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Future Times, Future Tenses
Contributor(s): de Brabanter, Philippe (Editor), Kissine, Mikhail (Editor), Sharifzadeh, Saghie (Editor)
ISBN: 0199679150     ISBN-13: 9780199679157
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
OUR PRICE:   $147.25  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: August 2014
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Language Arts & Disciplines | Linguistics - General
- Language Arts & Disciplines | Grammar & Punctuation
Dewey: 415.62
Physical Information: 1" H x 6.4" W x 9.3" (1.35 lbs) 312 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Future Times, Future Tenses examines how the future is expressed by means of tense, aspect, and modality across a wide range of languages, among them French, Polish, Basque, Turkish, and West Greenlandic. From the present point of view, the future is not fixed: while there is arguably only one
past, the future is largely open and/or indeterminate. Reference to the future has thus become one of the most hotly-debated topics in contemporary linguistics: the interactions of future tense with future time, and of future tense with the semantics of possible worlds, are crucial to any
satisfactory account of temporal linguistics.

This book considers and seeks a resolution to outstanding issues in the field by uniting linguistic and philosophical perspectives on future reference in natural language. Scholars from different parts of the world approach these issues from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including those of
linguistic typology, formal semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language. In the process they question the very validity of the traditional notion of a specific marker for future tense. The book shows the close connections between linguistic, logical, metaphysical, ontological, and
epistemological issues concerning the future and reveals the value of linking linguistic considerations of tense and aspect to philosophical approaches to modality and time.