Futuros epistémicos y semántica no prospectiva: notas sobre la temporalidad cero

The aim of this paper is to present a critical reflection on some of the proposals found in the literature regarding modal uses of the future tense in Spanish, specifically to account for the non-prospective semantics of conjectural, concessive, and mirative future interpretations, in light of data from European Spanish. We aim to argue in favor of a specific theoretical position, which holds that the study of this phenomenon should begin with the formal consideration of epistemic future as an operator. Its temporal meaning is to be explained based on the temporal semantics characteristic of modal auxiliaries with epistemic interpretation. This approach is further supported by the atemporal nature of other inferential auxiliaries and particles in various languages. Additionally, we present data related to both lexical and grammatical aspect, which support our hypothesis and facilitate the study of epistemic futures in relation to other phenomena that are not strictly temporal.