Tense in English

Traditional grammars of English talk of past, present and future tense. One view is that past and present tense go together, since they are both formed from verb stems plus the suffixes -s and -ed. (We ignore irregular verbs such as swim and the suffix-less present-tense forms.) The traditional future tense is formed from the auxiliary verbs shall and will plus the verb stem (although many speakers do not use shall). That is, the traditional future tense is a syntactic construction but the past and present tenses are single words. This grammatical difference should make us suspect that the ‘future tense’ is not a tense at all but has some other meaning.

It turns out that the will construction does not just place an event in future time but in many cases signals the intention of the speaker; will derives historically from a verb that was equivalent to want or intend and can still be used with this meaning. In examples with first-person subjects, such as I’ll return the book tomorrow and I’ll meet you at the airport, the speaker’s intention is part of the message. In examples with thirdperson animate subjects, such as She’ll be in London tomorrow or He’ll hand in the essay on Friday, the speaker may be talking about the third person’s intentions but may just be making a prediction about a future event. In examples with third-person inanimate subjects, it is difficult to find a reference to intentions; The snow will arrive tomorrow is simply a prediction.

The complex interpretation of the ‘future tense’ construction is not unique to English. In many Indo-European languages, speakers and writers typically refer to future time with verbs of movement. Many instances of a future tense derive historically from verbs of obligation (French) or from verbs of volition (Bulgarian, Modern Greek). Some Native American languages in North America have sets of verb forms that are used for presenting situations as remote from reality (as unreal or irrealis). These forms are also used for referring to situations set in future time.

We talk of future events in terms of intentions and obligations because future time, unlike past and present time, cannot be inspected. Even where verbs of movement are used, as in I’m going to take the weekend off and start afresh on Monday, there is a strong element of intention. Where future events are presented by means of present-tense verbs, the events referred to must be part of a schedule or plan that would only fail to operate in most unusual circumstances. Consider (15).

Speakers who utter (15a) or (15b) place the football match and the departure for Paris in present time because the events are known, arranged and regarded as inevitable. They are in the speaker’s present time. In contrast, (16) in most contexts is impossible because, outside the world of James Bond films, human beings cannot control volcanoes.