Is there a future tense in Russian?

Question

There is widespread consent among grammarians of Germanic languages that there is no future tense in those languages. The idea of futurity is either conveyed periphrastically (often with modal or semimodal verbs, as in English will/shall/be going to) or omitted altogether and expected to be inferred from the context.

That led me to think about the Russian language. We are taught in school that there are three tenses in Russian: past, present, and future. But it seems to me that Russian has the same problem with the future tense as the Germanic languages. However, I can’t find any authoritative sources to confirm this idea.

Russian doesn’t seem to have any morphological markers to denote a future tense. And if you look carefully at how a future tense is formed in Russian, you will see that we use present tense conjugation and we call it a future tense!

There are two ways to form a so-called future tense:

1. Conjugate the auxiliary verb быть in present tense + infinitive form of imperfective verb:

   Я буд·у говорить

   Ты буд·ешь говорить

   Он/она буд·ет говорить

   Мы буд·ем говорить

   Вы буд·ете говорить

   Они буд·ут говорить

2. Conjugate a perfective verb in present tense:

   Я скаж·у

   Ты скаж·ешь

   Он/она скаж·ет

   Мы скаж·ем

   Вы скаж·ете

   Они скаж·ут

In either case, we use present tense endings. For example, in the pair “я пишу — я напишу”, the only thing that’s different is the aspect.

So, wouldn’t it be more correct to say that we really have only two tenses (past and present) and two aspects (imperfective and perfective) in Russian?

Answer 1

Disclaimer: this is a debative answer, that challenges the assumptions made in the question, therefore, as of this writing, it is not intended to address the said question directly, but contains more information that a simple comment would warrant.

In my view, the question, as it was posed, commits one or more logical fallacies that prevent the adequate conclusion to be reached. First of all, as with any argument, we need to agree upon our definitions. What do we call a future tense? If we say that by “future tense” we mean “inflective future tense”, or “morphological future tense”, then, absolutely, the short answer to such question would be “No, contemporary Russian language does not have a future tense per se, and the grade school curriculum, as always, simplifies the matter much in the same way it simplifies other grammatical features of the language, as, for instance, it omits Locative case and labels its uses as exceptions”.

But then, why have those qualifications? Why have inflective or morphological future tense? Why specify simple versus complex or analytic versus synthetic future tense? If we agree that mostly synthetic Russian language uses analytical devices to indicate futurity, does it make its future tense less important or self-worthy than that of Latin? Thus, the question commits a bifurcation fallacy, commonly known as false dilemma.

Of course, we have linguists who argue that if the future tense is not a noble morphological kind, but a lowly analytical, then it’s not a future tense at all (which is the point of view your question implies). To which I say that if the trained grammarians cannot agree on that, what do you expect finding here?

What complicates matters, is that, if we focus on our Indo-European language cousins, some of those noble morphological future tenses have dubious bastard roots. Western Romance languages, such as French or Italian have that, but, at least according to Wikipedia article on future tense, these forms themselves originated from earlier analytical constructions:

Sound changes in Vulgar Latin made future forms difficult to distinguish from other verb forms (e.g., amabit “he will love” vs. amavit “he loved”), and the Latin simple future forms were gradually replaced by periphrastic structures involving the infinitive and an auxiliary verb, such as debere, venire, velle, and especially habere. All of the modern Romance languages have grammaticalized one of these periphrastic constructions for expressing the future tense; none of them has preserved the original Latin future.

As for examples you gave, who’s to say that those forms are the forms of present tense? Sure, they may look the same, but can you use words like буду or скажу and expect anyone to understand them as anything, but the future tense? Now, I am not a trained linguist, and it can indeed be a simple analytical combination of present tense and an aspect, but to give counter-argument to your argument on its own merit, in Russian declension system, for example, 1^st Declension Genitive, and 3^rd Declension Genitive, Dative and Prepositional cases all have the same ending и, but we do not lump them together simply because of one morphological unit that is the same. Clearly, the information extraneous to morphology, such as context, plays role across different grammatical categories.

Lastly, you had failed to mention so-called dual-aspect verbs, which can express futurity both analytically, and morphologically (via prefix). E.g. “он будет ранить” and “он поранит” or “мы будем жениться” and “мы поженимся”.

