FUTURE TENSE 123 this explains the use of ‘be going to’ instead of ‘will’ The fourth exam-

ple similarly allows for an event terminating the dynamical development toward the speaker 50th anniversary. The first example is interesting in this respect. After the ball has been hit by the bat it follows a deterministic, easily computed trajectory; hence ‘when’ instead of ‘if’. (Although termi- nating events remain possible, as when in a Dutch soccer game the ball hit a seagull.) But after the expected collision with the fence, chaotic dynamics sets in, and what the ball is going to do is anybody’s guess. The upshot of this discussion is that underlying all uses of be going to VPis a common formal structure, which in the case of animate subjects forming intentions works out as a goal-plan structure.

5.3. Will VP. A sentence such as ‘I will fly to London tomorrow’ is false when at some instant after speech time, the ‘I’ terminates the prepa- rations for flying , unlike ‘I am going to fly to London tomorrow’. The following (repeated) examples (41-a) and (41-b) show that will can how- ever be used felicitously if a plan has preconditions whose satisfaction is as yet uncertain:

(41) a. I will go unless there is severe or dangerous weather.

b. Barak said to Deborah, "I will go if you go with me. I will not go if you don’t go with me."

c. What Tony Blair did not say in 1997: ‘I will be a lot more radical in government than people think’.

The auxiliary will shares withbe going to the presence of an intention or a preparatory activity. It differs in that no actions of self terminating the preparation are envisaged. This leads to the following definition.

DEFINITION33. The semantic contribution ofwillinwill VPis defined

as that forbe going to, except that the following integrity constraint schema is added: for allerepresenting actions of selfexcept for the canonical cul- minating event terminatingf1, if?Happens(e, t)succeeds, then

?Terminates(e, f1, t)fails,

where f1 is the fluent representing the preparatory activity for VP as in

definition 32. This conditional integrity constraint may be reformulated as: for alleexcept for the canonical culminating event terminatingf1,

?Happens(e, t), T erminates(e, f1, t)fails.

This is a schema, that is, one concrete integrity constraint for each con- crete e (representing an action of self) that occurs in the scenario for the VP. Henceforth we omit the cumbersome phrase except for the canonical culminating event terminatingf1, but it is always understood19.

19_{See also exercise 8, where the reader is asked to reformulate the integrity constraint} in terms of theClippedpredicate.

124 8. TENSE

Suppose one were to add a clauseT erminates(e, f1, s0)(for some con-

stant s0) to the scenario, then the query ?Terminates(e, f1, t) would suc-

ceed, so that there is no way to satisfy the integrity constraint in 33. In this way untimely occurrences of terminating actions of self render a sentence involvingwillfalse (cf. definition 24), while preserving its plan-like contri- bution. This could explain why Blair was careful not to formulate (34-b) as (41-c). Obviously, willis also a future tense: since the execution of a plan takes time, and the reference time is now, the use ofwill has the effect of locating the event time in the future – or more generally, in the future of the reference time.

The above characterization of will focussed on its use in referring to actions of the speaker or others. There is of course also the impersonal use, as in

(42) ˇeIt will rain tomorrow.

Here it is mostly actions interfering with weather-dynamics that are of im- portance, but the integrity constraint has the same structure. Nevertheless there is a difference in truth conditions between (42) and (32-a), repeated here for convenience

(43) ˇeI will fly to Chicago tomorrow.

Because the integrity constraint refers only to actions of self cutting short the preparation phase, (43) can be true at utterance time if the flight is can- celled due to an Al Qaeda alert, say. By contrast, (42) is false if it does not rain tomorrow. This pure, non-modal, future tense arises because in this case there is no meaningful restriction on the events allowed in the integrity constraint.

As our examples show, the use of willin a main clause is felicitous if the plan has preconditions (’if . . . ’) or hedges (‘unless . . . ’). Our next task is to see how these fit in the framework; here it is useful to consider the interaction of conditionals with future tense more generally. The key to the analysis is the connection between the modal character ofwilland the form of the integrity constraint in definition 33.

5.3.1. Future tense in subordinate clauses. Let us see whether we can detect a regularity in examples (44-a) – (44-k):

(44) a. (Comrie) If/When you go out in the rain, you will get wet. b. (Comrie) *If you will go out in the rain, you will get wet. c. (Comrie) *When you will go out in the rain, you will get wet. d. (Comrie) If you’ll do the shopping, I’ll give you some money. e. (Google) The young man thought for a moment and then he said "I

will go - if you will go with me".

f. (Google) Jeremy Ord: "I think the biggest lesson is, when you are going to go out into that big wide world you must be prepared for the good stuff and the bad stuff."

5. FUTURE TENSE 125