| "Time" is the basic concept of epistemology. On grammatical level, linguists use tenses to connect time with language. English is a two-tense language which only has present tense and past tense. There is no future tense in English, while there are seven means of expressing future time:"will, shall or’ll+ infinitive"; the simple present; present progressive; "be to+infinitive"; "be about to+ infinitive"; "be going to+ infinitive"; "will, shall or’ll + progressive infinitive".In the previous studies about the means of expressing future time, several typical means attract much more attention of scholars; however, studies on analyzing the seven means of expressing future time are relatively scare. Most previous studies adopt the qualitative analysis; therefore, theories from them need to be further tested.Based on COCA and COHA, an in-depth and comprehensive study on the seven means of expressing future time is conducted with the tools of SPSS and EXCEL. This paper does some research synchronically based on COCA, which concludes that the general distributions of means of expressing future time are significantly different and differences of the means in different registers are significant. Diachronically, the study based on COHA concludes that changes of the means of expressing future time from 1810 to 2000 are significantly different. In a semantic view, the seven means of expressing future time can not only express futurity, but also express modality. This paper distinguishes the seven means by analyzing their sense of modality.This study is both qualitative and quantitative. With more objectivity in research method and more concreteness in research object, this study concludes that distinguishing the meanings and functions of seven means of expressing future time is very important in the field of pedagogy as well as translation. This study can overcome many shortcomings of the previous studies, and shed a new light on the theoretical value and practical application in related studies. |
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