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ArticlesA Contrastive Study ofTense-Rich and TenselessLanguages
The Case of the Future Tense

Masahiko Nose

Shiga University / Professor

Introduction

This study explores the contrast between theuse of the future tense in various languages (cf.
Comrie 1985, Nose 2017). Typologically, there
are diverse languages representing tense-rich,tenseless and other temporal realizations (Nose2020a). This study examines four sample languages, two languages that are tense-rich andtwo languages that are tenseless. The former are
Amele and Ma Manda, both are Trans-New
Guinea languages spoken in Papua New Guinea (Foley 2000). The latter are Mandarin
Chinese and Nguna, Chinese is Sino-Tibetan,
and Nguna is an Austronesian language, spoken in Vanuatu (cf. Nose 2020b).
The behaviors of tense are diverse and mostof languages have grammatical tense markers,
but some languages lack them. In previous
studies the author has already considered thepast tense (Nose 2017, 2020a) and this study
considers the future tense usages of tense-richand tenseless languages. There are several raretense phenomena different from standard European languages.
Firstly, Nguna has no past tense marker. In(1b), however, there is a future marker “ga” withintension meaning.
(1) Nguna (Austronesian, Schütz 1969)
a. Present and past: E munu.
“He drinks, he drank.”b. Future: E ga (intension marker) munu.
“he will drink.”
Another language, Amondawa, a Tupian language, spoken in Brazil, does not have any
grammatical tense markers (Sinha et al., 2011,
Dahl 2001). Therefore, Sinha et al. (2011) called

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it a “no concept of ‘time’ ” language. Of course,
there are a variety of temporal adverbs such as“yesterday” and “tomorrow,” and they can indicate tense information in the sentences. Thus,
we can consider the following two points inthis study. One is to discuss the relationshipbetween time and grammar (Comrie 1976,1985) and another is to clarify particularly the“future tense” (Bybee et al., 1994, Nose 2017).
Section 2 offers an overview of previous studies that have investigated future tenses andlanguage descriptions in Papua New Guinea
and outlines the study objectives. Section 3
presents data on the future tenses in the sample
languages. Section 4 discusses the form/meaning of the future tenses both in tense-rich andtenseless languages. Section 5 presents the conclusions.

II

Previous studies andthe purpose of this study

This section reviews previous studies on future tenses and related matters, included in thisis a typological study of future tenses. First, thisstudy tries to introduce the future tense. For
example, in English, there are two kinds of future markers: “be going to” and “will.”
According to Tyler and Jan (2017), basic
meanings are motivated in terms of cognitive
terms; (2a) is a metaphorical extension [TIME
IS MOTION] and (2b) has a modal meaning
with intension.
(2) English:
a. I am going to eat a cake.
b. I will eat a cake.

A Contrastive Study of Tense-Rich and Tenseless Languages

It is necessary to consider the sample languages in the combination of tense-aspectmood (cf. Bybee et al., 1994). This study is acontrastive study of different language genera,
Trans-New Guinea, Austronesian, and Chinese. This combination is not enough for atypological study, but it is helpful to find certain effect(s) of unusual tense features (cf. Nose
2017, 2020a, 2020b).
Before observing the data, this study shows
several examples of rich tense and tenseless languages.
(3) Amele, Papua New Guinea (Roberts 1987)
Present tense: Fri-diga (to surprise).
“I am surprised.”
Today’s past: Fri-iti-ga.
“I was surprised (today).”
Yesterday’s past: Fri-iti-gan.
“I was surprised (yesterday).”
Remote past: Fri-it-en.
“I was surprised (long ago).”In (3), Amele is a Trans-New Guinea language, it has three kinds of past tenses: today’s
past, yesterday’s past, and remote past. Their
past tense forms are involved in the verbal morphology. Therefore, one can say that Amele is atense-rich language. By contrast, the examples
below are of tenseless languages, Nguna, andMandarin Chinese.
(4) Nguna, Vanuatu (Nose 2007)
Kinau a gami (I eat/I ate): No marker(5) Mandarin Chinese (Lin 2012: 673)
“Lisi broke a vase.”a. Lisi dapo (break-(perf )) huaping.
(no past marker)

