Re: future past

David Peterson scripsit:

> Something about future tenses has always bothered me conceptually.
Most future forms comes from things like will (I will go = it is my will
to go), or necessity (I have to go, and its exact parallels in the
Western Romance languages, which use infinitive + haber), or wish
(Romanian, maybe other Balkan languages) or aspect, or realis/irrealis
("Are you God, to make realis statements about the future?"), or
sequence ("en train de").

Classical Latin has an inflected and unanalyzable future, but it's
suspiciously regular, as if it was formed fairly recently in the
language.  Anybody know its origin?

--
The man that wanders far                        jcowan@reutershealth.com
from the walking tree                           http://www.reutershealth.com
        --first line of a non-existent poem by:         John Cowan

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