Teacher Discussion Forums

Do we have Future Tense?

Interesting enough, in grammar books for young students, it is the general idea that we have Future Tense, especially by SHALL and WILL. However, when students have evolved to linguists or deep thinkers, they take it for granted that there is no Future Tense:

Ex: the authors state: "...there is no future tense in English... there are two tenses in English: present and past. ...but nothing that we can describe as future tense" thus repeating the well known point of view formulated by O. Jespersen and other representatives of American Descriptive Linguistics.
http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/issues/12/12-1562.html


Ex: “Consequently, there is no future tense in English, even though there are, of course, many different ways in which we can talk about the future time:”
http://www.helsinki.fi/~mpalande/meanin ... spect.html


Actually, I want to make clear what is the general idea of English native speakers about Future Tense. Is there Future Tense or not? Most of all, how to prove we have or have not Future Tense?

Thank you very much.

Shun Tang

If one applies the formal use of the term, tense, no.

If one applies the formal use of the term, tense, no.

Hello Metal56, it's been a long time.

Do you mean people don't use 'tense' to explain Future Tense to young students? What term else do they use?

Actually, I find it empty talk not to give evidence to prove whether there is Future Tense or not. How to prove we have or have not the tense?

Future Tense
Future tense expresses an action or situation that will occur in the future. This tense is formed by using will/shall with the simple form of the verb.
Ex: The speaker of the House will finish her term in May of 1998.
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/grammar/tenses.html

I don't know. If people don't apply the term 'tense', how can they, as in the web page here, explain the Future Tense?

Shun

When we study/learn about futurity (as native-speaker teachers) we are told that formally, will+base form cannot be described as a tense, because nothing is inflecting; more importantly, a (concept of a) future tense is not actively encouraged because there are other ways to express futurity that overlap meaning-wise, and many think (or seem to think) it would be a shame to lose all these "fine" distinctions by elevating any one structure to the status of a "tense". I guess (hope, even?) that over time, these forms will reduce in number and/or become clearer as to function...

There always seems to be an implicit recognition, however, that foreign learners at least will probably detect a structural regularity and then start generalizing a function...but that it would be too "academic" to tell them to "know better". Basically, teachers who have alternative viewpoints are not humoured (at least, not at first), but learners are free to think/conceptualize as they please!

Oh, I forgot to add, whilst teachers may talk informally amoungst themselves about "Future Simple", "Future Perfect Progressive" etc rather than being nit-pickingly precise, these are to be taken as referring to structures (involving more than one item) rather than tense (one inflected item) - there is no "Simple Future" (="simple"!) at least, anyway!

There always seems to be an implicit recognition, however, that foreign learners at least will probably detect a structural regularity and then start generalizing a function...

How to detect? Didn't I ask how to prove we have or have not Future Tense? Now the question seems to come back to me, a foreign learner. Anyway, thank you for your suggestion.

Shun

Well, I don't know you can prove that future tense exists, because people will come to the question with differing beliefs, and are always free to interpret and accept or reject whatever data you may find (in the light of their beliefs)...which is why I was suggesting an ultimately empirical approach (undertaken by learners, who are maybe the ones to whom it matters the most i.e. who feel the greatest urge and have a need for regularities) - recording, noticing, analyzing, in short "detecting" (all of which which might yeild such overwhelming evidence that even those who seemed diehard opponents before would be forced to agree with you).

That being said, I realize that it is often hard to detect how the mind is working in "performance" data, so more "intuitive" means (discussion etc) might be useful...but they often seem to lead to a kind of myopia (and, indeed, the very disagreement I referred to above).

Oh, I've started reading about Cognitive Linguistics/Grammar recently, because it seems to offer some hope of reconciling differing approaches and providing answers...do you know anything about it that you could tell me to help me make sense of it?

