Expressions of future tense
Languages can employ various strategies to convey future tense meaning.
The concept of the future, necessarily uncertain and at varying distances
ahead means that the speaker may express the future in terms of
probability,...
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Expressions of future tense
Languages can employ various strategies to convey future tense meaning.
The concept of the future, necessarily uncertain and at varying distances
ahead means that the speaker may express the future in terms of
probability, intent The auxiliary+verb sequence can eventually become
grammaticalized into a single word form, leading to reanalysis as a simple
future tense.
This is in fact the origin of the future tense in Western
Romance languages like Italian (see below).
In some languages, there is no special morphological or syntactic indication
of future tense, and future meaning is supplied by the context, for example
by the use of temporal adverbs like "later", "next year", etc.
Such adverbs
(in particular words meaning "tomorrow" and "then") can also develop into
grammaticalized future tense markers.
A given language can exhibit more than one strategy for expressing future
tense.
In addition, the verb forms used for the future tense can also be
used to
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