I really doubt that is your most controversial take

@kklein

Ай бұрын

hard disagree. this is the most divisive thing i've ever said.

@m1n3c4rt

Ай бұрын

@@kklein this reply is by far the most divisive thing you've ever said

@Iron_uksus

Ай бұрын

​@@kkleinwell, you probably will say something more controversial, but we've established that there is no future, therefore there IS something more controversial, therefore this is not the most controversial statement

@busdriverbuddha

Ай бұрын

It's not a controversial take at all

@SkyTheHusky

Ай бұрын

@@kklein Remember the Chinese phonology video? Two vowels in Mandarin is definitely more controversial.

Linguistics nerds are the pettiest people ever and i love that

@cubicbanban

Ай бұрын

I love petty disagreements between scholars!

@jgjg5182

Ай бұрын

Well obviously, they only ever argue semantics!

@rowboat10

Ай бұрын

@@jgjg5182 Should be "they _always_ argue semantics"

@jgjg5182

Ай бұрын

@@rowboat10 NERD

@SylviaRustyFae

Ай бұрын

​​​@@rowboat10 should be "They *will* always argue semantics"

Trying to cram all world languages into structures designed for specifically and exclusively the Romance family will always lead to awkwardness. Collective tense-aspect-mood (TAM) is a more valid lens to look at this feature of human language than trying to take tense separately just because that's what the Romans did. English TAM is conveyed through a combination of conjugation and auxiliary verbs, which can dynamically produce a large variety of specific meanings.

@handsoapinc

Ай бұрын

Especially when English isn't a Romance Language, and like in K Klein's old video, the Modals are something that other Germanic Languages (German was the reference in the Video) also do. It's just a normal Germanic Trait that gets treated as Abnormal. It also doesn't stand out compared to the North Germanic (Nordic) or the Slavic families either. It just seems weird in the Romance perspective.

@Alex-fv2qs

Ай бұрын

Even in Romance languages these structures don't always work particularly great As a speaker of Rioplatense Spanish I natively use the equivalent of "going to Verb" as the future tense, while the simple future is all but abandoned for simply talking about the future and is more of a conditional

@handsoapinc

Ай бұрын

@@Alex-fv2qs It really is a fascinating change. But it's not the existence of a simple tense, but the existence of a grammaticalized future tense, that's of focus here. Even if the Future Simple gets replaced by a Compound Future (e.g. "hablaré" becomes "voy a hablar"; Present Tense, but still used to indicate Future Timeframes). If you still retain the likes of the Future Perfect (e.g. habré hablado) you can make the safe claim that Spanish has a clearly defined Future Tense. So we'd say that Spanish (like quite a few Languages) has multiple strategies to express similar information: A Future Tense and a Compound Future Tense. It's less the clear division of Simple-Past, Simple-Present, and Simple-Future; it's more the clear division of Past, Present, and Future (where Aspects and Moods get superimposed).

@Alex-fv2qs

Ай бұрын

@@handsoapinc The future perfect is another "improper" mode in rioplatense as it isn't actually talking in any way about the future either

@pialba

Ай бұрын

@@Alex-fv2qs a similar thing is happening in French, in casual speech we mostly use the "je vais faire" (= I'm going to do) form rather than "je ferai" which is more formal

I'm a non-native English speaker and this has always been an obvious fact to me, specially when I compare it with other languages I know that similarly have and don't have future tense. I was surprised to find out this is controversial.

@user-gg3gd2iu1n

Ай бұрын

As a native Russian speaker I completely agree with you

@aiocafea

Ай бұрын

same, in the same way that speaking a language with cases, it seemed obvious to me that 'I/me' is not a distinction based on case i begin to also get the differing opinion, where this romance-based analysis is obvious for me, a speaker of a romance language but it may not be the most useful vocabulary and set of tools for describing english

@vari1535

Ай бұрын

@@aiocafea wait, why not? (why isn't "I/me" a case-based distinction?)

@allanjmcpherson

Ай бұрын

@@vari1535 I would assume because we don't have a fully fleshed-out case system. Though it's really debatable, but ultimately unimportant. We certainly used to have one, so you could argue it is on that basis. But we currently don't, so you could argue it isn't on that basis.

@aiocafea

Ай бұрын

​@@vari1535 i just looked it up and that was mostly a blunder of mine, the I/me distinction can usually be described by cases, just not the ones i know I speak a language with nominative+accusative+others, that would make 'It was we.' valid, but in English there is a subjective/objective distinction that holds most of the time, so it's just whichever is the grammatical subject, whichever is a grammatical object there do seem to me a huge number of exceptions that you just have to learn for the Nominative mind, like 'me, I like that' and you have to learn both that 'it is I' is the form that you're supposed to write, which would imply English is N/A, but nobody says 'that's I', they say 'that's me' implying it's a S/O language i would say it's still not fully case-based, as 'I and she are going to the store' sounds completely wrong even if both N/A and S/O would say those are the right pronouns, but 'She and I are going to the store' sounds more natural, implying 'and I' is just a learnt construction anyway, sorry for the long comment but basically, i meant there is no nominative-accusative distinction in current spoken english, but you can make an argument for the subject-object distinciton

136 views in 2 minutes. You're on pace for 35,740,800 views in a year.

@Cr_nch

Ай бұрын

I swear I just saw a meme similar to this like three minutes ago before coming here

@paulamarina04

Ай бұрын

my 31 new husbands from this month really liked this comment

@gallanosa

Ай бұрын

4801 views in an hour = 105,141,900 in a year.

@Laezar1

Ай бұрын

hey congratz!

@mapron1

Ай бұрын

Do you using linear extrapolation instead of exponential? Most videos are get view in his first day

WE LOVE DOUBLING DOWN WITH FACTS AND EVIDENCE

@Tasorius

Ай бұрын

Facts that were made up by pedantic people and serve no real purpose.

@cirodeandrade

Ай бұрын

... Something made up by pedantics which serves no real purpose? Do you realise you've just described languages in general?

@Tasorius

Ай бұрын

@@cirodeandrade No. I am describing petty linguistics.

@cirodeandrade

Ай бұрын

So, what's "proper" linguistics, then? Please, enlighten us

@Tasorius

Ай бұрын

@@cirodeandrade Petty linguistics makes you use a different word instead of tense when talking about the construction that expresses the future in English, instead of still calling it the future tense, with a subcategory that states which type of future tense it is.

This is the kind of response video I'd love to see more of on youtube

@mapron1

Ай бұрын

No thank you. self responding? Reaction videos already a cancer, but this is another level, reaction to yourself. Original video at least was worth watching.

@chuksk8592

Ай бұрын

​@@mapron1 I thought it was clear from what the first couple minutes showed that it was in response to others tbh

this video will now probably be the most controversial video...

