This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Prospective aspect" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(May 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Inlinguistics, theprospective aspect (abbreviatedPROSP orPRSP) is agrammatical aspect describing an event that occurs subsequent to a given reference time.^[1] One way to view tenses in English and many other languages is as a combination of a reference time (past, present, or future) in which a situation takes place, and the time of a particular event relative to the reference time (before, at, or after). As an example, consider the following sentence:

• When I got home yesterday, John called and said he would arrive soon.

The verbwould arrive expresses a combination of past reference time (the situation of my getting home, established as being in the past by the introductory clause) and an event (John's arrival) whose time of occurrence is subsequent to the reference time. Technically, this verb is said to bepast tense, prospective aspect, with thetense expressing the time of the overall situation and theaspect expressing how the event itself is viewed, relative to the vantage point of the overall situation.

In English, the prospective aspect is most clearly distinguished in the past. The Englishfuture tense expressed by theauxiliary verbwill refers to an event in the absolute future, regardless of the reference time or relative time of the event:

• Whenever I get home, John usually calls and says hewill arrive soon (present reference, prospective event).
• When I get home tomorrow, Johnwill arrive and meet me (future reference, simultaneous event).
• When I get home tomorrow, John will probably call and say hewill arrive soon (future reference, prospective event).
• When I got home yesterday, John called and said hewill arrive in three weeks (past reference, prospective event in the absolute future).

Note in particular the last sentence, with the same combination of tense and aspect aswould arrive in the first sentence above, but with an emphasis on a time occurring in the absolute future (i.e. after the present time, rather than simply after the time of the situation being described).

However, in English it is possible to express the prospective aspect in tenses other than the past using the so-calledgoing-to future: "He says he's going to finish soon. But yesterday he was also going to finish soon, and I'm sure in five weeks he'll still be going to finish soon."

The opposite of the prospective aspect is theretrospective aspect, more commonly known as the "perfect":

• When I got home yesterday, Johnhad alreadyarrived (past reference, retrospective event, also known aspast perfect orpluperfect).

It is actually possible to combine prospective and retrospective (perfect) aspects to produce a "prospective perfect", especially in the past:

• Don't wait a week; Johnwill have alreadyleft (future reference, perfect aspect orpresent reference, prospective perfect aspect).
• I told him not to wait a week; Johnwould have alreadyleft (unambiguouslypast reference, prospective perfect aspect).
• Iwas going to have left by then, but got distracted (past reference, prospective perfect aspect).

• Future in the past

• Grammatical aspects

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles needing additional references from May 2017
• All articles needing additional references