How did "going to" come to mean "will"?

[miragesyzygy]

I noticed Spanish has a counterpart in acabar de, so English isn't the only language. Among high school aged people and maybe undergraduates, "going to" seems more commonly used. I type "going to" reflexively sometimes, but I always substitute in "will." Any information?

[Blake]

Going to doesn't mean "will". It means "shall". "Will" only came to mean "shall" in the late 19th century. Prior to that "will" meant "intend" or "want". "Want" only came to mean "will" in the 19th century too. Prior to that it meant "miss" or "long for".

This is all slightly inaccurate (though not greatly so), but the point is that words change their meaning and gradually morph from one form to another, and in doing so they push out the word that previously occupied that space. As some linguist once said, English is a language that can not abide true synonyms, and when they develop one always dies out in short order. So if "going to" now means "will" amongst younger people, "will" seems doomed to vanish.

As for how it came to have that meaning, that is simple. Originally it meant what it literally said. It meant that the speaker was moving in order to achieve something. For example"

"Why are you going out?"
"I am going to shop" or "I am going to mow the lawn".

It was that literal. Over time the motion aspect of the expression has gradually vanished, until now someone sitting motionless on a chair says that he is "going to" change channels", when in fact he is going nowhere.

That sort of linguistic change is very easier to understand once you realise that children pick up most of their language passively though context, and most adults never analyse the literal meaning of what they are saying. From context the "correct" use of "I am going to shop" sure seems like it means "I shall shop". The implication of movement is easily lost on a child.

To me the most interesting thing about this is how short-lived "will" might prove to be. The mother of one of my friends was educated as an English teacher in the 1930s, and she still bemoans the fact that people use "will" when they mean "shall". Though she concedes the fight has been lost, she was educated that only "shall" was correct when referring to action and "will" referred only to thought and intention. Now, if you are correct in your observations, we have a generation that has already replaced "will" with "going to" while you, presumably an older generation, don't even have any concept that "shall" is correct. So "will" has changed meaning and been universally adopted within a single generation, and it may itself be lost within the same generation and forced out by another word.

[treis]

Originally Posted by miragesyzygy

I noticed Spanish has a counterpart in acabar de, so English isn't the only language. Among high school aged people and maybe undergraduates, "going to" seems more commonly used. I type "going to" reflexively sometimes, but I always substitute in "will." Any information?

acabar de means "just finished doing" not will or am going to.

Will and am going to aren't exactly synonymous in English either.

"Who wants to go to the concert?"

"I will go."

vs.

"Who wants to go to the concert?"

"I am going to go."

Represent two different ideas.

[miragesyzygy]

Wow totally wrong, sorry I'm terrible at spanish, I'm just recalling from a page in a review book, on which acabar de and ir a were on the same page.

ir a is what I meant

[miragesyzygy]

while you, presumably an older generation, don't even have any concept that "shall" is correct. So "will" has changed meaning and been universally adopted within a single generation, and it may itself be lost within the same generation and forced out by another word.

No I'm an undergraduate myself, and the only time I read of the distinction between "shall" and "will" is in a pocket grammar book whose entry said that "shall" was primarily used in the 1st person while "will" was strictly used in the 3rd, but "will" eventually assumed both usages. As a side note, the entry did say "shall" had originally meant action, but now is typically reserved for expressions of obligation or resolution, and that "will" signals intent, but the entry had nothing to say on whether "will" can also signal action.

Also, if "will" as used to complement the future tense is a relatively new invention, how was the future tense indicated before that? With "shall" substituted?

[Lamia]

"Going to" and "will" are interchangeable in some contexts, like making a prediction about the future, but not in others. I used to teach English as a foreign language, and one of the lessons covered the distinction between "going to" and "will". The big one is, treis's example shows, that "going to" can be used to indicate that you were already planning to do X, while "will" would indicate that you've only just decided to do X.

[Wendell Wagner]

Here is an argument that English doesn't have a future tense at all:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/langu...es/005471.html

The argument is that English has a number of different grammatical forms which are sometimes used to imply futurity, but each of which doesn't necessarily imply futurity.

