Expressions of futurity in contemporary English: a Construction Grammar perspective

Abstract

This article describes and analyses five different ways of expressing futurity in English (shall/will, be going to, be to, the simple present and the present progressive) in a Construction Grammar framework. It suggests that the different expressions can be captured as an onomasiologically motivated family of constructions in which the single constructions are differentiated by complex co- and contextual configurations. The latter can be elegantly captured in a Construction Grammar framework since constructions by definition can include pragmatic features. Also, this article claims that constructions may be equipped with an additional ‘context slot’, in which co- and contextual information can be stored. In a final section, this article turns to the issue of tense as a grammatical phenomenon and its genesis in grammaticalisation processes. It is suggested that a Construction Grammar account can make the age-old debate about a future tense in English redundant. Instead, it complements studies in grammaticalisation and opens up some interesting perspectives on parallel developments in the onto- and phylogenesis of constructions.