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A difference between Latin and English is that in subordinate clauses such as 'if this happens in future', English uses the present tense, but Latin usually uses the future. [48] nārrābō cum aliquid habēbō novī (Cicero) [49] 'I will tell you when I have some news' (lit. 'I will have') crūdam sī edēs, in acētum intinguitō (Cato) [50]
Thus all those Latin verbs which in the present tense have 1st singular -ō, 2nd singular -ās, and infinitive -āre are said to belong to the 1st conjugation, those with 1st singular -eō, 2nd singular -ēs and infinitive -ēre belong to the 2nd conjugation, and so on. The number of conjugations of regular verbs is usually said to be four.
The primary future is the future relative to the time of speech. For most verbs, the future is usually construed by a 'future indicative' verb as in faciam ('I will do'). In Early Latin, there was the 'sigmatic future indicative' faxō (also 'I will do'). [xvi]
In a future conditional, the protasis usually has one of the future tenses, where English has the simple present. In the following, the simple future tense is used: sī enim erit bellum, cum Pompeiō esse cōnstituī (Cicero) [51] 'if there is (lit. will be) a war, I have decided to be with Pompey' experiar et dīcam, sī poterō, plānius ...
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, or especially habere.
From a semantic perspective, a tense is a temporal circumstance in which an event takes place relative to a given point in time. [i] [ii] [iii] It is absolute (primary) if it relates the represented event to the time of the speech event [iv] [v] [vi] [vii] and it is relative if it relates the represented event to the time of another event in the context of discourse.
In Latin, there are different modes of indicating past, present and future processes. There is the basic mode of free clauses and there are multiple dependent modes found exclusively in dependent clauses. [1] In particular, there is the 'infinitive' mode for reported satetements and the 'subjunctive' mode for reported questions.
The future indicative tense does not derive from the Latin form (which tended to be confounded with the preterite due to sound changes in Vulgar Latin), but rather from an infinitive + habeō periphrasis, later reanalysed as a simple tense. Formally identical to the future perfect indicative, the two paradigms merged in Vulgar Latin.