The Double System of Tense Forms Referring to Future Time in English

Bibliographic Data

ID22882445
AuthorsRenaat Declerck (KU Leuven), Ilse Depraetere (0000-0003-3853-3876, KU Leuven)
Year1995
Volume12
Issue3
Pages269-310
Publication date1995-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Semantics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0167-5133 • E-ISSN: 1477-4593
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/jos/12.3.269
OpenAlexW2092027533
LanguageEN
Citations received9

As is well known, some types of subclause in English differ from independent clauses in that they require a different tense form when the reference is to the future. We say I will be happy if the weather is nice tomorrow, but not*I am happy if the weather is nice tomorrow or *I will be happy if the weather will be nice tomorrow. As is clear from these examples, the two ways of referring to the future are subject to different conditions, and each has a distribution of its own. This article investigates the two systems in detail. It shows how they fit into a more general theory of tense, offers an explanation for their different distributions and examines the subtle semantic differences between their uses in clauses that allow both (e. g. restructive relative clauses).

Distribution (mathematics) · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Nice · Programming language · Subject (documents) · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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