# Etymology of European will-future



## Encolpius

Hello, when are where did it all started? I read the will as *I shall/will do* started in Old English. That would not be interested, but after realizing *moder Greek* (not ancient Greek) uses a similar form for future formulation: *θα*, which is the shorter form of the verb θελω (want), once I have been told the *Bulgarian *future copied the Greek pattern and I do not know about *Serbian*. So is that only a coincidence or are there any links (Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, English)? Are there any European language using the will-future pattern? Thanks a lot.


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## Wilma_Sweden

Encolpius said:


> Are there any European language using the will-future pattern? Thanks a lot.


The modern Nordic languages all use the shall/will pattern to express future alongside other ways of expressing future (using other verbs or expressions). They either use cognates of shall or will + verb in the infinitive form. Here's a quick rough list:
Swedish: _skall_, Danish: _vil_, Norwegian: _skal_ and Icelandic: _skulu_

Unfortunately I don't know the history of future usage in those languages. Old Norse and Old English were related, so one should expect - and there are - similar grammar and vocabulary in many respects, not just future usage.


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## sakvaka

In Dutch, _zullen _is used just as _will_ / _shall _in English.

_Ik zal naar school gaan. _I will go to school.
_Ik zou naar school gaan. _I would go to school.

Finnish and Hungarian don't, I'm sure about that. ;D


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## Encolpius

Yes, now that you write about them I can remember, too. I am not sure about Finnish, but Hungarian also uses an auxiliary word (fog), which etymology I could not find. What does Finnish use to form Future Tense???
But Romance languages do not use anything like that, they use suffisex. Latin did not either. I am just fascinated by the distance, North and the Balkan.


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## sakvaka

Encolpius said:


> Yes, now that you write about them I can remember, too. I am not sure about Finnish, but Hungarian also uses an auxiliary word (fog), which etymology I could not find. What does Finnish use to form Future Tense???
> But Romance languages do not use anything like that, they use suffixes. Latin did not either. I am just fascinated by the distance, North and the Balkan.



Nothing. We don't have the future tense. (You're surprised, aren't you!!)

Well, actually we CAN use auxiliary verbs in two ways to express future, but one of them has been borrowed from Swedish (and is not recommended, but it's still frequently used) and the other is rare, old-fashioned, and very formal.

*tulla (come, become) + III infinitive illative*
_Hän tulee sanomaan siitä._ "He comes to say about that" < _Han kommer att säga om det._

*olla (be) + present participle*
_Hän on sanova siitä. _"He is saying about that"


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## mugibil

It's a very natural development, so there doesn't need to be a connection between Germanic and Balkan use. Persian/Farsi has the same use of the auxiliary verb xah/xastæn "to want, to wish," + infinitive to indicate future: khāhæd khord "I will eat". All in all, analytically formed future tenses are not uncommon at all, and the ways in which they are formed tend to occur time and time again independently. For example, another typical analytic formation that you will find arising independently in different languages is the one with "go" or "come": English (going to + infinitive), Scandinavian (Swedish kommer att + infinitive), Hindi (gā <- gayā + subjunctive). The Romance future tenses are also originally analytic formations: "to have + infinitive": French tu aimer + as "thou hast to love" - "thou wilt love"; Slavic has "to be (future) + infinitive" in the imperfective aspect (Russian budu delatj "I will do") and, in Western South Slavic, "to be (future) + past active participle" (Slovene videl bom "I will see").


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## bibax

> Slavic has "to be (future) + infinitive" in the imperfective aspect (Russian budu delatj "I will do").


Really?

It's not sure that "budu" is a form of the verb byti (= to be). My etymological dictionary says that the present form budu (Protoslavic bo~do~, with nasal o's) is related to the verb buditi and originally meant "I intend", and that budu cannot be explained from PIE root *bheu- like byti. If it is true Slavic has "to intend + infinitive" and Russian/Czech budu delati originally meant "I intend to do", now it is periphrastic future.


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## CapnPrep

bibax said:


> It's not sure that "budu" is a form of the verb byti (= to be).