@artembaguinski9946

Ай бұрын

and now in the future it has already willed.

@voikalternos

Ай бұрын

this comment section will be very tense

@lonestarr1490

Ай бұрын

You mean he'll have to do a response video to the discussion under this one?

Ah, the “is Pluto a planet” debate but for linguistics.

@notahumanhand4390

Ай бұрын

Complete with one of the sides being objectively correct and yet there still being debate over it because people refuse to accept that as an answer!

@a_worldly_man

28 күн бұрын

This is actually a pretty apt comparison. In both debates it really comes down to the difference between a formalized academic definition versus a colloquial definition.

@BasiliskKingOfSerpents

27 күн бұрын

@@a_worldly_man Exactly! And personally, I think both definitions are useful to understand in their appropriate contexts.

@rateeightx

27 күн бұрын

Honestly though, If Pluto isn't a planet, I'm yet to hear a convincing argument as to what it actually is. Is it a Dwarf Planet? Well news flash, A Dwarf Planet _is_ a Planet! Don't believe me? Just look at the name, Dwarf *Planet!* Check-Mate Astronomers!

@joshuasgameplays9850

6 күн бұрын

@@BasiliskKingOfSerpents Just like how, biologically speaking, there is no such thing as a fish (either that, or you're a fish) It's still useful in everyday communication to describe the general concept of a fish, even if such a concept has so objective basis in reality.

I remember Hank Green said something very useful in a video on if fish were animals and he said something like "it turns out a lot people think different words mean different things but it's also helpful if we agree some words mean the same thing, in this case animal does not mean mammal which is why we have these different words". Like my syntax classes are hard enough and different syntacticians seem to agree on so little, if the meaning of tense was one of those things I think I'd just die.

@Envy_May

Ай бұрын

that's semantics babeyy

@tuluppampam

Ай бұрын

To be fair, English usually distinguishes between land and water animals, or fish and animals. There's also the fact that lots of vegetarians eat fish, because that's not considered an animal. Semantics is weird and very flexible (pragmatics).

@rateeightx

27 күн бұрын

Honestly even if Animal did mean Mammal, some Fish would be Animals because Mammals are Fish. Aquatic Mammals especially, there is genuinely no definition that would disqualify say a Whale from being a Fish without disqualifying other fish or completely arbitrarily excluding Mammals (Or Tetrapods in general) because you feel like it. Aquatic Vertebrate? Whales are Fish. Must be able to breathe underwater? (Most) Lungfish aren't fish. Can't give live birth? Sharks aren't fish. Can't be Endothermic (Warm-Blooded)? Tuna aren't fish. If you can give me a solid definition of Fish that includes all things traditionally considered fish, but excludes Cetaceans by a reasoning other than simply stating that Mammals/Tetrapods cannot be Fish, I will... Not actually give you money because honestly that'd be a lot of effort and I don't know how to transfer money digitally, but if it were less effort I'd straight up give you 10 dollars, Instead I suppose I shall simply give you great admiration.

@Anonymous-df8it

24 күн бұрын

@@tuluppampam They're not vegetarians; they're pescatarians

@tuluppampam

24 күн бұрын

@@Anonymous-df8it many that call themselves vegetarians eat fish, which means that sometimes vegetarian is a synonym of pescatarian (descriptivism)

Okay, I did not expect it - but yeah, you genuinely convinced me that "will" is not temporal but rather modal :O

@thebaker8637

Ай бұрын

It helps to consider the etymology. “will” originally had the same meaning as in German, ie. “to desire, to want”, which eventually developed into the future, as the word “want” moved away from its original meaning of “to lack, to miss” (ie. “for want of a nail”, “I shall not want”) to “I desire (that which I lack)”. Hence “as you will” (as you wish), “the car won’t start” (the car does not want to start), “my grandpa would always smoke indoors” (my grandpa always wanted to smoke indoors [and did]), and even “I will crush you” (I want to crush you [and I’m going to]), and literally the noun in contexts like “god willing”.

@xXJ4FARGAMERXx

Ай бұрын

​@thebaker8637 There's a thing called "a will" which is a thing where you write your wants and desires for after your death

@Heulerado

Ай бұрын

​@@thebaker8637 Wait, is "will" as a noun with that definition not used anymore? I'm not native, but "losing the will to live", "will to power", "their will faltered", etc. Are all these just one of those phrases that have meaning as a whole, but not if the words are interpreted individually?

@chuksk8592

Ай бұрын

​@@Heulerado It's not entirely gone or left to be fossilised in phrases but it's kind of growing closer to that!

@Heulerado

Ай бұрын

@@chuksk8592 I was thinking that this was very weird because it's a very useful word, but then I remembered that the word "willingness" is way more common, which is pretty funny. It's like aquatic mammals, the noun "will" was used to make the adjective "willing", people forgot about the noun and used the adjective to make the noun "willingness". I'm sure this has a name.

The interesting thing is that when I was learning English I was taught that "will" was both a future tense and a modal verb

As an ESL teacher, I've always taught the future as one of the modal verbs, because it fits this category the most

@noamtashma617

Ай бұрын

teaching ESL to english speakers or teaching english to ESL signers?

@soryaaza7362

Ай бұрын

@@noamtashma617 English as a second language to Spanish native speakers

@marcella8576

Ай бұрын

@@noamtashma617 I'm pretty sure english sign languages are referred to as ASL (american sign language) or BSL (british sign language). I've only heard ESL meaning english second language.

@sponge1234ify

Ай бұрын

​@@marcella8576english sign language are not "referred to" as asl or bsl; those two are different languages.

It’s obvious that ‘will’ got classified as a tense simply because people wanted a simple drop-in translation for the actual future tenses in French and Latin. The same with ‘would’. Since French and Latin use a verb similar to ‘can’ to express what we express with ‘can’ in English, there is never any suggestion that this is some sort of tense or mood or whatever. If French and Latin had a verbal inflection that expressed desire (e.g. _je mangereux, nous mangeroulons_ ) then we would all be listing ‘I want to eat’ amongst the English moods and tenses just like ‘I will eat’ and ‘I ate’.

@Tasorius

Ай бұрын

Or perhaps it is a tense that is formed with an auxiliary verb, instead of a suffix... as it primarily conveys a future event.

@AmyThePuddytat

Ай бұрын

@@Tasorius Watch the effing video.

@Tasorius

Ай бұрын

​@@AmyThePuddytat I did, and the future tense still exists in English. It is just formed in a different way than the past tense.

@steffahn

Ай бұрын

Apparently a term for such a mood exists; it is "desiderative mood".

