Aspect vs. Tense in English

[finlay]

There are also the future constructions that are actually morphologically present: "I'm having dinner with him tomorrow" (present continuous) or "My plane leaves at 9 on Sunday" (present simple). This is perhaps the best evidence that English doesn't strictly separate present and future, but to be fair, the uses of these are somewhat limited; plans and schedules, mainly.

But isn't that mostly what we use the future for? Either plans or predictions, what else can there be?

*shrug* We called it the "diary present" on my CELTA course... once I've had my attention drawn to it, I now always notice when learners "misuse" the will-future instead of the present-future or the going-to-future. They all have quite specific uses and convey different meanings.

EG: One point where the will future and the going to future are different is that it tells you when a decision was made. It's not always the case, but given the right context, "I'm going to do it" means you've planned to do it, and "I'll do it" means you are just now agreeing to do it; you've only just made the decision to do it. To me it's really obvious now when people use the wrong one.

[Travis B.]

And this is why, if anyone thinks English is "easy", they are clearly ignorant of the nature of English verbal system... Hell, even people who are quite familiar with English linguistics, who speak it natively, and who generally are not linguistically naive cannot even agree on how it works in the first place.

[Viktor77]

And this is why, if anyone thinks English is "easy", they are clearly ignorant of the nature of English verbal system... Hell, even people who are quite familiar with English linguistics, who speak it natively, and who generally are not linguistically naive cannot even agree on how it works in the first place.

Yea, but when you're at this level of analysing, you could probably make similar arguments for other languages too.

[linguoboy]

And this is why, if anyone thinks English is "easy", they are clearly ignorant of the nature of English verbal system... Hell, even people who are quite familiar with English linguistics, who speak it natively, and who generally are not linguistically naive cannot even agree on how it works in the first place.

Yea, but when you're at this level of analysing, you could probably make similar arguments for other languages too.

This is what I've always maintained: If you think a language is "easy", it probably means you simply haven't learned it very well yet.

[zompist]

The difference between "will" and "going to" came up in another thread not long ago, and I wasn't very satisfied with any of the attempts to distinguish them. So let's try to apply SCIENCE.

I looked at the first ten or so pages of Google results for "I'll" and "I'm going to", and attempted to categorize them. This is of course far from definitive, but at least it's some actual data.

For I'll:

FUTURE + PROMISE
I'll follow you on Twitter.
I'll Take Care of U
I'll be there
I'll Make Me a World In Iowa
I'll be Home Soon: How to Prevent and Treat Separation Anxiety
p.s. i'll find my frog
Forget Manhattan, I'll Take a Condo in Hoboken
I'll Take Care of Britney Spears
I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today
I'll be back. [Schwarzenegger ref]
Thaksin: I'll be back home soon
Huntsman: "Of course" I'll vote for Mitt Romney
I'll go down with the ship
Romney: "I'll build Keystone pipeline"
Why I'll never own an Android-based anything
I'll be your baby tonight.

SIMPLE FUTURE
Mitt Romney: How I'll Respond to China's Rising Power
Letters I'll Never Send
Next time, I'll spend the money on drugs instead.
I'll never forget all the things Joe Paterno did for me

GRICEAN FUTURE
[an indirect way to place an order]
I'll Have What She's Having

FUTURE CONDITIONAL
[i.e., it's part of a response to a postulated future event]
Obama: "I'll be angry" if Secret Service scandal is true
If you're paying, I'll have top sirloin

FUTURE + PREDICTION
Assange: I'll be called a traitor, interviewing radicals
I suspect this will actually be where I'll spend most of my free time after this weekend.

INDIRECTION (PRESENT MEANING)
I'll say that my spinach and goat cheese frittata was the best frittata I've had out anywhere.
I'll take Steve Zwick's bet on climate change

For "I'm going to":

FUTURE + PROMISE
I'm Going to Go Back There Someday
Stern: I'm going to be a strict judge on AGT
Mosley: I'm going to beat Alvarez
50 Thing I'm Going to Do Today
I'm Going to Stop Pretending That I Didn't Break Your Heart
Wittman: I'm going to do the best that I can.
Witnesses heard Marine say "I'm going to stab somebody"
One of These Days, I'm Going to Cut Your Film Into Little Pieces
I'm going to run 26 miles, 385 yards for my father
I'm going to make him see that it was the biggest mistake in his life.
I'm going to buy a one piece swimsuit an then I'm going to take it off and jump into a pool full of cherry flavored yogurt... [part of a revenge fantasy]
I'm going to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA.
I'm going to be the favorite uncle if it kills me.
I'm going to take my ball and go home!
I'm going to do a terrific show today!
I'm going to run for mayor.