[guizot]

Originally Posted by Lamia

The big one is, treis's example shows, that "going to" can be used to indicate that you were already planning to do X, while "will" would indicate that you've only just decided to do X.

Yes. And for a momentary predictions, it's kind of the reverse:

"Look at the those dark clouds! It's going to rain."

versus

"Look at those dark clouds! *It will rain."

[Blake]

Originally Posted by miragesyzygy

No I'm an undergraduate myself, and the only time I read of the distinction between "shall" and "will" is in a pocket grammar book whose entry said that "shall" was primarily used in the 1st person while "will" was strictly used in the 3rd...

Which is weird because it doesn't match common usage in any period that I can think of. From Tudor English ("And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church") to Victorian (“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all year") to early 20th century ("Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart.") Will has routinely been used in the non-third-person for the entire history of modern English as far as I can see. And I have never seen any evidence that "shall" is primarily used in the first person.

As a side note, the entry did say "shall" had originally meant action, but now is typically reserved for expressions of obligation or resolution, and that "will" signals intent, but the entry had nothing to say on whether "will" can also signal action.

There is no doubt that this is true today. My point was that it wasn't true within living memory.

Also, if "will" as used to complement the future tense is a relatively new invention, how was the future tense indicated before that? With "shall" substituted?

First off I can see no evidence that "will" used for the future tense is relatively new. In fact I can't think of any historical uses where it was not future tense. "The rock upon which I will build my church" is from the King James Bible, and refers to events that will occur at least a year in the future.

that aside, shall was substituted for "will" in the future tense when referring to action rather than intention: "You shall go to the ball", "You shall not pass", "I shall do such things, what they are yet I know not, but I do know they shall be the terrors of the earth".

[(mostly) Harmless]

As for the OP's question:

It is a recognized occurrence in several languages that verbs meaning "to go" or something close take on the meaning of futurity and can even become grammaticalized to the point where that becomes all that they mean.

In my Historical Linguistics class the professor brought up the examples in English that were sited in the OP and (if i'm remembering correctly) it is due to a kind of semantic change called (obviously) metaphor. Because we visualize time as "proceeding" in a direction from past to future we make an analogy with direction through space and end up using the same words. Whereas "go" once meant only motion through space it later took on the meaning of "motion" through time.

An interesting observation is that "going to" is already becoming gramaticalized (ie: used as a syntactic marker instead of just a content-rich word). The proof of this is that "going to" can be shortened to "gonna" which one would assume is merely a phonological rule not having anything to do with meaning.

This is not the case as I can say:
"I'm gonna work tomorrow."

But I cannot say:
"I'm gonna Seattle" (meaning: "I'm going to Seattle")

This shows that the shortening is not only due to phonology but ALSO semantics, there by separating this "future" use from the other uses.

Secondly I would like to address the thing about tense. From a linguistic perspective saying that a language has a tense means that its verb forms change based on what time (past, present, future, nonpast, nonfuture, near past, near future, etc...) you are talking about. An example would be:

"I live in California."
vs.
"I lived in California."

In these two examples the actual shape of the verb changed. This leads me to my next point: English does not have a future tense. We have the ability to talk about future time but look at the following:

"I ran everyday."
"I run everyday."
"I will run everyday."

Notice how the main verb in each of the last two examples is the same and both are different from the first. This is because the two Tenses of English are Past and Non-Past. We have one tense (and remember the form of the verb itself has to change to be considered a 'tense') to refer to the past and another one for everything else.

As for how new is the usage of "will" as the main modal used for the future, I'm not really interested enough to look it up. As for whether it is better or more correct than "shall" all I will say is this: I am a Descriptivist. So that should tell you where I fall on that particular debate.

I love the discussion so far! Let's keep it up.

[Siam Sam]

How about "fixing to" or "fixin' to"? I remember back in Texas, this drove a transplant from back East up the wall.