Oh, I forgot to add, whilst teachers may talk informally amoungst themselves about "Future Simple", "Future Perfect Progressive" etc rather than being nit-pickingly precise, these are to be taken as referring to structures (involving more than one item) rather than tense (one inflected item) - there is no "Simple Future" (="simple"!) at least, anyway!

Interesting indeed. It sounds to me that because we call it "Future Simple", so we don't have "Simple Future". However, as we may see from the web quotes above, they mean business. They prominently concluded there is no Future Tense in English. By the way, no one will call Future Tense "Simple Future", or "Future Simple" in our case, because if there is Future Tense, we have already agreed we need modal verbs such as SHALL and WILL, and a SIMPLE FORM of the verb. The tense must be compound, rather than SIMPLE.

Oh, I've started reading about Cognitive Linguistics/Grammar recently, because it seems to offer some hope of reconciling differing approaches and providing answers...do you know anything about it that you could tell me to help me make sense of it?

Oh, I am sorry, I have to admit it is way out of my reach. But I will suggest we have to understand any future time is within a present period of time. For example, if we regard this coming Christmas a future time, it is within this present year. Sometimes we may even refer it to be "this present Christmas". Again, if we take the coming two decades as future time, it is within this present century. However, usually we arrange the time in order as past-present-future, so how can we say a future time is within a present time? Therefore, we don't even know how to decide a future time, so how can we have a tense to express what we don't even know?

Shun Tang

Don't worry about the Cognitive Grammar, it was just an aside (and actually, it seems quite approachable, addressing as it does corpus linguistics/performance data, metaphor etc).

Talking of metaphor, have you read (Chapter 9 of) Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff and Johnson)? It kind of reminds me of what you said about the future (but I am not smart enough to tell you if it's about the same thing exactly).

How do they say about YESTERDAY, which is also within this presentweek?

You mean you want me to read the whole book?! I'm just dipping into it at the moment...

Returning to your original concern, I guess if (enough) teachers and learners talk about "future tense", it exists (for them at least) regardless of whether grammarians tell them to believe otherwise...but the idea is not going to be endorsed in formal grammars because to do so would make the writers appear crazy or stupid, and also complicate matters in the short term (even if you could argue it would simplify things in the long run).

That is, even if people believe in something and use the term, it might not actually exist or have a right to exist by all rational thought. For example, we all know what a "unicorn" is, but we all also know that they are not real...and whereas unicorns do no harm, some would say that a "future tense" might (as far as teacher thinking goes), so the term is hardly likely to become popular, especially given the general antipathy to grammar terms/metalanguage in communicative approaches i.e. teachers are more likely to say "Use THIS to say/express that" than "Use the future perfect progressive here" (especially when talking to young learners!).

That being said, given the way my mind works (and how little I can understand and therefore know!), I quite like the idea of irrationality...

I never talk to my students about "Future Tenses" - I talk about "Future Forms or "Ways of talking about the future". Students who have been told that will is the "Future Tense" are often confused later on, not only because it isn't a tense, but because it doesn't always refer to future time either. It's a modal and should be analysed as such i.e. it adds an element of speaker interpretation to the form. Compare these uses of will: What time is being referred to?

Where's Tim?
He'll be in his office right now.
He'll have gone home.
He'll be back this afternoon.

Time is clearly not the issue here. Explanations that "will is the future" only confuse in the long run.

I agree with lolwhites that it is better to use the expression "ways of talking about the future".

Will often acts as the Future tense does in other languages, particulary in conditional or temporal clauses, but in separate main clauses the idea of future is nearly always overlaid with another concept, such as planning, prediction, desire, probability or evidential deduction.

Lolwhites,

Time is clearly not the issue here.

I seldom heard that we talk about Future, no matter in forms or ways or tenses, and add that time is not the issue. It sounds to me that we discuss English, but opinion is clearly not the issue.

Shun

I'm not sure you understand me, Shun. When I said "time is not the issue", I was referring specifically to will. The examples in my last post show that the fundamental meaning of will is not future time as they refer to present, past and future time respectively.