SIMPLE FUTURE
I'm going to be a dad.
Gingrich: I'm going to look at how I can be helpful
I'm going to need all the luck there is.
I'm going to meet with man I met on the net

FUTURE CONDITIONAL
If I can survive the separation, I'm going to do this for a year.
I have no home to bring him to because I'm going to be put out.
I'm going to become rich and famous after I invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the Internet

PLANS TO MOVE
Oh man, I'm going to hell for laughing at that.
How I know I'm going to Heaven

IMMEDIATE FUTURE
I'm Going to Tell You a Secret
Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret.
I'm going to give you to the count of ten to get your ugly,yellow, no-good kiester off my property!

ALARM
I'm Going to Die [an 'outlet for hypochondriacs']
Touch me, I'm going to scream

INDIRECTION
I think I'm going to have to break-up with facebook.
If I'm going to come all the way here, I might as well throw one down.

The categories are almost the same for both. That matches my intuition that they're mostly style or register alternatives. The most common meaning (in first person, mind you) is what I called FUTURE + PROMISE. You could add "I vow" in there to test for these.

The etymological meaning of "go to" (i.e., move toward) is still alive; that and the ALARM sense can't be replaced with "will".

But we're not done! I also went through each list, thinking about what would happen if the opposite construction were used. I suggest you try this yourself. Mostly, it resulted in exactly the same meaning, with at most a stylistic difference. E.g. "I'm gonna be back" isn't as simple and catchy as "I'll be back". "Letters I'm Never Gonna Send" sounds clunky.

In the PROMISE section, I often felt that the "gonna" variant was stronger. E.g. "I'll stab someone" isn't quite the threat that "I'm gonna stab someone" is. "I'll do a terrific show today" isn't as much of an affirmation. "50 Things I'll Do Today" doesn't have the same level of determination.

Other specific differences:

1. "I'm gonna take Steve's bet" sounds much more argumentative.
2. "I'm gonna be a dad" seems to concentrate on the life change, either as a result of learning the news, or just reflecting on its momentousness. "I'll be a dad" doesn't have the same charge.
3. "I'll be rich and famous..." somehow doesn't work so well, perhaps because of the general weaker vibe.
4. Curiously, "I think I'll have to break up with Facebook" seems stronger, sounds more determined.
5. I'm not sure what's going on with "If I'm going to come all the way here...", but it simply can't be done with "If I'll come all the way here..."

Anyway, no really firm conclusions, but I'm gonna be skeptical, and I also will be skeptical, if you just offer a single construction where the two differ and imply that it holds for everything.

[Travis B.]

And this is why, if anyone thinks English is "easy", they are clearly ignorant of the nature of English verbal system... Hell, even people who are quite familiar with English linguistics, who speak it natively, and who generally are not linguistically naive cannot even agree on how it works in the first place.

Yea, but when you're at this level of analysing, you could probably make similar arguments for other languages too.

Tis definitely true, of course.

[Miekko]

And this is why, if anyone thinks English is "easy", they are clearly ignorant of the nature of English verbal system... Hell, even people who are quite familiar with English linguistics, who speak it natively, and who generally are not linguistically naive cannot even agree on how it works in the first place.

Uhm, isn't that more a question of what metric you use for difficulty?

[Travis B.]

And this is why, if anyone thinks English is "easy", they are clearly ignorant of the nature of English verbal system... Hell, even people who are quite familiar with English linguistics, who speak it natively, and who generally are not linguistically naive cannot even agree on how it works in the first place.

Uhm, isn't that more a question of what metric you use for difficulty?

Of course there is the factor that people often tend to think that minimal inflection/agglutination is basically "easy", e.g. that typical Romance verbal systems should be "harder" than the English one, with only it's 3rd.SING.IND marker (and rare stem vowel change), weak past/past participle marker, present participle/gerund marker, ablaut (and occasional Ruckumlaut), and occasional separate strong past participle marker. Yet all the complicated parts of the English verbal system are basically analytic.

[Miekko]

And this is why, if anyone thinks English is "easy", they are clearly ignorant of the nature of English verbal system... Hell, even people who are quite familiar with English linguistics, who speak it natively, and who generally are not linguistically naive cannot even agree on how it works in the first place.

Uhm, isn't that more a question of what metric you use for difficulty?

Of course there is the factor that people often tend to think that minimal inflection/agglutination is basically "easy", e.g. that typical Romance verbal systems should be "harder" than the English one, with only it's 3rd.SING.IND marker (and rare stem vowel change), weak past/past participle marker, present participle/gerund marker, ablaut (and occasional Ruckumlaut), and occasional separate strong past participle marker. Yet all the complicated parts of the English verbal system are basically analytic.