Answer 2

I spent a couple of hours googling the Internet to find support for my observations.

I found an interesting book called Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe on Google Books that answered my question .

Here are some excerpts from it (highlights are mine):

One, which is relatively unproblematic to ascertain, is the absence of inflectional futures, which holds for all Germanic and Finno-Ugrian languages and for the majority of the Slavic ones; as well as for some more peripheral parts of Romance and for the non-Slavic languages in the Balkans. Another manifestation of a slightly more elusive kind is the tendency not to distinguish present and future time reference in any systematic way at all, be it inflectionally or periphrastically.

It also notes that different grammatical ways of conveying futurity found in the Slavic languages are a relatively recent invention:

Similarly, there seems to be no evidence of any grammaticalized future markings in Finno-Ugrian. Furthermore, the area may also originally included Slavic. The different FTR devices found in the Slavic languages are, like the Germanic and Finno-Ugrian ones, relatively recent, with one exception: the use of the Perfective Present for future time reference, which, according to standard descriptions, goes back to Old Church Slavonic. However, there is good reason to doubt that this was a trait of Common Slavic. It is not in general found in the modern South Slavic languages, and there is some evidence that the link between the Perfective Present and future time reference was at least not fully developed in Old Church Slavonic.

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I'd like to expand on my above answer as there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding and discontent in the comments about future tense in Russian.

I'd also like to mention that I'm not trying to impose my view on anyone who prefers to disagree with it. It is indeed a very debatable question that can be looked at from different angles. If you'd like to read more about what should be considered tense, I think there are great posts on ELU Whose tense is it, anyway? and When did periphrastic tenses stop being tenses?. The things discussed there can be applied to Russian as well.

I was asked in the comments to add more scientific sources to my answer so I will try to do it below.

Here's a nice write-up on the topic by Cyril Babaev:

The present tense had not quite simple usage. Besides its direct meaning as the present action, it could be meaning also future actions, because there was no simple future in Common Slavic. Usually Indo-European languages have some suffixes to mark the future tense: -s- is one of the most frequent of them, existing in Baltic and Hellenic languages, -f- is used in some Celtic tongues. But Slavs unified present and future, and any verb could be used in the forms pointed above and mean the future event.

He then goes on to say that in the absence of future tense, the aspects took on the role of expressing futurity:

Later Slavic languages, nevertheless, acquired a form of difference between future and present. The category of aspect (perfective and imperfective) possesses also the meaning of tense in Modern Slavic languages, and imperfective verbs which denote the action which is still taking place go for the real present tense (Russian daju - I am giving, from Common Slavic *dajo.), while perfective verbs denoting the final action usually mean the future (Russian dam - I will give, from Common Slavic *damï). Scientists came to a conclusion that there were not such a distinction in Common Slavic. Even Old Church Slavonic, which was spoken in 7-10 centuries AD, much later than the Common language, was just starting distinguishing aspects as present and future, and still mixed them.

As for the periphrastic "быть" type compound future, it arises from the lexical Common Slavic verb **byti* that means to be(come) and now it is used as an auxiliary verb to form future forms in most of the West and East Slavic languages. But "быть" is not the only verb that can be used to form compound future tense.

Currently, stati can be used as an alternative form of a future tense auxiliary in all East Slavic languages, as in the Russian example from a poem by Lermontov.

Stanu skazyvat’ ja skazku

begin(PRES.1SG) tell(INF) I story

“I will (begin to) tell a story” (Source: The Syntax of Compound Tenses in Slavic)

Plus, Balkan Slavic uses a descendant of the verb ‘to want’, instead of "to be". That's because

The nature of the future, necessarily uncertain and at varying distances ahead, means that the speaker may refer to future events with the modality either of probability (what the speaker expects to happen) or intent (what the speaker plans to make happen).

Thus, constructions like "Я намерен/хочу/должен делать что-либо" can all be used to express futurity.

I don't know about you, but I think it is a little unfair that we see "Я буду делать" as a special "future tense" form, but "Я стану делать" is not viewed as such. But I don't want to provoke another debate here.

