Future Tense

Nature - Humans - Past - Future - Presence - Absence These familiar terms are the stepping stones of thought that went into my thesis work. While some may pair these words together as dichotomies, I concentrate on the balancing act that exists between them. Since the first Industrial Revolution beginning in the mid-18th century, human activities have significantly altered the rest of the natural world. Other species have evolved in reaction to circumstances produced by human actions. Through my own observations of nature and research into how humans have impacted nature’s evolution, speculation began to swell as to what does the future look like? My thesis work presents found objects from human life intermingled with my own ceramic pieces that are inspired by nature but have elements of peculiarity. The relics represent a human existence and the ceramic components act as a symbol of other forms of life. These familiar, yet odd growth forms imply futurity, a continued existence. This futurity is stemming from a human element that is clearly from the past, combined with this altered view of nature. Are humans of the past too? Are these growths something of the future? At a fundamental level, the work I make as an artist is intended to imply that life will continue in some form, with or without us. My work evokes a glimpse of how things may evolve in the future in order to stress the importance of mindful consideration of how the decisions we make impact the environment

Talking in the present, caring for the future: Language and environment

This paper identifies a new source that explains environmental behaviour: the presence of future tense marking in language. We predict that languages that grammatically mark the future affect speakers' intertemporal preferences and thereby reduce their willingness to address environmental problems. We first show that speakers of languages with future tense marking are less likely to adopt environmentally responsible behaviours and to support policies to prevent environmental damage. We then document that this effect holds across countries: future tense marking is an important determinant of climate change policies and global environmental cooperation. The results suggest that there may be deep and surprising obstacles for attempts to address climate change

Future tense

A poem about technology

Testing the aspect first hypothesis : A preliminary investigation into the comprehension of tense in child greek

Crosslinguistic research on the production of tense morphology in child language has shown that young children use past or perfective forms mainly with telic predicates and present or imperfective forms mainly with atelic predicates. However, this pattern, which has come to be known as the Aspect First Hypothesis, has been challenged in a number of comprehension studies. These studies suggest that children do not rely on aspectual information for their interpretation of tense morphology. The present paper tests the validity of the Aspect First Hypothesis in child Greek by investigating Greek-speaking children’s early comprehension of present, past and future tense morphology as well as the role that lexical aspect plays in the early use of tense morphology. It is suggested that although Greek-speaking children have not yet fully mapped the tense concepts to the correct tense morphology, tense acquisition does not seem to be significantly affected by the aspectual characteristics (i.e. the telicity) of the verb

What the Future ‘Might’ Brings

This paper concerns a puzzle about the interaction of epistemic modals and future tense. In cases of predictable forgetfulness, speakers cannot describe their future states of mind with epistemic modals under future tense, but promising theories of epistemic modals do not predict this. In §1, I outline the puzzle. In §2, I argue that it undermines a very general approach to epistemic modals that draws a tight connection between epistemic modality and evidence. In §3, I defend the assumption that tense can indeed scope over epistemic modals. In §4, I outline a new way of determining the domain of quantification of epistemic modals: epistemic modals quantify over the worlds compatible with the information accumulated within a certain interval. Information loss can change which interval is relevant for determining the domain. In §5, I defend the view from some objections. In §6, I explore the connections between my view of epistemic modality and circumstantial modality

Категория презенса и его языковая реализация в текстах разностилевой направленности