For the etymology, I believe your dictionary, but I believe that _bǫdǫ_ was already the future tense form of _byti_ in Common Slavic. For example, "I will be XYZ" was simply _bǫdǫ XYZ_, and not _bǫdǫ byti XYZ_, right? So the forms _bǫdǫ _etc. (whatever their origin) must have been integrated into the paradigm of _byti_ a long, long time ago.

Also according to this article, a few other verbs could be used as future tense auxiliaries in early Slavic (want, begin, have to).


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## mugibil

bibax said:


> Really?


Well certainly synchronically at least.



bibax said:


> It's not sure that "budu" is a form of the verb byti (= to be). My etymological dictionary says that the present form budu (Protoslavic bo~do~, with nasal o's) is related to the verb buditi and originally meant "I intend", and that budu cannot be explained from PIE root *bheu- like byti. If it is true Slavic has "to intend + infinitive" and Russian/Czech budu delati originally meant "I intend to do", now it is periphrastic future.



That's a very interesting theory, I wasn't aware of it. Well if Machek is right, that only proves my point: another example of a periphrastic future originally formed with "want/intend to" independently from the Balkans and Germanic. I don't think that there is a consensus about it, though - Machek thinks what you're saying, but Vasmer thinks "budu" is related to "byti".



CapnPrep said:


> For example, "I will be XYZ" was simply bǫdǫ XYZ, and not bǫdǫ byti XYZ, right?



Hard to say - Proto-Slavic is not attested, and Old Church Slavonic didn't use bǫdǫ + infinitive anyway. All of the modern Slavic languages with this construction have bǫdǫ XYZ, and not bǫdǫ byti XYZ. However, Machek claims that budu býti was correct Old Czech. Old Church Slavonic certainly uses bǫdǫ as a future tense of byti: thus it has a periphrastic future in bǫdǫ + present active participle, and a future perfect in bǫdǫ + past active participle http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/ocsol-5-X.html#Ocs05_GP24_03 (the latter is the regular future in Slovene). Neither of these periphrases makes any sense if bǫdǫ = "intend" at that point. But one can't exclude the possibility that OCS was more innovative than Old Czech in that respect. BTW, it's interesting that another OCS periphrastic version is "to have" + "infinitive", precisely equal to the Romance periphrastic future.


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## ireney

Just to say that the emergence of the modern Greek future is still a matter of discussion. Some of the theories/views on the matter can be found in the second (or third, in the first pages anyway  ) of this paper.


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## sokol

CapnPrep said:


> For the etymology, I believe your dictionary, but I believe that _bǫdǫ_ was already the future tense form of _byti_ in Common Slavic. For example, "I will be XYZ" was simply _bǫdǫ XYZ_, and not _bǫdǫ byti XYZ_, right? So the forms _bǫdǫ _etc. (whatever their origin) must have been integrated into the paradigm of _byti_ a long, long time ago.


Indeed it was.

Old Slavic _*bǫdǫ*_ originally was the perfective pair to "byti" in present tense, and as at this stage present tense of perfective verbs _*was*_ future tense (as is still the case in West and East Slavic while the South Slavic situation is different*)) you're right.

So I'm sorry, bibax, but your source is wrong. (Source of the etymology given above really shouldn't be necessary, this has been established by many; I'd quote an online resource if I'd have found one but unfortunately I can only give Trunte Hartmut (Munich 1990), Ein praktisches Lehrbuch des Kirchenslavischen in 30 Lektionen, p. 92.)

By the way, in Slovene future is formed with forms of "bǫdǫ" (in Slovene it is _bom_ in 1st sg.) plus participle, thus "bom dela*l*" etc., and future is formed like that with both perfective and imperfective verbs (as opposed to Russian where only imperfective verbs form future like that while perfective verbs present tense _are_ future).

*) For that see Slavic forum, this has been discussed there in many threads, e. g. Bulgarian compared to Other Slavic, Slavic tense and aspect, etc.


This just to put facts about Slavic straight. 

About the formation of future tense in general (in Indoeuropean languages I take it?!): PIE probably did not have a future tense, but most (or all?) attested IE languages developed future tense nevertheless - most typically as periphrastic tempora, but formations differ widely between individual languages.

I do not know if the controversy about PIE has been resolved already but to my knowledge it hasn't (at least, to my knowledge, there's no unanimous vote of IE linguists for one or the other).

