Actualization of the Future Meaning in English Literary Discourse

Abstract

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of linguistic means that serve to express the future meaning in English. The material for the study was the direct speech of a novel written by a British author, from which 1,695 examples containing predicative grammatical and lexico-grammatical units with the future meaning were extracted by continuous sampling. The study of the extracted language units was carried out using componential, distributive, contextual and quantitative analyses. The results of the study revealed a significant repertoire of linguistic means, expressing the future meaning with varying degrees of discreteness. Among the grammatical forms of the indicative mood, Future Indefinite and Present Indefinite were the most frequent; among the forms of the subjunctive mood, the form would + infinitive was in the lead. The imperative mood showed a very high frequency, being the most common grammatical means in the contexts of the future meaning. Of the lexico-grammatical means (represented by biverbal constructions), be going to + infinitive and can + infinitive were quite frequent. The Continuous and Perfect forms turned out to be much less common. It was also found that when used in contexts of the future meaning, the grammatical Continuous forms partially lose the semantics of duration, and the Perfect forms partially lose the semantics of completeness, which leads to a certain neutralization of their aspectual characteristics. Grammatical forms with the primary future meaning tended to be used as absolute tenses, while forms with the secondary future meaning — such as Present Indefinite, Present Perfect, Past Subjunctive — tended to express relative temporal semantics in dependent predication.