III. Moment of comparison Future.
It is stated that the event—
(a3) will THEN be past.
(b3) will THEN be present.
(c3) will THEN be still to come.
The above nine subdivisions exhaust all possibilities as long as we employ but a single ‘moment of comparison’ in each case; and it is so important that this point should be fully realised, that, simple as it appears, we proceed to illustrate each division as follows:—
(a1) Cæsar once said, ‘Veni, vidi, vici.’
(b1) I now believe that this is true.
(c1) I expect that he will come.
(a2) When I entered, he had gone.
(b2) When I entered, he was speaking.
(c2) When I entered, he was going to speak.
(a3) On New Year’s day I shall have completed my fiftieth year.
(b3) I shall then receive a letter.
(c3) I shall then be going to write.
It is at once apparent here that in some of these cases we are forced to have recourse to periphrasis, and that in some we use tenses which might also serve in other divisions. This, for instance, may be seen by comparing b2 and a1, or, at any rate, c1 and c3. But before discussing these points we must pay a little more attention to the above scheme, not, indeed, as it actually exists, but as it might conceivably exist.
It is by no means inconceivable, and quite in accordance with logic, that we should wish to employ two moments of comparison instead of one, especially in some of the cases falling under II. and III. In c2, for instance, the event might be then still to come, but now α) past, (β) present, (γ) even yet to come.
This at first seems fanciful; but while the example we employed to illustrate c2 does not necessarily convey as much, still most hearers would naturally interpret it as follows: “When I entered, his speaking was still in the future, but now (unless some hindrance, as yet unstated, has intervened) it belongs to the past.” Again, if, on the other hand, we take a sentence like He has promised to do so; in the first place, it is found to STATE that the promise was given in the past, when as yet the action of fulfilment belonged to the future; and, secondly, to IMPLY that this action of fulfilment belongs to the future still.
Further, it is logically possible, and often necessary, to make a statement about some event without any reference to time; when, for instance, a statement is true at any time, or at no time at all. The form employed in such cases ought, in strict agreement with our definition of ‘tense,’ to be called ‘tenseless’ or ‘absolute;’ but it is well known that, in English and all Indo-European languages, the ‘present’ is the tense employed. In Man is mortal the copula is cannot justly be called ‘present’ tense, for the statement is wholly abstract, and applies equally to past, present, and future; yet it is customary and convenient to apply the term ‘present’ even to the word is as thus used.
This use of the present sometimes gives rise to a certain ambiguity. If, in speaking of a child, we say He is very troublesome, the statement may mean He is at this moment very troublesome, in which case the verb is is present tense proper; or it may mean He is a troublesome child, whence the sentence becomes abstract-concrete[153] and the verb is tense absolute.
If, as in the case of grammatical gender and number, these distinctions of form are to be regarded as later developments in the case of the grammatical tenses of the verb, we must assume (i.) that the same form must once have served indifferently for all tense relations, and (ii.) expect that the tenses actually differentiated will (a) correspond only incompletely with the scheme of logical distinctions, (b) will in various languages show various deviations from the ideal scheme, and (c) will, in the same language at different periods of its history, show similar variations in those deviations.