Monday, November 10, 2014

Future Tense





 Future Tense

   Nidhu Bhusan Das


We have the first form (go, play) to have present tense, the past form (went, played) to show past tense and third form (gone, played) to get the perfect tense of the verb, but no such form to show the future tense directly. We can say “I go to school”, “I went to school” but don’t have the scope to express future actions and events with such felicity.

So we have to resort to indirect ways of speaking of futurity thus:
  1. I go to Kolkata tomorrow.( using the first form of the verb)
  2. I am going to Kolkata tomorrow.(using present continuous)
  3. I am to go to Kolkata tomorrow.(using  ‘be’ verb + infinitive [ to go] in this case )
  4. I am going to go to Kolkata tomorrow. ( be going +infinitive ) 
  5. The most common form of future  tense is :
a)        I / we shall go the Kolkata tomorrow.(First form of the verb preceded by ‘shall’ in case the subject is in the first person)
b)        He/she/they/you will go to Kolkata tomorrow. (First form of the verb preceded by ‘will’ in case the subject is in the second or third person.


Maybe, since future is uncertain, the language users haven’t bothered to think of a direct and definite form of expression of the future tense of the verb.

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