The Grammar of Future Expressions in English

Author： Naoaki Wada ISBN： 978-4-7589-2275-3 First published： 2019 / 11 / 27 Price (in Japan only)： 9,000 yen (Tax Not Included) (444 pages)

Summary

This book offers a comprehensive model which can treat not only tense and aspect but also modality, mental attitudes, and speech acts in a systematic and unified way by combining the theory of tense proposed in the author’s previous book with the general theory of language use proposed by Yukio Hirose as well as the theory of modality and mental attitudes adopted in a series of studies by the author. In constructing the model, the author bases himself on four key concepts, i.e. compositionality, comprehensiveness, systematicity, and cognitive schema, and supplies a temporal structure analysis of six future expressions in English, i.e. will, be going to, the present progressive, the simple present, be about to, and the future progressive. Although the analysis is mainly based on English, the model itself can be extended to both other genetically related languages such as French and genetically non-related languages such as Japanese.

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1　Introduction

PART I
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Chapter 2　A Compositional Theory of Tense

Chapter 3　Modality, Mental Attitudes, and Related Phenomena

Chapter 4　Tense Interpretation and Temporal Structures

PART II
APPLICATIONS

Chapter 5　Will
Chapter 6　Be Going To
Chapter 7　The Present Progressive
Chapter 8　The Simple Present
Chapter 9　Be About To
Chapter 10　The Future Progressive

Chapter 11　Conclusion