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GÜNTER RADDEN, Meaningful Grammar

from the past to the present and continuing in a similar way into the
future. When we are certain that a future situation will occur, we give
expression to our certainty by using the Future expression will. Mete-
orologists, for instance, can reliably predict the weather on the basis
of past and current weather developments and hence can confidently
announce: «We will have two days of sunshine». We tend to interpret
situations described in the will-Future as predicted with certainty. This
also applies to sentence (4e), I will teach square dancing this year, which
we understand to mean that my course on square dancing has been
firmly scheduled. The will-Future can thus be seen as an absolute Fu-
ture Tense comparable to the Present and Past Tenses.
Our daily expectations about the future, however, are not seen
as absolute but much rather as relative to another unit of time. Thus,
sentence (4f), I am going to miss my teacher, describes my present wor-
ries about my future feelings. Our focus is on the present time, which
serves as the point of orientation from where we take a forward-look-
ing, or prospective, stance. The tense form referring to this constella-
tion is known as Present Prospective. We may also adopt a past or,
more rarely, a future point of orientation and take a prospective stance
from there. Thus, we have both I was going to miss my teacher and I will
be going to miss my teacher. The latter situation is hard, but not impos-
sible, to imagine: ‘Some time in the future, my teacher will leave, and
when she is gone, I will be going to miss her’. Note that we cannot use
a past or future point of orientation with the absolute will-Future. (I
would miss my teacher does not describe a past, but a hypothetical,
situation.) Note also that we can be mistaken about a prospective out-
come. Consider the following situations in the Past Prospective, where
an expected future situation did not come about.

(5a) I thought I was going to miss my teacher but my new
teacher turned out to be much better.
(5b) The car was going to swerve off the road but I jerked the
steering wheel to the side.

In both sentences, the first clause invites the implicature that the fu-
ture situation would occur: I would miss my teacher and the car
would veer off the road. The but-clauses, however, cancel these im-

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