Obvious response is obvious, yet entirely irrelevant. A claim along the lines of "English verbs are easy" may not be a claim about how English measures up along some metric, it may be a claim about experience in learning English. If someone's perceived it as easy to learn how to use English verbs in a way that is convincingly close to how natives use them, are you going to say they're misusing the word "easy"? Now, of course, if we come up with some more formalized idea about difficulty - a way of actually measuring it, we'd probably end up with notions like algorithmic complexity, amount of information required to figure out all the rules, amount of rules as well as variation of rule systems that still fall within the bounds of permissible variation etc. Probably something like Kolmogorov complexity could do the trick, but let's not get lost in that kind of thing right now. I doubt most people parse words like "easy" or "hard" in a way that includes anything close to those notions - yet I bet we could figure out a metric that catches what some learners would call "easy" or "hard" but using a definition that probably uses something like loads of loads of loads of definitions, whereas the notion of "easy"/"hard" used by your average joe will be based on some heuristic that we'd just be trying to catch or ignore, depending on what we prefer.

[Travis B.]

And this is why, if anyone thinks English is "easy", they are clearly ignorant of the nature of English verbal system... Hell, even people who are quite familiar with English linguistics, who speak it natively, and who generally are not linguistically naive cannot even agree on how it works in the first place.

Uhm, isn't that more a question of what metric you use for difficulty?

Of course there is the factor that people often tend to think that minimal inflection/agglutination is basically "easy", e.g. that typical Romance verbal systems should be "harder" than the English one, with only it's 3rd.SING.IND marker (and rare stem vowel change), weak past/past participle marker, present participle/gerund marker, ablaut (and occasional Ruckumlaut), and occasional separate strong past participle marker. Yet all the complicated parts of the English verbal system are basically analytic.

Obvious response is obvious, yet entirely irrelevant.

I had originally figured that the above would not need to be stated, that of course it depends upon how one measures difficulty, but I was assuming said naive model of difficulty, one that I figured would not need stating.

[Miekko]

And this is why, if anyone thinks English is "easy", they are clearly ignorant of the nature of English verbal system... Hell, even people who are quite familiar with English linguistics, who speak it natively, and who generally are not linguistically naive cannot even agree on how it works in the first place.

Uhm, isn't that more a question of what metric you use for difficulty?

Of course there is the factor that people often tend to think that minimal inflection/agglutination is basically "easy", e.g. that typical Romance verbal systems should be "harder" than the English one, with only it's 3rd.SING.IND marker (and rare stem vowel change), weak past/past participle marker, present participle/gerund marker, ablaut (and occasional Ruckumlaut), and occasional separate strong past participle marker. Yet all the complicated parts of the English verbal system are basically analytic.

Obvious response is obvious, yet entirely irrelevant.

I had originally figured that the above would not need to be stated, that of course it depends upon how one measures difficulty, but I was assuming said naive model of difficulty, one that I figured would not need stating.

I edited my post, reread.

[Travis B.]

And this is why, if anyone thinks English is "easy", they are clearly ignorant of the nature of English verbal system... Hell, even people who are quite familiar with English linguistics, who speak it natively, and who generally are not linguistically naive cannot even agree on how it works in the first place.

Uhm, isn't that more a question of what metric you use for difficulty?

Of course there is the factor that people often tend to think that minimal inflection/agglutination is basically "easy", e.g. that typical Romance verbal systems should be "harder" than the English one, with only it's 3rd.SING.IND marker (and rare stem vowel change), weak past/past participle marker, present participle/gerund marker, ablaut (and occasional Ruckumlaut), and occasional separate strong past participle marker. Yet all the complicated parts of the English verbal system are basically analytic.

Obvious response is obvious, yet entirely irrelevant. A claim along the lines of "English verbs are easy" may not be a claim about how English measures up along some metric, it may be a claim about experience in learning English. If someone's perceived it as easy to learn how to use English verbs in a way that is convincingly close to how natives use them, are you going to say they're misusing the word "easy"? Now, of course, if we come up with some more formalized idea about difficulty - a way of actually measuring it, we'd probably end up with notions like algorithmic complexity, amount of information required to figure out all the rules, amount of rules as well as variation of rule systems that still fall within the bounds of permissible variation etc. Probably something like Kolmogorov complexity could do the trick, but let's not get lost in that kind of thing right now. I doubt most people parse words like "easy" or "hard" in a way that includes anything close to those notions - yet I bet we could figure out a metric that catches what some learners would call "easy" or "hard" but using a definition that probably uses something like loads of loads of loads of definitions, whereas the notion of "easy"/"hard" used by your average joe will be based on some heuristic that we'd just be trying to catch or ignore, depending on what we prefer.

Tis true. Here you get that English verbs may very well be easier to initially pick up but harder to use idiomatically across a full range of use patterns, such that they may indeed be perceived as "easy" in being able to be used in a way that can be effectively understood by native speakers, while not actually covering a full range of modal and aspectual forms that a native speaker would actually use, and not using the will-future, be going to-future, and present-future, much the less the will-future and be going to-future's being combined with other tenses/aspects, idiomatically across their very many usages.

