The grammar of future time reference in European languages

As the title suggests, this chapter is about the ways in which speakers of European languages talk about the future; more specifically, the grammatical devices that are used in doing so. At the centre of the investigation, we will n ecessarily find the things traditionally called future tenses. Since their theoretical status has been the object of considerable controversy, and since we want to be open for other potentially interesting phenomena, the delimitation of the area of study is kept deliberately vague. Future time reference (FTR) was the first of the focal areas in the work of the EUROTYP Theme Group on Tense and Aspect. Questionnaire data were collected for about 30 languages, and on the basis of them a number of descriptions on the marking of FTR in different European languages were written and issued as working papers. Much of what will be said below is based on the empirical material in the questionnaires and the working papers. In this chapter, we shall first look at some major semantic/pragmatic distinctions relevant to the marking of future time reference and at what future grams look like in a typological perspective. Then, we shall see an example of how ongoing grammaticalization processes are reflected in the questionnaire material. Finally, we shall look at the areal distribution of future grams in Europe, with special attention to what will be called the 'futureless area' of Northern Europe.