[guizot]

Originally Posted by (mostly) Harmless

In these two examples the actual shape of the verb changed. This leads me to my next point: English does not have a future tense. We have the ability to talk about future time but look at the following:

"I ran everyday."
"I run everyday."
"I will run everyday."

I'll just say that while this point is obvious to me (as a linguist), I find it interesting only in a pedantic way. (I don't think a descriptivist should get too hung up on the technical definition of "tense," except for historical observations.) In fact, it's much more interesting for me to see what languages can do despite such classifications, and how varied the ways are in which they accomplish the same functions.

[(mostly) Harmless]

Originally Posted by guizot

I'll just say that while this point is obvious to me (as a linguist), I find it interesting only in a pedantic way. (I don't think a descriptivist should get too hung up on the technical definition of "tense," except for historical observations.) In fact, it's much more interesting for me to see what languages can do despite such classifications, and how varied the ways are in which they accomplish the same functions.

I agree completely that it is more interesting to see how flexible language is and I am fascinated by the variety and innovation I see.

While you make a good point about the pedantry involved in the technical use of "tense", it is still necessary (especially for a descriptivist) to be able to categorize things into groups based on similarity. Maybe it is pedantic. Maybe it's not the most interesting part of the field of study. It is, however, necessary.

[guizot]

Originally Posted by miragesyzygy

..."shall" was primarily used in the 1st person while "will" was strictly used in the 3rd, but "will" eventually assumed both usages...

Originally Posted by Blake

Will has routinely been used in the non-third-person for the entire history of modern English as far as I can see. And I have never seen any evidence that "shall" is primarily used in the first person.

Modals have certain restrictions (in modern use), depending on their function:

"Shall I pay the check?" is not simply the interrogative form of "I shall pay the check." It's an offer/suggestion, so functionally it's restricted to first person.

And you can't offer in the second person, (which of course is actually a request) (*"Shall you give me a hand?"), and to use it for third person is a non-agent offer. (i.e., "Shall he help you tonight?" is an offer to make someone else do something.)

[BigT]

Originally Posted by guizot

I'll just say that while this point is obvious to me (as a linguist), I find it interesting only in a pedantic way. (I don't think a descriptivist should get too hung up on the technical definition of "tense," except for historical observations.) In fact, it's much more interesting for me to see what languages can do despite such classifications, and how varied the ways are in which they accomplish the same functions.

I honestly don't see the difference in adding a word or adding a suffix. "will <verb>" maps directly to any other language that a one word future tense. It seems odd to limit tense to one word constructions.

[Acsenray]

This thread shows that the "will verb" construction is not the sole manner of indicating the future. So how can you call it the future tense?

[glowacks]

I have always understood the original distinction between "shall" and "will" was one of prediction/intent vs. actuality. That is, "thou shalt not kill" is an absolute direct command, indicating exactly what will happen - it's not a suggestion or prediction. "You will not kill anyone" is effectively a prediction about the future although it's taken more as a request/suggestion. From this perspective, "you're not going to kill anyone" is purely a prediction of the future and has very little to no suggestive value. In theory, if you say you "will" do something you are making a far less concrete statement than saying you "shall" do something. Using the latter implies that there's not even a consideration of doing anything else, whereas the former implies that you might make a different decision later. As time has progressed the concreteness of the latter increased to the point that it became rarer to actually use and eventually fell out of typical speech.

In Latin, there's the active periphrastic form of verbs that tends to be translated with "going to" even though there's nothing in Latin that indicates that. It's formed with the future participle + "to be", and is basically translated "is going to verb", "was going to verb", "had been going to verb", etc. Thus, I see the English form of "going to" as being the equivalent of the Latin active periphrastic. Latin had future participles to use, English doesn't, and the word "willing" doesn't have the right connotation.

[guizot]

Originally Posted by BigT

I honestly don't see the difference in adding a word or adding a suffix. "will <verb>" maps directly to any other language that a one word future tense. It seems odd to limit tense to one word constructions.

Yeah, it's essentially the same, isn't it? It might be because of the whole Latin-as-"ur-language" thing that some English grammarians have.

