Languages & Linguistics
Future Progressive Tense
The future progressive tense is a grammatical structure used to describe ongoing actions that will be happening at a specific point in the future. It is formed by combining the auxiliary verb "will" with the present participle form of the main verb. For example, "I will be studying" indicates an action that will be in progress at a future time.
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11 Key excerpts on "Future Progressive Tense"
eBook - PDFMastering English
An Advanced Grammar for Non-native and Native Speakers
- Carl Bache, Niels Davidsen-Nielsen(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
On the pave-ments pedestrians were strolling along. Suddenly an idea occurred to me. Here each nonprogressive form makes the action advance in narrative time by introducing a new time focus. The progressive forms do not perform this function but are used to describe a situation that is simultaneous with that described by the preceding nonprogressive form. 9.6.8. Future progressive forms In using the present future progressive the speaker instructs the hearer to tag the sentence on to present time, then look ahead to a future time and finally to look at a simultaneously progressing situation. This can be captured by the notation [Present [future [progressing [situation]]]] and illustrated by: (1) They'// be leaving in half an hour. (2) You're right. But in the meantime we'// be travelling by boat, and you can always jump off a boat. Tense and aspect 305 In some situations the present future progressive may be preferred to the present future because WILL + V may out of context be ambiguous: (3) I'// keep watch for you. (4) Ι ΊΙ be keeping watch for you. Here WILL in (3) may be either volitional or purely temporal, and only by means of the context is the hearer able to determine whether the communicative function of the sentence is a promise or a descriptive state-ment. In (4), on the other hand, WILL can only be understood to be purely temporal. The speaker pays a price for this type of'disambiguation': she must instruct the hearer to look not only at a future situation but at a future situation as being in progress. In using the past future progressive the speaker instructs the hearer to tag the sentence on to a past time, then look ahead to a posterior time and finally to look at a simultaneously progressing situation. This can be expressed by the notation [Past [future [progressing [situation]]]] and illustrated by: (5) I knew she would be asking payment for my meals.
eBook - PDFThe Grammar of the English Tense System
A Comprehensive Analysis
- Susan Reed, Bert Cappelle(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Such an interpretation is avoided by the use of the pro-gressive form of the future tense for pure future and by the use of be going to for future with present intention. Will you come to the party? (probably a request or invitation) Will you be coming to the party? (pure future) Are you going to use this towel? (intention) Will you come inside? (invitation) Will you be all right tomorrow? (pure future: nonagentive verb phrase) Will you have some cocoa? (offer) Will you please stop shouting? (request) 344 7. Absolute tense forms referring to the post-present 7.7 The progressive future tense (without progressive meaning) Post-present time reference can also be expressed by the progressive form of the future tense. Apart from its basic use as a progressive form with progressive meaning ( representing a situation as in progress at a future ‘vantage time’), there is also a special use of the progressive form of the future tense, which combines the following characteristics: (a) There is no implication of pro-gressive aspectual meaning; (b) The reference is mostly to ‘pure future’, i. e. there is no implication of intention, plan or volition; (c) There is usually a suggestion that the post-present situation will actualize as a matter of routine or as part of what is (or is expected to be) the normal ‘course of events’. We will not be using the gymnasium for a couple of weeks [because it is being refurbished]. (It is only natural that a gymnasium is out of use as long as it is being refurbished.) Bill will be driving to London on Thursday.
eBook - PDF- Martin J. Endley(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Information Age Publishing(Publisher)
(52) a. Kelly is talking to her best friend. b. Kelly was talking to her best friend. In terms of meaning, progressive aspect is usually said to indicate that a situation is or was ongoing (i.e., in progress) at the time of speaking. Not surprisingly, therefore, it is very natural to find dynamic verbs marked for progressive aspect (for a discussion of verb types, see Chapter 2 above): (53) a. We are eating right now. b. Currently, they are studying English. c. I was watching a movie when my mother called. Not all languages permit dynamic verbs to be marked as progressive. For example, French does not have an equivalent of the English present progres- sive. Thus, to translate We are eating right now, a French speaker would require a periphrastic expression such as en train de (“in the middle of”) (e.g., Nous som- mes en train de manger). On the other hand, Spanish has a verb form that con- veys essentially the same meaning as the English progressive, utilizing a form of estar (to be) plus a participle of a main verb. Thus, the equivalent sentence in Spanish would be Nosotros estamos comiendo. Turkish also has a present pro- gressive verb form, although it is formed differently, employing the infix -iyor. Thus, the Turkish version of our sentence is the single lexical item Yiyoruz. The idea conveyed to generations of English learners that the progres- sive is invariably used to refer to ongoing situations is something of a sim- plification. The present progressive, in particular, has a variety of uses. For example, it can also be used to convey the sense that some current situation is impermanent or of limited duration. In this respect, it is instructive to compare the present simple (54a) with the present progressive (54b): (54) a. I live in London. b. I am living in London.
