantic account of temporal reference in English: neither adverbial nor aspectual forms play their characteristic roles in this construction. Because it is problematic, the futurate is of some interest for the study of temporal reference. Particularly interesting are the truth-conditional and presentational variations of aspect. The futurate in a general account of temporal reference is the specific topic of this paper.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1983 Communication and Cognition
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Smith, C.S. (1983). The Temporal Reference of the English Futurate. In: Tasmowski, L., Willems, D. (eds) Problems in Syntax. Studies in Language. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2727-1_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2727-1_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-9691-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-2727-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive