The future of Greek and Italian: An epistemic analysis

Abstract

In this paper we examine the epistemic and temporal uses of Italian and Greek future and argue that, in both readings, future morphemes in these two languages are epistemic modal operators that assess indirect evidence at the utterance time. We show that the future reading arises when an overt adverb is used, or in virtue of a mechanism ensuring indirect access to the eventuality. By treating FUT as an epistemic modal across its available interpretations, our account differs from previous analyses that posit metaphysical/epistemic ambiguity for FUT operator.