[Miekko]

Tis true. Here you get that English verbs may very well be easier to initially pick up but harder to use idiomatically across a full range of use patterns, such that they may indeed be perceived as "easy" in being able to be used in a way that can be effectively understood by native speakers, while not actually covering a full range of modal and aspectual forms that a native speaker would actually use, and not using the will-future, be going to-future, and present-future, much the less the will-future and be going to-future's being combined with other tenses/aspects, idiomatically across their very many usages.

Does every native speaker possess the full set of idiomatic uses? I was actually trying to avoid the thing about "easier to initially pick up" - I actually meant the few learners who learn a fairly good portion of the actual rules involved. A portion comparable to the portion in the possession of an average native speaker - I am not entirely convinced every native speaker does possess even a majority of the set. So it's kind of difficult there too to come up with a reasonable measurement of what competence in English entails!

[clawgrip]

Interesting research

As you said, FUTURE + PROMISE dominates both lists, but I'm pretty sure if you try this with subjects other than 1st person you will get far less promises and might be able to see a different pattern of usage emerge. I'm not sure what though. Maybe I'll check.

[clawgrip]

1. "I'm gonna take Steve's bet" sounds much more argumentative.
2. "I'm gonna be a dad" seems to concentrate on the life change, either as a result of learning the news, or just reflecting on its momentousness. "I'll be a dad" doesn't have the same charge.
3. "I'll be rich and famous..." somehow doesn't work so well, perhaps because of the general weaker vibe.
4. Curiously, "I think I'll have to break up with Facebook" seems stronger, sounds more determined.
5. I'm not sure what's going on with "If I'm going to come all the way here...", but it simply can't be done with "If I'll come all the way here..."

In #1, to me, using will makes it sound like the speaker has just now surveyed the options and taken Steve's bet. The speaker sounds more committed to Steve's bet if be going to is used, as though he had previously been leaning toward Steve's bet, then looked at other options, and then confirmed that yes, Steve's bet really is the best one.
In #2, using will makes it sound like his wife or significant other is not yet pregnant, while using be going to suggests she is.
In #3, using will makes it sound like a wistful dream, and using be going to sounds either like the person is committed to this dream or this person has already taken a step toward the goal (like say, successfully landing a part in a movie)
In #4, we have "I think" which is probably colouring the meaning here. How exactly, I'm not sure.
In #5, I think the main problem is that we don't typically mix will and if in the same clause, but be going to is free of this restriction.

I went ahead and tried the same thing as you, but changed 'I' to 'it'

will:
FUTURE + PREDICTION
It'll End in Tears
It'll Be 'Years' Before We Catch Up on Drone Data
It'll Be Better Tomorrow
What It'll Take For Tablets to Replace PCs
Dating Younger Women: Why It'll End Badly
It'll Never Work
It'll Never Fly, Orville
It'll All End In Tears
Taxes too high? It'll get worse
It'll be a cakewalk, says Ba'ath Party
And I know someday that it'll all turn out
It'll be a demanding game but a good one
It'll Come
It'll be a fight until the end

SIMPLE FUTURE
It'll cost you.
It'll take a whole lot of money to solve GTA's transit woes; but we're willing to pay
It'll Take The Snap Out Of Your Garters!
It'll be a battle of the top jockeys, but Manighar gets nod
It'll Grow Back
It'll Rain
It'll all come out in the wash
It'll be Baker's Street when pasty march hits No 10
It'll make a turd [said of mediocre food]
A little attitude problem all good, it’ll make the shit last

FUTURE + PROMISE
It'll Be OK
One Day It'll All Make Sense
It'll Happen
It'll Never Be Over For Me

INDIRECTION (PRESENT MEANING)
North Korea Has a Tractor Simulator. It’ll Plough the Fields of Your Mind.
It'll Do

be going to:
FUTURE + PREDICTION
How It's Going To Be
I Think It's Going to Rain Today
But these people also think it's going to be okay:
It's Going To Get Nasty
So it's not gonna be easy. It's going to be really hard; we're gonna have to work at this everyday,
I Think It's Going To Be A Long Long Time
The Microsoft Strategy, and how it’s going to break everything
If you've got a niche, it's going to work.
It's Going to Happen
It's Going to Take Some Time
It's going to be a good week!
It's Going To Be A Cold Winter
You know it's going to be a great story when it starts off with... "So this bitch..."
It's going to be a Yellowcard kind of day.
Student Loan Bubble To Exceed $1 Trillion: "It's Going To Create A Generation Of Wage Slavery" And Another Taxpayer Bailout
Sony Thinks It's Going to Lose Even More Money
It's going to be easy work
It's Going To Be One Of Those Days
Here's How Expensive It's Going To Be For Burger King To Use Cage-Free Eggs
It's going to be a fascinating final
It's going to be perfect
I Think It's Going To Work Out Fine
Buckle Your Seatbelts, It's Going to a Volatile Market

FUTURE + PROMISE
Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!
I want to stop the lies, It's going to be the bad. It's going to be the good.
Hi, I'm Notch, and this is my new game. It's going to be a space game, and it's quite ambitious!

