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HEBREW TENSES ILLUSTRATED BY THOSE OF OTHER LANGUAGES. ENGLISH.
PRIESTLEY writes:--"A little reflection may, I think suffice to convince any person that we have no more business with a "future tense" in our language than we have with the whole system of Latin moods and tenses; because we have no modification of our verbs to correspond to it; and if we had never heard of a future tense in some other language, we should no more have given a particular name to the combination of the verb with the auxiliary "shall" or "will", than to those that are made with the auxiliaries "do, have, can, must", or any other."--"English Grammar".
LATHAM writes:--"Notwithstanding its name, the "present" tense, in English, does not express a strictly "present" action; it rather expresses an "habitual" one. He speaks well--he is a good speaker. If a man means to say that he is in the act of speaking, he says, "I am speaking". It has also, especially when combined with a subjunctive mood, a "future" power. I beat you (--I will beat you) if you don't leave off."--"English Language", p. 455.
LINDLEY MURRAY writes:--"The "present" tense, preceded by the words "when, before, after, as soon as", &c., is sometimes often? used to point out the relative time of a "future" action; as, '"When" he arrives he will hear the news;' 'He will hear the news "before" he arrives;' or, '"As soon as" he arrives,' or, 'At, farthest, "soon after" he arrives;' 'The more she improves, the more amiable she will be.'
"In animated historical narratives, this tense is sometimes always? substituted for the imperfect tense; as, 'He "enters" the territory of the peaceful inhabitants, he "fights" and "conquers,
takes" an immense booty, which he "divides" among his soldiers, and "returns" home to enjoy an empty triumph.'
"The "perfect" tense, preceded by the words "when, after, as soon as", &c., is often used to denote the "relative" time of a "future" action; as, '"When" I have finished my letter, I will attend to his request;' 'I will attend to this business, "as soon as" I have finished my letter.'
"It is to be observed, that in the "subjunctive" mood ... the verb itself in the "present", and the auxiliary both of the "present" and "past-imperfect" tenses often carry with them somewhat of a "future" sense; as, 'If he come to-morrow, I may speak to him; if he should "or" would come to- morrow, I might, could, would, or should speak to him.'
"Observe also, that the auxiliaries "should" and "would", in the "imperfect" tenses, are used to express the "present" and "future" as well as the "past": as, 'It is my desire, that he should, or would, come now, or to-morrow;' as well as, 'It was my desire, that he should or would come yesterday;' so that, in this mood, the precise time of the verb is very much "determined" by the nature and drift of the sentence."--"Grammar", p. 116-119.
PICKBOURN writes:--"The first of these English tenses, viz., "I write", is an aorist ?, or indefinite of the present time.
"Even those compound participles, which denote "completed" or "finished" actions, may be applied to "future", as well as "past" and "present" time. Thus: "Whenever that ambitious young prince "comes" to the throne, "being supported" by a veteran army, and "having got" possession of the treasures which will be are "found" in his father's coffers, he," &c.--"English Verb", p. 111.
MARSH writes:--"It is a curious fact that the "Romance" languages, as well as the "Romaic", at one period of their history, all rejected the ancient inflected futures, and formed new compound or auxiliary ones, employing for that purpose the verbs "will" and "shall", or "have" in the sense of duty or necessity, though French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, have now agglutinated the infinite and auxiliary into a simple future.
"Why is it that the Gothic languages have always possessed a "past" tense, never a "future"?
Why did the Romance dialects retain the Latin "past" forms, and reject the Latin "future"?"
"If the expression of time is an inherent necessity of the verb, special forms for the future as well as the present and the past ought to be universal, but in most modern European languages, the future is a compound, the elements of which are a "present" auxiliary and an "aorist" infinitive, for in the phrases I "shall" go, he "will" go, "shall" and "will are in the present tense, and "go" is aoristic.
"The Anglo-Saxon, with a single exception in the case of a substantive verb, had absolutely no mode of expressing the future by any verbal form, simple or compound. The context alone determined the time, and in German, in the Scandinavian dialects, and in English, we still very commonly, as the Anglo-Saxons did, express the future by a present. "Ich gehe morgen nach London", I go, or I am going, to London to-morrow, are more frequently used by Germans and
Englishmen, than "ich werde gehen", I shall or will go; and the adverbial nouns "morgen" and to- morrow, not the verbs "gehen" and go, are the true time-words.
"The use of the present for the past, too, especially in spirited narrative and in poetry, is not less familiar, and in both these cases the expression of time belongs to the grammatical period, not to the verb."--"Lectures", p. 204.