Towards the semantic typology of prospective aspect

In this paper, we aim at reconstructing an outline of semantic development of a prospective aspect construction. A newborn prospective gram introduces a preliminary state of an event, which has all properties that states usually have. As it undergoes further semantic development, this state grows less salient, while the subsequent event gains saliency. The final result of this development is usually a future gram, which does not contain in its meaning structure any preliminary state at all. We propose several typological diagnostics that correlate with the degree of saliency of the preliminary state and the subsequent event, namely the possibility of modifying them with different types of temporal adverbials, as well as putting the whole construction into the consequent of a causal conditional.