Las maneras de hablar del futuro en espa ol: del sistema codificado a las interpretaciones contextuales

In Matte Bon 2006 I analysed the current descriptions proposed by the main reference grammars as well as by most of the works dedicated to the problem of the three most common ways used en Spanish to refer to the future (the future tense, the present indicative and ir a + infinitive) and I presented a new hypothesis which tried to delineate the main features which characterize these three elements. Furthermore, I emphasized the importance of the contextual dynamics en each case. Such dynamics are usually not explored en the literature. In this paper I briefly recall the main points I dealt with in Matte Bon 2006 and further develop my proposal through the analysis of various examples drawn from three Spanish contemporary novels and of some data from the CREA corpus of the Spanish Real Academia. The ideas of uncertainty/certainty and of immediateness mentioned by most authors, as well as the interpretations we give of the future, of the present indicative and of the periphrasis do not seem to depend on the means used to refer to the future, but rather on different contextual aspects which need further exploration. The ways of speaking about the future thus prove to be a privileged area to explore the relationships between the abstract system (grammar) and its uses (pragmatics).