From Volition to Future: The Grammaticalization of Future Tense in Persian

As it is generally assumed, the concept of future is not a concept of novelty. However the specialized strategies of encoding the notion are recently emerged. Typologically, the lexical units bearing the meanings of "desire" and "volition" are potentially major constructions representing the meaning of future. This embodies in the fact that intension is future projecting. The present contribution illustrates the grammaticalization of xâstan from a lexical verb to a modal auxiliary of volition and then to an auxiliary encoding the future tense. The result offers a clear picture of specialization process of using the future marker in a scheduled and inevitable future situation.