Contemporary Croatian future II: a tense or a mood?

Abstract

Summary This paper seeks to determine the place of contemporary standard Croatian future II in the verbal system and to define its meaning more accurately. What applies to Standard Croatian is assumed to apply to the majority of Štokavian and Čakavian dialects as well. While the primary focus of this work is modern future II, some of its older meanings are mentioned briefly in Section 4. Modern Croatian future II is peculiar in several ways, due in part to its unclear place in the verbal system: some linguists treat it as a tense (i. e. as an indicative tense), others as a mood (i. e. as a non-indicative tense). This paper attempts to resolve that disagreement by comparing future II with future I in similar contexts. The difference between the two future forms is difficult to interpret as a difference between categories but, in any case, it is modal rather than temporal. In that sense, future II functions as an ‘oblique’ mood in relation to future I, which belongs to the indicative. Whereas future I refers to a future process anchored in the present, future II refers to one that is not. The anchoredness of a future process in the present is understood chiefly as a relatively concrete concept: one that increases the conviction that a process will be realised. The non-indicativity of future II is also corroborated by the situation in languages that use the subjunctive to express the future II meanings. Future II as an oblique mood, whether formed using the l-participle or the infinitive, is a logical consequence of its development from earlier indicative forms.