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Forthcoming: Futures of the past: The diachrony of future constructions across languages
Synopsis
Thinking of and talking about future events is a crucial part of our everyday lives. Thus, it is not surprising that in the languages of the world, a variety of markers for future time reference has developed. The goal of this volume is to take a contrastive perspective on the evolution of future constructions by bringing together scholars working on different languages and language families. In doing so, the edited volume opens up new perspectives on long-standing questions regarding the diachronic development of future constructions across languages, with implications not only for research on tense-aspect-mood systems but also for research on grammaticalization and language change more generally.
Chapters
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Introduction
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Expressing future reference in Middle Low German
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Constructional template or competitor?Revisiting the relation between German werden + Infinitive and werden + Present Participle based on new datasets
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German werden-futureA case of failed grammaticalization?
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The future that did not happenOn the history of the verb varda in Swedish
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The future that may still beThe spread of blir å INF in contemporary Norwegian
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The expression of future in the past in Old and Middle High German
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The entanglement of grammaticalization and hypoanalysis in the rise of futures in Slavic languages
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Hypoanalysis and aspectual diversificationThe Armenian future in diachrony
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Grammaticalization of future markers in Korean
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Grammaticalization of future markers in Thai
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West Polesian future tense constructions switch roles

Published
July 8, 2025
LaTeX source on
GitHub
Cite as
Hartmann, Stefan & Schnee, Lena (eds.). Forthcoming. Futures of the past: The diachrony of future constructions across languages. (Advances in Historical Linguistics). Berlin: Language Science Press.
Copyright (c) 2025 Stefan Hartmann, Lena Schnee; Sarah Ihden, Elena Smirnova, Dominika Skrzypek, Dominika Skrzypek, Olaf Mikkelsen, Dylan Glynn, Svetlana Petrova, Yen-Chun Chen, Björn Wiemer, Robin Meyer, Seongha Rhee, Kultida Khammee, Kristin Roncero