Re: future tense

Dawnstorm — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 22:38:45 GMT

Inchoateknowledge wrote:
What does (simple) future tense mean in this sentence?

The grammarian (it is a grammarian, isn't it?) you're quoting would probably tell you that there is no future tense. Many linguists claim English has only two tenses: Past and Non-past (sometimes called present). Like Marius Hancu said, the grammarian might tell you its about "intention"; will is a modal auxiliary, therefore "will go" is not the future tense of "go". Instead, it's present tense with modified "mood".

Whether English expresses future through tense or not is a controversial question. Your quote doesn't support the existence of a future tense, so - in this context - "future tense" would be a meaningless term.

Thomson/Martinet, in A Practical English Grammar, for example, say:

There is no future tense in modern English, but for convenience we often use the term 'future simple' to describe the form will/shall + bare infinitive.

This is not uncontested. It's a purely terminological debate, though, depending on the definition of tense. Whether there is a future tense or not has no bearing at all at your language proficiency, if you know how to express the future in English. There are other terminological debates: for example, I've heard linguists say there's no passive voice in English, and that the distinction between present participle and gerund cannot be sustained. Different ways to look at language yield different vocabulary to talk about it.

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Re: future tense