Oswald Szemerényi (Introduction into Comparative Linguistics, in my German edition p. 307f, chapter 4.2.2; you can search the English version by chapter or by index) is in favour of an IE future tense even though he admits that both Hittite and Old Germanic didn't have one, and that Latin "-ba-" forms of future obviously is a younger development not going back to PIE.
But he suggests that future tenses with an "-s-" element (in Greek, Indo-Aryan, Baltic, Old Irish, or some cases of Latin like "ego faxo") were an indicator for an PIE future tense.

However, especially those who put much emphasis on Hittite (which for some reasons - gender and laryngals, to name but two - seems to be more archaic than all other known IE languages) think that there wasn't a PIE future tense. One of my teachers at Graz university supported this view (Christian Zinko by name), but he's not the only one.

Whatever be the case, if there _*was*_ a PIE future tense at all then it would have been lost by many languages at a very early stage, which easily would explain why periphrastic future tenses devleopped.
And if there _*wasn't *_one then it is even more clear, in that case some languages developed a periphrastic one, and others developed future tense endings/infixes.

Both explanations sound perfectly reasonably to me. 
(Personally I'm in the Hittite fraction but it doesn't matter in the context of this thread. )


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## mugibil

ireney said:


> Just to say that the emergence of the modern Greek future is still a matter of discussion. Some of the theories/views on the matter can be found in the second (or third, in the first pages anyway  ) of this paper.



As far as I can see, the disagreements mentioned in that paper are about details, but nobody denies that the future construction originally derives from a volitional construction with (e)thelo: "want to". The authors clearly say that "the really crucial step is the initial one by which thelo: + the infinitive first began to be used as a future", so they recognize that thelo: + the infinitive originally didn't mean future but volition.


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## mugibil

sokol said:


> Indeed it was.
> 
> Old Slavic _*bǫdǫ*_ originally was the perfective pair to "byti" in present tense, and as at this stage present tense of perfective verbs _*was*_ future tense (as is still the case in West and East Slavic while the South Slavic situation is different*)) you're right.
> 
> So I'm sorry, bibax, but your source is wrong. (Source of the etymology given above really shouldn't be necessary, this has been established by many; I'd quote an online resource if I'd have found one but unfortunately I can only give Trunte Hartmut (Munich 1990), Ein praktisches Lehrbuch des Kirchenslavischen in 30 Lektionen, p. 92.)



You're describing Old Church Slavonic, but I think bibax means an even earlier, unattested Proto-Slavic stage. I believe bibax's source is Machek's etymological dictionary of Czech, which is as legitimate and academic a source as any other. Another problem is that if byti had both a perfective and an imperfective aspect version and bo~do~ was perfective, one may wonder why we don't find the full paradigms for both: the opposition esmi^ vs bo~do~ is present, but we don't find such an opposition in the infinitive or in the past tenses (even though there is an opposition of aorist vs imperfect). We do find secondary imperfective, iterative forms in -va- as in Russian бывает, Bulgarian бива, but that's another thing. Also, there seems to be nothing perfective about the meaning of bo~do~ as we find it in attested languages (a putative perfective aspect version of "to be" would probably mean something like "to become").

One thing that makes me doubt Machek's theory is that if bo~do~ really meant "want, intend to", there is no explanation as to why not a single Slavic language has come to use it as a universal future marker with the infinitive - not only for imperfective, but also for perfective verbs. Why буду играть, but not *буду сыграть (the latter is a common mistake in Bulgarian learners of Russian, BTW)? Semantically, it would make equal sense for both. After all, this is what happened with hotaeti "want to" in most of South Slavic, and also with byti + participle in Slovene. One may argue that the future of perfective verbs was already well expressed with the present tense of perfective verbs and didn't need the periphrasis, but the fact is that this didn't stop South Slavic (Slovene has actually kept that second construction as a volitional of sorts). Since "want to + perfective" makes just as much sense as "want to + imperfective", I'm inclined to think that the temptation to extend the periphrastic construction by analogy would have been too strong to resist. If, on the other hand, буду was seen as a future imperfective of "be", as it is today, that would explain why it didn't make sense with perfective verbs in the infinitive. Of course, it would still be unclear how this unique synthetic imperfective future form arose in the first place; that remains an advantage of the Machek theory.