@steffahn

Ай бұрын

To name another example: I suppose, if Latin didn't have prepositions itself, we'd probably also call every noun with a preposition in English as having a "case". A case that's just formed with an auxiliary word instead of a case ending. Or - well - on second thought, we'd probably even go further and just call it a case for those prepositions that would happen to somewhat match the [in this scenario likely way more than 5] Latin cases, whilst calling the remaining prepositions something entirely different, for no particular reason.

I feel like a lot of the claim about English having a Future Tense, only really make sense from an English perspective. When you study foreign Languages that have a clear Past/Non-Past distinction, it's easy to see how these Languages lack a Future Tense. Yet they still have plenty of strategies for Future Statements. I like Polish as an example, because it lacks a Future Tense, but it has two Future Constructions. An Aspect System (Non-Past Tense + Perfect Aspect) or a Compound Future (Non-Past Tense + "I will"). It's pretty easy to look at Polish's "Compound Future" and see parallels to English. And in the Polish example, the 'Compound' bit is made more obvious by the fact everything else is properly conjugated to Past and Non-Past, with the sole exception being "to be". I think people that only speak English, and are most familiar with English, are the most likely to refute the idea that English has no Future Tense, mostly on intuitive grounds. Because it sorta "makes sense" to describe English in terms of three time-frames. But English doesn't have a Future "Tense", only a Future "Time-Frame".

@kklein

Ай бұрын

brilliant, no comments

@Arcangel0723

Ай бұрын

@@kklein I have always found it funny when someone comments "no comments" which in and of itself is a comment. Maybe it is short for "I have no comments past that which I have just made" lol

@arthurgabriel2625

Ай бұрын

Polish actually has 2 ways of making the compound future tense. The first is by using the future tense of to be(być) and the infinitive of a verb. Ex: ja będę robić And the second one is also by using the future of to be, however, instead of adding an infinitive of a verb, it will use the past tense conjugation of it. Ex: ja będę robił

@handsoapinc

Ай бұрын

@@arthurgabriel2625 I didn't know about the infinitive form conjugation. Only the past tense.

@SylviaRustyFae

Ай бұрын

​@@Arcangel0723 no comment

This still doesn't change why Malaysia's biggest export are electrical and electronic products (E&E Products)

@mapron1

Ай бұрын

Ehm... and why?

@DEMEMZEA

Ай бұрын

Why would it

@jimmulaneyfue

Ай бұрын

so true!!!

@the5002ndpanda

Ай бұрын

​@@mapron1I think the punchline is that it's a non-sequitur in relation to the video.

@Anonymous-df8it

24 күн бұрын

@@the5002ndpanda No; I think someone is trying to promote something

One of the funniest comparisons for me on this matter is Japanese. Japanese also doesn't have a grammatical future tense, but unlike with English, nobody pretends that Japanese does have a grammatical future. So when learning the tense system, after it's explained that they just distinguish between past and non-past tense in Japanese, one of my classmates was like "that's so confusing, why don't they just do it like us". And when I tell you that I had to bite my tongue to avoid blurting out that they literally do use tenses exactly like us...

@maxim_ml

Ай бұрын

I disagree. There's no commonly used grammatical construction to indicate the future in Japanese, not even something like the non-obligatory German "werden" ～みる come to mind, but the future is only an additional semantic

@kasane1337

Ай бұрын

@@maxim_ml So...where's the disagreement?

@tovarishcheleonora8542

Ай бұрын

@@maxim_ml The real difference between non-past and present/future is that you can non-past can be used for both present and future depending on context clues, but you can include nouns that already conveys time like "tomorrow, today, next week, next year, etc" if you want to make sure that it's about the future or present if it would be confusing by context. While for example, in english you need to inclued specific words to convey future meaning in a mandatory way. So english pretty much has a future tense even if you not change the form of the main verb.

@thebaker8637

Ай бұрын

@@tovarishcheleonora8542 My flight leaves tomorrow is a clear counterexample, just to name one.

@henricmezzomolima4199

Ай бұрын

In japanese if you want to say "I will travel" you just say "I travel"(旅行する) and people just have to understand by context that you're talking about the future. Most of the time this is pretty obvious and there is no ambiguity, as there would be no other interpretation. You can add other words like "tomorrow" or "often", to be more clear if you want.

Funnily enough in Turkish "can" is also a suffix, and some people consider it a tense there. "I will go" is gideceğim, "I can go" is gidebilirim, "I will be able to go" is gidebileceğim. But I believe that not all suffixes are considered tenses, so, yeah Edit: I mixed up git with gel originally, thanks to the kind person who corrected me

@omerosmanaksu5128

Ай бұрын

Should be "gidebilirim" and "gidebileceğim." Also, I haven't encountered people considering -abilmek as a tense, but I'm not very knowledgeable about it.

@eshaanbhargavpatel1768

Ай бұрын

That's a mood.

@prywatne4733

Ай бұрын

this suffix is not a tense but it's a related thing called a mood (this one is the Potential mood if I'm not mistaken), I think he talks about Tense-Aspect-Mood in his original video if I remember correctly

@georgios_5342

Ай бұрын

@@omerosmanaksu5128 yeah I mixed it up, I'll correct it in the initial comment so it makes sense

@13thk

Ай бұрын

As a native speaker, I haven't seen anyone consider -ebil, -eyaz, -ekal, -egel, -iver as a tense. They are very obviously their own thing. And the -e(insert verb) is a pattern that is very clear. Even though there are only a few of these. They transparently originate from verbs. Ek: bil (know) in the case of -ebil. If you ask anyone if it is one, they'll say no (sample size: the 7 people in the house right now). And it is taught in school as a _kip_ (mood) not as a _zaman_ (tense), so anyone with an education higher than middle school 7th grade should know it.

Is "will" actually more certain than "going to"? Those both sound equally certain to me.

@kklein

Ай бұрын

in the specific example given, definitely in my opinion. however, they can switch in certainty based on certain circumstances. take "I'll go shopping" - could function as a suggestion, there's some leeway here "I'm gonna go shopping" - set in stone, said as you're on your way out the door, already in the process of "going to go shopping"

@samagraarohan2513

Ай бұрын

​@@kkleinI feel like the first sentence seems less certain because of how it's used by people, and not because it actually is. On a side note, expanding "I'll" to "I will" gives it the same level of seriousness again

@angeldude101

Ай бұрын

​@@kklein "gonna" While "gonna" is well known as a contraction of "going to", what kind of object would it be considered if analysed as a standalone word. It's _almost_ a modal verb, but it still needs to be prefixed with a form of "be", revealing its origin as being formed from a gerund. Many contractions have similar questions that can be asked. In some cases it almost feels like adding new inflectional morphology to the language that either wasn't there before or might've been lost at some point.