eBook - PDFLanguage and its Ecology
Essays in Memory of Einar Haugen
- Stig Eliasson, Ernst H. Jahr, Stig Eliasson, Ernst H. Jahr(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Further studies are needed to evaluate the degree of grammaticalization of the different progressive forms used by individual languages such as Dutch and Swedish. When a category is obligatory in grammar, one would expect a higher frequency with respect to other languages where it is optional. Thus the criteria mentioned in section 2 would obtain different perspectives on markedness depending on whether they are used intralinguistically or crosslinguistically. The English progressive is more frequent and hence less marked than the Italian or Spanish progressive (Comrie 1976: 117). However, within the English system, the progressive is more marked than the simple forms at least on the basis of the morphological criterion. 4. Aspectual and actional properties of progressive construc-tions The semantics of progressive constructions in the languages considered is not overlapping either: to mention just one case, Italian stare + gerund, and French etre en train de + inf. have an overwhelming focalization value, signalling that the situation is ongoing at a given time, 5 while the English progressive has a very wide range of uses, including continuous, iterative and some habitual values. In Germanic languages (except English), prepositional progressives are typically used with activity verbs describing an intentional action, while the postural verb progressives indicate activities with duration carried out in a Stative (sitting, standing, lying) position (Ebert, in press): 268 Anna Giacalone Ramat (2) German Sie ist am Lesen. 'She is reading.' Sie ist beim Kartenspielen. 'She is playing cards (at the club, as usual).' Dutch Zij zit aardappels te schillen. 'She is peeling potatoes (in a sitting position).' In Comrie's subdivision of imperfectivity (1976: 25) into habitual and continuous, progressive appears as a subcategory of the continuous as-pect. He also admits that the possibility of distinguishing continuousness from progressiveness is not so clear cut.
eBook - PDF- Östen Dahl(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
35 One notable fact is the use of PROG in contexts corresponding to a sort of ex-tended present (but similar examples may be built with past temporal reference). PROGQ:61 is an example ( The boss TYPE his own letters, while the secretary is ill ). The only informants who use PROG in this case are, once more, the English and Portuguese ones. This possibility seems to be totally excluded in French, while in the remaining languages, choices may vary depending on register. In the standard varieties, speakers tend to avoid this usage. Perhaps the most striking feature of English PROG, as compared to all the remain-ing languages considered here, is the possibility of expressing future-time reference, as in sentences like: Ann is leaving tomorrow (cf. PROGQ:66; cf. also PROGQ:67– 69). 36 Note that in these cases the future-time reference is conveyed by the Present Progressive, rather than by the Future Progressive, as in sentences like: Tomorrow I’ll be leaving (cf. also the comment to sentence (3a) above). This property of PROG, although rather rare, may be found in other European (as well as non-European) lan-guages. This is notably the case in Icelandic (Ebert, this volume) and to some extent also in Finnish (Tommola, this volume), but also in Judeo-Spanish, and in some colloquial varieties of Latin American Spanish (Squartini 1998), as well as in some colloquial varieties of Southern Italian (like in Naples; cf. Gliela sto passando subito ‘I am going to pass her [on the phone] right now’). It is not easy to understand how this use may have arisen. The hypothesis that most obviously comes to mind is that it is somehow related to the imminential meaning often expressed by achievement predicates under PROG (cf. Section 6.3.1), which conveys something close to a fu-tural sense. The data gathered from languages other than English are too scanty to allow us to put forth a hypothesis as to the actual meaning of PROG with future-time reference.
