The Future Tense
Verbs: tense, mood, evidence · one world map for each value
WALS codes 222 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “No inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction”, covers 112 of them (50%); the least frequent, “Inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction”, covers 110.
That value is most frequent in Eurasia (58% of the 66 languages coded there) and least frequent in North America (42% of 31).
All 8 Trans-New Guinea languages coded have “Inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction”.
Afro-Asiatic is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 9 of 18.
Inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction110 languages · 50%
No inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction112 languages · 50%
One map per value; each dot is a language WALS codes with that value.
By macro-area
| Value | Africa | Eurasia | Papunesia | Australia | North America | South America |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction | 22 | 28 | 22 | 10 | 18 | 10 |
| No inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction | 28 | 38 | 18 | 4 | 13 | 11 |
| All values | 50 | 66 | 40 | 14 | 31 | 21 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austronesian | 23 | No inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction | 74% |
| Indo-European | 21 | No inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction | 57% |
| Niger-Congo | 20 | Inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction | 60% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 18 | Inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction | 50% |
| Sino-Tibetan | 8 | No inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction | 88% |
| Trans-New Guinea | 8 | Inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction | 100% |