Editor’s note: Welcome to InDepthNH.org’s column Speaking of Words. Michael Ferber retired from the English Department at UNH, but has plenty more to say and write about words. We are thrilled he wants to do that for our readers. Welcome Michael!
Speaking of Words
By MICHAEL FERBER
Those of us lucky enough to have been taught some grammar in school, even if we hated it, learned that the future tense in English is formed with will or shall, two modal auxiliaries. The differences between them were subtle and hard to keep straight, but shall usually went with the first person, especially in questions such as Shall I send you the package? or Shall we dance? If you ask almost any school-trained English-speaker how English makes the future tense, you’ll hear something about will and shall, but that same speaker, which may be you or I, doesn’t use will or shall for the future most of the time. In everyday spoken usage we use BE + gonna, and our anglophone forebears have done so for at least two centuries.
Gonna is obviously a compressed version of going to, and we can use that pair of words to express the future if we want to sound a little more formal, but we seldom actually say I’m going to eat lunch early. We compress the participle and to into a new verb: I’m gonna eat lunch early. We don’t spell it gonna, but that’s how it usually comes out of our mouths.
How did English hit upon go as a future auxiliary verb? Examples can be found as far back as 1500 or so, at first usually to indicate intention, often unfulfilled, such as As I was going to say. But as early as Shakespeare we find it much as we use it today: Are you now going to dispatch this deed? (Richard III). In that instance the idea of physical movement is still implicit, but today going need not imply any real going at all. You can say I’m gonna stay right where I am.
English is not the only language that has recruited its word for go to serve as a future auxiliary. In French il va arriver means He will arrive (or He’s gonna arrive), and there are similar constructions in Spanish. Some languages, by the way, use come for the future: in Portuguese you can say venho cantar for “I’m going to sing,” and in Swedish you can say Du kommer att tala svenska for “You are going to speak Swedish.”
English settled not only on go but on the progressive form of it, going. We don’t say I go to read the book, not, at least, as a simple future. Our cousin Dutch does it: Ik ga het boek lezen. But Dutch, like many other languages, lacks a distinct progressive form. Perhaps the progressive form seemed the natural choice in English because it emphasized an ongoing process, as if the future is beginning now, as indeed it is.
Note, in any case, that, if we can substitute going to for gonna in every instance, the reverse is not true. I’m going to Chicago cannot be changed to I’m gonna Chicago. The new verb gonna must be followed by another verb. It has come loose from its origin and has a new meaning. In some dialects it has also shaken off the BE form; we might hear You gonna get in trouble.
BE + gonna has been supplanting will in many verb phrases, but it may have limits. Take the future perfect progressive form: By July I will have been working there for ten years. Can we substitute gonna? By July I’m gonna have been working there for ten years. I’ve tried this construction on several native speakers, and they don’t like it. I don’t either, but I’m not sure why.
Besides the complexity of its future-tense forms, English also has a past-tense form that is often overlooked by grammar teachers. We use it all the time: yusta, or maybe usta. It is of course a compression of used to, and that is how we write it. It might be called the past habitual auxiliary: I used to eat pizza with anchovies. He used to talk all the time. But it usually implies that the subject no longer does what it used to do, so the form might be called the past discontinued habitual auxiliary. There is also a passive form, I think more common in Britain: They were used to leading a quiet life. A present-tense form passive is possible—They are used to leading a quiet life—but in the active voice the present is not found in standard English dialects. But it used to exist! Shakespeare wrote Dost thou use to write thy name? (from 2 Henry VI), which we might explicate by deploying related words: Is it your usage to write your name? Is it usual for you to write your name? Another playwright, John Webster, wrote I do not use to kiss (from The White Devil). Try that on your next date. It might work in Trinidad and Tobago, however, where the present-tense form survives.
That yusta has come unmoored from its origin in used to is evident in the voiceless –s– of yusta versus the voiced –s– (like a –z-) in used to in a sentence such as A screwdriver may be used to pry open a paint can. We can’t say A screwdriver may be yusta pry open a paint can any more than we can say I’m gonna Chicago.
All languages generate new forms that express new distinctions, but English seems unusually profligate in its verb system. It has three tenses (past, present, future) and four aspects (simple, progressive, perfect simple, and perfect progressive) (“simple” is not the best term, but these two are simplest in form); they combine into twelve phrases for nearly every verb. It has several variants of the future tense (will, shall, and BE + gonna, but also the present as future) and several variants of the past habitual (she read every day, she was reading every day, she used to read every day, she would read every day). It also throws DO around with abandon: in questions, in negations, in polite requests, for emphasis, and in several other uses. Take a moment then to feel grateful that you didn’t have to learn English for the first time in high school.
I am happy to hear from readers with questions or comments: mferber@unh.edu.