SIMPLE FUTURE
It's going to be a very competitive, open race
the problem for Barnes & Noble has been ... how much it's going to cost to pick up more market share...

FUTURE CONDITIONAL
Microsoft not really sure if it's going to upgrade Windows Phones to Windows Phone 8
If It's Going to Be, It's Up to Me

INDIRECTION (PRESENT MEANING)
from now on, it's not going to be about how pretty the voice is. It's going to be about believing that the voice is telling the truth.

Observations:

It seems like a lot of them can use either will or be going to without significant change in meaning. But I noticed a few things:

1. It'll Be 'Years' Before We Catch Up on Drone Data - I think this one could use be going to if it were the original person saying it, but as a quote be going to seems presumptuous.
2. Dating Younger Women: Why It'll End Badly - changing this to be going to takes it from hypothetical to real: it sounds like there is a specific person dating a specific younger woman
3. It’ll come / It’ll happen / It'll all come out in the wash - with will these sound like someone assuring themselves or of a wish or hope. Using be going to removes that sense and makes it sound more like an inevitable eventuality.
4. It's going to be perfect – be going to makes it sound like this person is extremely optimistic or even deluding him/herself, moreso than if will were used.
5. It's going to be a Yellowcard kind of day / It's Going To Be One Of Those Days – These seem weird with will. Usually we say these kinds of phrases after we have a few bad things happen to us early in the morning.
6. It'll take a whole lot of money to solve GTA's transit woes; but we're willing to pay - This one is a toss-up, but I feel like will makes it unclear if they have decided to go through with the plans, while be going to makes it sound like they have already decided to try to solve the problems.
7. It'll Take The Snap Out Of Your Garters! - With will it sounds like a simple description of the thing in question. With be going to it sounds like the person has already chosen this thing, and is now being given a warning about it
8. It’ll grow back - This sounds awkward with be going to. You could say that it is just stylistic, but I feel like there is a fundamental grammatical problem with this. I think it is because there is no clear evidence to suggest it will grow back. You could say that cutting off its predecessor is a evidence for it growing back, but "It grew back because I cut it off," seems like an awkward and even backwards way of describing the situation.
9. So it's not gonna be easy. It's going to be really hard; we're gonna have to work at this everyday, - with will it sounds more hypothetical.
10. Sony Thinks It's Going to Lose Even More Money - using will makes it sound more like Sony may be wrong in their prediction
11. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night! – using will sounds weird here.

My conclusion here is that:
will primarily shows one's gut feeling, wishes, hopes, hypothetical situations (including conditionals), or predictions/expectations based on common knowledge (such as the passage of time). In short, it is primarily based on general knowledge and feelings.
be going to shows predictions/expectations based on some sort of immediate evidence at hand, including one's own decisions. In short, it is primarily based on specific facts and evidence.

There are many situations where both of these definitions overlap, leading to the possibility of stylistic choices.

[Vardelm]

The difference between "will" and "going to" came up in another thread not long ago, and I wasn't very satisfied with any of the attempts to distinguish them. So let's try to apply SCIENCE.

That would be this thread, where the discussion became about my use of the "going to" construction as a prospective aspect, rather than a future tense.

I agree that "will" and "going to" can be used almost interchangeably. I've enjoyed this thread so far because it tries to get at the distinctions between them, which are extremely subtle.

I have used "going to" as a translation of a prospective aspect mostly because it includes the present (non-past) of "to be", as in "I am going to run." That, to me, implies a certain amount of "present relevance". Maybe that description doesn't work well for the perfect & prospective, just as was mentioned in that thread. I see a prospective aspect as being the mirror image of the perfect. It applies to events that have yet to occur. "Will" constructions don't have that non-past "to be" copula, which makes it a bit different. The problem with English is its completely fubar tense/aspect system makes it very hard to come up with a precise translation for future vs. prospective. For instance, we could say "I will run tomorrow", "I am going to run tomorrow", or "I am running tomorrow". There is very little, if any, semantic difference between those that I can see. With that situation in English, how can you describe other tense/aspect systems in a simple & at least semi-accurate manner?

My conclusion here is that:
will primarily shows one's gut feeling, wishes, hopes, hypothetical situations (including conditionals), or predictions/expectations based on common knowledge (such as the passage of time). In short, it is primarily based on general knowledge and feelings.
be going to shows predictions/expectations based on some sort of immediate evidence at hand, including one's own decisions. In short, it is primarily based on specific facts and evidence.