@maciejlehr4874

Ай бұрын

I definitely learnt that to be the case in school, though to this day I don't "feel" that to be the case. I know that doesn't mean much since I'm not a native Anglophone, but I'd argue that I have a pretty native-like understanding and confidence regarding English and yet this aspect of it I still haven't internalised

@shambhav9534

Ай бұрын

@@kklein I think it's made so by the fact-and someone in the comments pointed this out-that etymologically, "will" is related to "want", but nowadays, it's becoming a vanilla word to express the future. Hence, two different levels of certainties.

Prescriptivism gets a bad rap. It is very useful in the sciences. You need a very strict definition that helps create perfect dichotomies and other relations that can be very useful. Grammar and naming can be descriptivist, but categorization should be at least a little prescriptive.

@CerealGamingTV

Ай бұрын

prescriptivism is useful in the sciences because of its predictive capability. doing so for some field on principle when it doesnt adequately predict behaviours isnt useful.

@noamtashma617

Ай бұрын

But... You can't do prescriptivism in moat sciences. You can't prescribe to the world what its rules of physics _should_ be; you can't prescribe to a molecule what reactions it _should_ be doing. It doesn't make sense. It only makes sense in linguistics, because you're studying current human behavior, and people might try to follow a rule just because someone told it to them. But, if you're talking about prescriptivism towards scientific jargon, then actually it's not even that uncommon for different papers to have different definitions for the same word. The author might think that their own definition is better, for whatever reason. The most important thing is only that the aithor clarify any non-standard definition they use. The second most important is that they don't do it in a way that creates unnecessary confusion.

In german, the modal construction of "will + [verb]" is a way to express desire (normally translated with "to want to [verb]) and i think this is how it became a temporal marker in english: originally, it was only supposed to express *aim*, not inevitability like the "original" german future tense. "Ich will trinken" means "I want to drink" but "I will drink" means "Ich werde trinken" So, while germans will use will to want, english speakers will use will to will.

@thebaker8637

Ай бұрын

and then to dig into it more, “werden” in German as a main verb means “become, turn into, get”, from which *it* got the future meaning via semantic extension: Den Kindern ist (es) kalt. - The children are cold. Den Kindern wird (es) kalt. - The children are getting cold. Es ist heißer. - It’s warmer. Es wird heißer. - It’s getting warmer. Wir sind glücklich. - We are happy. Wir werden glücklich. - We will (become) happy. This is incidentally similar to Hungarian where “lesz” primarily means “become” with its own past tense (lett) but it also is used as the future form of the copula.

@jopeteus

Ай бұрын

In Swedish "vill" also means "to want"

@tomaikenhead

Ай бұрын

the distinction in english is really will/shall. “i will go” originally indicated desire to go as in other germanic languages, whereas “i shall go” indicated necessity to go. then they both began implying the future, but with different moods. will go = “I am going in the near future and I want to” ; shall go = “I am going in the near future and must”. then shall began to be used less frequently and will took over the future auxiliary role while largely losing its sense of “want”. schoolteachers often teach shall as a first-person future auxiliary - i/we shall vs you/they will (though this construction is very dated). when i write formally, i still maintain the “want” sense of “will” and use it only in future constructions where desire is included. for obligatory moods, i use must, shall, or another construction.

@Tasorius

Ай бұрын

Everything that expresses the future is uncertain. You can make a statement about what you will do and then the world could end before you do it.

I agree with your point that "will" and similar verbs are used in ways that don't indicate a future tense, but I think as far as their utility, it's a bit nitpicky to say that they don't at all count as future tense. In cases where "will" indicates an action in the future, it is acting as a future tense verb. When it's not doing that, it's not a future tense verb. Anyway, today I learned what a modal verb is, so thanks for that. ^_^

Good stuff, king. Kind of related: would you consider making a video about the "chat is a 4th person pronoun" take that made its rounds online some months ago? I swear that shit traumatized all of linguistics tumblr forever lmao

@KabalFromMK9

Ай бұрын

What even is a "4th person pronoun" or "4th person perspective" for that matter

@monemori

Ай бұрын

@@KabalFromMK9 Nothing. It's not a thing lol. Sometimes you'll see obviative being referred to as a "4th person", but it's just another type of third person. People love to make things up and pretend they know about linguistics when they actually don't, is all lol

@Anonymous-df8it

24 күн бұрын

@@monemori I thought it meant "hypothetical person" (e.g., "one" as a pronoun)

@monemori

24 күн бұрын

@@Anonymous-df8it That's still third person!

@Anonymous-df8it

20 күн бұрын

@@monemori Really?!

As a non-binary person, thanks for your unwavering support on this issue. It delights me to watch your dedication to the issues that truly matter.

@kklein

Ай бұрын

you're welcome, I will never back down on this

@sayven

Ай бұрын

Why did I think this was gonna be about tense being a social construct 😂

@camelattejeans88

Ай бұрын

​@@sayveni mean all of language is a social construct lol

@ihategoogle-fr7zf

29 күн бұрын

@@sayven time is a social construct the present is relative to the observer depending on their speed and position in spacetime all moments are real and the flow of time is an illusion

@Ann-mj4xn

25 күн бұрын

​@@sayvenI mean... It's not like tenses exist as physical objects in the world

It's useful to distinguish "tense" and "time" in language. These are different concepts: "tense" is a grammatical concept, while "time" is a semantic concept. Those two can sometimes go together neatly, but sometimes they don't. "Present tense" often describes "present time events", but they don't necessary have to. Let's take an example: "I'll text you when I get there". "Get" is an action in a future time, but we don't call it "future tense". I think everyone will agree that "get" is in "present tense" even though it's a future event.

@maxim_ml

Ай бұрын

agree

@tovarishcheleonora8542

Ай бұрын

But you need the "will" to give the sentence a future meaning, even if the other verb not changes it's form for the tense. And you can't really make future meaning in english without using a very specific set of word options. So it's a future tense even if the main verb doesn't change.

@thebaker8637

Ай бұрын

@@tovarishcheleonora8542 Yes you can. “My flight leaves tomorrow.” “The conference starts in two hours.” “This train calls at all stations.” “I need to run, the uber’s here in a minute.” etc. etc. You can even use the present continuous “The plumber’s coming in the evening.” “I’m only staying for 5 days.” etc.

@thebaker8637

Ай бұрын

@@tovarishcheleonora8542 “My flight leaves tomorrow.” “Gotta run, the uber’s here in two minutes.” “This train calls at all stations.” “The shop closes in 30 minutes.” “The pub quiz starts in an hour.”

