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Future - In grammar

Future - In grammar: Encyclopedia II - Future - In grammar

Main articles: Future tense, and [[{{{2}}}]], and [[{{{3}}}]], and [[{{{4}}}]], and [[{{{5}}}]] In grammar, the future is a tense or a mood used to ref ...

Future: Encyclopedia II - Future - In grammar

Future - In grammar

Main articles: Future tense, and [[{{{2}}}]], and [[{{{3}}}]], and [[{{{4}}}]], and [[{{{5}}}]]

In grammar, the future is a tense or a mood used to refer to events that have yet to happen.

Future - Future tense in English

Strictly speaking, English does not have a future tense as such, that is, a verb form specifically used to talk about the future.

When the English future tense is mentioned, usually it refers to present-tense (or rather, "non-past"-tense) constructions using the modal verb will or shall used to discuss the future: In the future, everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes.

As with other moods, this mood is also available in the past, using "would," the past tense of "will": He thought he had his whole life ahead of him; little did he know that the next day, he would die in a car crash.

Several other modal forms are also used to refer to the future, including:

With "going to": I'm going to do something. For intention and prediction, and also for infinitive and continuous situations where "will" is unavailable (to have seen, to see, to be going to see).
Present Continuous: I'm learning English next year. For prior plan.
Present Simple: Tomorrow I go into the hospital. Used for schedule.

Future - Future tenses and periphrastic constructions in Romance languages

Languages that have a true future tense include the Romance languages; most also have a periphrastic construction, like English. For example, French has a true future tense j'aimerai, tu aimeras, il aimera (from aimer, to like), but the future is most commonly expressed with the verb aller as an auxiliary: je vais aimer, tu vas aimer, il va aimer.

As in English, this periphrastic construction is also available in the past, by conjugating aller to the imperfect: j'allais voir "I was going to see". Depending on grammatical context, this can sometimes be done with the conditional: Le lendemain, il reconnaîtrait son erreur (The day after, he would recognize his mistake).

Confusingly, Catalan uses the verb anar for periphrastic constructions both in the future (with the preposition a) and the past (without the preposition). In other words, jo vaig a veure is "I will see"; jo vaig veure is "I saw."

Many Romance languages use the future tense not to express a real future but to refer to a supposition or a statement about habit, for example in Spanish: serán las once ("It will be 11 o'clock," meaning "I suppose it's around 11, it must be 11 by now").