ABSTRACT
282 necessity for such terms as the" Future Perfect in the Past" for would have written, which, as we have seen, in its chief employment has nothing whatever to do with future time, and which still retains some trace of the original meaning of volition in its first element. If we give I shall write, you will write, he will write as a paradigm of the future tense, we meet with difficultie? when we come to consider he shall write in " he says that he shall write" as a shifted (indirect) " I shall write." It is really easier to make our pupils understand all these things if we take each auxiliary by itself and see its original and its later weakened meaning, and then on the other hand show how futurity (future time) is expressed by various devices in English, sometimes by a weakened will (volition), sometimes by a. weakened shall or is to (obligation), sometimes by other means (is coming), and how very often it is implied in the context without any formal indication. Thus we shall say, not that I shall go and he will go are "a. future tense," but that they contain an auxiliary in the present tense and the infinitive. The only instance in which there is perhaps some ground for a. special tense-name is have written (had written), because the ordinary meaning of have is here totally lost and because the combination serves exclusively to mark one very special time-relation. But even here it might be questioned whether it would not be better to do without the term "perfect."
