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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT. English has a variety of constructions for indicating the future, such as will and be going to. English can also just use present tense alongside a future-marking adverbial (e.g. I leave soon). These future-marking strategies are not in free variation and exhibit key contrasts. Clues to the modern meanings, uses, and distributions of the futurate constructions of Modern English may be gained through direct comparison to their etymological meanings. Whereas this general strategy is not new, the focus here is to determine what etymology can suggest about broadly categorizing modem synchronic contrasts, such as determining whether an observed phenomenon results from an intrinsic distinction of truth-conditional semantics or is instead due to pragmatics. Both the prior presence and the eventual loss of historical meanings have impacted the modern patterns of how the future is expressed in English. *
1. INTRODUCTION. English has many future-marking options, as we see from the variants I leave (soon), I will leave, I am going to leave, I am leaving (soon), I will be leaving, and I am about to leave, among others. These assertions are similar, but also exhibit differences in their meanings and uses, some more subtle than others. To advance formal treatments, it is first necessary to understand contrasts pretheoretically, since choices of analytical framework depend on whether a given distinction is one of truth-conditional semantics, pragmatics, or perhaps neither, such as contrasts pertaining only to sociolinguistic, syntactic, or dialectal issues. Theoretical analysis of future marking is complicated in that categorization of relevant contrasts is not always obvious.
As a short introductory example, consider about to and going to, both of which Leech (1971:70), Coates (1983:200,204), and Wada (2000:386) portray similarly as indicators of the immediate future. Yet, note that whereas *I am about to leave, but I am not going to leave eventually is contradictory, I am not about to leave, but I am going to leave eventually is not. This shows us that going to is available to describe both the immediate and the distant future, but the truth-conditional meaning of about to must intrinsically include a contextually specified notion of IMMEDIACY not inherent to going to. Jirsa (1997:25) indeed maintains that about to '... encodes an INCIPIENT aspectual element. The action or event is viewed from a point immediately prior to its execution'. Therefore, I am going to leave eventually is not contradictory, unlike *I am about to leave eventually. Also, I am going to leave eventually can be asserted alongside I am not about to leave (i.e. I am not going to leave immediately) without contradiction.
A formal analysis of about to would incorporate IMMEDIACY as an intrinsic component of the truth-conditional meaning, whereas an analysis of going to may be compatible with expressing either the immediate future or the distant future. However, questions remain. What gives Leech, Coates, and Wada the impression that going to is particularly linked to expressing the immediate future? In addition, how can I am not about to leave (next year) mean that I REFUSE to leave, seemingly without necessary reference to the near future? I set these issues aside until Section 5.
We could analyze future-marking patterns formally with more confidence if we could first gain a clearer pretheoretical understanding of how to categorize differences we observe. The choice of analytical framework depends upon whether contrasts involve truth-conditional semantics, pragmatics, illocutionary force, presupposition, collocational or syntactic preferences, or perhaps other factors.
Etymology offers us a rich source of clues in helping to make such fundamental determinations. Appealing to etymology to better understand the behavior of future-marking patterns in English is certainly not a novel idea. This was notably discussed by Fries (1927), but Wekker (1976:23-9) provides a summary of even earlier scholarship on this topic. More recently, diachronic data have been prominently examined under grammaticalization theory, such as by Bybee and Pagliuca (1987) and Hopper and Traugott (2003). It might thus seem that there could be little new to say on the matter, but I believe that in the area of pretheoretical characterization of phenomena, there are still valuable points to make based on etymological considerations.
Simply put, etymology can be shown to suggest or fail to suggest given synchronic analyses. For example, the notion of IMMEDIACY can be located also in the etymology of the about to construction. Thus, it is not difficult to imagine how the concept of nearness in time may still be an intrinsic part of the truth-conditional meaning today.
Certainly this point cannot be taken as proof regarding any synchronic analysis, since meanings may be reanalyzed over time, removing concepts that were once available or introducing new ones not in evidence historically. Synchronic analyses must ultimately stand or fall on their ability to account for synchronic data. However, all things being equal, we may at least give such clues consideration as we search for explanations of observable contrasts.
Use of historical data in synchronic analyses of language, even in this role of suggestive guidance, has been downplayed in much of formal linguistics due to the legacy of Saussure, who advocated synchronic analyses free of diachronic evidence. As Saussure (1916, translated 1959:81) explains:
The first thing that strikes us when we study the facts of language is that their succession in time does not exist insofar as the speaker is concerned. He is confronted with a state. That is why the linguist who wishes to understand a state must discard all knowledge of everything that produced it and ignore diachrony. He can enter the mind of speakers only by completely suppressing the past. The intervention of history can only falsify his judgment.
