III. Futurish forms other than
be going to
357
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others, but] it has to be done if you are to stay in control of your garden, rather
than the other way round. (www)
[The Protestant marching season coincides with the preparations for elections to
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violence then a mixture of delicacy and resolution will be required to maintain public
order and sustain political progress. (www)
If we are to be effective and authentic, Oxfam staff, volunteers and supporters must
function as an integrated movement. (www)
7.16 The present tense
Both the progressive and the nonprogressive present tense can under certain
conditions be used to talk about a situation whose post-present actualization
is dependent on present circumstances:
The new teacher arrives tomorrow.
We’re leaving in a minute.
This use of the present tense, which represents a shift of temporal perspective,
is treated in detail in 3.8Ϫ10.
358 7. Absolute tense forms referring to the post-present
IV. Summary
7.17.1 The meaning of the future tense is: ‘ The situation time is located in
the post-present zone’. The principal future tense form in English is ‘will (or
shall) ϩ present infinitive’. (Shall is only ever used in the first person and then
only in restricted grammatical and pragmatic contexts). An alternative future
tense form is ‘be going to ϩ present infinitive’, which, however, can also be
used as a ‘futurish’ form Ϫ see 7.17.2.
The progressive future tense can be used without progressive meaning to
express ‘future as a matter of course’:
[Their centre forward is limping. I expect that] his substitute will be playing the

second half.
7.17.2 Unlike future tense forms, ‘futurish forms’ always combine some sort
of reference to the present with the location of a situation time in the post-
present zone. Because the location of a situation time in the future is not the
main meaning of these forms (reference to the present is at least as important
and in some cases is the core temporal meaning) they are not future tenses, but
they do establish post-present domains.
The form be going to is not only used as future tense form but also, and
more usually, as a futurish form. The dividing line between the two uses is not
a clear one, but in cases in which be going to refers to the future more or less
devoid of reference to the present, we consider it to be a future tense form.
As a futurish form, be going to expresses the idea that the post-present
actualization of a situation is predictable from present circumstances. That is,
the source or cause of the actualization of the future situation is already pres-
ent. The present ‘roots’ of the future situation may lie in an intention: She’s
going to wash the elephant means ‘she has the intention of washing the ele-
phant’. The future situation may also have its roots in any other sort of present
circumstances that can be used as evidence for a prediction. For example, The
elephant is going to be sick implies ‘The elephant is showing signs that I recog-
nize as evidence that it will shortly be sick’. Unlike will, which normally re-
quires that there be a contextual temporal anchor for the situation referred to,
be going to can be used without such an anchor.
The observation that will normally requires a temporal anchor explains why
it is hardly possible in examples like the following:
[Be careful!] The bathtub {is going to /
??
will} overflow. (For lack of an indication
of time, will strongly suggests that there is a condition missing.)
Because will (and shall) in their use as future tense auxiliaries simply locate a
situation at some unspecified time in the future, it can be difficult to interpret

a clause with a future tense form with will if there is no indication of where
IV. Summary 359
in the future the situation lies. Thus Be careful, the bathtub will overflow! tends
to provoke the reaction ‘when?’ or, more likely, ‘if what?’, since conditions are
often left implicit and one of the most characteristic uses of the will future is
in sentences with a conditional meaning or connotation. In such sentences, the
post-present situation does not have to be located at any particular point in
the future, but is simply presented as logically posterior to the situation in the
if-clause (or the equivalent, in sentences with a conditional connotation).
7.17.3 However, be going to can also be argued to function at times as a
future tense form, since it is sometimes used to refer to the future actualization
of a situation with little attention to the present roots of that situation: The
concert is going to be held in the open air. In such cases, we treat be going to
as a future tense auxiliary. Be going to as a future tense auxiliary can also be
argued to be even more ‘neutral’ than will as a future tense auxiliary, since it
lacks the subjective element present in the prediction meaning of will.
Nevertheless, since be going to retains some sense of the situation’s having
its roots in the present, its use implies that the conditions for the actualization
of the situation have been met at speech time. This means that it does not
normally combine with a conditional clause which refers to a condition that
has yet to be met. In such cases, will is normally used. Thus be going to is
somewhat difficult to interpret in the following example:
If your dog bites a post office worker, the post office {will /
??
is going to} sue you.
Similarly, in If that dog bites him he’ll sue, the speaker simply makes a predic-
tion about a future situation that will actualize if a future condition is met.
However, in If that dog bites him he’s going to sue, the meaning is either ‘He
has already decided that he is going to sue if the dog bites him’ Ϫ i. e. the
conditions for his suing if the dog bites him have already been met Ϫ or some-