@tovarishcheleonora8542

Ай бұрын

@@thebaker8637 You literally spamming me with sentences where you state the time itself already. But you surely can't do it without extra verbs or words like "tomorrow", "in 1 minute" etc. If english really doesn't have a future tense then you should be able to make future without extar verbs and things that specifically states a time. Oh you can't? Thought so. Because if you not have a future tense then you should be able to tell the future only from context clues without anything that specifies the thing to be in the future. But i guess it might be too much to comprehend for you guys.

Native english soeaker here, I totally agree. I hated my foriegn language classes because the way teachers would sort of bend the rules to explain the language's structure, *and thus explain it incorrectly and in a way which excludes the fundamental mechanisms that I need to learn for my future within that language*, it was fucking awful.

Love the title. Immediately expected the plot twist though.

your explanation of perfective/prospective aspects of verbs was really helpful. I’ve always struggled with the concept but you made it a lot clearer.

Hey, quick question: Why does being a modal verb construction stop the "English Future" from being analysed as a future tense? Or, perhaps, if I may ask a different question - why can't the category of "modal constructions in English that use the modal verb 'will'" be analysed as containing "The English Future Tense" (in comparison to other related languages, such as French and Spanish), plus some other things"?

@PlatinumAltaria

Ай бұрын

In traditional grammar "tense" is the inflection of a verb to mark temporal relations to the speaker. This reveals the flaw of tense as a concept.

@tuluppampam

Ай бұрын

This is because linguists enjoy having different names for different constructions, distinguishing between SEMANTIC and GRAMMATICAL. In this case, it is semantically a future tense, but grammatically it makes little sense to call it a tense because it doesn't ONLY (or mostly) refer to the future. I hope this clears things up.

@somnvm37

Ай бұрын

I feel like the idea that this inconsistency throws out the whole future tense makes no sense. saying "I am going tomorow" doesn't specify tense at all, only the context [word tomorrow] shows it's the future. Afaik that's how arabic shows temporal context. "i will ..." uses 1 specific word like a normal modal verb. Every other example in the video was just different expressions that are also popular for the future.

@Kiyoliki

Ай бұрын

Because that boils down to "If a language can express the future, it has a future tense" which isn't true.

Regarding my own native language (Spanish) it's weirder, because in fact we have the "future tense" Yo comeré / Tu comerás / El/ella comerá / Nosotros comeremos / Ustedes comerán. But if you dig futher you realize that the future tense in Spanish is a simplification of a periphrastic tense with the auxiliary verb "haber" Yo he de comer / Tu has de comer /El ha de comer / Nosotros habremos de comer / Ustedes han de comer. You just dropped the "h" at the beginning and add the rest to the ending of the verb and there you have the future tense, but idk if it is indeed a future "tense"

@holaliceanos

Ай бұрын

En español moderno si me atrevería a decir que existe un tiempo de futuro porque antiguamente se podía jugar con esa construcción y ahora no. Podías poner haber antes o después, etc. (creo que hay dos instancias en el Cantar del Mio Cid en que se puede apreciar esto). Ahora no, haber está totalmente fijo después del verbo principal, de suerte que no puedes separarlos. Me recuerda a la evolución sintáctica del adverbio latino magno opere/magnopere. Otra razón importante es que ningún nativo conceptualiza comeremos como comer hemos o trabajaré como trabajar he, es decir, ya no se trata de una construcción si no definitivamente de una sola palabra. Basta con decir “Trabajaré” para indicar el futuro (y la persona). Pero no basta con decir “Work” por ejemplo. Los mismos gringos entienden will con un verbo auxiliar, así que…

Alright, the matter is closed. Nobody disagree with Klein anymore! I love this video. Doubling down with good arguments, facts and evidence is the only agreeable kind of doubling down.

This discussion got tense

I wouldn't interpret "It's going to rain tomorrow" and "It will rain tomorrow" as expressing different levels of certainty

@holaliceanos

Ай бұрын

the sun it’s going to explode vs the sun will explode

@j.r.8176

Ай бұрын

I would

@shambhav9534

Ай бұрын

@Tom_Het In that case, "going to" sounds more certain.

@nicfarrow

Ай бұрын

I would, and I would consider them in reverse to that stated in this video.

Now look at Czech, which can sometimes make a morphological tense on a verb and other times needs a modal verbs

@prywatne4733

Ай бұрын

interesting here in Polish all tenses are like actual tenses (morphological tenses), this is mostly due to the "to be" verb used to form the past tense has collapsed into suffixes (compare Czech jsem vyrobil and Polish wyrobiłem, or jsem byl to byłem, you can see the -em from jsem went to the end of the participle), the only debate in Polish is whether the compound future is a tense or not, I think it's just an expression using the only verb with future tense that being "być"

@CallMeChrisOfficial

Ай бұрын

​Adding onto that: 1. Morphologically speaking and excluding the verb "to be", the polish language only has two tenses: past and non-past. The future is expressed thanks to aspect. The non-past imperfective has a present meaning, while the non-past perfective has a future perfective one. In order to create a future imperfective meaning, one must use the auxiliary verb "to be", putting all of the conjugation on it and conjugate the lexical verb for the imperfective aspect, third person and grammatical gender or use the infinitive. 2. The suffixes still behave like separate words. They don't shift the stress and can be separated from the verbs. Here are some examples of it on the verb "to be" in 1st person singular masculine: Past: byłem - jam był Present: jestem - jam jest Conditional: byłbym - bym był The last one is quite common, while the rest is mainly used for poetical reasons.

@thebaker8637

Ай бұрын

@@prywatne4733 but then you can also see those suffixes aren’t REALLY part of the verb morphologically because they can move and attach to conjunctions, pronouns, and just about anything else. In the following, the first variant is commonly used: I would like… Ja bym poprosił Ja poprosiłbym Lest we forget Żebyśmy nie zapomnieli Że nie zapomnielibyśmy and then there’s more archaic variants, where nowadays the second one would be more common, the first one is archaic: I am the Lord, your God… Jam jest Pan, twój Bóg… Ja jestem Pan, twój Bóg… Why have you forsaken me? Czemuś mnie opuścił? Czemu mnie opuściłeś? Because I am still young Bom jeszcze młody Bo jeszcze jestem młody

@thebaker8637

Ай бұрын

@@CallMeChrisOfficialYou beat me to it, but also the perfective does not have to have a future meaning, although it usually does. Im więcej piwa wypije, tym bardziej jestem pijany. Here the perfective form is used (wypić instead of pić) but the meaning of this sentence is more like “the more beer I have, the drunker I become” with no future time reference (the sentence is more literally “the more of the beer I finish drinking, the drunker I am”, which kinda elicits the perfective).

