Be going to: an exercise in grounding

Abstract

This paper investigates the semantics of be going to, starting from a schematic definition which interprets temporal meanings in terms of referential and epistemological attributes. The analysis is framed within the model of cognitive grammar, taking deictic syntactical constructions as instances of grounding predications and differences between them as triggered by aspects of construal and profiling. On the basis of corpus material from American and British English texts, it is concluded that be going to features a paradoxical but pragmatically plausible interpretation of the future as non-given yet present, with a pending event's being signaled or announced at the time of speaking.

A Cognitive Grammar account of the semantics of the English present progressive

“…Futurate uses of the simple present and the present progressive differ primarily in terms of the modal status they confer upon the future situation. As recognized by, among others, Wekker (1976), Brisard (2001) and Williams (2002) and in line with the schematic characterization we propose, the simple present indicates that the future occurrence of a situation is regarded as inevitable, while a Futurate progressive typically indicates a confident PREDICTION (which is, by definition, liable to human fallacy and thus contingent). Its use therefore appears out of place whenever the future event is certain to occur (because, e.g.…”

Modality, aspect and the progressive

“…This futurate use of the present progressive yields a slightly different interpretation than more canonical constructions used for future-time reference in English, such as 'will' and 'be going to' , in that the latter typically involve less certainty on the part of the speaker (Brisard, 2001). Futurate uses of the present progressive constitute yet another extension of current ongoingness, since the situations involved are construed as if they were ongoing in the present (i.e., there is again virtual rather than actual coincidence).…”

Chapter 2. The Spanish preterite and imperfect from a cognitive point of view

“…These are the characterizations of the prototypical temporal uses of the English present tense and past tense (Langacker 1991(Langacker , 2001b(Langacker , 2009. Langacker (2009) and Brisard (1999Brisard ( , 2001Brisard ( , 2002 argue that a more general characterization of the two tenses is epistemic. On the one hand, perfectives do not usually occur with the English present tense (e.g., *He writes a book).…”