Masahiko Nose023

Figure 1: The future tense in world languages (Dahl and Velupillai 2005b)b. Lisi zuotian (yesterday) dapo (break)huaping.
(Using temporal adverb, yesterday)
c. Lisi dapo-LE heaping.
(Using perfective marker LE)
In (4) and (5), Nguna (Austronesian, Vanuatu) and Chinese (Sino-Tibetan) are tenselesslanguages. Nguna in (4) has no past tense
markers, and sentence (4) means both present
and past meanings (Nose 2020a). Chinese has
several options of translating “Lisi broke a vase”
in (5a-c). (5a) is the same as Nguna in (4), andit has past meaning inside “dapo” neverthelessit has no marker. (5b) implies a past meaning
by using the temporal adverb “yesterday” and(5c) uses the perfective marker “le” and the sentence means perfective, as it had happened
already, as a past event (Lin 2012).
The distribution of the future tenses in world
languages is shown in Figure 1.
Dahl & Velupillai (2005) investigated futuretenses typologically. Dahl & Velupillai (2005)
classified the languages into inflectional or no024

inflectional futures. Geographically, the languages in Europe do not have an inflectional
future, except Spanish, French, and Basque. In
Asia, the languages without past tenses also
have no morphological future. In the South Pacific and Australia, many languages have an
inflectional future.
This study considers why some languages
have rich tense systems and other languages aretenseless in when expressing the future. Moreover, this study tries to discuss the effects ofrich tense (remoteness distinctions: Roberts
1987, Nose 2018, 2020a) and the effects oftenselessness in grammars (cf. Dahl 2001, Lin2012). This is a contrastive study of four sample
languages, tense-rich (Amele and Ma Manda)
and tenseless (Chinese and Nguna). This study
examines these languages future tense forms
and particularly verbal morphology and their
future meanings are investigated (cf. Foley
2000, Nose 2017).
In (6) below are the data sources of the languages. Only Ma Manda examples are referredfrom Pennington (2015) with no interview da-

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Autumn / Oct. 2020 / No.425

ta. Pennington’s work is reliable, and it offers
enough information for this contrastive study.
(6) Data sources of the sample languages* Amele (New Guinea): Roberts (1987)
and interview data
* Ma Manda (New Guinea): Pennington(2015)* Nguna (Vanuatu, South Pacific): Schütz(1969), Nose (2007) and interview data
* Chinese (China, Asia): Setog uchi
(2003), Yip and Rimmington (2004) andinterview data1)

III

Data of future reference

In this section, the future tense usages of thesample languages are given. This study particularly investig ated their morpholog y(inflectional or not) and meanings (realis or irrealis, cf. Elliott 2000). Finally, this study
summarizes the observed data and seeks themechanisms of future tenses or alternativemeans such as temporal adverbs.
3.1. Amele, Trans-New Guinea, as
tense-rich (interview data and Roberts 1987)
Amele has an inflectional future2) and a future suffix is involved in verbal morphology, as
shown in (7).

(7) Amele: Future: 3SG: -an (Present: manigi-na/Past: man-ig-a)
Uqa sab man-igi-an.
“She will cook the food.”

Amele has an inflectional future tense, and it
has positive and negative future forms, as
shown in (8).
(8) Positive and negative future in Amelea. Positive future tense:
I will come: hug-en
b. Negative future tense:
I will not come: (qee) hug-un
In sum, Amele has inflectional futures withboth positive and negative forms. All forms are
involved in verbal morphology, and they consist of a portmanteau form with persons,numbers, and tenses.
3.2. Ma Manda, Trans-New Guinea,
as tense-rich: (Pennington 2015)
There are two kinds of inflectional futures in
Ma Manda. Their forms are inserted in the verbal inflections, and moreover there is adistinction between normal future and remotefuture as in (9).

(9) Future forms in Ma Manda
Normal future: ulak taab-taa-t.
(tell-future-1sg). “I will tell a story.”
Remote future: sisa ku-we-t.
“The day after tomorrow I will go.”In (10), there is a clear distinction between
near and remote past meanings.
(10) Past tense forms in Ma Manda (Pennington 2015:366-369):
Near past: taamengsûla membû temlaal-a-k.
“(This) morning he shaved his head.”
Remote past: kep bûsenang aatûkugu

1) There are already many previous studies of past usages2) Roberts (1987) described the relative future tense. But

A Contrastive Study of Tense-Rich and Tenseless Languages

Masahiko Noseor the aspect marker “le”. The perfect perfective usagesin Chinese are so complicated and variety of previous
studies to check and this study focuses on the futuretense.

the Amele consultant claimed that the relative future
forms are no longer used. Relative future can express an
immediate future meaning (be about to do).

025

ba-go-t.
“Yesterday going around in the bush, I
came (back).”Thus, Ma Manda has near and remote distinction both in past and future tense usages.
(11) fiyat dong ku-ya-t.
Urine search go-present-1SG“I’m going (for a) wee.”(Pennington 2016:371)
Sentence (11) uses the present tense, yet itmeans an immediate future.3)
3.3. Nguna, Austronesian, as tenselessNguna has a simple verbal structure, and it
does not have any tense markers. To clarify past
events, it uses temporal adverbs, like “yesterday” or “last night,” as shown in (12).

(12) Kinau a gani (eat) naika nanofa (yesterday).
“I ate fish yesterday”
In (12), there is no morphological marker on
the verb and the temporal adverb “nanofa”(yesterday) is the only cue of the past event.
Nguna has TAM (tense, aspect and mood)markers, and the markers appear between thesubject and verb: Perfective poo (Schütz 1969:27). One of the TAM markers is the perfective“poo,” as shown in (13).
(13) A poo (perfective) munu (drink) sua (already).
“He has drunk already.”

Other TAM makers “ga” and “gawo” have future implications, but not inflectional future,
as in (14a) and (14b). These meanings are intension or necessity and their meaning is basedon irrealis. Sentence (14c) has future tense
meaning with the temporal adverb “vano” (tomorrow).
(14) Nguna: Future marker: “ga” and “gawo”
a. Kinau a-ga.
“I will” (intension)b. Kinau a-gawo.
“I will, I must” (necessity, intension)c. Kinau a-gawo vano paki Vila matamai(tomorrow).
“I will go to Port Vila tomorrow.”
3.4. Chinese, Sino-Tibetan, as
tenseless
Chinese is famous for its tenselessness (Lin2012), because it utilizes temporal adverbs andoften the aspect marker “LE” is the preferred
way to express past meaning. In future meaning in Chinese, two kinds of modal markers(Yip and Rimmington (2006: 280, 286) callmodal verbs) are used; “hui” and “yao,” as in(15a) and (15b). The basic meaning of “yao” isspeaker-oriented and means “wish, want,should,” so therefore is not allowed (15d) because rain forecasts are not “speaker-oriented.”.”The marker “hui” means “be likely, may” and in(15c) is not allowed because landing is a “speaker-oriented” future. Both forms are based on
irrealis.

(15) Future: using markers “yao,” “hui”
a. Feiji yao jiangluo le.
“The plane will land soon.”b. Jintian hui xia yu. “It will rain today.”3) Future tense markers in Ma Manda are inserted be-

tween verbal root and person/number inf lections. The
forms are not a portmanteau form which is observed inAmele.

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c. *Feiji hui jiangluo le.
d. *Jintian yao xia yu.
Lin (2012) claimed that Chinese is a tenselesslanguage, but he also recognized that there are
two means of future tense reference.
3.5. Results and observations
This study was conducted on the future tenses of two types of languages: tense-rich andtenseless. The data in Table 1. has been summarized during which there have been two
significant observations.
First, tense-rich type languages were represented by Amele and Ma Manda, they arebased on remoteness distinctions in realis
meaning. Moreover, they tended to use verbal
suffix (inflectional) and are tense-rich, a distinction made in earlier research on bothlanguages highlighting that they have several
kinds of past tenses. Future and past tenses are
divided into categories for remoteness; nearand remote. Amele particularly has a distinction between positive (or affirmative) andnegative tense usage. Both languages (both belong to Trans-New Guinea family) put theirtense meanings in verb morphology and thus,

they have a morphological burden (Nose2020a).4)
Next, was the tenseless type represented by
Nguna and Chinese. They are semantically
based on irrealis. These types of language havethe characteristics of having no past tense,
hence the label tenseless. They do not have an
inflectional future, but they distinguish the future tense by using irrealis markers. These
irrealis markers imply intension, necessity or
possibility.

