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The future in the past is a grammatical tense where the time reference is in the future with respect to a vantage point that is itself in the past. In English, future in the past is not always considered a separate tense, but rather as either a subcategory of future [1] or past [2] tense and is typically used in narrations of past events:
Biblical Hebrew has a distinction between past and future tenses which is similar in form to those used in other Semitic languages such as Arabic and Aramaic. Gesenius refers to the past and future verb forms as Perfect and Imperfect, [18] respectively, separating completed action from uncompleted action. However, the usage of verbs in these ...
Mortlockese uses tense markers such as mii and to denote the present tense state of a subject, aa to denote a present tense state that an object has changed to from a different, past state, kɞ to describe something that has already been completed, pɞ and lɛ to denote future tense, pʷapʷ to denote a possible action or state in future tense ...
The pluperfect and future perfect forms combine perfect aspect with past and future tense respectively. This analysis is reflected more explicitly in the terminology commonly used in modern English grammars, which refer to present perfect, past perfect and future perfect (as well as some other constructions such as conditional perfect).
It should be noted that, since the distinction between tense, mood and aspect in grammar is sometimes fuzzy, some may disagree with some of the below categorisations. Pages in category "Grammatical tenses"
The past progressive or past continuous construction combines progressive aspect with past tense, and is formed using the past tense of be (was or were) with the present participle of the main verb. It indicates an action that was ongoing at the past time being considered:
future in past 'that I would say' (with the active form īre) 'infinitive fore ' locūtum fore: past in future in present 'that I will have said' past in future in past 'that I was going to have said' 'infinitive present' locūtum esse: past in present 'that I said' past in past 'that I had said' 'infinitive perfect' locūtum fuisse: past in ...
Relative future is also possible for a limited number of uses of the modular "will" or "shall" in their so-called past tense forms, respectively "would" and "should" (see future in the past). Periphrastic phrases may be able to express some relative future meanings that are otherwise unattested. For example, the phrase "to be about to" means ...