Originally Posted by glowacks

From this perspective, "you're not going to kill anyone" is purely a prediction of the future and has very little to no suggestive value. In theory, if you say you "will" do something you are making a far less concrete statement than saying you "shall" do something. Using the latter implies that there's not even a consideration of doing anything else, whereas the former implies that you might make a different decision later. As time has progressed the concreteness of the latter increased to the point that it became rarer to actually use and eventually fell out of typical speech.

In any case, "you're (not) going to _____" is often used by English speakers as neither a prediction nor a suggestion, but a command. Context plays into function as much as grammar does:

Mother to child:
"You're going to sit (your butt) down in here right now and finish your homework!"

Local fire code :
"Smokers shall sit down to smoke in such a position that any burning material will fall within a cleared area..."

[miragesyzygy]

Spanish, being a Romance language, also has a future tense in which words' endings visibly inflect to form future one-word verbs. Nevertheless, it also has the ir a construction, which translated literally, means "go to."

mostly harmless's suggestion of a cross-realm temporal application of spatial motion makes some sense, but I find it interesting that the construction can be found in other languages too. Is it just a colloquial shorthand that has become accepted?

[Wendell Wagner]

The ideas that (mostly) Harmless talks about in post #10 are pretty standard in cognitive grammar with its notion of a conceptual metaphor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor

The point is that there are standard metaphors in each language, some of which extend across many languages. One of these metaphors is that movement in time is similar to movement in space. Because of this, it's common in many languages for a verb meaning "to go" to be used for futurity.

[Hari Seldon]

The teaching of English is seriously damaged by trying to fit it into a \latin mold, that could hardly fit it worse. Before I launch into this, let me observe that "aller"" in French functions exactly as "going to" in English and is the most common form of expressing future.

The most important observation is that the English verb form does not express tense. What it expresses is "aspect". There are two forms, the imperfect, mistakenly called the present and the perfect, generally called the past. As an example, consider the sentence, "I go to my office every day." The idea it expresses is simultaneously past, present, and future. Contrast, "I went to my office every day (until I retired)." past action, to be sure, but mainly completed action (prefective). The main constrast in meaning between "Jon has been a mathematician" and "Jon was a mathematician" is that the second has an implication that Jon is dead. I could go on with this a long time, but I desist.

Another observation about English is that while many languages have modal verbs, English has a part of speech called modals. But their grammar differs sufficiently from that of verbs that it is best to consider them a distinct part of speech. There are several ways to recognize the difference. First place they cannot be governed by modals. In German you can say, "Ich mussen koennen machen etwas" and in French, "Je doit pouvior faire quellque chose", but in English you must say something like "I must be able to do something"". Second, only "be", "do", and modals can be used in questions and negatives without "do supposrt". (Sometimes "have" can be so used but that usage is becoming increasingly archaic.) Thirdly, along with "do", "be", and "have", they can govern a verb without a preposition. Interestingly, the optional modals "dare" and "need" can be used both ways, but can be inverted and negated only if used without "to".

Apparently the modals were verbs until about 1550. In the ensuing 50 years, they ceased being verbs and the periphrastic constructions, "be going to", "be about to", "be able to", "have to", entered the language.

This and much more can be found in a book called "Prncipals of Diachronic Syntax" by David Lightfoot, where I learned it. He gives much better arguments than I can.

I think the teaching of ESL would be vastly improved if the actual grammar of English were taught and they stopped trying to shoehorn into a Latin mold. Just the distinction between perfect and imperfect might go a long way to sorting out the question of when to use the so-called progressive forms that give non-native speakers such problems.

A native German speaking colleague of mine told that he once spent a sleepless night before he realized the simple rule that determines whether a German verb uses a "ge-" prefix in the past participle. The rule is not taught to students learning German (wasn't to me) and, while known unconsciously to all native speakers of German, had never been articulated before as far as he was aware:

SPOILER:

The "ge-" is used in the past participle if and only if the verb is stressed on its first syllable.

