Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:24:57.824Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Be going to and will: a pragmatic account1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Liliane Haegeman
Liliane Haegeman
Affiliation:
Department of English, University of Geneva
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the literature on English tense usage, expressions of futurity such as

(1) (a) I will/shall leave next week.

(b) I'm going to leave next week.

have already received a lot of attention, especially so in the pedagogical descriptive tradition of English linguistics (cf. Close, 1977; Haegeman, 1981, 1983; Leech, 1971; Quirk et al., 1985; Palmer, 1974, 1979; Wekker, 1976, etc.). Although these accounts are attractive, they raise further questions because most of them do not propose to deal with the problem against a formal theoretical background. As a consequence, the rules formulated to describe the use of shall/will or be going to in (1) tend to be intuitive and often do not really allow any decisive choice to be made in many instances of usage. On the other hand, Reichenbach type analyses of tense interpretation are usually mainly concerned with the general problem of tense representation and treat both examples in (1) as illustrations of future tense without detailed discussion of the contrasts between them.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , September 1989 , pp. 291 - 317
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Binnick, R. I. (1972). Will and be going to. Papers from the Seventh Regional Meeting Chicago Linguistics Society. 40–52.Google Scholar
Blakemore, D. (1985). Discourse connectives and conjoined utterances. Paper presented at the LAGB meeting, Liverpool, 1985.Google Scholar
Blakemore, D. (1987). Semantic constraints on Relevance. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Blakemore, D. (1988). So as a constraint on relevance. In Kempson, R. (1988c). 183–195.Google Scholar
Close, R. (1977). Some observations on the meaning and function of verb phrases having future reference. In Bald, W -D. & Ilson, R. (eds) Studies in English usage: the resources of a present-day English corpus for linguistic analysis. Frankfurt: Peter Lang; Bern: Herbert Lang. 125–156.Google Scholar
Ehrlich, S. (1987). Aspect and point of view. Paper presented at the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, 08 1987.Google Scholar
Enç, M. (1987). Anchoring conditions for tense. LIn 18. 633–657.Google Scholar
Fleischman, S. (1982). The future in thought and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Grice, P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. (eds) Syntax and Semantics 3. New York: Academic Press. 41–58.Google Scholar
Haegeman, L. (1981). The use of will and the expression of future time in present-day British English. Unpublished Ph.D. diss. University of Ghent.Google Scholar
Haegeman, L. (1983a). Be going to, gaan and aller: some observations on the expression of future time. IRAL, Vol. xxi, 2. 155–157.Google Scholar
Haegeman, L. (1983b). The semantics of will in present day British English. Verhandelingen van de koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, klasse letteren. 45.103. Published by John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Haiman, J. (1978). Conditionals are topics. Lg 54. 564–589.Google Scholar
Hopper, P. (1979). Aspect and foregrounding in discourse. In Givon, T. (ed.) Discourse and syntax. (Syntax and Semantics 12.) Academic Press: New York. 213–241.Google Scholar
Hopper, P. (1982). Aspect between discourse and grammar: an introductory essay for the volume. In Hopper, P. (ed.) Tense-aspect: between semantics and pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hornstein, N. (1977). Towards a theory of tense. LIn 8. 521–557.Google Scholar
Kempson, R. (1977). Semantic theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kempson, R. (1988a). The relation between language, mind, and reality. In Kempson, R. (1988c). 3–25.Google Scholar
Kempson, R. (1988b). Logical form: the grammar cognition interface. JL 24. 393–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kempson, R. (ed.) (1988c). Mental representation: the interface between language and reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Leech, G. N. (1971). Meaning and the English verb. Longmans: London. [Second edition: 1987.]Google Scholar
Palmer, F. R. (1974). The English verb. Longman: London.Google Scholar
Palmer, F. R. (1979). Modality and the English modals. Longman: London.Google Scholar
Quirk, R. et al. (1985). A grammar of English. Longman: London.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, H. (1947). Elements of symbolic logic. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Smith, N. V. (1981). Grammaticality, time and tense. Paper presented to the Royal Society/Britich Academy discussion meeting on The Psychological Mechanisms of Language. Published in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. London. B. 259. 253–265.Google Scholar
Smith, A. & , N. V. (1988). A Relevance-theoretic account of conditionals. In Language, speech and mind: studies in honour of Victoria A. Fromkin. Hyman, L. & Li, C. N. (eds). London & New York: Routledge. 322–352.Google Scholar
Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance. Oxford: Blackwells.Google Scholar
Vet, C. (1984). Is there any hope for the ‘futur’? In Bennis, H. & van Lessen-Kloeke, W. U. S. Linguistics in the Netherlands, 17. 189–196.Google Scholar
Vikner, S. (1985). Reichenbach revisited: One, two or three temporal relations? Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 19. 18–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wekker, H. C. (1976). The expression of future time in contemporary British English. Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar