Re: future past

On Sunday, June 13, 2004, at 11:30 , John Cowan wrote:

> 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),
Yep - by using the modal verbs 'shall' & 'will'. English strictly has no
future tense; it uses different moods.

> 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").
In other words, showing future as modally different from indicative, not
as a different tense in contrast with present & past.

The future tenses of Classical Greek developed from earlier subjunctive
forms. They didn't survive. Modern Greek uses the particle /Ta/ followed
by either present or aorist subjunctive depending upon whether the aspect
of the  future action/state is imperfective or perfective respectively.
/Ta/ originated from earlier /Telo: na/ etc. "I wish that..."

> 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?
yep - PIE had no future tense. The Latin forms are of Latin origin. There
are, in fact, two different future formations:
-am, -e:s, -et, -e:mus, -e:tis, -ent
Used for the 3rd conjugation and, normally, the 4th conjugation.
These developed from earlier subjunctive formations.

In the 1st conj. similar endings (only 1st sing, -em is different) are
used for the ordinary 'present' subjunctive, since the alternative set
(-am, -a:s, -at etc) coincided with the indicative. Similarly, with the
second conj. the alternative subj. endings (i.e. 3rd & 4th futures)
coincided, except in 1st sing., with the indicative. So a different set of
endings evolved for these two conjugations:
-bo:, -bis, -bit, -bimus, -bitis, -bunt.

These are formed from the inherited 'short vowel' IE subjunctives on the
root *bhw- (cognate wit our "be"), thus *bhwo:, *bwes, etc.
These new endings were sometimes in early Latin and occasionally in
Classical Latin added to the 4th conj, e.g. audibo, audibis etc.

The future of 'to be' was formed from the short vowel subjective forms
also; ero:, eris, erit etc <--- *seo:, *eses, *eset etc.

None of these forms survived in VL or the Romance langs, except 'eris' in
Spanish 'eres', which in Iberia acquired a present meaning after 'est'
lost its final /t/ and had become homophonous with 'es' (you are).

On the other hand, the old present & imperfect tenses continued into VL
and gave rise to the forms still extant in the modern Romance langs - yet
another indication (if one were needed) that futurity is not generally
viewed in the same way as present and past.

Ray
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