@CallMeChrisOfficial

Ай бұрын

@@thebaker8637 Powinno być "Jam jest Pan Bóg twój...", a lepszym przełożeniem na współczesny polski byłoby "Jestem Panem Bogiem twoim...".

"grammaticalized time reference" is sometimes also used for purposes other than indicating time. For example, in Italian the future tense is also used to make assumptions and state hypotheses. Much like the fox will hunt rabbits example.

As a linguist, I would like to point out how special English is: verbs don't have future tense, but nouns do: "he'll call me later" and "the sun'll shine tomorrow". The _future_ him calls and the _future_ sun shines. This is absolutely the only way to analyze these facts and I'll be collecting my Nobel Prize for Linguistics shortly.

@PlatinumAltaria

Ай бұрын

That's definitely the correct interpretation, also the apostrophe is a letter of the alphabet /j

@kklein

Ай бұрын

ahahaha yeah I engaged in this analysis a little a couple years ago in my Wolof video if you'd be interested in that

@nixel1324

Ай бұрын

@@PlatinumAltaria I'll concede it's a letter, but it certainly isn't in any alphabet I've ever learned.

@Just_A_Banana

Ай бұрын

​@@nixel1324 /j means joking if you didn't know

@angeldude101

Ай бұрын

Usually contractions are just expanded to their original forms when parsing, but interpreting them as their own distinct thing marked things so much more weird, complicated, and wonderful. Some romance languages drop pronouns because the information is contained in the verb? English you can argue inflects the _noun_ (including pronouns) letting you "drop" the _verb._

I still find this video hard to agree with, and I think it's because the way I learned what tense means is more to how it's used in the literary world, rather than linguistics. While English is a past/non-past language as you say, it's not really useful to say "You need to put this sentence in the non-past instead" if say you're giving feedback to someone's writing. It's more useful to distinguish between present and future to know what kind of construction to use. In a similar vein, I see the present perfect tense as past tense becuase of what exactly it refers to, not because of how it's conjugated. Probably influencing my views on this as well, Japanese is also a past/non-past language, but unlike English does not have a specific construction to talk about the future. 「寝る。」can mean both "I sleep" and "I will/am going to sleep", and thus is context dependent as to what time reference it's referring to, whereas in English it's not because of the construction with "will/going to".

@holaliceanos

Ай бұрын

Yes, but strictly speaking is still wrong to call it future tense. You don’t have to know linguistics, every dictionary will briefly tell you the same thing. It’s not that it is useful, but rather all of you are USED TO call like that. About you mentioning Japanese context-based future and comparing it to English's “future tense”, that’s simply not the case. Again, it suffices with consulting a dictionary. Tense is a set of forms taken by the verb to indicate the time. Does the verb to talk have a future form or any verb at all? Tense has to do with morphology, not with syntax

I remember posting on the last video. I have a linguistics degree, so I should have known better, but I was among the dissenters. I subsequently, very quickly, learned that I was wrong. As soon as I saw the thumbnail, I knew what this video would be about. I'm glad you took the time to make it! Thanks!

@kklein

Ай бұрын

it's okay, it's from the objectively worst part of linguistics... syntax

agree with the comment of the month, but that’s also why I’m here

@mapron1

Ай бұрын

I couldn't tell if this comment made by toptist or frontist

Given that "I'm [verb]ing at [time]" is more grammatical then "I will [verb]..." for my ideolect (and many people I know), I have to agree with you here

@Tasorius

Ай бұрын

When talking about grammar, please get simple things like "then" vs "than" correct...

@ractheraccoon

Ай бұрын

she [verb] on my [noun] till i [verb]

@Just_A_Banana

Ай бұрын

​@@Tasorius Yeah everyone should know the difference between two words that are completely irrelevant to this debate and your point completely destroys this argument!

@Tasorius

Ай бұрын

@@Just_A_Banana It's just a bit ironic that you didn't get a basic spelling right when talking about linguistics...

@Just_A_Banana

Ай бұрын

@@Tasorius Grammar nazi much?

I agree with your general take. There's a few specific examples in this video that I don't exactly agree with a few extra things you were saying here, but then I realized it's because you speak a different dialect of English than me

this is your controversial video? I thought everyone agrees that English is past/non-past and will is a modal verb, and the "future tense" is only used by L2 teachers in non-English speaking countries as a simplification.

@crptpyr

Ай бұрын

Nope, "future tense" is what native English speaking kids are taught in school too, so pretty much everyone figures the tenses in English are past/present/future until they think too hard about it

i’m not an expert on this and i probably shouldn’t say anything but i consider english to have three tenses with two being actual, by definition tenses and the other being a sort of actor of a tense to allow people speaking english to describe the future without using any additional words (to the language). like, it’s not “real,” but it serves a very functional purpose by describing what will happen in the future and is thus grouped with the present and past tenses

3:29 The PC ("J'ai joué") is more often used for the simple past to be fair to you, but I wouldn't say it's completely different because it can also carry this "retrospective present" meaning, i.e. "J'ai joué au football toute ma vie

this goes agaist everything I've been taught about he English lanugage in the most satisfying way and I'm not gonna lie, I kinda love it

I love watching linguistics videos on KZread, (they were actually my first introduction into the topic before I was old enough to enroll in a university and become a linguistics student), and I'm beginning to notice a pattern whenever linguistic data about the way language subconsciously works is brought up. Time and time again, people will get incredibly defensive, even aggressively so, about the way they think they speak their native language when the truth is counterintuitive. A recent example that comes to mind is a video by Ling Otter (or something like that, I don't remember the name perfectly) about allophones in Spanish. For instance, how the d will be pronounced as a voiced dental plosive when preceded by a consonant, but softened into more of a dental fricative when preceded by a vowel. A common example of this is the initial D in dedo vs. a dedo, which in the first instance, is distinct from the second D, as the second one is always preceded by a vowel. In the second instance, where the same phonetic environment exists for both D's, they sound alike. But due to the fact that these are allophones and thus practically unnoticable to L1 speakers unless pointed out, many Spanish native speakers commented under that video that this is misinformation and to not believe him, forcing him to do a followup video adressing the comments (who were ironically spreading misinformation by claiming his claims to be misinformation). And now the same happened to you. Just goes to show how important language is to people, I guess, and how deeply we care about it

Wait, so is present perfect or past perfect not considered a "tense" separate from the past tense or present tense? I think that would be the decisive argument, because French, Spanish etc. also have helping verbs that form those tenses. Or whatever they are. (Verb forms?)