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Now the question is 'how come Russian grammars talk about future tense if it's not there?'

Well, I think that's because traditional grammars (also known as school grammar) are largely based on the principles of Latin grammar, not on current linguistic research in Russian. (This sentence was originally said about English, but I rephrased it for Russian, because I believe it gets the point across nicely).

Answer 3

No, this is not an aspect, this is future tense.

The verb forms приду, буду etc cannot be used for present. They are just future forms. The present forms would be прихожу and есть respectively.

The endings might look similar for foreigners, but native speakers clearly distinguish the future forms of the verbs.

Answer 4

Future tense in Russian can be indicated by the form of the verb.

Будущее время глагола может быть выражено двумя типами форм: простыми (синтетическими) и сложными (аналитическими). Формы будущего простого времени образуются от основы настоящего времени глаголов совершенного вида с помощью тех же окончаний лица и числа, что и при образовании форм настоящего времени: приду, придёшь, придёт, придём, придёте, придут; услышу, услышишь, услышит, услышим, услышите, услышат. Простые формы будущего времени иногда называют также формами наст.-буд. времени.

Формы будущего сложного времени образуются от глаголов несовершенного вида и представляют собой сочетание личных форм вспомогательного глагола быть с инфинитивом: буду писать, будешь писать, будет писать, будем писать, будете писать, будут писать.

Source (see more details there).

So in your example "Я скаж*у*" the verb скажу has the future tense. It can't be used in present.

Answer 5

It seems to me, that within the Russian aspect system there appears to be a clear morphological distinction between past and non-past formations. A perfective action can only be referenced as completed in the past or expected to have been completed in the future. Verb formations for both imperfective and perfective aspects have similar constructions. When first learning Russian, this formation process did not make any sense to me within my understanding of the English tense system. While working on a computer project based on a "single-stem" approach to the Russian verb system (ala Roman Jacobson, i.e., how to generate the forms брать and беру from a single idealized stem бЕрА with a set of ordered rules), I puzzled over the problem of the same formations (conjugations) for both present reference and future reference and decided, for the purposes of my project, to coalesce the perfective and imperfective formations under the terms "past" and "non-past." While this tactic does not resolve the issues presented in this discussion, pedagogically it might provide a more comprehensive insight into understanding the Russian verbal system from an English speakers perspective. After all, remember that the issue of aspect and tense might have some origins with the loss of the Common Slavic aorist tense.

Answer 6

We do have a future tense, but not one with its own conjugation like present or past. I will be showing you the past and present, then the future for both imperfective and perfective. :)

Here is, first a review on past and present tense. I will bold the conjugation to make it easier.

Let’s use говорить and сказать.

Present говорить: Я говорю Ты говоришь Он, она, оно говорит Они говорят Мы говорим Вы говорите

Present сказать:

Я скажу Ты скажешь Он, она, оно скажет Они скажут Мы скажем Вы скажете

Past говорить:

Я, ты, он: говорил Я, ты, она: говорила Оно: говорило Они, мы, вы: говорили

Past сказать:

Я, ты, он: сказал Я, ты, она: сказала Оно: сказало Они, мы, вы: сказали

Very easy, straightforward. Now for future tense. With an imperfective verb, we will conjugate быть, then add the infinitive of our action we will perform.

[subject] быть (conjugated) [action]

Я буду говорить Ты будешь говорить Он, она, оно будет говорить Они будут говорить Мы будем говорить Вы будете говорить

Righty-o! Very very simple if you are confident with present tense.

And for perfective verbs, we will simply just use the present tense. “Well, how do we know if it’s in the present or future?!” You may be asking right now. Based on context :)

“Сейчас я ему скажу“ You see what in this? You see сказать, yes? Right! :)

Let’s break it up and translate

Сейчас | я | ему | скажу

Now I to him say. Right, it doesn’t make sense. But it becomes:

I am saying it to him now. Since it is perfective you’re saying it now and never again. It’s over and done with after you tell him.

Now let’s use:

Завтра я ему скажу.

Tomorrow, I say to him.

Or: I will say it to him tomorrow.

Tomorrow hasn’t happened yet. It’s in, you guessed it, the future. So it’s the future tense. :)

Hope that helped :)