[Tom Tildrum]

On "shall" vs. "will."

Originally Posted by Strunk and White

Shall. Will. In formal writing, the future tense requires shall for the first person, will for the second and third. The formula to express the speaker's belief regarding a future action or state is I shall; I will expresses determination or consent. A swimmer in distress cries, "I shall drown; no one will save me!" A suicide puts it the other way: "I will drown; no one shall save me!" In relaxed speech, however, the words shall andwill are seldom used precisely; our ear guides us or fails to guide us, as the case may be, and we are quite likely to drown when we want to survive and survive when we want to drown.

[Acsenray]

Strunk and White is not a credible source for anything. It's like citing Bill Bryson for etymology.

[bordelond]

Originally Posted by Wendell Wagner

The ideas that (mostly) Harmless talks about in post #10 are pretty standard in cognitive grammar with its notion of a conceptual metaphor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor

The point is that there are standard metaphors in each language, some of which extend across many languages. One of these metaphors is that movement in time is similar to movement in space. Because of this, it's common in many languages for a verb meaning "to go" to be used for futurity.

I find myself pimping this guy a lot: Steve Pinker extensively covers the extension of terms of spatial movement to describe temporal movement in his book The Stuff of Thought.

[guizot]

Originally Posted by Hari Seldon

I think the teaching of ESL would be vastly improved if the actual grammar of English were taught and they stopped trying to shoehorn into a Latin mold.

What makes you think that hasn't happened? To be certain, too much of the later persists, but the former has become much more prevalent. Principles of Diachronic Syntax came out ages ago--even a decade before that, (Latin-inspired) grammar-translation instruction was being questioned, and functional-notional models were starting to influence grammar instruction pedagogy.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally Posted by Wendell Wagner

The argument is that English has a number of different grammatical forms which are sometimes used to imply futurity, but each of which doesn't necessarily imply futurity.

An interesting article, but to my untrained eyes it seems that there are alternate explanations for his examples that "will" can mean something other than future tense.

For instance:
"My parents won't know that I'm here yet, so I should call them."
"Means that they don't know I'm here, not that a time is coming along in the future at which they will cease to know. "

But it seems to me that we often speak of others from the perspective of someone in the past--as if our mental snapshot of that person is frozen in that past state. In that sense, it is future knowledge that I have arrived safely.

I might posit that this interpretation fits better with relativity in physics. There is no absolute time, so it makes sense to speak relative to the last causal contact with the other object. For all I know, my parents may have been traveling at close to the speed of light since I last spoke with them.

[DrMatrix]

"I am going to ..." means "I will ..."
"I was going to ..." means "I did not ...".

[Acsenray]

Originally Posted by DrMatrix

"I was going to ..." means "I did not ...".

Or it could mean --

"I would have ..." or
"I intend to ..."

[Johanna]

Originally Posted by (mostly) Harmless

An interesting observation is that "going to" is already becoming gramaticalized (ie: used as a syntactic marker instead of just a content-rich word). The proof of this is that "going to" can be shortened to "gonna" which one would assume is merely a phonological rule not having anything to do with meaning.

This is not the case as I can say:
"I'm gonna work tomorrow."

But I cannot say:
"I'm gonna Seattle" (meaning: "I'm going to Seattle")

Excellent point. It's a key point to the whole question. I can think of only a single example that violated it, but it may be a pseudo-example. The lyrics printed along with John Lennon's album Mind Games had this line in the song "Meat City":

Well I'm gonna China to see for myself

In which China is obviously not a verb but a place name. However, Lennon pronounces it differently from the syntactic marker gonna, which is pronounced [gənə].

But Lennon pronounces it [ˈgoʊnə] (rhyming with "Arizona"), which sounds to me like a very elided pronunciation of [ˈgoʊɪŋ tu], i.e. the verb denoting motion. Note the primary stress on the first syllable, while as a syntactic marker, gonna is almost always unstressed. English does not use schwa in stressed syllables.

