Investigating the past of the futurate present

Abstract

Using a corpus of 1118 future-referring clauses from each of five versions of the Christian Gospels, this paper explores the effect that the development of English modals as a distinct class had on the range of meanings expressed by the simple present tense. It is shown that in Old English, the simple present tense was the primary form used to express future meanings, while by Early Modern English modals were obligatory in such clauses. In late Middle English, modals were very frequently used, but are shown not to be obligatory. The change is attributed to the advent, in the late 1500s, of a contrastive interpretable feature modality, spelled out by the modals. Thereafter, a clause lacking this contrastive feature could not be interpreted as future-referring except in planned or scheduled contexts. The featural implications of the present-day decline of the true modals are then briefly considered.