Contemporary Thai has a number of forms that mark the notion of futurity. The
primary future tense marker is cà, whose lexical origin, though not yet established,
is likely the verb càk ‘know’. Other markers are used either alone or in
combination with cà(k). Their morphosyntactic development reveals some influence of the
typological and idiosyncratic features of Thai, such as pragmatic orientation, verb
serialization, and preference for polylexemic units in lexicalization and
grammaticalization, among others. Their semantic developments are also well motivated in
terms of conceptual relatedness between the source forms and the
grammaticalized forms. A review of grammaticalization scenarios with reference to
grammaticalization parameters, e.g., desemanticization, extension, decategorialization, and
erosion, shows that the Thai future markers have been grammaticalized to varying
degrees.
Publication Date: 2026-06-04