Future "future" in the past

[linguoboy]

Today I caught myself saying (well, actually texting) "I was going to come straight home, make a sandwich, and pop in a movie." None of these things have happened yet and my plans haven't changed. I still intend to do these things. So what's going on?

My best guess: I was texting a friend who plans to join me. By stating my intentions in the past tense, I was emphasising that they aren't fixed and would be subject to changes he might suggest.

What do you all say? Is that a convincing explanation? Does it coincide with your intuitions?

[vampireshark]

To me, you having said "was going to" indicates to me one of two things:
1.) That the plans have changed for some reason or another. Mostly due to the meddling of somebody else or due to their misdeeds.
2.) That you expect the plans to change or, at the very least, be subject to the other person's approval and/or modifications.
How you put it, to me, feels like you expected your friend to disapprove/disagree with the plans and, thus, you're open to changing them. Without hearing you say it, on the other hand, I would automatically assume an intonation for case 1.

So, yeah, convincing, but how I read it is probably different from how you probably would have said it/intended it.

[Davoush]

I think so yeah. To me it feels like "My original plans were to come straight home..." (but now you've text me, they may change slightly). Or "I was going to" = "I was originally planning to".

[zompist]

Hmm, the most general explanation could be that you've demonstrated that the "past" tense of English is really an irrealis. But that's probably a little too facile.

A narrower explanation is that signalling what your intentions were is a pragmatic signal that they are mutable. That is, your friend can make a Gricean implicature along the lines of "LB said he was planning to do these things; the fact that he's informing me about past rather than present intentions must be relevant: his planning is changeable if I have a better plan."

An advantage of a pragmatic explanation is that we don't have to say that the semantics of "was going to" are complicated. We can still use such expressions with a clear past meaning: "I ran to fetch the bucket, because he was going to hurl."

[Travis B.]

I think so yeah. To me it feels like "My original plans were to come straight home..." (but now you've text me, they may change slightly). Or "I was going to" = "I was originally planning to".

Seconded here. You were communicating that your had been planning on doing something but other things have managed to change that.

Also, you were probably more obliquely indicating that your plans in general may be subject to change.

(Note that, as noted elsewhere here, not all uses of was going to have this meaning.)

[Salmoneus]

I think the use of aspect is just as important, as tense. "I was planning to..." seems sort of like saying "I was planning to... until you said otherwise", without actually having to assume that they've said otherwise... sort of leaving the door open to it. "I planned to..." can still be changed, but it's harder. If I planned to do something, you would have to leap in to object 'well plan again!', whereas if I was merely planning to do something... to me the imperfective aspect welcomes a termination.

Two other interesting things I notice (because I was thinking of 'planning to' rather than 'going to'):
- 'plan' is an unusual verb. It's sort of inherently perfect. "I planned to X" is not the same as "I wanted to X" - the latter is a fact about the past, whereas in the former case, you haven't really finished planning at all, unless you've done X - you may have but the planning to one side assuming enough has been done, but you're still in the planning stage and the planning can still be moved in a different direction. I'm also interested by when exactly 'I planned' becomes 'I've planned', which I don't think is the same as normal. And depends on the object: "I planned to go on holiday" vs "I've planned a holiday".

- "I was planning to go on holiday, unless you don't want me to." - woah. You can't say "I ate a sandwich, unless you don't want me to". I'm not sure if it works with "going to"?

- A third thing: in any case, in the second clause, the tense can show a clear politeness distinction: "I was thinking of buying a shark - unless you think that's a bad idea?" is direct and abrupt and invites a similar response, whereas "I was thinking of buying a shark - unless you thought that was a bad idea?" is exactly the same in terms of tense, but more indirect, and invites a politer response.

[Whimemsz]

I think so yeah. To me it feels like "My original plans were to come straight home..." (but now you've text me, they may change slightly). Or "I was going to" = "I was originally planning to".

Seconded here. You were communicating that your had been planning on doing something but other things have managed to change that.

Also, you were probably more obliquely indicating that your plans in general may be subject to change.

(Note that, as noted elsewhere here, not all uses of was going to have this meaning.)

I think the exact context of the message plays a big role in how I'd interpret it. Depending on what had already been said, or what Linguoboy might have said after this sentence, I could interpret it either as "I was originally planning to, but my plans have been changed by some external event", OR "this is my tentative plan (but let this serve as an oblique invitation to you to suggest alternate plans)".

[Radius Solis]

I don't know that our past tense is "really" an irrealis, but the two do get mixed into each other sometimes in English - e.g. the whole "If I were you" construction; our adoption of the past form of "shall", "should", as a present modal, I think there are others. Closer to the case at hand: I don't know if this works for others, but for me I could make that text even more irrealis by moving it even further into the past: I had been going to go home and make a sandwich. By that, I would be signalling that I not only was open to changing plans, but that I expected to. (This also fits into the pragmatics approach nicely.)

[Imralu]

When I worked in retail I used to ask my customers "What were you after?" The question seems to target their intentions before they came to the store.
At my old job, the receptionist used to ask the students "What was your name?" when accessing their details. It occasionally used to confuse the hell out of them (ESL students). I suppose it was supposed to convey "You did tell me your name" or "I did know your name, but now it's temporarily slipped my mind."