As a non-linguist with absolutely no training in the field, I'm going to agree with you.

very interesting video, though apparently I'm a little late to the debate. I have just seen a couple of videos of yours before. As a Russian speaker from what I understand Russian also doesn't have a future tense , but I have follow-up questions, if there is no future tenses in English then what are the Future Simple, the Future Perfect, etc. because throughout my English learning journey I have always been taught that there are the 12 tenses in which the Future tenses are inherent parts and the second question so if English does not have a future tense then how many tenses there are in English? I'm sorry if I said something wrong and I'm by no means trying to object, in all honestly when it comes to linguistics I'm just scratching the surface

It’s actually the same in Arabic. Despite being considered one of the most difficult languages to learn (which, as someone who speaks a dialect of that language I can confirm), standard Arabic conjugation is surprisingly easy. There’s the past, the present and the imperative tenses. You just add a prefix to the present verb to make it future.

Wow, incredible video with really clearly explained, carefully thought-out examples. I agree with your analysis

I see your point, however when I learn French, I’m taught the future tense to be also “je vais faire” so in your frame is this also seen as present looking to the future

A table can be a chair for lack of other sitting surfaces though

The most divisive thing yet... here's to a hundred more divisive things!

What’s you’re opinion on future perfect continuous?

"It's going to rain" and "it will rain" have the same degree of certainty. Should or Might would change it to less certain. Other than that great video! And I agree!!!!!

damn never considered that English doesn't have a future tense before but I love your reasoning and will be informing everyone I've ever met about this.

I'd love to hear what you have to say about the Japanese verbal system and how it expresses (or fails to express) the future tense.

@bobboberson8297

Ай бұрын

It's just past/non-past like english. You can just say like つもり or use volitional conjugations to talk about things you intend to do

Present retrospective is so much better than present perfect

The use of will in the future tense is different from the use of will as a modal verb

@clubsandwich559

Ай бұрын

i see. it’s useful to make the distinction between “i will eat,” referring to some future point in time where i will be eating and “i will eat,” which contextually indicates that at some future point i will be eating. bold!

@user-kp1js6cb2s

Ай бұрын

@@clubsandwich559 well, "I will eat" when you are going to eat something in the future or "I will eat" as in expressing your will to do something even if there are forces that will try to stop your wrongdoings, but they will fail (according to you, at least)

@Tasorius

Ай бұрын

@@clubsandwich559 You clearly did not see. "Will" can be used as both a modal and temporal verb.

I too prefer the term "retrospective", and how it fits well with the "prospective".

2:33 but in french it's written : tu ne tueras point future tense without modal verb, so shall/will = future tense

I came to a similar conclusion that time I attempted to create my own Germanic language. I decided that I needed a "future participle" of "te-" the way that German uses "ge-" as a past participle but in conjugation with "be" instead of "have". Creating an actual simple future tense was more work than I was willing to do at the time lol

In school we were taught the modal nature of the future conjugations in English, though he didn't identify it as a modal system, just as a different approach compared to the continental European grammar. Come to think, I should probably thank this teacher!

I didn't even realize this was a controversial topic until you made this video. Not even agreeing on the relevant definition of words like "tense" adds a lot of spice to any discussion.

Your use of "Prospective" has helped me massively settle the tense descriptions I argue with my Filipino bf And has resolved my grammatical description of "am" and "have" - thank you! Also, yes, totally agree - there is no "future tense" as such in English

I don't see how "It will rain tomorrow" is more certain than "it's gonna rain tomorrow". I think there's a subtle difference but i don't think that is it. Semantically, any sentence I can think of that uses "will" or "going to" to indicate a future event has an equal amount of certainty. "If you keep on like this, you're going to lose your job" "If you keep on like this you'll lose your job" "if you keep on like this, you WILL lose your job" In all cases, the speaker expresses a certainty.

this video convinced me, good job, fair arguments, and enlightening!

This video reminded me of a debate in the comment section of MindYourDecision's "-3²" quiz where even if there already exists a(n almost) universally agreed upon definition, people will still try to find reasons to justify their opposing view.

@Anonymous-df8it

24 күн бұрын

Is it -9? Just want to make sure I'm not *_that_* type of person

When you said this was your most controversial video, I thought it was actually really funny that it was one of the videos I agreed with you about lmao

I love hearing hot takes about academic subjects, that's why this channel is one of my favorites.

Constructions like "The car won't start" have always been fascinating to me... In Portuguese, my native language, you have to use the present tense for that: "O carro não liga"

I wonder how Slavic languages fit into this. In (most) Slavic languages (that i know of), each verb has an inherent property: either it is perfective, or imperfective. Imperfective verbs have a past and a present (and an analytic future). Perfective verbs have a past and a future (and no present at all, in fact, the future tense uses the same endings as the present tense in imperfective verbs). The only exception to this is "to be" which has both a present and a future (the future tense is used in the construction of the imperfective analytic future, even) (and it is an imperfective verb). Also, the past tense uses an l-participle which inflects by gender and number but not by person (they're 3rd person by default, and add the present form of "to be" for 1st and 2nd, like, uh, bol[a] som/bol[a] si/bol[a]/boli sme/boli ste/boli). So it's analytic in 1st & 2nd person but not in 3rd? And the l-participle isn't used in any other context so it's not like you can interpret it like some more complex construction like "have+past participle" in English. (also, lolling at you completely brushing aside the controversy with the gender videos)

I love the foreshadowing. xD

As a person who learned english as a foreign language, I totally get what you mean and I think it's a very interesting thing to notice. If I say "zrobię" in polish you could translate it to "I will do" or "I will have done" but it doesn't imply any movement, probability, any state I'm being in, any schedule, whether I want it or someone made me do it. Any of these grammatical tricks on which it could support itself. Just an abstract action floating somewhere in the future.

This only convinces me tense is a lost cause or at least very limited as a concept. The distinction of verb conjugation and auxiliary verb is far more important at least in English when referring to when something happened.

I like how the nearly-dead subjunctive mood which is typically identical to the past tense is required for a future even in the construction "It's high time someone [did something]".

