However, there are still a number of ways of expressing future in English besides the one mentioned above (which is the commonest, though), all of which have their particular nuances of meaning and are generally not interchangeable.
This structure is typically found in informal spoken English and generally denotes a future fulfilment of the present intention. It contrasts with will/shall+ Infinitive in that the latter is associated with a spontaneous decision at the time of speaking, a prediction or a promise. Let’s illustrate this with following example:
‘The phone is ringing. I will answer it!’ (spontaneous decision)
‘Next year I am going to have a holiday in Hawaii.’ (future fulfilment of present intention)
Also, like will/shall it can be used to show prediction, only that in this case the presence of evidence on which the prediction is made is implied:
‘When you grow up, you will probably have twins.’(mere prediction)
‘She is going to have a baby!’ (she is already pregnant)
Present Progressive can have a future meaning, which resembles that of be going to, although there is a slight difference: here we do not have a present intention or cause, but rather a present, fixed arrangement or plan, as in the example:
‘I am flying to Paris next week.’ (an arrangement already made)
or
‘He’s not coming with us, is he?’
At this point we should address the fact that since we are talking of a ‘fixed arrangement’, we cannot be referring to the distant future, so, Present Progressive is usually associated with a sense of immediacy; something is going to take place in the near future.
√
When the Present Simple is used to mark future reference, then there is usually a sense of future as being a fact conveyed; an event will occur and this can hardly change:
‘We set off tonight.’ (changing the plan is out of question)
What is more, the event or process we refer to is often felt to be an impersonal or collective one, that is to have been determined not by the speaker, but by a committee or some kind of authority:
‘The train leaves at 08:45.’
‘The bus makes a stop halfway.’
- Will/shall+ Progressive Infinitive
This construction is usually referred to as ‘Future Progressive’ and is another way to speak about the future. It differs from the rest, however, in that it can refer to temporary situations in the future. Also, it usually associates the action with a future point of time round which it forms a ‘temporal frame’:
‘This time tomorrow I will be lying on my bed!’
‘Tomorrow at 7 o’clock I will be working on my project.’
There is also another implication in the use of this structure. It can indicate that a predicted event will happen independently of the will or intention of anyone concerned; it evokes, thus, a feeling of neutrality, which excludes any personal involvement.
‘I will be seeing John tonight.’ (implying the prediction of the arrangement on behalf of the speaker, hiding his/her personal feelings about the event)
Of course, there are further ways to express future time in English, such as be about to+ Infinitive, which is quite similar to the Present Progressive or be going to in use, but we have decided to pay particular attention to the most frequent ones.
English in comparison with other languages
In the Introduction, we raised the question of whether there are more languages where this subtle conflict concerning the Future or other tenses occurs. In answer to this, we can refer to Finnish, where the future tense does not exist either and the present perfect is used instead. Chinese is another outstanding example, where no tenses are used whatsoever and future time is indicated by auxiliary verbs or time expressions. In fact, the reason why English lacks future tense is partly because when early grammarians sat down to write the first grammars of English, they took Latin as the model, and then filled in the categories that worked for Latin with their nearest English equivalents.
Conclusion
To sum up, it should definitely not be surprising that different languages vary as to how many tenses, if any, they have. Each language follows different sets of rules, which is what makes them distinct. It is not even necessary that we divide time up into past, present and future, but should the case be such, it is not logically necessary to express this distinction through tense, and this is something we attempted to shed light on in this essay through the analysis of the way future time is marked in the English Language.
Bibliography:
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G.N. Leech.1988. Meaning and the English Verb. Longman
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C.N. Li/ S.A Thompson.1996. Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar, University of California Press