eBook - PDF- Co Vet, Carl Vetters, Co Vet, Carl Vetters(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The English progressive tenses and the layered representation of Functional Grammar Louis Goossens 1. Introduction In this paper a proposal will be put forward to deal with the progressive in English in terms of the layered version of Functional Grammar, as outlined in Hengeveld (1989, 1990), and especially Dik (1989). In other words, I shall be concerned with a Functional Grammar treatment of one aspectual category in one specific language. With respect to the study of aspect, the importance of the study of individ-ual grammatical expressions in individual languages has recently been (re)-emphasized in a paper by Bybee and Dahl (1989: 97), where they write that: the relevant entity for the study of grammatical meaning is the individual gram [= B. and D.'s neologism for grammatical morpheme], which must be viewed as having inherent semantic substance reflecting the history of its devel-opment as much as the place it occupies in a synchronic system. Without making an attempt to reconstruct the history of the development of the English progressive here, I will at least partially be in line with Bybee and Dahl's advice, in that I will try to give an account of a specific gram whose specific semantic substance has to be understood dynamically within the synchronic system. As far as Functional Grammar is concerned, the subject has been given an initial treatment within the layered model (Dik 1989: Chapter 9), but more as an illustration of aspectuality and aspect within the theory of a Functional Grammar than as a full-scale discussion of the subject in a description of English. Again I do not want to claim for this paper that it does provide us with this full-scale treatment, but it should at least be a stepping-stone in the right direction. The structure of my paper is as follows. In the second section I give a brief presentation of the treatment of aspectuality, aspect and progressive in Dik (1989). My (alternative) proposal for the English progressive is worked
eBook - ePub- Geoffrey N. Leech(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
It is difficult, for example, to see any ambiguity in I’m attending evening classes in Spanish. Because of its habitual meaning, this sentence must almost certainly refer to the present rather than the future, unless we add a future adverbial such as next year. a. ‘Transitional event verbs’ such as arrive, die, land and stop in any case have an anticipatory element in their meaning when used with the Progressive Aspect (see §35 B). The aeroplane is landing, Our team is winning, etc. referring to an event already under way, are probably best regarded as exemplifying the in-progress present rather than the future use of the Present Progressive. But The aeroplane is landing at Amsterdam could easily be interpreted as ‘future by arrangement’. 101 The factor of ‘plan’ or ‘arrangement’ in the future meaning of the Present Progressive restricts its use in the main to ‘doing’ verbs involving conscious human agency: John’s getting up at 5 o’clock tomorrow. | *The sun is rising at 5 o’clock tomorrow. The second sentence is absurd because it suggests that the rising of the sun could be deliberately planned, instead of being determined by natural law. In this respect, the be going to future has wider application than the Present Progressive future: we can say It is going to rain tomorrow (a forecast on the basis of present circumstances), but not * It is raining tomorrow. a. This does not mean, however, that the Present Progressive is entirely limited to ‘doing verbs’. In I’m getting a present tomorrow, the verb get is ambiguous – it can have either the active, agentive meaning ‘acquire’, or the passive, inert meaning ‘receive’
eBook - PDFFunctional Semantics
A Theory of Meaning, Structure and Tense in English
- Peter Harder(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The future 349 2.3. The future 2.3.1. Semantic description In discussing the meaning of the future I am not taking for granted that English has a structurally clear-cut future tense. The point-blank question of whether English has a future tense (cf., e.g., Davidsen-Nielsen 1988) only has an answer if we are quite sure precisely what a future tense is; and since the overarching category of tense does not obviously constitute a well-defined natural kind (cf. Bybee—Dahl 1989), that is not guaranteed to be the case. In approaching the issue I begin by discussing the temporal meaning that I see as defining for a pure future. As opposed to the deictic tenses discussed above, where I could take my point of departure in fairly uncontroversial structural elements in the grammar of English, the discussion of the future thus starts off as a discussion in terms of content substance only. However, I hope to show that the type of meaning I am after has a central status not only in relation to the cross-linguistic substance discussion, but also in relation to English. Futurity is an aspect of the meaning of a great many signs and con-structions: adjectives like imminent, nouns like destiny, verbs like become, etc. In homing in on the special status of the future in a verbal context, a central lexical class is that of verbs like plan or want whose complements are understood as awaiting future realization. As part of what such verbs do, they thus assign futurity to clauses that occur as their direct objects. This shared feature itself, abstracted from all indications of how it is to come about — i.e. abstracted from the rest of the content of these verbs — is what I understand by pure future. My paraphrase is the following: (70) The 'pure future' indicates that the state-of-affairs applies to some situation ahead in time (time F for future) An obvious path whereby a marker of pure future may arise is through a process of bleaching (cf. below).
