back to the future

[Scott Delancey]

The most annoying thing about this nonsense is that English is _not_
a "strong FTR" language: 

"If I wanted to explain to an
English-speaking colleague why I can't attend a meeting later today, I
could not say 'I go to a seminar', English grammar would oblige me to
say 'I will go, am going, or have to go to a seminar'." 

First, of
course we regularly use the simple present for future reference: _I fly
to New York on Friday_. Second, neither _I am going_ nor _I have to go_
is in any way a future construction. Neither is _I will go to a
seminar_, which is modal, not tense, but we can let that go, because, in
the context indicated here it is quite impossible. In certain contexts
one could say _I'm going to go ..._, which is a real future
construction. But it simply is not obligatory in English to use any kind
of future construction here -- the most natural way to say this is with
the PRESENT progressive:_ I am going to a seminar_. 

On 2013-02-26
7:54, Nigel Vincent wrote: 

> At Frans' prompting I post this piece of
nonsense for typological (or indeed other!) comment:
> 
>
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21518574 [1]
> 
> Nigel
> 
>
Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA
> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance
Linguistics
> The University of Manchester 
> 
> Vice-President for
Research & HE Policy, The British Academy 
> 
> Linguistics & English
Language
> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures 
> The University of
Manchester 
> Manchester M13 9PL 
> UK 
> 
>
http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/lel/staff/nigel-vincent/



Links:
------
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21518574
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