Admittedly, a synchronic analysis should not become clouded by diachronic data, such as might happen if one were to assume that an etymological meaning once in evidence must somehow still be intrinsically contained it its modern meaning and must therefore have some demonstrable influence today. This is not the case for which I argue here.
Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to bend Saussure's advice somewhat if done judiciously, as has been advocated for example in Jirsa (1997:25). Synchronic behavior is a result state of an oral tradition from the past. Thus, if etymological facts seem to point to one synchronic account over another, it seems worthwhile to give this consideration. If we have two suspects in a criminal investigation, and if we find the fingerprints of one but not the other at the crime scene, we might use this fact to determine which should be the prime suspect.
I therefore use well-reported aspects of etymology as clues in discerning plausible basic characterizations for modern future-marking patterns in English. This paper does not argue definitively for synchronic analyses under particular theoretical paradigms. Neither does it argue for some particular theory of diachronic change, such as grammaticalization theory. Neither of these projects is my aim. Rather, my purpose is to illustrate the utility of considering etymological evidence in initial investigative procedures of these grammatical constructions. Advancing new formal accounts and/or appraising accounts already published can certainly benefit from a better pretheoretical understanding of the nature of the contrasts themselves. Considerations of the etymology of these constructions can indeed yield such a deeper pretheoretical understanding. Based upon the insights this paper provides, the reader can evaluate the utility of the investigative strategy that I advocate.
The organization of this work is as follows. After providing a brief summary of major future-marking patterns in Section 2, I begin in Section 3 to discuss particular constructions, starting with use of the simple present tense with future reference. I argue that this future-marking pattern can best be characterized by noting how the arrival of will and going to broadly impacted its use. The etymological meanings of both once inherently expressed a HEDGE (i.e. a degree of uncertainty) on predictions of the future that no longer can be shown to be intrinsically communicated. Given this, it is plausible that the simple present tense with future reference was gradually relegated to expressions of the future not involving such a hedge. In fact, the simple present tense is apparently used today in cases where the future is not predicted, but rather postulated or hypothesized. This etymological evidence suggests that a synchronic account would treat the contrast as involving illocutionary force or presuppositions made by the speaker. Although discussions in Close (1980), Bybee et al (1994), and Kaufmann (2005) seem to approach this view, I am aware of no analysis that argues this exact position in detail. The plausibility of this unified synchronic approach comes in part from the idea that modern uses of this future-marking pattern may have survived everywhere they are found today from a single historical cause.
Section 4 addresses contrasts between will and going to. I discuss the so-called ELLIPTICAL NATURE of will, use of will in making decisions or volunteering, and certain of its nonfuturate and semifuturate uses. These characteristics of will are lacking with going to. The plausible explanation for these phenomena follows from their differing etymological meanings which were subsequently lost. From this, we may suggest what aspects of their synchronic meanings and uses can be addressed through various kinds of analyses.
Section 5 discusses about to. An etymological view is helpful to explain its association with the immediate future in contrast to a different kind of immediacy often implied by going to, as well as why this typical interpretation of about to can be lost in negated contexts. In such cases, the construction instead often indicates REFUSAL.
Section 6 describes various forms of the progressive with future reference. An etymological perspective helps explain why we have both the present progressive with future reference (e.g. Peter is hunting tomorrow) alongside will + progressive (e.g. Peter will be hunting tomorrow). Likewise, we can understand why will + progressive may lose the interpretation of placing us in the middle of an event, so characteristic of other progressive clauses, and instead place us temporally at the start of the event in question. Lastly, I discuss the plausible origins of the rather unexpected FUTURE AS A MATTER OF COURSE interpretation of will + progressive. Section 7 presents a summary of all findings.
2. OVERVIEW OF FUTURATE CONSTRUCTIONS. Wekker characterizes the expression of time, in particular the future, as ' ...one of the most difficult areas of English grammar to master' (1976:1). He notes, 'For even the advanced learner of English, the proper use of will/shall and be going to is a persistent problem' (1976:123). A sizable literature has arisen, including Leech (1971), Binnick (1974a, b), Palmer, (1974), Wekker (1976), Coates (1983), Bybee and Pagliuca (1987), Haegeman (1989), Bybee et al (1991), Nicolle (1997), Wada (1996, 2000), Brisard (1997, 2001), and Declerck (2006), attempting to differentiate the meanings and uses of these constructions. Traditionally, the focus had been on will versus shall, but, as Poplack and Tagliamonte (2000) observe, 'With the virtual demise of shall from productive future reference, at least in North American varieties, the long-standing controversy over the meanings and functions of shall and will ... has been transferred to will versus going to' (321).