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## sokol

mungu said:


> You're describing Old Church Slavonic, but I think bibax means an even earlier, unattested Proto-Slavic stage. I believe bibax's source is Machek's etymological dictionary of Czech, which is as legitimate and academic a source as any other. Another problem is that if byti had both a perfective and an imperfective aspect version and bo~do~ was perfective, one may wonder why we don't find the full paradigms for both: the opposition esmi^ vs bo~do~ is present, but we don't find such an opposition in the infinitive or in the past tenses (even though there is an opposition of aorist vs imperfect). We do find secondary imperfective, iterative forms in -va- as in Russian бывает, Bulgarian бива, but that's another thing. Also, there seems to be nothing perfective about the meaning of bo~do~ as we find it in attested languages.


Well, about perfective meaning of "bǫdǫ" - the perfective meaning just is found in the fact that it refers to a completed action in the present which, then, only could mean future.

But my apologies for not knowing Machek, and that bibax' post is referring to him (obviously), and his theory of how "bǫdǫ" developed, that's a theory I've never heard of and of course I trust your judgement that this is a valid if not proven theory.


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## mugibil

sokol said:


> that's a theory I've never heard of


Neither had I. One learns for as long as one lives.


sokol said:


> Well, about perfective meaning of "bǫdǫ" - the perfective meaning just is found in the fact that it refers to a completed action in the present which, then, only could mean future.



Sorry, I don't quite get it. What is that completed action in the present?


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## sokol

mungu said:


> Sorry, I don't quite get it. What is that completed action in the present?


The verb "to be", when not used to form periphrastic tenses, just means a "status of being" in present tense imperfective (biti/byti etc.), but in present tense perfective that this status will be reached ("completed" more or less), or that's how I see it.

As we've established on that Bulgarian thread in Slavic forum present tense perfective in Bulgarian too usually does not mean "exactly" present tense (but near future), except for special uses which aren't particularly relevant here (and which anyway have been thoroughly discussed already in Slavic).
And of course this is regularly so for West and East Slavic languages.

So "bom prevajalec" then would mean, if you >read< "bom" historically, so to speak, (Slovene "biti" in future tense) as perfective form of "to be", as "I am to be a translator", or "I will be a translator".

Or that's how I see this.


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## ireney

mungu yes, of course, but answering the "when it all started" is most certainly not easy to pinpoint.


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## mugibil

sokol said:


> The verb "to be", when not used to form periphrastic tenses, just means a "status of being" in present tense imperfective (biti/byti etc.), but in present tense perfective that this status will be reached ("completed" more or less), or that's how I see it.
> 
> So "bom prevajalec" then would mean, if you >read< "bom" historically, so to speak, (Slovene "biti" in future tense) as perfective form of "to be", as "I am to be a translator", or "I will be a translator".
> 
> Or that's how I see this.



Well, I think completing or reaching a status of "being" X means basically the same as "to become" X. That is, if there was a perfective verb corresponding to "be", it should have meant "become". Assuming that bo~do~ originally meant that, constructions such as "bom prevajalec" or "budu perevodchikom" must have meant, historically, "I shall _become_ a translator", a perfective meaning. At present, they really mean "I shall _be_ a translator", an imperfective meaning. 

Frankly, I found this very unlikely at first, from the point of view of my native intuitions about modern Slavic languages. But on second thoughts I don't think I can exclude it either. When I look at an OCS dictionary, it seems that byti was very special in that it could work both as an imperfective and a perfective aspect verb in OCS. Unlike other verbs, it looks like it can form both an aorist with the "neutral" meaning of that tense - "it became" (and perhaps "it was for some time") - and an imperfect with the "neutral" meaning of that tense - "it was". Its future forms can be interpreted both as imperfective and as perfective ("There shall be a great grief" or "there shall come a great grief"? "the righteous shall be = reside in paradise" or "shall become = come to reside in paradise"?). So it's such a strange verb that nothing is impossible. Maybe there was originally a separate perfective aspect verb "to become" with a complete paradigm corresponding to present-future bo~do~, then bo~do~ came to be regarded as a perfective, and therefore future, version of jesmi^, and finally it acquired its now-predominant meaning of imperfective future.