That "immediate evidence at hand" sounds like a good way to describe the whole "present relevance" of the perfect or prospective. At some point here I'd like to go back through the lists in this thread to see if this description of "will" vs. "going to" is true in my view.

[clawgrip]

The difference between "will" and "going to" came up in another thread not long ago, and I wasn't very satisfied with any of the attempts to distinguish them. So let's try to apply SCIENCE.

That would be this thread, where the discussion became about my use of the "going to" construction as a prospective aspect, rather than a future tense.

I agree that "will" and "going to" can be used almost interchangeably. I've enjoyed this thread so far because it tries to get at the distinctions between them, which are extremely subtle.

I have used "going to" as a translation of a prospective aspect mostly because it includes the present (non-past) of "to be", as in "I am going to run." That, to me, implies a certain amount of "present relevance". Maybe that description doesn't work well for the perfect & prospective, just as was mentioned in that thread. I see a prospective aspect as being the mirror image of the perfect. It applies to events that have yet to occur. "Will" constructions don't have that non-past "to be" copula, which makes it a bit different. The problem with English is its completely fubar tense/aspect system makes it very hard to come up with a precise translation for future vs. prospective. For instance, we could say "I will run tomorrow", "I am going to run tomorrow", or "I am running tomorrow". There is very little, if any, semantic difference between those that I can see. With that situation in English, how can you describe other tense/aspect systems in a simple & at least semi-accurate manner?

My conclusion here is that:
will primarily shows one's gut feeling, wishes, hopes, hypothetical situations (including conditionals), or predictions/expectations based on common knowledge (such as the passage of time). In short, it is primarily based on general knowledge and feelings.
be going to shows predictions/expectations based on some sort of immediate evidence at hand, including one's own decisions. In short, it is primarily based on specific facts and evidence.

That "immediate evidence at hand" sounds like a good way to describe the whole "present relevance" of the perfect or prospective. At some point here I'd like to go back through the lists in this thread to see if this description of "will" vs. "going to" is true in my view.

Present relevance (in this case, predicting based on specific, possibly transient things that definitely exist now) vs. no present relevance (in this case, predicting based on the sum of one's experiences without any necessarily defined connection to the present situation) is possibly a good way to define it in its most general sense, but I'm not entirely sure. There is one caveat: as a general rule, decisions made at the moment of speaking tend to be made using 'will' cf. "I'll get it," and "I'm going to get it," upon hearing the telephone ring. Defining 'will' as lacking present relevance would require this type of snap decision to lack present relevance, even when the decision is clearly based on immediately relevant circumstances, such as the phone ringing. The distinction is probably still valid in some way though: me answering the phone is not an inevitable outcome of it ringing; someone else could just have easily have answered it first. A ringing phone is not evidence of me answering it, even though it is the cause.

To be honest, I find I will run tomorrow awkward without some sort of context to explain specifically why 'will' was chosen. My first guess is that you are deciding at the moment of speaking to run tomorrow, based on something you just heard or learned. I am going to run tomorrow seems like the most obvious choice for a context-free statement, while I am running tomorrow gives the same present relevance meaning, but suggests that it is your intention to perform the action in question. When you say, I am going to run tomorrow, you know from facts at hand that you are going to run tomorrow, but it is not necessarily something you intend or plan to do; it is simply a seemingly inevitable future event. This is why you would say something like I'm going to get in trouble when he sees the mess I've made of his garden, but not, *I'm getting in trouble when he sees the mess I've made of his garden. Present continuous shows clear intention on the part of the subject, while with be going to that is not necessarily the case.

What I have trouble nailing down is 'will be doing' not used in a continuous sense, e.g. "we will be landing in rome on my birthday (september 5th!) and i am still a bit indecisive about our itinerary."

[TaylorS]

Why didn't I noticed this thread before? LMAO!!!

Tense is typically used to describe when a verb occurred in time, and aspect usually describes the quality of a verb in time. But sometimes the distinction isn't clear-cut.

Oh, god, he's gonna pull out some obscure language with, like, two living speakers isn't he?

If by "obscure language with, like, two native speakers" you mean English, then yes. Yes I am. Quick, how many grammatical categories does English have that are unambiguously tenses, not aspects?

Six: Past, Past-perfect, Present, Present-perfect, Future, and Future-perfect.

WRONG! You need to learn what an aspect is.

Three: Past, Present, and Future, duh.

Nope. Well, yes. But no. But yes. Pick a different number.

Two?

Yes. If we were to be very picky, there's only two: Past and Not-Past. What about future? Well, that's both a tense and an aspect. Let me explain:
English forms its future with the modal verb "will" (I'd say "to will", but that sounds kind of weird). As in "I will walk" or "I will eat some corndogs right now." Now being formed by a modal verb doesn't automatically make it an aspect, what does make it an aspect is that it works both in the past and the not-past.
Yes, "will" does have a past tense, as in "Little did he know, the fate of the entire world would one day rest on his understanding of English's clusterfuck of a tense-aspect system." But this isn't called the future-past tense, that would be complicated. No, the word for this is prospective aspect. But because English doesn't actually conjugate verbs into the future, anglophones have used the prospective aspect as the future tense enough for it to, for all intensive porpoises...

