In:Perspectives on Evidentiality in Spanish: Explorations across genres
Edited by Carolina Figueras Bates and Adrián Cabedo
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 290] 2018
► pp. 223–250
Chapter 10Tenses in interaction
Beyond evidentiality
Published online: 24 July 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.290.10rod
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.290.10rod
Abstract
This chapter analyzes the discursive functions performed by the future in Spanish. In order to do so, it departs from a definition of the future based on the deictic ‘distance forward’ instruction, which may be projected along a subjectivity axle and cross different levels of meaning. When distance is projected upon the utterance, the future plays several discursive roles and traverses a variety of categories that go beyond evidentiality. More specifically, the future in Spanish can be a powerful tool to persuade and convince (persuasive future); it can also help control disagreement as part of a counter-argumentation strategy (concessive future); or it can participate in an assessment process (mirative future). Information occurring in the future must have been previously activated for these values to arise, which naturally happens in the context of interaction.
Keywords: future, (inter)subjectivity, (counter)argumentation, mirativity
Article outline
- 1.Time, tense, tenses, and the puzzle of the future
- 1.1 Future, discourse, and evidentiality
- 2.A deictic definition for the future
- 3. Interaction as a joint activity
- 4.Discursive functions of the future
- 4.1 Persuasive future
- 4.2Concessive future
- 4.3Mirative future
- 5. Conclusion
Notes References
References (123)
Aksu-Koç, Ayhan A., and Dan I. Slobin. 1986. “A Psychological Account of the Development and Use of Evidentials in Turkish.” In Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, ed. by Wallace L. Chafe, and Johanna Nichols, 159–167. Norwood: Ablex Publishing Company.
Alonso Cortés, Ángel. 1999. “Las construcciones exclamativas. La interjección y las expresiones vocativas.” In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 3993–4050. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
Anscombre, Jean-Claude, and Oswald Ducrot. [1983] 1994. La argumentación en la lengua. Madrid: Gredos.
Azorín, Dolores. 2002. (coord.): ALCORE. Alicante Corpus del Español. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante.
Bello, Andrés [1847] 1970. Gramática de la lengua castellana destinada al uso de los americanos. Buenos Aires: Sopena.
Bermúdez, Fernando W. 2004. La evidencialidad. La codificación pragmática del punto de vista. Doctoral Dissertation. Stockholms Universitet.
Blakemore, Diane. 2001. Relevance and Linguistic Meaning: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bolón Pedretti, Alma. 1999. “Pasivos serán los de antes: apuntes discursivo-enunciativos sobre un valor de futuro.” Hispania 82: 830–840.
Brisard, Frank 2010. “Aspects of Virtuality in the Meaning of the French Imparfait.” Linguistics 48 (2): 487–524.
Brisard, Frank, and Adeline Patard. 2011. “Introduction: Cognitive Approaches to Tense, Aspect and Epistemic Modality.” In Cognitive Approaches to Tense, Aspect and Epistemic Modality, ed. by Adeline Patard, and Frank Brisard, 1–20. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Briz, Antonio. 2003. “Las unidades de la conversación: el acto.” In Estudios ofrecidos al profesor José Jesús de Bustos Tovar, ed. by José Luis Girón Alconchel, Silvia Iglesias, Francisco Javier Herrero, and Antonio Narbona, 953–968. Madrid: Ed. Complutense.
Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins, and William Pagliuca. 1994. The Evolution of Grammar. Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago / London: The University of Chicago Press.
2010. “An Expressive Answer. Some Considerations on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Wh-Exclamatives.” Proceedings from the annual meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society <[URL]>.
Chafe, Wallace. 1976. “Givenness, Contrastiveness, Definiteness, Subjects, Topics, and Point of View.” In Subject and Topic, ed. by C. Li, 25–55. New York: Academic Press.
Clark, Herbert H. 1977. “Bridging.” In Thinking: Readings in Cognitive Science, ed. by Peter C. Johnson-Laird, and Philip N. Wason, 411–420. London / New York: Cambridge University Press.
Company, Concepción. 2006. “Tiempos de formación romance II. Los futuros y condicionales.” In Sintaxis Histórica de la Lengua EspañolaI, ed. by Concepción Company, 349–418. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Cornillie, Bert. 2009. “Evidentiality and Epistemic Modality. On the Close Relationship between Two Different Categories.” Functions of Language 16 (1): 44–62.