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## sokol

Yes, mungu, that's a good observation - yes of course, I didn't realise this when posting above, "biti/byti" really is one of those bi-aspectual words: one stem, but both aspects present.

This goes already beyond what I know about the history of this verb (and future tense) in Slavic languages but your guess sounds very reasonably to me indeed.


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## koniecswiata

The idea that volition expressions are the basis for Future Time expression seems quite "logical" or "common" to me.  It must be a semantic issue, some connexion between "wanting" and then "doing" in the future.  The fact that there are some Germanic languages and Balkan languages that do this is probably not particularly relevant--probably like "the have mountains in Scandinavia and the Balkans--what is the connexion?"  (I don't mean to be disparaging to anyone).  
Someone must have done, or is doing a study on using volition expressions to create future time expression on as they are spread over the world.  I don't think they would be just in one or two places.
As for analyitical periphrastic expressions as opposed to conjugational forms.  In Spanish, the "going to" (future) (ir a hacer algo) is probably in the process of replacing the future conjugational forms.  In spoken daily speech, the conjugational forms already sound a bit stuffy and formal--at least in Chile.  You would find them more in written documents.  In fact, the same may be happening in English.  "Going to" for future expression is pushing "will" aside.  Since the mid 1800s, "will" as it appears in written text is decreasing in frequency.  Around 150 years ago, "going to" still had a very low frequency of appearance in texts (it was even considered to be substandard), now it is up around 50%, I believe.


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## clevermizo

I wanted to add that using verbs of desire to imply future tense seems to be a natural development the world over. Compare Mandarin yào which depending on context can mean "going to do X", "want X" or "need X". In colloquial Arabic of the Levant, the form _bidd/badd-_ used to mean "I want/you want/he wants" can also in certain contexts mean future tense as well.

Such things may well have developed independently across various IE language groups.


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## koniecswiata

Very good point Clevermizo.  Using "desire verbs" for the future is not just something restricted to a particular region, and even less due to belonging to a particular language group as this tendency is attested quite the world over.


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## Meyer Wolfsheim

koniecswiata said:


> The idea that volition expressions are the basis for Future Time expression seems quite "logical" or "common" to me. It must be a semantic issue, some connexion between "wanting" and then "doing" in the future. The fact that there are some Germanic languages and Balkan languages that do this is probably not particularly relevant--probably like "the have mountains in Scandinavia and the Balkans--what is the connexion?" (I don't mean to be disparaging to anyone).
> Someone must have done, or is doing a study on using volition expressions to create future time expression on as they are spread over the world. I don't think they would be just in one or two places.
> As for analyitical periphrastic expressions as opposed to conjugational forms. In Spanish, the "going to" (future) (ir a hacer algo) is probably in the process of replacing the future conjugational forms. In spoken daily speech, the conjugational forms already sound a bit stuffy and formal--at least in Chile. You would find them more in written documents. In fact, the same may be happening in English. "Going to" for future expression is pushing "will" aside. Since the mid 1800s, "will" as it appears in written text is decreasing in frequency. Around 150 years ago, "going to" still had a very low frequency of appearance in texts (it was even considered to be substandard), now it is up around 50%, I believe.


 
Yes, I suppose based on what is given this must be a logical idea in human thought that wanting or needing something implies doing it in the future.  

On a more off topic note, I do not agree with you on the future "will" being dropped in English.  In fact I feel it is much more common because it is "weaker" than "to be going to."  Where I speak English, the verb "will" for future is already collapsing into a simple attachment to the noun which will perform the action.  I agree that actually stating "will" as a seperate word is on the decline to imply just the future.  

Compare pronoun forms of:

I'll/You'll/He'll/She'll/It'll/We'll/They'll (there is some vowel modification when 'll is added to certain pronouns).  

But also on any noun:

The cat'll eat at nine.  

Tonight all the wolves'll howl at the moon.  

While that usage isn't standard, it certainly seems that English future can be formed by inflecting the subject for the tense!  The inflection is lost however under inversion and questions.  

The coding of 'll on any noun can't be matched by "to be going to" in terms of fluidity and briefness.  

But the trend does seem to be that actual future constructions are seen as formal versus using more analytical ones or simply a present tense (case example of Spanish).


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