It is well known that Spanish futurizing morphology is frequently used not to express futurity, but instead to formulate a hypothesis, i.e. express epistemic modality. Although this is possible with both synthetic or periphrastic future marking, the synthetic future tense is more likely to express an epistemic reading than the periphrastic future. This paper explores the relationship between futurizing morphology and sentence type on the basis of a quantitative analysis of about n = 2,700 tokens of synthetic and periphrastic ‘future’ constructions in spoken conversations from Madrid, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile. On the basis of a bottom-up classification of these tokens regarding their potential to express modal meanings, we demonstrate that polar and partial futurizing interrogatives are more likely to display modal meanings and associated rhetorical effects than futurizing declaratives. This effect is even stronger for synthetic future constructions, due to a conventionalization of specific form-function pairings. Finally, we also document substantial dialectal variation in the use of futurizing morphology.

中文翻译：

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句型如何影响西班牙语未来结构的解释

众所周知，西班牙语的未来化形态学经常被用来表达未来性，而不是表达一个假设，即表达认知模态。尽管这对于合成未来标记或周边未来标记都是可能的，但合成未来时态比周边未来更可能表达认知阅读。本文基于对来自马德里、布宜诺斯艾利斯和智利圣地亚哥的口语对话中大约 n = 2,700 个合成和外围“未来”结构的标记的定量分析，探讨了未来化形态与句子类型之间的关系。在对这些标记表达模态含义的潜力进行自下而上分类的基础上，我们证明，极性和部分未来化疑问句比未来化陈述句更有可能显示模态意义和相关的修辞效果。由于特定形式-功能配对的常规化，这种效果对于合成的未来结构甚至更强。最后，我们还记录了使用未来化形态的大量方言变化。