So he actually wasn't singing "gonna" ([gənə]), but whoever transcribed the lyrics for the liner notes chose that misleading spelling. You're right, to read "I'm gonna China" always looked wrong, and you've given a good explanation of why that is. The apparent grammatical anomaly was really just bad transcription.

[guizot]

Originally Posted by Dr. Strangelove

But it seems to me that we often speak of others from the perspective of someone in the past--as if our mental snapshot of that person is frozen in that past state.

This happens with other kinds of deixis, too. Bring and take, for example, are not absolute representations of one direction or another. They can be employed to demonstrate a certain degree of identification with another person's perspective:

"Grandma's sick in the hospital. Let's bring her some flowers."

The speaker chooses bring over take to show empathy for the sick grandmother.

[guizot]

Originally Posted by acsenray

Or it could mean --

"I would have ..." or
"I intend to ..."

Yes. One way in which English speakers show deference or formality is switching to the past tense.

Employee: "Sir, I was just going to take a short break now to call my children, if you don't mind."

Boss: "Sure, that's all right. Go ahead."

[Hari Seldon]

Originally Posted by guizot

What makes you think that hasn't happened? To be certain, too much of the later persists, but the former has become much more prevalent. Principles of Diachronic Syntax came out ages ago--even a decade before that, (Latin-inspired) grammar-translation instruction was being questioned, and functional-notional models were starting to influence grammar instruction pedagogy.

Glad to hear this. But I know a teacher of ESL and she still uses traditional grammar (even though she has a master's in linguistics).

[Colophon]

So how does "I'ma" fit into all this, as in "I'ma let you finish"?

[Jas09]

I believe "I'ma" is simply a contraction for "I am going to", right?

ETA: Or perhaps more obviously, for "I'm gonna" which is in turn a contraction for "I am going to"...

[guizot]

Originally Posted by Hari Seldon

Glad to hear this. But I know a teacher of ESL and she still uses traditional grammar (even though she has a master's in linguistics).

Well, that's one reason (but not the sole reason) why univerisities started applied linguistics programs. In pure linguistics, people tend to sit in their office and make up sentences which no one would actually say ("The quick brown fox will have jumped over the lazy dog.") Then they write whole dissertations about it. Many (especially those who study things like syntax and phonology) tend to approach language in a mathematical way, and as a result, when they find themselves teaching a language, they teach it synthetically. But the reality is that real language, as it actually occurs, is messy, so to speak, and applied linguists embrace that, and utilize that awareness for effective language instruction.

In applied linguistics we go out and record what people actually say in real situations, and use that record to see how discourse and functional contexts, social relationships, motivations, physcial circumstance, etc. shape the way language is used. With enough data, we can identify patterns and "rules," but these are far more complex than what the studies of syntax, morphology, etc. alone can describe.

Applied linguists have to know all the basics of what pure linguists study, but then go about using that knowledge differently. (In fact, at UCLA, the two departments are in separate buildings.) The result is you get studies like this, (Deb Roy's intense documentation of how his son acquired production of the word "water"), and it intersects with studies in departments like anthropology, neuro-biology, sociology, etc. You also find that the studies that come out of applied linguistics are what help to make computer systems like IBM's Watson more successful at playing Jeopardy.

To a person who wants to gain competency in English it isn't important whether the language has a "true future tense." That person instead needs to understand and learn the various native ways the language is used for various functions and motivations to reference, in this case,"future" perspectives:

I'm paying for dinner tonight. (intention)

I'm going to take my mother out tonight. (plan)

My plane arrives at 8:00am Saturday. (itinerary)

I think I'll take the bus instead of the subway. (momentary decision)

I'll get that! [telephone, dropped object, etc.] (offer)

When I grow up, I wanna be a doctor. (volition)

Of course another reason why other people still teach English using only grammar-translation or audio-lingual (i.e., behavioristic) methods is simply because that's how their high school Spanish/French/German class was taught, and so that's all they know about language instruction. Because of the world-wide demand, though, instruction of English has advanced more than instruction of other languages.