... it IS the future tense. This, to me, is really fucking confusing. I'm hoping you guys can help me get my head around it.

I consider the English "future" a mood, not a tense. Blame 17th century grammarians trained in Latin and Greek for calling the English "future" a tense. In reality will/would is kind of irrealis modal form that implies futurity because the future does not exist.

But of course that is forgetting that English actually also forms a future with be going to... except that can take a range of tenses and aspects applied to itself that significantly change its meaning to being not simply a future but rather meaning something like planning to, e.g. you can say was going to, have been going to, had been going to, would have been going to, etc.

And yes, of course English tense and aspect is an absolute mess, and no, you don't get arbitrary combinations of tense and aspect in English.

This is kind of well-known at this point.

I call the "gonna" future the Intentional Mood.

[TaylorS]

Why didn't I noticed this thread before? LMAO!!!

Tense is typically used to describe when a verb occurred in time, and aspect usually describes the quality of a verb in time. But sometimes the distinction isn't clear-cut.

Oh, god, he's gonna pull out some obscure language with, like, two living speakers isn't he?

If by "obscure language with, like, two native speakers" you mean English, then yes. Yes I am. Quick, how many grammatical categories does English have that are unambiguously tenses, not aspects?

Six: Past, Past-perfect, Present, Present-perfect, Future, and Future-perfect.

WRONG! You need to learn what an aspect is.

Three: Past, Present, and Future, duh.

Nope. Well, yes. But no. But yes. Pick a different number.

Two?

Yes. If we were to be very picky, there's only two: Past and Not-Past. What about future? Well, that's both a tense and an aspect. Let me explain:
English forms its future with the modal verb "will" (I'd say "to will", but that sounds kind of weird). As in "I will walk" or "I will eat some corndogs right now." Now being formed by a modal verb doesn't automatically make it an aspect, what does make it an aspect is that it works both in the past and the not-past.
Yes, "will" does have a past tense, as in "Little did he know, the fate of the entire world would one day rest on his understanding of English's clusterfuck of a tense-aspect system." But this isn't called the future-past tense, that would be complicated. No, the word for this is prospective aspect. But because English doesn't actually conjugate verbs into the future, anglophones have used the prospective aspect as the future tense enough for it to, for all intensive porpoises...

... it IS the future tense. This, to me, is really fucking confusing. I'm hoping you guys can help me get my head around it.

I consider the English "future" a mood, not a tense. Blame 17th century grammarians trained in Latin and Greek for calling the English "future" a tense. In reality will/would is kind of irrealis modal form that implies futurity because the future does not exist.

But of course that is forgetting that English actually also forms a future with be going to... except that can take a range of tenses and aspects applied to itself that significantly change its meaning to being not simply a future but rather meaning something like planning to, e.g. you can say was going to, have been going to, had been going to, would have been going to, etc.

And yes, of course English tense and aspect is an absolute mess, and no, you don't get arbitrary combinations of tense and aspect in English.

This is kind of well-known at this point.

I call the "gonna" future the Intentional Mood.

because generally it implies not only futurity but also some degree of volition on part of the subject of the sentence, though there are exceptions like "I'm going to be a dad", as mentioned above.

[clawgrip]

I call the "gonna" future the Intentional Mood.

because generally it implies not only futurity but also some degree of volition on part of the subject of the sentence, though there are exceptions like "I'm going to be a dad", as mentioned above.

The fact that there is a common exception in which no intention at all is involved suggests that the name 'intentional mood' is inaccurate (especially when will may also show intention or volition). I suggest evidential mood for be going to, because it is a conclusion about the future drawn from specific evidence that is currently at hand. That evidence may be your preexisting personal intentions, e.g. I'm going to go buy a sandwich, but may also be ambiguous about intentions, as in the example I'm going to be a dad, (based on specific evidence involving your significant other), or actually be completely undesired, as in my previous example, I'm going to get in trouble when he sees the mess I've made of his garden. It's a general conclusion based on specific evidence that a person is able to observe, sense, or otherwise gain knowledge of.

This is in contrast to future with will, which I suggest calling epistemic mood because it is based on a person's feelings, desires, or knowledge rather than any specific evidence.

You wouldn't say I'll be a dad when you were referring specifically to concrete evidence, such as your wife being pregnant. You could say it if you were dreaming of the future, e.g. I'll be a dad someday. This shows a clear intention that is unrelated and possibly even at odds with the evidence at hand. It's a general conclusion based on the body of knowledge, experience and desires this person has.