Предметом рассмотрения данного исследования является временная форма презенс, его многозначность и способность выражать действие в будущем времени. В ходе исследования удалось выявить условия, при которых презенс выражает действие в будущем времени.Предметом розгляду даного дослідження є часова форма презенс, його багатозначність і здатність виражати дію в майбутньому часі. У ході дослідження вдалося виявити умови, за яких презенс виражає дію в майбутньому часі.The focus of this study is the category of the Present tense, its ambiguity and its ability to express the Future time action. The research finding is the conditions under which the category of the Present tense expresses the Future time action. The Present tense has the greatest ambiguity. Almost all well-known authors of grammar books emphasize that the Present tense may be relevant both to the present, future, and past time. In the German language the forms of Future and of the Present tense with the future meaning compete between themselves to express the future time. According to the analysis of a large number of texts belonging to different styles, the Present tense with the future meaning is more often used with time expressions (dates, adverbs of time, etc.) (35.5%) than the Future tense (24 %), which generally indicates a greater dependence of this tense form on the context presupposing a future time. However, time expressions’ semantics plays a key role in the usage of these forms. So, it should be noted that sentences which have exact indication of time are usually used in dialogues of characters of literary works and the form of the Future tense that is observed in them is exclusively the Present tense with the future meaning. In sentences with explicit, more or less distinct localization of actions in the future, mainly the Present tense with the future meaning is used. And in sentences with reference to the "indefinite future", especially with such expressions as eines Tages (eines Morgens), mal, einmal, irgendwann, in Zukunft, mainly the Future tense is used. In this regard, we can speak about the predisposition of the Present tense with the future meaning to the “definite” future, and of the Future tense - to the designation of "indefinite” future. There are some commonly known adverbs of time which transform the action of the Present tense to the action of the Future tense. With adverbs and phrases of futurity the future meaning of the Present tense is given only as a special, particular meaning. Consider some adverbs that transform the action of the Present tense to the action of the Future tense. E.I. Shendels gives quite a limited number of adverbs with the meaning of futurity: bald, morgen, in kurzer Zeit, in einigen Stunden, in einer Woche, am nächsten Tag ua

Aspect and Meaning in the Russian Future Tense: Corpus and Experimental Investigations

This dissertation is a study of the Russian future tense within the framework of cognitive linguistics. In this dissertation I focus on the distribution of the perfective and imperfective future forms, their future and non-future meanings, and the use of the future tense verb forms by both native and non-native speakers. In the Russian tense-aspect system, it is reasonable to operate with markedness on a local level of tense, rather than the level of the verb. Via local markedness it is possible to see that the perfective future is the unmarked member of the opposition, and the imperfective future is the marked one. The perfective future tense forms are approximately fourteen times more frequent than imperfective future tense forms in the Russian National Corpus. Both perfective and imperfective future tense forms express not only future meanings but also gnomic, directive etc. The (non-)future meanings form a radial category with the future meaning as a prototype and other meanings as extensions. Native speakers operate with frequency when they use future tense forms. Non-native speakers are not sensitive to frequency, and instruction in the use of the future tense forms in Russian could be improved

What is the ‘Future’ of Greek? Towards a Pragmatic Analysis

The paper investigates the problems related to futurity and modality in modern Greek. The discussion of Greek temporal future expressions is conducted with reference to relevant literature from the areas of English linguistics, cognitive studies and pragmatics. The focus is on the status of future-oriented expressions and the question whether they are primarily epistemic in nature, whether they are tense-based, or modality-based. It is argued that the future tense in Greek has a modal semantic base conveying epistemic modality and that the preferred future prospective reading is a pragmatic development of the semantic modal base. The author further suggests that the future reading is a kind of presumptive meaning which follows from the neo-Gricean Principle of Informativeness, known as the I-principle (Levinson 2000) being a generalised interpretation which does not depend on contextual information

A Contrastive Analysis of English and Arabic Tenses

The study deals with the similarities and differences of Tenses in English andArabic Tenses. The application to the language teaching and learning process. Inthis study the researcher focuses on the three main tenses of both languagesnamely simple Present Tense, simple Past Tense, and Future Tense, that isdescribing the verb systems of both languages based on to each tense. The datathat support this study are obtained by applying a documentary technique thatselected by reading some references related to the subject matters. The data areanalyzed by using the theory of Contrastive Analysis to found out the similaritiesand differences of tenses in English and Arabic. The findings show some aspectsof tenses in English are similar to those in Arabic. The differences are bothEnglish and Arabic has different number of pronoun. English consists of sevenpronouns while Arabic pronouns are fourteen which influence the verb formation