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth and Sandra Thompson. 2000. “Concessive patterns in conversation.” In Cause, condition, concession, constrast, ed. by Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, and Bernd Kortmann, 381-410. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
De Haan, Ferdinand. 2005. “Encoding Speaker Perspective: Evidentials”. In Linguistic Diversity and Language Theories, ed. by Zygmunt Frajzyngier, Adam Hodges, and David S. Rood, 379–397. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
De Saussure, Louis. 2013. “Perspectival Interpretations of Tenses.” In Time. Language, Cognition and Reality, ed. by Kasia M. Jaszczolt, and Louis De Saussure, 46–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DeLancey, Scott. 1997. “Mirativity: the Grammatical Marking of Unexpected Information.” Linguistic Typology 1 (1): 33–52.
Dendale, Patrick, and Liliane Tasmowski. 2001. “Introduction: Evidentiality and Related Notions.” Journal of Pragmatics 33: 339–348.
Dryer, Matthew. 1996. “Forms, Pragmatic Presupposition, and Activated Propositions.” Journal of Pragmatics 26: 475–523.
. 2014. “Evidential Futures: The Case of Spanish.” In Future Tense vs. Future Time: An Introduction, ed. by Philippe De Brabanter, Mikhail Kissine, and Saghia Sharifzadeh, 219–246. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Español Giralt, M. Teresa. 2011. “Valor concesivo versus adversativo en algunas estructuras propias de la lengua conversacional. Su relación con la modalidad alética o de posibilidad.” In Sintaxis y análisis del discurso hablado en español. Homenaje a Antonio Narbona. Vol. 1, ed. by José Jesús Bustos Tovar, Rafael Cano, Elena Mández, and Araceli López, 209–218. Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 209–218.
Fernández Leborans, María Jesús. 1999. “La predicación. Las oraciones copulativas.” In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 2357–2461. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
Fernández Ramírez, Salvador. 1986. Gramática española. 4. El verbo y la oración. Madrid: Arco Libros.
Fillmore, Charles. 1981. “Pragmatics and the description of discourse.” In Radical pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 143–166. New York: Academic Press.
Fleischman, Suzanne. 1982. The Future in Thought and Language. Diachronic Evidence from Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 1989. “Temporal Distance: A Basic Linguistic Metaphor.” Studies in Language 13 (1): 1–50.
García Negroni, Marta. 2016. “Polifonía, evidencialidad citativa y tiempos verbales. Acerca de los usos citativos del futuro morfológico y del futuro perifrástico.” In La evidencialidad en español. Teoría y descripción, ed. by Ramón González, Dámaso Izquierdo, and Óscar Loureda, 279–301. Madrid / Frankfurt: Iberoamericana Vervuert.
Garrido Rodríguez, M. Camino. 2004. Conectores contraargumentativos en la conversación coloquial. León: Universidad de León
Giannakidou, Anastasia, and Alda Mari. 2012. “The Future of Greek and Italian: An Epistemic Analysis.” Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 17: 255–270. [URL]
Ginzburg, Jonathan. [2012] 2015. The Interactive Stance. Meaning for Conversation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
González, Ramón, Dámaso Izquierdo, and Óscar Loureda. 2016. “Un acercamiento a los fundamentos de la evidencialidad y a su recepción y tratamiento en la lingüística hispánica.” In La evidencialidad en español. Teoría y descripción, ed. by Ramón González, Dámaso Izquierdo, and Óscar Loureda, 9–45. Madrid / Frankfurt: Iberoamericana Vervuert.
Gras, Pedro. 2011. Gramática de construcciones en interacción. Propuesta de un modelo y aplicación al análisis de estructuras independientes con marcas de subordinación en español. Tesis Doctoral. Universidad de Barcelona.
Gutzmann, Daniel. 2013. “Expressives and Beyond. An Introduction to Varieties of Use-Conditional Meaning.” In Beyond expressives. Explorations in Use-Conditional Meaning, ed. by Daniel Gutzmann and Hans-Martin Gärtner, 1–58. Leiden: Brill.
Haβler, Gerda. 2010. “Epistemic Modalityand Evidentiality and their Definition on a Deictic Basis.” In Modality and Mood in Romance: Modal Interpretation, Mood Selection, and Mood Alternation, ed. by Martin G. Becker and Eva-Maria Remberger, 95–108. New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Hengeveld, Kees, and Hella Olbertz. 2012. “Didn’t you Know? Mirativity does Exist!” Linguistic Typology 16 (3): 487–503.