thing like ‘I can see that he’s the type to sue if the dog bites him’ Ϫ i. e., again,
the conditions for his suing if the dog bites him Ϫ namely his being the type
to do so Ϫ are already there’.
7.17.4 Will and shall also have uses as modal auxiliaries expressing volition.
For example Shall I help you? inquires about the addressee’s wishes and I won’t
help him expresses unwillingness or refusal on the speaker’s part. As tense
auxiliaries, will and shall simply locate a situation in the post-present, albeit
with varying degrees of subjectivity. (In 2.8.2 we have distinguished between
pure future, prediction and predictability.) They do not have connotations of
present factors that affect the actualization of the future situation, such as
those found in the use of futurish forms or modal forms. The ‘neutral predic-
tion’ value of will and shall as tense auxiliaries is most evident when the post-
present actualization of the predicted situation is dependent on factors that are
external to the subject referent of the future tense clause: If that dog barks
360 7. Absolute tense forms referring to the post-present
much more the neighbours will complain. In certain contexts, the modal mean-
ing of will or of shall is particularly salient. In those contexts, the speaker
wishing to express pure future time reference has to find an alternative form.
7.17.5 The futurish forms other than be going to include ‘be about to ϩ
present infinitive’ and ‘be on the point of ϩ present gerund’ for immediate
future and be to for (externally imposed) arranged future. In addition, both
the progressive present tense and the nonprogressive present tense can be used
to refer to the future by treating it as if it were the present, as in The new
helper arrives this afternoon. (This ‘shift of temporal perspective’ use of the
present tense is addressed in 3.6).
8. Temporal domains and relative tenses:
theoretical foundations
I. Introduction 364
8.1 Full situation vs predicated situation 364
8.2 Orientation time & situation time 367

8.3 Temporal relations expressed by tenses: T-relations 368
8.4 Temporal relations not expressed by tenses: W-relations 369
8.5 The two ‘time-spheres’ 370
8.6 Present time-sphere zones 370
8.7 Visual representation of time-spheres and zones 371
8.8 Absolute zones 371
8.9 The length of the time-spheres and zones 372
8.10 Absolute vs relative tenses 372
8.11 Temporal domain 372
8.12 Two past tenses: the absolute preterite vs the relative preterite 373
8.13 Past vs present (time-sphere) tenses 374
8.14 Temporal subordination or temporal binding (T-binding) 374
II. Temporal domains: further terminological apparatus 376
8.15 Central time of orientation (central orientation time) 376
8.16 The temporal nature of the domain 377
8.17 The definition of T-simultaneity 377
8.18 The definition of W-simultaneity 378
8.19 Temporal subordination vs syntactic subordination 380
8.20 Definition of ‘head clause’ and ‘matrix’ 380
8.21 Shift of domain 381
8.22 Shift of temporal perspective 382
III. Arguments for distinguishing between the absolute and the relative
past tense 383
8.23 Argument 1: similarity between past and post-present domains 384
8.24 Argument 2: past tenses whose situation time is W-posterior to t
0
385
8.25 Argument 3: tense use in represented speech 390
8.26 Argument 4: the incompatibility of a punctual adverbial with a relative
preterite 398