eBook - ePub- Nuala O'Sullivan, Geraldine Woods(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- For Dummies(Publisher)
Choosing Past, Present or FutureIn this chapter, we look at basic time questions. No, not ‘You’re late again because. . . ?’, but ‘Which verb do I need to show what’s completed, not yet begun or going on right now?’ We look at the basic tenses (past, present and future) and the perfect tenses, which are anything but perfect. We also work on irregular and auxiliary verbs.Verbs indicate time using a quality known as tense . Before you reach for a tranquilliser, here’s a rundown of the three basic tenses: present, past and future. Each tense has two forms: plain or simple (called by its basic time designation) and progressive (the - ingform of a verb). The progressive places a little more emphasis on process or action that spans a time period, and the present progressive may reach into the future. In many sentences, plain and progressive verbs may be used interchangeably. Here’s a taste of each type:The past tense tells you what happened at a specific time in the past or describes a pattern of behaviour in the past. In the sentence ‘Diane painted a skull on her bike’, painted is a past tense verb describing a single past action. In ‘During the Biker Festival, Diane was drinking more than usual’, was drinking is a verb in the past progressive tense describing an action that recurred over a period of time – the duration of the festival.The present tense tells you what’s going on right now or, more generally speaking, what action is recurring. The present tense also touches the future. In the sentence ‘Diane rides to work’, ridesis a present tense verb and riding to work is something that Diane does regularly – she has done it for some time and you expect her to go on doing it in the future. In ‘Diane is polishing her bike’, the verbis polishing is in the present progressive tense and polishing her bike is what Diane is doing right now. But in ‘Diane is riding her bike to Cornwall on Friday night’, the present progressive verb is ridingindicates that this action is something that Diane is going to do in the future. This double use of the present progressive as a present or future time indicator is just one of the interesting features of English!
eBook - PDFPerspectives on Variation
Sociolinguistic, Historical, Comparative
- Nicole Delbecque, Johan van der Auwera, Dirk Geeraerts, Nicole Delbecque, Johan van der Auwera, Dirk Geeraerts(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The situation is seen as completely unalterable and uncontrollable by the speaker, because it is fixed on a calendar (13) or a timetable, because it results from a definite plan or agreement (14), etc. (cf. Declerck 1991a: 91). (13) And I'm eighty-three in December. (Cain 34) (14) Tomorrow we go over to Triebschen ... where Richard Wagner spent some of his life. (Cain 30) The difference with the progressive counterpart is not a purely aspectual one: the present progressive is used to represent a future situation as resulting from a present plan or arrangement. The referent of the subject noun phrase 17 is felt to have control over the situation, which is not seen as completely unalterable. The speaker wants to stress that the subject really intends to carry out his plan and therefore he shifts his temporal perspective Future time reference 261 to the present and, using the progressive, he represents the situation as already ongoing, as having started at the moment of speech. (15) Actually he's publishing his memoirs. The Peverell Press are bringing them out next spring. (OS 28) As there is reference to a plan or arrangement, this use of the present progressive is only possible with intentional situations. Apart from some well-known exceptions, such as sit, stand, wait, etc., Stative verbs, which are not intentional, do not have progressive forms. The corpus confirms this: all cases of the present progressive in The Daughters of Cain and Original Sin refer to an intentional situation. In (16) to see functions as a dynamic verb, meaning 'to meet'. ( 16) What time are you seeing Armstrong-Jones? (Cain 234) For Dutch, various motivations for the use of the present tense with future time reference have been proposed in the literature on the topic. They are not all clearly distinct from each other and the terminology is not always well-defined.
eBook - PDFVerbal Periphrases in Romance
Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization
- Mario Squartini(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
As a matter of fact such a construction seems to occur in any context without any actional and aspectual restrictions. In this respect the French form shows the same evolution as the American Spanish Progressives described above, which have neither aspectual nor actional restrictions. Interestingly, in French such 3.5. The Progressive in the other Romance languages 121 an unrestricted construction ends up disappearing. The construction with etre + present participle/gerund seems to have survived only in the perfective tenses as a possible substitution for aller + gerund. Gougenheim 1929: 35-36 reports recent examples of etre + gerund, which substitute for aller + gerund: (177) L'amelioration de la situation economique de I'U.R.S.S. a en s'acc616rant journal 1925) 'The improvement of the economic situation of the Soviet Union has been gaining speed 1 As for the other French constructions, their distribution is quite interesting here since it confirms the hypothesis on the difference between pure progressivity and durativity. As a matter of fact in French the construction etre en train de + infinitive is only used for pure progressive contexts, namely when the situation is viewed as on-going at a given contextually relevant time. In this respect French can be grouped together with Italian as having a verb periphrasis whose usage is restricted to pure progressive imperfective contexts and not admitted in purely durative cases. On the other hand the two remaining constructions ( etre ä + infinitive and etre apres + infinitive), whose usage is quite restricted nowadays, are documented as occurring both in progressive contexts and durative contexts, thus behaving like the Ibero-Romance form.
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