Crucially, note that English has no future tense, at least in the sense that it has no inflectional ending on the verb indicating future time. Rather, to express the future from the viewpoint of the present, English employs present tense. Thus, the main verb can appear in the present tense alongside a future-marking adverbial, as in I have a meeting next Tuesday. I refer to this pattern as THE SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE WITH FUTURE REFERENCE. Past tense, on the other hand, can be used to indicate the future from the viewpoint of some past time, as in I had a meeting next Tuesday, although 1 didn't realize it at that time. The present and past tenses each serve a variety of functions in English, but we might say that one role of the present tense is to function as the FUTURE TENSE for English and one role of the past tense is to be the FUTURE-IN-THE-PAST TENSE for English. I do not delve into future in the past in this paper, but focus instead on expressions of the future from the present.
English also has an assortment of present-tense constructions commonly employed to indicate the future. Each has a past-tense counterpart that can be used to indicate future in the past. I broadly term these FUTURATE CONSTRUCTIONS and include among them will/would, (be) going to ('gonna '), (be) about to, be + V-ing (i.e. where V-ing is a verb ending in -ing, as in We {are/were} having a meeting next Tuesday), will/would + be + V-ing, and others. Declerck (2006) labels many of these FUTURISH TENSE FORMS, but argues that will/shall and some instances of going to express a genuine future tense in English. For the purposes of this discussion, I begin with no such distinctions, but regard futurate constructions as a broad category. Also, for the sake of comparing forms, I treat the simple present tense with future reference as a sort of futurate construction in its own right.
As we considered a brief overview of about to and going to above, we can now also highlight contrasts among other futurate constructions of this paper. Consider will in contrast to going to. *I will leave, but I am not going to leave and *I am going to leave, but I will not leave both seem contradictory. We detect no obvious truth-conditional contrast here, tempting us to conclude that there is no semantic difference between will and going to at all. Indeed, Palmer (1974:163) states, 'In most cases there is no demonstrable difference between will/shall and be going to though many scholars have looked without success for one'. Yet, if there is a call for a volunteer to leave, the plausible response in volunteering is I'll leave instead of *I'm going to leave. Here we have a demonstrable difference, but unlike the notion of IMMEDIACY intrinsic to about to, it does not seem correct similarly to propose an intrinsic notion of VOLUNTEERING as part of the truth-conditional contribution of will. Though will is compatible with volunteering, note that I'll die can be asserted even in cases where I am not raising my hand to volunteer.
As I discuss in upcoming sections, will historically involved the notion of INCLINATION, which is obviously compatible with VOLUNTEERING (i.e. expressing an inclination to do something). However, whereas about to has retained the notion of IMMEDIACY intrinsically, will in its use as a future-marking construction has not intrinsically retained the notion of INCLINATION. Thus, *I am about to leave a very long time from now strikes us as contradictory, but I will do something that I do not want to do (or am not inclined to do) is not similarly contradictory. IMMEDIACY is a truth-conditional component of about to, but INCLINATION only maintains pragmatic compatibility with use of will in volunteering. The demonstrable retention of an etymological meaning in a modern construction is consistent with a truth-conditional analysis involving this meaning. The demonstrable loss of an etymological meaning suggests that this is no longer a truth-conditional component. The influence of its former presence might perhaps only be detected in lingering patterns of pragmatics or collocational preferences.
Based on similar evidence, Haegeman (1989) concludes that will and going to do not contrast truth-conditionally, but rather exhibit differences in pragmatics. Haegeman advances an analysis under the Relevance Theory of Sperber and Wilson (1986) modeled on the relevance-based account of the present perfect from Smith (1981), noting that this is more successful than an account based on 'the "inherent" properties of will' (311 ). Nicolle (1997) also advances a relevance-theoretic account of will and going to, influenced by Klinge (1993). Suffice it to say that whereas the accounts of Haegeman (1989) and Nicolle (1997) differ in their details, both agree that the contrasts of will and going to are in pragmatics, rather than truth-conditional semantics. Without arguing for a relevance-theoretic account here, let us suppose that this view is correct and that will versus going to can serve as example of contrasting future-marking forms that differ non-truth-conditionally.
As we move away from demonstrable truth-conditional distinctions, how to characterize observed phenomena pretheoretically can be more challenging. The account of Copley (2002:3 I) argues for a view advanced by a number of scholars, including Vetter (1973) and Dowty (1979:154-63), that the notion of a PLAN is an intrinsic component of the truth-conditional semantics of assertions such as I am leaving soon. That is, that there is a plan for the speaker to leave is not merely introduced via pragmatics (as in the association of will with volunteering), but is rather asserted as part of intrinsic truth-conditional content (as in the association of about to with immediacy). This could be correct, since it is probably necessary for an individual to plan to leave before asserting I am leaving soon.
Yet, there is room for doubt. As Copley (2002) notes, 'If futurates really just assert that there is a plan for the eventuality to occur, we would expect futurates to have the same entailments as do sentences that explicitly state that there is a plan for the eventuality to occur. However, this is not the case' (34). For example, we would expect the initial clauses in (1...
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