1. Introduction

This article introduces the use of "near future" as a grammatical morpheme type and explores its status and controversies in tense typology. The article summarizes the origins of terms such as "instant form" and "prospect form", and uses language materials from Chinese, Siglinglan, and Mongolian to demonstrate that "event is about to occur" can be a form of "time". With the improvement of grammaticalization, future time reference and prediction usage can be developed. Finally, through the historical evolution of English related constructions, the changes in immediacy and the emergence process of predictive usage are elucidated.

2. The origin of recent future and related concepts

Explored the origins and development of the concept of 'near future' and related concepts. The term 'near future' was first proposed by Ultan (1978) to distinguish between two types of future time references. The concepts of prospect form and line form are discussed in detail in the works of Comrie (1976), Fleischman (1982), and Heine (1994). Comrie later abandoned the term "prospect", but her understanding of its relevance to subsequent situations remained unchanged. Dahl (1985, 2000) questioned the use of prospect as evidence across linguistic categories. Heine distinguished three differences between the present tense and the future tense, emphasizing that the present tense is a tense and the future tense is a tense. Nevskaya (2017) classified prospect and action as the initial stages of action, but did not fully discuss Heine's three differences. Li Guilan and Wu Fuxiang (2022) basically inherited Heine's recognition of the physical appearance of a person. Haspelmath (2010) has a broad definition of the future tense and does not require prediction as a defining feature of the future tense. This article proposes that in the study of specific language tense and aspect, a conceptual system similar to comparative concepts should be adopted to highlight commonalities and individualities. Next, we will use Chinese, Siglinglan, and Mongolian language corpora to demonstrate the temporal aspect and temporal reference properties of the near future.

3. Reflecting on the current status of the entity from the perspective of its recent future evolution path

Explored the cross linguistic evolution path of the status of the tense aspect in the near future, and pointed out that the problem of category attribution in the near future stems from its low degree of grammaticalization and the characteristics of different categories. By comparing Chinese, Mongolian, and Siglinglan languages, this article analyzes the recent and future evolution paths and temporal referential properties. The evolution path of the Chinese Mandarin sentence ending with "le" has evolved from the end meaning verb to the perfective aspect, ultimately developing into the near future function. The past tense form of Mongolian - laA has both near past and near future usage, indicating that these two usages may have a direct evolutionary relationship. The article also discusses the direct evolutionary relationship between the near future and the near past, as well as the core issue of whether the near future belongs to the future tense. Through cross linguistic comparison, the article believes that the near future can refer to future time and has time directness, which is consistent with Haspelmath's (2010) definition and interpretation of the future tense.

4. The evolution of immediacy and predictive usage and the status of temporal bodies in the near future

In depth exploration of the evolution process of two constructions representing the nearest future tense in English - be going to and be about to - and their impact on the status of tense aspect. Research has shown that 'be going to' gradually evolved from representing the nearest future tense to the general future tense, while 'be about to' expanded from representing intentional usage to predictive usage. Through the analysis of Canadian English and British dialects, it was found that the use of 'be going to' has become difficult to distinguish from the general future tense form 'will' in some dialects, and its immediacy features have gradually disappeared or weakened in some dialects. Meanwhile, the usage of 'be about to' has undergone significant changes in late modern English, with semantic and functional extensions. In addition, micro studies of Chinese dialects have also demonstrated the recent development from intentional usage to predictive usage in the future. These findings suggest that predictive usage is an important direction for semantic evolution in the near future, and the selection limitations of linguistic morphemes and predicate semantic types are not necessarily reliable. Cross linguistic comparisons should be based on comparative concepts.

5. Conclusion

Through cross linguistic corpus analysis, it is pointed out that the recent future tense meaning gradually becomes prominent in the process of grammaticalization and can evolve from various morphological meanings. The corpora of Chinese, Siglinglan, and Mongolian support this viewpoint. The historical evolution of English reveals the connection between the nearest future tense and the general future tense. The semantic characteristics of "instant" or "recent" in some languages are unstable and difficult to distinguish from general future tense. Classifying the linguistic elements that are about to occur as stage bodies is not conducive to explaining grammaticalization unidirectionality and cross linguistic comparisons. The article summarizes the evolution of various languages in the near future tense, tending to view it as a young future tense. In the near future, typical future tense usage can be gradually developed based on the urgency of the assertion event, without the need for prediction as a defining criterion, but the conclusion needs to be verified by more linguistic facts and research practice.