Hernanz, M. Lluisa. 2012. “Sobre la periferia izquierda y el movimiento: El complementante si en español.” In El movimiento de constituyentes, ed. by Josep Maria Brucart, and Ángel J. Gallego, 151–171. Madrid: Visor.
Hill, Nathan. 2012. “Mirativity does not Exist: ḥdug in ‘Lhasa’ Tibetan and Other Suspects.” Linguistic Typology 16 (13): 389–434.
Iglesias, Silvia. 2000. “Propiedades interpretativas y discursivas de la estructura ¡(Si) será bobo!” In Cien años de investigación semántica: de Michel Bréal a la actualidad, ed. by José Manuel Oliver Frade et al., 529-542. Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas.
Jaszczolt, Kasia M. 2009. Representing Time: An Essay on Temporality as Modality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form. Topic, Focus and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Langacker, Ronald W. 2011. “The English Present: Temporal Coincidence vs. Epistemic Immediacy.” In Cognitive Approaches to Tense, Aspect and Epistemic Modality, ed. by Adeline Patard, and Frank Brisard, 45–86. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Lazard, Gilbert. 1999. “Mirativity, Evidentiality, Mediativity, or Other.” Linguistic Typology 3: 91–109.
2000. Presumptive meaning. The theory of generalized conversational implicature. Cambridge / London: The MIT Press.
Malchukov, Andrej L. 2004. “Towards a Semantic Typology of Adversative and Contrastive Marking.” Journal of Semantics 21 (2): 177–198.
Martines, Josep. 2017. “L’émergence des futurs épistémiques romans. L’exemple du catalan médiéval du XIIIème siècle.” In Le futur dans les langues romanes, ed. by Laura Baranzini. Berne: Peter Lang.
Mozerski, Joshua M. 2015. Time, language, and ontology. The world from the B-Theoretic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Myhill, John. 1997. “Should and ought: The rise of individually oriented modality in American English.” Journal of English Linguistics 1: 3-23.
Montolío, Estrella. 1999. “Las construcciones condicionales.” In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 3643–3737. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
Myhill, John, and Laura A. Smith. 1995. “The Discourse and Interactive Functions of Obligation Expressions.” In Modality in Grammar and Discourse, ed. by Joan L. Bybee, and Suzanne Fleischman, 239–292. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Nuyts, Jan. 2001a. Epistemic Modality, Language, and Conceptualization. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
. 2001b. “Subjectivity as an Evidential Dimension in Epistemic Modal Expressions.” Journal of Pragmatics 33: 383–400.
. 2008. “Qualificational Meanings, Illocutionary Signals, and the Cognitive Planning of Language Use.” Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 6: 185–207.
. 2012. “Notions of (Inter)subjectivity.” English Text Construction 5 (1): 53–76.
Pavón, M. Victoria. 1999. “Clases de partículas: Preposición, conjunción y adverbio.” In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 565–655. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
Pérez Saldanya, Manuel. 2002. “Les relacions temporals i aspectuals.” In Gramàtica del català contemporani, ed. by Joan Solà, Maria-Rosa Lloret, Joan Mascaró, and Manuel Pérez Saldanya, 2567–2662. Barcelona: Empúries.
Peterson, Tyle. 2013. “Rethinking Mirativity: The Expression and Implication of Surprise.” Ms., University of Toronto [available at: [URL]], 2013.
Porroche, Margarita. 1998. “Sobre algunos usos de que, si y es que como marcadores discursivos.” In Marcadores del discurso, ed. by María Antonia Martín Zorraquino, and Estrella Montolío, 229–242. Madrid: Arco Libros.
Prince, Ellen. 1992. “The ZPG letter: Subjects, Definiteness, and Information Status.” In Discourse Description: Discourse Analyses of a Fundraising Text, ed. by William C. Mann, and Sandra A. Thompson, 295–325. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Real Academia Española [RAE]. 2009. Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española. Morfología. Sintaxis, I. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
. Banco de datos (CREA). Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual. <[URL]>
. Banco de datos (CORPES XXI). Corpus del Español del Siglo XXI. <[URL]>
Reig Alamillo, Assela. 2011. “The Pragmatic Meaning of the Spanish Construction lo que pasa es que
.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1435–1450.