8.27 Argument 5: a relative past tense form cannot be replaced by used to 402
8.28 Argument 6: the use of the preterite rather than the conditional tense 405
8.29 Argument 7: ambiguity or vagueness? 408
8.30 Argument 8: choosing between the progressive and the nonprogressive
form 412
8.31 Argument 9: T-simultaneity is a unidirectional relation 414
8.32 Argument 10: the Dutch test 416
362 8. Temporal domains and relative tenses: theoretical foundations
IV. Theoretical conclusions from these arguments 419
8.33 Theoretical conclusion 1 419
8.34 Theoretical conclusion 2 420
8.35 Theoretical conclusion 3 421
8.36 Theoretical conclusion 4 422
8.37 Theoretical conclusion 5 424
8.38 Theoretical conclusion 6 425
8.39 Theoretical conclusion 7 426
V. The principle of unmarked temporal interpretation 427
8.40 Introduction 427
8.41 The ‘Principle of Unmarked Temporal Interpretation’ 427
VI. Summary of chapter 8 434
8.42 Terminology 434
8.43 Evidence for the existence of two past tenses 435
8.44 Further theoretical conclusions 437
8.45 The role of (non)boundedness in the unmarked temporal interpretation
of situations 438
Abstract 363
Abstract
In the previous chapters we provided an over-
view of the four absolute tenses in English: the
present tense, the past tense (or preterite), the

present perfect tense and the future tense (which
we discussed together with ‘futurish tense
forms’). The current chapter deals with the no-
tion of ‘temporal domain’, which is established
by an absolute tense form and which can be ex-
panded by one or more relative tense forms. For
example, in the sentence Mary told me she felt
sick, the first past tense form (told) is an abso-
lute tense form, establishing a past domain,
while the second past tense form (felt) is a rela-
tive one, representing the situation of feeling
sick as simultaneous with the telling.
In part I (ϭ sections 8.1Ϫ8.14) we first reca-
pitulate (and in some cases further develop)
some of the key concepts we introduced in chap-
ter 2. We begin by stressing the difference be-
tween ‘full situation’ and ‘predicated situation’.
For instance, in the example above, the full situ-
ation of Mary feeling sick takes up a longer por-
tion of time than the predicated situation, which
is ‘temporally bound’ by (more specifically, rep-
resented as T-simultaneous with) the virtually
punctual situation of telling and whose duration
is thus confined to the time taken up by the tell-
ing situation (since T-simultaneity is defined as
coincidence).
Part II (ϭ sections 8.15Ϫ8.22) lays out the ad-
ditional conceptual machinery we need to talk
about temporal domains, such as ‘central time
of orientation’, ‘T-simultaneity’, ‘W-simultane-

ity’, ‘head clause’, ‘matrix’, ‘shift of domain’
and ‘shift of temporal perspective’.
In part III (ϭ sections 8.23Ϫ8.32) we adduce
no fewer than ten arguments in support of the
claim that there exist two distinct past tenses in
English, viz. the ‘absolute past tense’ and the
‘relative past tense’. The most decisive argument
is based on the observation that a past tense
form can be used to refer to a situation that lies
in the future rather than in the past, as shown
by the last verb form (felt)inMary told me on
the phone last night that at the dinner party to-
morrow she would suddenly say that she felt
sick. This means that not all past tense forms
locate a situation in the past. An absolute past
tense form does, but a relative past tense form
just expresses coincidence between two times in
a past domain and can therefore be used even if
the two times are interpreted as lying in the fu-
ture, as in the above example.
In part IV (ϭ sections 8.33Ϫ8.39) we draw a
number of theoretical conclusions based on the
arguments adduced in the preceding part.
Among other issues, we take a stance with re-
spect to the question whether we are dealing
with two past tenses being homophonous or
with a single past tense morpheme with ambigu-
ous meaning.
Part V (ϭ sections 8.40Ϫ8.41) is devoted to
default principles guiding the interpretation of

temporal relationships between consecutive
clauses with absolute tense forms. We show
how, in the absence of any direct linguistic clues
as to the temporal relations holding between the
situations, the (non)boundedness of the situa-
tions involved is of central importance. For ex-
ample, the bounded situations in John went to
the door and knocked three times are interpre-
ted in terms of temporal succession, whereas the
nonbounded situations in John stood by the
window and enjoyed the scenery are interpreted
in terms of temporal coincidence.
Part VI provides a summary of chapter 8.