To address some of the comments made in this video, I think it may be instructive to look at the French language, specifically the most commonly used form of the French past, or "passé composé". Hopefully we can agree that this is a form of "past tense" (the original video cites it as such), though you can take it up with the Académie if you insist that only the passé simple and imperfect are valid. To summarize the arguments in the video: 1) The English future appears distinct from other tenses. The French "passé composé" also stands out here - "passé composé" uses a conjugated helping verb and a participle rather than a unique conjugated ending as in the present, future, or past imperfect. You can make the argument that helping verbs and participles also appear in French present perfect and the like, but then the English future also isn't very distinct from other "tenses" as constructions like "will verb" or "going to verb" aren't too different from conditional "should verb" or "can verb" or the other examples listed in this video. 2) Constructions English uses for future tense don't always refer to the future. French "passé composé" generally conjugates the verbs "avoir" or "être" along with the participle when constructing the past. That said, as noted before, "être" with a participle is also be used for present perfect. So, "je suis allé" means "I have gone" in the past while "je suis fatigué" means "I am tired" right now. 3) The English future isn't needed to talk about the past. Neither is "passé composé" in French! And I'm not even talking about using the "passé simple" - a construction like "venir de" can easily refer to recent past events using only present tense conjugations! 4) The English future uses a bunch of seemingly random constructions. French will usually use two different verbs ("avoir" and "être") but can express numerous different past aspects by conjugating them either in the present, past imperfect, or even the subjunctive. And this doesn't even take into account various other constructions like "avoir dû faire" or "should have done" which conjugate the subordinate part in the "passé composé" but leave the main verb in the infinitive. All of this is NOT to say that English has a future tense. That is for linguists to decide what definition those words mean and whether English meets said definition. However, I'm afraid the arguments made in this video are insufficient to define English as missing a future tense unless we also agree that French "passé composé" is not part of a French past tense. I'm fine with this, as it furthers my theory that French is Latin as spoken by Germans, but French and the Romance languages were given as ur-examples of what a tense is in the original video. In any event, none of this discussion invalidates any informal analysis, here or otherwise, that uses terminology loosely to assist understanding of one language through comparison with another. tl;dr: English is a confusing mess of Germanic and French and other influences, each of which carries its own random exceptions and weird "tense-like" constructions. We're doing our best.

@bastientheriault7301

Ай бұрын

"Je suis fatigué" isn't passé composé though. It's présent + adjective. Sure there is the verb fatiguer but the passé composé od that verb is J'ai fatigué (I have tired something). We can also take Se fatiguer (to get tired) but the passé composé is Je me suis fatigué (I have gotten myself tired) I guess you could also think of Être fatigué as it's own thing. But then "Je suis fatigué" would be the présent of that verb Edit: I guess a more appropriate verb to show that distinction yoi were showing is probably Mourir. "Il est mort" can either mean "he has died" or "he is dead". But even then one is passé composé and the other is présent+ adjective

I like how a video on gender and the most controversial thing is if "future tense" is a thing. And btw your explanation makes a ton of sense.

As a native English speaker who has never once thought about or cared about the future tense, I wholeheartedly agree with this video

Hi, Just found your channel. Catchy name for it. Cheers, K. Klein

I didn't watch the original video, but I'm reasonably well persuaded by the arguments in this "doubling down" video.

I remember being unconvinced last time (though I don't remember why), but I have to say I agree now. Maybe it was the examples, or maybe I just wasn't paying attention then. Consistently analysing those constructions as modal verbs does in fact make more sense.

The grammar teachers of my English degree referred to it as 'future reference' which I think is probably the best way to describe it. There's no grammatical future tense in English, but it does have future reference

This is delightful

damn this is a really good elaboration. now i understand your point ! 😃

As someone who is not a linguist but who loves linguistics and tries to learn as much as humanly possible... I agree

I'm surprised you didn't even mention it's called suppletion, as a morphological future tense doesn't exist as such in English (nor in another germanic language: standard german, I don't know about the other germanic languages), we use as you explained very well constructions with auxiliary verbs or with adverbs that indicates potential, certainty of happening or even the temporal proximity of a future event. We also experiment that in French (and other languages, but as a native French speaker I'm sure of what I'm talking about) as there is the morphological future "-rai,-rais, -ra," etc. which is not the most commonly used as we use also an auxiliary verb "aller" to express immediate future (and "venir" to express immediate past). In certain varieties of French we also use "vouloir" (will) as in English to express immediate future. Morphologically it's analysed as a present tense, but semantically it's more subtle as it's not future in general but a specific future, with a high degree of certainty and a high degree of proximity. In English though it may be semantically other kinds of future, but the morphological analysis says the same: it's all present tense. All that just to say it's called suppletion.

Can I even comprehend a future tense from the perspective of the future?

wait so does german not have a future tense either? because id translate "i will" directly into "ich werde" so is that both not future tense? or does it just magically turn into one because it switched languages? why? Im so confused

ok, you've convinced me. thanks :)

4:53 SHEVVILD MENTION'D RAAAH, COME AN GET THI BREEADCAKES LAD

We can do as we will, but cannot will what we will.

okay you've convinced me

OK so this broke me a little 😅 as a monolingual dyslexic, this has broken my brain In the best way

The use of the present as a marker for future time-reference (e.g: "tomorrow, I'm playing football") doesn't negate the tenseness of "will" or "going to" anymore than when it's used for past time-reference negates the tenseness of past forms (e.g: "so I'm heading home, and then this bus comes along and nearly runs me over")

@MCArt25

Ай бұрын

So is your latter example in the past tense?

@bobboberson8297

Ай бұрын

Your examples don't work. The last one is entirely present tense. It's just telling a story from a perspective that's in the past, from which they are talking about things currently happening (in that past perspective). Meanwhile for the future tense example, it's being said by a person in the present talking about things in the future, so there's actually a difference in these examples.

«Will» is just a verb signifying what one wills, it doesn't necessarily signify it's modal function of pointing to the future. It's not a tense, there are likewise a lot of «tenses» in Occitan and French and such also are simply other tenses with an auxiliary or modal stitched onto it, which (sure,) can be used to signify different timeframes, but isn't grammatically novel. Not yet, anyways. Maybe in a thousand years, these modals and auxiliaries would have become so integrated into their verbs that they in practice would be actual tenses. Who knows

Couldn't agree with you more! The English "future" is a set of related constructions that indicate the future in the discourse, but are not morphological. It reminds me of William Croft's take on construction grammar. He proposes that things like tenses, adjectives, and other categories, can only really be defined as those things if they fit the strict and narrow definition. But, since most of every language doesn't fit these narrow definitions, we can refer to the meaning/role they play in the sentence. Saying "I will go to the store" is a future construction meaning that I will perhaps travel to the store at some point in the future. Especially since English is so analytic, we don't do too much in the way of morphology, but have a plethora of periphrastic constructions to achieve these meanings. When you say that English is past/non-past, that isn't a limit on what we can express in English, it's just a description of our *morphological* range of tense. All is possible in every language!

I didn't know about the perfect aspect until I learned French at high school.

There is a difference between meaning and grammar. Romanian, even though it is a Romance language, does not have a grammatical future. We use an archaic conjugation of the verb “a voi” (Romanian teachers usually say it is actually the verb “a vrea”, which is identical in meaning, “to want”, but I think it is “a voi”, because it’s an older word and is still the main one used in Aromanian, which is pretty conservative in grammatics) plus the infinitive. That’s why I found it confusing at the beginning when I learned Latin and French, because my native thinking patters do not recognise the future as a tense that should be incorporated in the verb.