IV

Discussion

This section discusses the functional effectsof the tenseless languages in contrast to thetense-rich languages, and then, seeks inflectional, and semantic balance of the different
grammars.
According to the previous studies such as Bybee et al. (1994), Elliott (2000), Sinha et al.
(2011) and Nose (2020a), speakers with tenseless languages think of past and future events
differently. Their semantic concepts of time arebased on a distinction between realis and irrealis. In realis situations, present and past events
can be events that happened or happen in realsituations. But future events are not considered

Table 1: Future tense usage of the sample languages
Amele

Ma Manda

Nguna

Chinese

Forms

Positive andnegative future

Near andremote futureMarkers: Ga, gawo

Markers: yao, hui

Verbs

Involved

Involved

Preceding verb

Preceding verb

Inflectional

Yes

Yes

No

No

Meanings

RealisRealis, partly irrealis

Irrealis (intension,necessity)

Irrealis (necessity,
possibility)4) At this point, this paper does not discuss why Amele
has affirmative and negative future tenses.

A Contrastive Study of Tense-Rich and Tenseless Languages

Masahiko Nose027

real, and that is why irrealis markers are necessary. Therefore, tenseless languages have a sortof future tense though they do not have a realis
past marker. Thus, the tenseless effect is to obser ve future events as unreal situations.
Moreover, these languages tend to use temporal adverbs (such as “tomorrow,” “tonight”) to
specify the temporal reference. The effect of
this is to minimize the morphological burdenof verb morphology (which can be observed intense-rich languages).
Inflectional future tenses are frequent intense-rich languages (particularly in New
Guinea), but there are two or more kinds of future meanings, such as near/remote, positive/
negative. However, tenseless languages do nothave inflectional future, but they have futuretense with irrealis meaning. Therefore, typologically, future tenses are more marked thanpast tenses. In many cases, future tense usages
are utilized by irrealis, meaning unreal situations. Primitive languages did not have any
grammatical markers and later some lexical
items have been grammaticalized that are incorporated into verbal morphology. Amele and
Ma Manda have a long tradition of having richtense forms. The viewpoint difference between
near and far past might be considered key toTrans-New Guinea languages. However, theirgrammaticalization path of the future tense (orbasic meaning of future) is uncertain.

V

Conclusion

This study has clarified the characteristics offuture tenses in certain languages by investigating tense-rich and tenseless languages. This
study contrasted the two language types which
are semantically quite different viewpoints of028

time. One is tense-rich: several events on atimeline (remote past, near past, present, near
future and remote future), and another that istenseless: realis and irrealis events are viewed
separately, as are completed or not tenselesscompleted actions. Tenseless languages have future tense, but they are not inflectional.
Amele and Ma Manda place tense information (such as pastness or futurity) in realis
verbal morphology. Contrastingly, Nguna andChinese do not have morphological markers
implying past or future in realis as they aretenseless languages. Yet they have a stronger
motivation for marking futurity than pastness.
Irrealis future is grammatically related to themood category, further study needs to be done
to investigate mood categories of languages.
Moreover, temporal adverbs are a key to identifier of time. For languages like Amele and Ma
Manda, tense information is included in the
person or number of verbal inflections. Instead,tenseless languages focus on verbal actions only.
【Acknowledgments】

I would like to thank Neret Tamo, Yoan Jay,
Joseph Jay, and Yanyun Chen for their data andkindness. This work was supported by JSPS
KAKENHI Grant Numbers 15K02478 and
20K00541. An earlier version of this paper waspresented at the Conference on Language Typolog y in China and the World. Shanghai
International Studies University ( July. 14-16,
2017). I am grateful to the audience for theircomments.
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ASAS-Verlag. 159-173.