[Miekko]

This use of past tense in questions like "what was your name" is interesting and happens to some extent in Swedish and Finnish as well. The idea of projecting the tense onto the awareness-of-the-name rather than on the actual name itself seems reasonable and is something I've been thinking a lot of.

[clawgrip]

The exact same thing happens in Japanese.

名前はなんだったっけ？
Namae wa nan datta kke?
name TPC what be.PST (don't know how to gloss the last word...asking yourself a question to try to recall a forgotten fact)
What was his name again?

The original sentence can also be put in the past in Japanese:
帰ってサンドイッチ作って映画を観るつもりだったけど。
Kaette sandoitchi tsukutte eiga o miru tsumori datta kedo.
return.home.CNJV sandwich make.CNJV movie ACC watch intention be.PST but
I was planning to go home, make a sandwich and watch a movie.

Anyway this seems to be something of a cross-linguistic phenomenon.

[Gulliver]

Today I caught myself saying (well, actually texting) "I was going to come straight home, make a sandwich, and pop in a movie." None of these things have happened yet and my plans haven't changed. I still intend to do these things. So what's going on?

My best guess: I was texting a friend who plans to join me. By stating my intentions in the past tense, I was emphasising that they aren't fixed and would be subject to changes he might suggest.

What do you all say? Is that a convincing explanation? Does it coincide with your intuitions?

Hmm. I did a research project on will and futurity and modality and things in my final year of my BA and am trying to remember things. There was a really interesting thing written by someone Japanese (I think) who looked at many different ways of alluding to the future (with the irritating omission of shall, but that's not important right now). This will all be very much thinking aloud (or rather a-typed).

In, "I am going to verb some nouns, "am going to" is in the present tense and describes you right now, at present. It casts light on your expectations of the future by revealing your intentions. I am fairly confident in saying that is a present tense action describing a contemporary action (the intentions of the speaker). So, when we smoosh it into a past tense form "I was going to verb some nouns", it is describing a state of events that happened in the past. By shifting them into the past as you did, I think, as you said, you sort of put them away in a kind of "I had these plans, which we can use as a model for new plans if you wish" box where you have an option of creating a second, identical, set of plans or modifying them accordingly.

So:
1 - linguoboy forms PLANS and says "I am going to verb some nouns" to inform himself of this.
2 - Wild FRIEND appears!
3 - FRIEND uses SOCIAL LIFE
4 - linguoboy uses ALTER PLANS, but it failed! PLANS are defunct as linguoboy does not have the ability to alter the past. He can, however, create new SUPER PLANS based on previous PLANS.
5 - linguoboy uses INFORM FRIEND and says "I was going to verb some nouns", indicating his previous PLANS.
6 - linguoboy and FRIEND create SUPER PLANS using PLANS as a model.
7 - It's super effective!

I'm unhappy with calling the past tense an irrealis, but that's mainly because it lacks precision. "Past-tense verb forms can be used for irrealis moods" is probably something more apt. Most verb forms in English have a truckload of modal uses as we have so few verb forms and so few specific modal verbs (many of which have uses for many different kinds of modality, like can having epistemic and deontic uses).

[clawgrip]

I think your description of be going to is correct, but not complete. I often see ESL/EFL textbooks describe the difference between will and be going to as being based on when you make a decision, so will shows a snap decision and be going to shows a planned decision. This is nice, but it only works when describing yourself, because you have full access to the contents of your brain and when you made decisions. "That bear is going to get shot if it keeps digging around in people's garbage" shows nothing about previous intention in either the bear or the shooter. Yet using will sounds awkward here.

I've always considered be going to to be indicative of a cause/effect relationship that is clear to the speaker, representing a state somewhere between the catalyst or initial indication (the cause), and the resulting event itself (the effect). "I'm going to see a movie" indicates a situation between the cause, i.e. making the decision (in the past), and the effect, i.e. seeing the movie (in the future). "It's going to rain" indicates a situation between the initial indication of the event (e.g. as black clouds in the sky, or checking the weather report) and the event itself (rain). "That bear is going to get shot if it keeps digging around in people's garbage," indicates a cause, i.e. the bear picking up a habit that pisses off humans, and the expected result, humans shooting it.

Putting be going to in the past indicates that the speaker may have been wrong about the cause/effect relationship, and that the cause is not necessarily linked to the effect as was once thought.

[hwhatting]

This use of past tense in questions like "what was your name" is interesting and happens to some extent in Swedish and Finnish as well. The idea of projecting the tense onto the awareness-of-the-name rather than on the actual name itself seems reasonable and is something I've been thinking a lot of.

That happens In German as well. You get things like (question from waiter to diner) Wer bekam das Steak? "Who got the steak?", actually meaning "who is getting / ordered the steak?". (Even better: Wer war das Steak? "Who was the steak?", with the same meaning.)

[Viktor77]

This use of past tense in questions like "what was your name" is interesting and happens to some extent in Swedish and Finnish as well. The idea of projecting the tense onto the awareness-of-the-name rather than on the actual name itself seems reasonable and is something I've been thinking a lot of.

That happens In German as well. You get things like (question from waiter to diner) Wer bekam das Steak? "Who got the steak?", actually meaning "who is getting / ordered the steak?". (Even better: Wer war das Steak? "Who was the steak?", with the same meaning.)

The same thing in English. The latter is not as common but it really doesn't sound wrong to me. Maybe change the context a bit, like, Who was the car (again)? (Referring to Monopoly pieces while currently playing Monopoly).