Makri wrote:Person A tells me they'll be going to café blah for lunch at 12:30
At 12:30, person B asks me where person A is
I say "they're eating lunch at café blah" using a present progressive
In this tense/aspect system, because they didn't start the eating in the past, I'd respond with:
"they will eat lunch at café blah"
I see two ways to interpret that. First, with an evidential future, which exists in English, but would require a progressive in this case: "they will be eating lunch at café blah right now" This is perfectly straightforward, and an evidential future exists in quite a few languages. But using evidential futures for every present tense makes no sense (and will make every child learning the language turn your future morpheme into a present tense morpheme).
The other idea I had is a perfect, but turned into the future. The analogue of "they have been eating", extending into the future instead of the past, but including the present. So it means that they are eating now and will be eating for some time from now on. I'm not sure how this would be distinguishable from an ordinary non-past tense.
My thinking behind this is based, almost entirely, on the idea that two two tenses of the verb mark the onset and end of the action with any other thinking coming from the idea that a given construction would be too complicated/require too much thinking and so simplifying in a way which seems "native" to me. There is no particular idea in my head about whether a given tenspect is perfect or evidential and when I described my usage as evidential, that was a quick analysis of where my attempt at thinking natively had left me.
So, the reason I said "they will eat lunch at café blah" instead of "they're eating lunch at café blah" was mainly based on the fact that, from the point of view of the speaker, the action may or may not have begun, but will end in the future, clarifying the statement as "they are eating/will eat lunch at café blah" would be a more precise translation but, as it requires two verbs and conjunctions seems ugly and un-native to me.
This leaves me in the position of having to choose between "they past-eat-future lunch at café blah" or "they future-eat-future lunch at café blah" (roughly "they are eating lunch at café blah" vs. "they will eat lunch at café blah") and decided that a confidence based distinction (whereby if the speaker is confident "they" have started eating they'd use the past-future tenspect and if they are not confident they'd use the future-future tenspect). This example was possibly a bad one because the speaker was told they'd start eating lunch at 12:30 which is also when the speaker is asked where the people are; in this case, the speaker isn't confident either way, a few minutes earlier or later and they would be, but as it is they're not so I decided to use an evidential distinction as the final decider.
So, if person A is the speaker, person B the eater and person C is looking for B we have the following situations:
B: A, I will be eating lunch at 12:30
*B walks off*
*C arrives at 12:00*
C: A, do you know where B is?
A: B will eat lunch at café blah (A is confident B has not started eating lunch)
B: A, I will be eating lunch at 12:30
*B walks off*
*at 12:00 A walks through the café and sees B about to eat his lunch*
*C arrives at 12:05*
C: A, do you know where B is?
A: B past-eat-future lunch at café blah (even though B told A he wouldn't be eating until 12:30, A saw B eating so is confident that B started eating in the past but that he has not finished)
B: A, I will be eating lunch at 12:30
*B walks off*
*C arrives at 12:30*
C: A, do you know where B is?
A: B will eat lunch at café blah (A isn't confident B has started eating neither is A confident B hasn't so A bases their statement on the evidence at their disposal that B will be eating)
B: A, I will be eating lunch at 12:30
*B walks off*
*C arrives at 12:40*
C: A, do you know where B is?
A: B past-eat-future lunch at café blah (A is confident B has started eating lunch)
B: A, I will be eating lunch at 12:30
*B walks off*
*at 12:35 A walks through the café and notices that B isn't there eating their lunch*
*C arrives at 12:40*
C: A, do you know where B is?
A: B will eat lunch at café blah (even though B told A he'd be eating at 12:30, A saw that B wasn't eating their lunch but is confident B didn't eat their lunch early so, based on the evidence at A's disposal decides that B has yet to start eating)
Hopefully that should clarify my thought process a little. It's almost entirely based on the speaker's confidence on whether or not the action has already started as to whether or not the past is included and their confidence on whether or not the action has already ended which determines whether or not the future is included (for "present" tense constructions).