⦿Tyler, A., & H. Jan, (2017). Be going to and will: talking

about the future using embodied experience. Language
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⦿Yip, P. C., & D. Rimmington, (2006). Chinese: An essen-tial grammar. Routledge.

⦿ Dahl, Ö., & V. Velupillai. (2005). The future tense.

WALS feature 67.

⦿ Elliott, J. R. (2000). Realis and irrealis: Forms and con-cepts of the grammaticalisation of reality. Linguistic typology, 4(1), 55-90.

⦿Foley, W. A. (2000). The languages of New Guinea. An-

nual review of anthropology, 29, 357–404.

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(ed.).:669-695.

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the languages of Papua New Guinea. 彦根論叢, 413号:
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⦿ Nose, M. (2020a). Past tense usages in tense-rich andtenseless languages: A contrastive study. In: MichalisGeorgiafentis, Giannoula Giannoulopoulou, Maria Koliopoulou, Angeliki Tsokoglou(eds.). Contrastive Studies in Morphology and Syntax, London: Bloomsbury Academic: 137-151.

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Terms in Melanesia: A Contrastive Study, In: Toru
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⦿Pennington, R. (2015). A grammar of Ma Manda: a Pap-

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tics Special Publications, 5: 1-88.

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A Contrastive Study of Tense-Rich andTenseless Languages
The Case of the Future Tense

Masahiko Nose

This study examines languages with richtense systems and those without tense. It particularly focuses on the future tense forms of its
four sample languages: Amele, Ma Manda, andNguna from the South Pacific, and Mandarin
Chinese. Amele and Ma Manda are spoken in
New Guinea and possess rich tense systems
with several distinct past tenses, and Nguna(spoken in Vanuatu) and Chinese are wellknown for their tenselessness (Smith 2005).
This study enumerates these four languages, especially the features of their past and futuretenses. Moreover, it discusses the functional effects of being tense-rich/tenselessness.
First, Amele has a rich tense system, withthree past tenses: today’s past, yesterday’s past,and the remote past. Moreover, it has two future tenses: the normal future tense and thenegative future. Next, Ma Manda has two pastand two future tense forms, near and remote
past/future. The inflectional past/future ofAmele and Ma Manda is deeply incorporated
in verbal morphology. Thus, tense information
is grammatically embedded in verbal inflections.
Amele:
Today’s past: Ija hu-g-a (come-1sg-today’spast). “I came (today)”Yesterday’s past: Ija hu-g-an. “I came (yesterday)”030

Remote past: Ija ho-om. “I came (before yesterday)”Future tense: Uqa sab manigi-an (cook-1sg.
future). “She will cook the food.”
Negative future: Ija sab qee jigi-n. “I will not
eat the food.”
Ma Manda (Pennington 2015):
Normal future: ulak taab-taa-t. (tell-future1sg). “I will tell a story.”
Remote future: sisa ku-we-t. “The day after
tomorrow I will go.”Contrastingly, Chinese and Nguna lack apast tense form. For example, Chinese utilizes
the perfective aspect marker “le” to indicate
past meaning. Nguna lacks past tense entirely
and requires the utilization of temporal adverbs
such as “yesterday” or “last week” to indicate
pastness. Neither language has inflectional future. Instead, they use future markers implying
necessity or possibility. These future markers
are semantically related to irrealis meaning.
Chinese (Lin 2012: 673):
Perfective: Lisi dapo-le (break-aspect marker). “Lisi broke a vase.”
Future: using markers yao, hui
Feiji yao jiangluo le. “The plane will landsoon.”
Jintian hui xia yu. “It will rain today.”
Nguna: Future marker: gawo
Kinau a-gawo. “I will, I must” (necessity)

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This study claims that Amele and Ma Manda
place tense information (such as pastness or fut u r i t y ) i n r e a l i s v e r b a l m o r p h o l o g y.
Contrastingly, Nguna and Chinese do not havea morphological marker implying past or future in the realis mood as they are tenselesslanguages. Thus, they have a stronger motivation for marking futurity than pastness.

A Contrastive Study of Tense-Rich and Tenseless Languages

Masahiko Nose031