Which sentence is correct to indicate future tense from it?

The first is correct, but I can’t explain the formal reason why. It sounds better to my trained ear.

My grammer brain wants to correct the second sentence for the future tense. Change “will come” to “has come”. The first one sounds better,

The first one is correct. The second one is redundant.

In the declarative statements that you’re thinking of, the word “when” pre-supposes future tense. “When it happens, I’ll tell you”. You don’t need to say “When it will happen, I’ll tell you” because A) saying “when it happens” implies that it hasn’t happened yet, so it’s not necessary to use future tense and B) reverse the sentence order and you get “I’ll tell you when it will happen”. That is a different statement altogether; that’s more like saying you have knowledge of the future and are going to reveal it.

The first is correct. The second sentence seems to have extra emphasis on the right time definitively happening, rather than when it happens.

The first sentence is right. The “when” clause never uses “will”, but it still does indicate future time in this context.

There is no future tense in English.

As @morphail says, clauses of time with “when” use a present simple structure to refer to the future (it has a future aspect even though its structural tense is present).

Other examples of conjunctions that induce their subsequent clauses to behave in similar ways are “as soon as”, “before” and “after”.

@the100thmonkey: I will bet you the farm that there is a future tense in English, plus future conditional, etc.

When will my prince come?

@gailcalled “When will my prince come?” is a current question about a future event. Not future tense.

@missingbite

Actually, it is. The sentence can be re-ordered thusly: “when my prince will come”. You can also say “when my prince comes” and use the present-tense (because “when” implies that he hasn’t come yet), but in the first example, “will come” is in the future tense.

English definitely has a future tense. “I will go to the store tomorrow”, “I am going to love it”, “I am about to drive over there”, etc. (Keep in mind that in most cases “am going to” and “am about to” can be replaced with “will” and still be future tense).

@gailcalled @DominicX
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=897

@morphail: I will read your link tomorrow. Thank you. I do know that tomorrow my prince will probably not come.

@gailcalled I would be curious to know what you think when you read it tomorrow.

@morphail: I will be sure to let you know.

@morphail

It’s interesting, but why doesn’t it address “going to” and “about to”? Also, in a linguistics class I took, the professor distinguished between “will” and “shall”, though I can’t for the life of me remember why he said they meant different things.

To me, this seems more like an issue of semantics. If you want to express something happening in the future, you still use “will”, “shall”, “going to”, “about to”, etc. When you translate the future tense from other languages, you use the same forms.

Here’s an interesting sentence from Wikipedia: “However, in all cases, the sentences are actually voiced in the present tense, since there is no proper future tense in English. It is the implication of futurity that makes these present tense auxiliary constructions amount to a compound future quasi-tense.”

Germanic languages seem to all do this. There is not inflection for future tense; it requires the usage of auxiliary verbs in present tense construction. Future tense is a function of present tense. I think then it depends on what you want to call it. Wikipedia claims that Germanic languages do not have a ”simple future tense”, but it is still a future tense.

“Will” and “shall’ traditionally meant a difference in emphasis, usually ignored today.

I shall do it. Statement of fact. I will do it. Statement of emphasis.

If you want the big words explaination ( and I suggest you don’t)
read this.

@gailcalled

It’s actually very interesting because I remember thinking as a young kid that maybe “will” and “shall” did mean different things (early signs that I was destined to become a linguistics major?), but I was never taught that. That was just my own assumption. It’s interesting to know I was not crazy in thinking that.

And I believe historically that it was reversed for “you.”

“You will do that” can be construed as a command. “You shall do that”—-hmm- may also be construed as an order.

Apparently, one can write a PhD thesis on the usages of “will” and “shall,” particularly historically. I don’t think too many folks pay attention to it now.

Here’s a breezier POV; http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/shall-versus-will.aspx

@DominicX The point is that English doesn’t have a formal future tense – it has no form for indicating future time that patterns the same as the present and past tenses.

@morphail; I was going, I am going, I will going.

@gailcalled could we be agreeing?!

But what’s wrong with “I will be going”?

The perfect and past-perfect tense require a form of “be” along with the auxiliary verb. “I have been going”, “I had been going”, etc. Does that mean English doesn’t have perfect and past-perfect either?

Guys: Anything is going today. “Arizona” is now a verb on fluther.

@DominicX “will” isn’t like “have” – “have” is used to form the perfect tenses, but “will” is a modal and patterns with other modals like “would”, “may”, “can”, etc.

@morphail: And you are the very modal of a modal major generalist.

@morphail

Just curious; what is your opinion on “going to” and “about to” being used to express future? They’re not mentioned much in the article you linked to. In Latin, when we translated the future tense of Latin (in infinitives and participles as well), there were many instances where “going to” was used to translate it.

Additionally, what of this comment I found in the responses: “Calling “will” a “present tense modal expressing present time intent or will” is not an adequate description. In “It will rain tomorrow” or “He will be fifty next year” there is no intent or will implied.”

@DominicX “Going to” and “about to” might be used to translate the future tense in another language, but that’s not a test of whether they are a tense or not in English. I don’t know much about these constructions, but I don’t think they form a tense because they don’t fit into the English tense system. For instance, if you use a past time marker in English, you must use a past tense: the past, present perfect, past progressive, past perfect, etc:
I went yesterday.
I have gone yesterday.
I was going yesterday.

You can’t use the present tense:
*I go/am going yesterday.

But when you use a future time marker, you can use all sorts of constructions – the present tense, modals like “will”, “can”, “may”, constructions like “going to”, etc. There’s nothing that says you must use a certain construction when talking about the future.

As for the second point, one of the things “will” implies is prediction. “It will rain tomorrow” is a prediction.

“He will be fifty next year” is not a prediction. Unless he is hit by a bus first, I guess, and even so, his family might celebrate the birthday.

He can be fifty next year.” That also sounds odd.

I find ” I have gone yesterday” to sound wrong. “Have gone” to me signifies repetition. “I have gone to the beach many times. I went yesterday. I was going the day before, but the tornado prevented it.”

It’s a guess or calculation then if it’s not a prediction.

I think I made a mistake with the present perfect. You’re right; it’s for repetition, action that covers a long time (I have always gone), or completed action (I have gone recently).