Rett, Jessica. 2012. “Expressing Exceeded Expectations in Exclamatives and Other Constructions.” Second Cornell workshop in Linguistics and Philosophy.
Reyes, Graciela. 1990. “Tiempo, modo, aspecto e intertextualidad.” Revista Española de Lingüística 20: 17–53.
Rivero, María Luisa. 2014. “Spanish Inferential and Mirative Futures and Conditionals: An Evidential Gradable Modal Proposal.” Lingua 151: 197–215.
Roberts, Craige. 1996. “Information Structure: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics.” OSU Working Papers in Linguistics 49: 91–136.
Rocci, Andrea 2012. “Modality and argumentative discourse relations: A study of the Italian necessity modal dovere.” Journal of Pragmatics 44: 2129-2149.
Rodríguez Ramalle, Teresa M. 2016. “Partículas evidenciales en el desarrollo del discurso reformulativo.” In La evidencialidad en español. Teoría y descripción, ed. by Ramón González, Dámaso Izquierdo, and Óscar Loureda, 179–200. Madrid / Frankfurt: Iberoamericana Vervuert.
Rodríguez Rosique, Susana. 2008. Pragmática y gramática. Condicionales concesivas en español. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
. 2011. “Valores epistémicos de las categorías verbales. Cuando la pragmática se integra en la gramática.” Verba. Anuario Galego de Filoloxia 38: 243–269.
. 2015a. “Distance, Evidentiality and Counter-Argumentation: Concessive Future in Spanish.” Journal of Pragmatics 85: 181–199.
. 2015b. “Spanish Future in Evaluative Contexts: A Case of Mirativity?” e-Humanista / IVITRA 8: 500–516.
. 2017. “The Future of Necessity in Spanish: Modality, Evidentiality and Deictic Projection at the Crossroads”. In Evidentiality and modality in European languages: Discourse-pragmatic, ed. by Juana Marín-Arrese, Julia Lavid-López, Marta Carretero, Elena Domínguez, María Victoria Martín, and María Pérez, 57-85. Berne: Peter Lang.
Rojo, Guillermo, and Alexandre Veiga. 1999. “El tiempo verbal. Los tiempos simples.” In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 1867–2934. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1996. “Turn Organization: One Intersection of Grammar and Interaction.” In Interaction and grammar, ed. by Elinor Ochs, Emanuel A. Schegloff and Sandra A. Thompson, 52–133. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 2000. “Viewpoints and Polisemy: Linking Adversative and Causal Meanings of Discourse Markers.” In Cause, Condition, Concession, Contrast, ed. by Elisabeth Couper-Kuhlen, and Bernd Kortmann, 257–281. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
. 2016. “Independent Si-Clauses in Spanish.” In Insubordination, ed. by Nicholas Evans, and Honoré Watanabe, 89–112. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Squartini, Mario, 2001. “The Internal Structure of Evidentiality in Romance.” Studies in Language 25 (2): 297–334
. 2012. “Evidentiality in Interaction: The Concessive Use of the Italian Future between Grammar and Discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 44: 2116–2128.
Stalnaker, Robert C. 1978. “Assertion.” In Syntax and semantics 9. Pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 315–332. New York: Academic Press.
Suñer, Avel.lina. 1999. “La aposición y otras relaciones de predicación en el sintagma nominal.” In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque and Violeta Demonte, 523–364. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Traugott, Elisabeth C. 1989. “Subjectification in Grammaticalisation.” In Subjectivity and Subjectivisation, ed. by Dieter Stein, and Susan Wright, 31–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2010. “(Inter) subjectivity and (Inter) subjectification: A Reassessment.” In Subjectification, Intersubjectification and Grammaticalization, ed. by Kristin Davidse, Lieven Vandelanotte, and Hubert Cuyckens, 29–71. Berlin / New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Traugott, Elisabeth C., and Richard B. Dasher. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van der Auwera, Johan, and Vladimir A. Plungian. 1998. “Modality’s Semantic Map.” Linguistic Typology 2: 7–124.
Willet, Thomas. 1988. “A cross-linguistic survey of the grammaticization of evidentiality.” Studies in Language 12: 51-97.
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Cabedo Nebot, Adrián & Carolina Figueras Bates
2018. Evidentiality in discourse. In
Perspectives on Evidentiality in Spanish [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 290], ► pp. 1 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
