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Future reference in Turkish

This paper analyses future reference in Turkish within the light of the hypothesis that futurity is more of a modal notion than a temporal one in natural language. It is shown that there are several ways of referring to future in Turkish and that the choice is governed by (i) the degree of certainty the speaker attaches to the event, and (ii) the knowledge base for the prediction. What is traditionally analyzed as the Turkish future tense marker is the most unmarked way of referring to future. The same form is also used to express prediction in non-future contexts. It is argued that the behavior of the Turkish future marker is incompatible with its traditional treatment as a tense marker and that it can be better analysed if the modal nature of the future and hence, the modal function of the future markers is accepted.