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Progressive forms with adverbs referring to future time (plans and arrangements) 4a I'm meeting John at six-thirty tomorrow. 4b I left home at six: I was meeting John at six-thirty. When used with an adverb referring to future time, the present progressive indicates that the action or event is pre-arranged. We could paraphrase sentence 4a: I have arranged to meet John at six-thirty tomorrow. (This is not to say that the two sentences are exactly the same: in 4a, the forcus of interest is on the meeting, whereas in the paraphrase our attention is directed towards the arrangement.) Sentence 4b represents a situation in past time parallel to the situation in 4a in present/future time: my meeting John at six-thirty was part of a pre-arranged plan that existed at the time I left home. The past progressive sometimes refers to plans that do not or did not materialize: 5a I was coming to see you tomorrow, but now I find I can't. More frequently, we find the form 'going' to instead (this form would not be used in 5a for stylistic reasons - we would not normally say I was going to come to see you): 5b I was going to tell you myself (e.e. but I find you already know). |