Cases where will and be going to overlap are cases where both general knowledge/feelings and specific evidence exist.

For example, you could say both I'll be a dad in three months and I'm going to be a dad in three months because the statement relies on both your general knowledge of the length of a standard pregnancy and of the passage of time, and also on the specific evidence of when your wife/whatever got pregnant and what the current date is.

If you are looking for an intentional mood in English, you will probably find it in the present continuous used for future, e.g. I'm meeting my friends next Saturday, where the speaker clearly intends this event to happen.

[TaylorS]

I call the "gonna" future the Intentional Mood.

because generally it implies not only futurity but also some degree of volition on part of the subject of the sentence, though there are exceptions like "I'm going to be a dad", as mentioned above.

The fact that there is a common exception in which no intention at all is involved suggests that the name 'intentional mood' is inaccurate (especially when will may also show intention or volition). I suggest evidential mood for be going to, because it is a conclusion about the future drawn from specific evidence that is currently at hand. That evidence may be your preexisting personal intentions, e.g. I'm going to go buy a sandwich, but may also be ambiguous about intentions, as in the example I'm going to be a dad, (based on specific evidence involving your significant other), or actually be completely undesired, as in my previous example, I'm going to get in trouble when he sees the mess I've made of his garden. It's a general conclusion based on specific evidence that a person is able to observe, sense, or otherwise gain knowledge of.

This is in contrast to future with will, which I suggest calling epistemic mood because it is based on a person's feelings, desires, or knowledge rather than any specific evidence.

You wouldn't say I'll be a dad when you were referring specifically to concrete evidence, such as your wife being pregnant. You could say it if you were dreaming of the future, e.g. I'll be a dad someday. This shows a clear intention that is unrelated and possibly even at odds with the evidence at hand. It's a general conclusion based on the body of knowledge, experience and desires this person has.

Cases where will and be going to overlap are cases where both general knowledge/feelings and specific evidence exist.

For example, you could say both I'll be a dad in three months and I'm going to be a dad in three months because the statement relies on both your general knowledge of the length of a standard pregnancy and of the passage of time, and also on the specific evidence of when your wife/whatever got pregnant and what the current date is.

If you are looking for an intentional mood in English, you will probably find it in the present continuous used for future, e.g. I'm meeting my friends next Saturday, where the speaker clearly intends this event to happen.

Ah, THAT makes a lot of sense! Thank you!!!

[Travis B.]

That definitely sounds like a good system by which to separate out the moods indicated by be going to and will.

[Terra]

Since nobody's asked it yet:

I'll follow you on Twitter.
I'll be back home soon.
"Of course" I'll vote for Mitt Romney.

How I'll Respond to China's Rising Power.
Letters I'll Never Send
Next time, I'll spend the money on drugs instead.

How are the former promises, but the latter not?

* * *

As for "will" vs "going to", am I the only one that feels that "going to" is more immediate/nearer/sooner? Thus:

(Situation: You're the victim of an ongoing armed robbery.)
- Oh God, I'm going to die!
- * Oh God, I will die!

(Situation: Your wife is minutes away from giving birth to your first child.)
- I'm going to be a dad!
- * I will be a dad!

(Situation: You're thinking about the future.)
- Someday, I'm going to be a dad!
- Someday, I will be a dad!

(Situation: You've just had a panic attack.)
- I'm going to go outside to get some fresh air.
- * I will go outside to get some fresh air.

(Situation: You've just been asked "What about the prisoner?".)
- He's going to be cast into the lions' pit.
- He will be cast into the lions' pit.

Interestingly, the former seems to be what an impotent observer would say, but the latter what the controller/director of the situation would say.

[Vuvuzela]

As for "will" vs "going to", am I the only one that feels that "going to" is more immediate/nearer/sooner?

Well, that's how it works in Spanish AFAIK, though it's not my L1. Thus:
Voy a leer De ratónes y hombres mañana. (I'm going to read Of Mice and Men tomorrow)
vs.
Leeré Guerra y paz eventualmente. (I'll read War and Peace eventually)
Eandil or Torco or someone can tell me how much of an oversimplification this is.

[zompist]

Since nobody's asked it yet:

I'll follow you on Twitter.
I'll be back home soon.
"Of course" I'll vote for Mitt Romney.

How I'll Respond to China's Rising Power.
Letters I'll Never Send
Next time, I'll spend the money on drugs instead.

How are the former promises, but the latter not?

One test is that with the first set, you can add "I promise" with, to me, no change in meaning. The others go better with "I predict" or "I expect".

As for "will" vs "going to", am I the only one that feels that "going to" is more immediate/nearer/sooner?

No, I'd agree with you on most of those.

Except for the asterisks; I think you're reacting to the formality of the non-abbreviated form. They all sound fine to me with "I'll".