Time after timethe mirative construction < no ir Fut. a + infinitive > in Spanish

Resumen

This paper analyzes the construction < No irFut. a + infinitive > in Spanish. At first sight, the construction is made up of two futures: the so-called periphrastic future < ir a + infinitive > [going to + infinitive] and the morphological future (Fut.) in which the auxiliary of the periphrasis occurs. However, neither of them seems to denote posteriority. The construction is rather used to convey the speaker’s surprise towards a contextually activated situation that is considered inappropriate, which falls under the umbrella of mirativity. Both the deictic instruction of ‘distance forward’ invoked by the morphological future and the lexical characterization of the verb ir [‘to go’] are acknowledged as productive mechanisms in the creation of meaning. The uses of their respective spatial configurations, in the relevant contextual environment, explain the interaction between future and mirativity in Spanish.