The future in Spanish: Verbal periphrasis IR + A + INFINITIVE

It's already January and we finally started the year 2023 ! 🥳

Have you thought about your new projects for this year? What plans are you going to make? 

Are you going to practice a new sport?

Are you going to push yourself to socialize more? 

Or maybe you will come to Hispania, escuela de español for learn spanish with us? 😊

If you have noticed, in the previous questions I have written «you go + a + infinitive». Is the verb go + to + infinitive and we use it a lot in Spanish to talk about the future.

Do you want to know more about this structure?

Well, stay with me and I'll tell you! 

At the end of the article you will know how to talk about your future plans and other things that you are going to learn by conjugating the same verb in another tense.

Additionally, you will practice with exercises that we will offer you

¡Vamos allá!

What is a verb periphrasis?

We say that go + to + infinitive is a verbal periphrase.

AND, what are verb periphrases in Spanish?

It is a grammatical structure that is made up of a group of two verbs:

• The first verb is always conjugated in the personal form with a subject and a tense. 
• The second is put in a non-personal form (infinitive, gerund, or participle).

Sometimes between the verb and the non-personal form there may be another word such as a preposition or the word "that".

The periphrases have the function of giving information about the action. Sometimes they present us with an action that is beginning, others talk about an action in progress... 

They give the action a nuance in its meaning so that we understand where it is at or so that we can see that it is an action that presents extra information.

Don't you understand me very well? Don't worry. 

then let's see the structure of the verbal periphrasis with examples and you will see how easily you understand it.

Basic structure

As I said before, the structure of verb periphrases is always the same: 

A conjugated verb, plus another verb in a non-personal form. In between there may be nothing, there may be a preposition, or the word "that" may appear.

There are three personal forms: infinitive, gerund or participle. 

The structure would then be the following:

Conjugated verb + Ø/preposition/that + infinitive/gerund/participle

Don't you get clear with the non-personal forms of the verb? 🤔

Do not panic! I'll explain them to you right now.

non-personal forms of the verb

As its name says, non-personal forms of verbs are forms that do not have person marks. 

That is, these non-personal forms cannot follow the traditional structure of Spanish: 

SUBJECT + VERB.

Why? Because the subject always agrees with a verb in personal form.

For example, in the present of the verb to walk, each person has their verb form:

i walkedo

you walkedas

He/she/you walkeda

we / we walkedamos

you / you walkedáis

They / they / you walkedan

Do you see how each person has their verb form with a different ending?

we call that  personal forms of verbs. Thanks to them, in Spanish we can introduce an action without marking the subject or a time stamp necessarily in the sentence, because the verb itself contains the information.

For example:

• Now I walkedo by the park.

as the verb ends in -o, we know that it is first person singular (yo) present. 

And, of course, the personal forms of the verbs are used at all times of Spanish, not only in the present tense.

Now that you know this, can you get an idea of ​​what the non-personal forms of verbs?

There are only three: the infinitive, the gerund and the participle. And they can never go alone with the subject, since these words do not have endings and do not give information about the subject.

Let's see them in more detail separately and now you will understand it 100%, I promise. 😉

Infinitive

The infinitive is the base form of the verb without conjugation. There are only 3 conjugations that classify all verbs. We will find verbs that end in -AR like for example I studiedAR, -ER as the verbER, or in -IR how did i driveIR.

Want to examples of infinitives? Come on:

Sing, speak, command, drink, eat, see, go out, write, say, translate, etc.

This non-personal form of the verb would be like the proper name of the verb itself, it is the form that we will find in the dictionary if we look for the meaning of the word.

Do you want to know some verb periphrases with infinitive? 

Let's see some!

• HAVE TO + INFINITIVE (expresses an obligation)

For example:

The exam is on Friday. This week I have to study much.

• BEGIN A + INFINITIVE (expresses the beginning of an action or habit)

For example: 

this month i I start training to get strong.

• WANT + INFINITIVE (expresses the desire to do something)

For example: 

I want to buy a book to Lola.

These are just a few examples, there are many more: 

• Need + infinitive.
• You have to + infinitive.
• power + infinitive
• Finish off + infinitive.
• End of + infinitive.
• Etc.

As you can see, there are some that in between the two verbs have a preposition, the word "that" or they have nothing.

All of them will give us important information about the action to better understand what the speaker means.

Now you know what kind is the verbal periphrasis ir + a + infinitive, belongs to this group, periphrasis with infinitive. And its function, as we have commented before, is to give the action a future value.

Isn't it wonderful to be able to discover so many things about the message that we transmit through the verb? 

In Spanish, the verb is the boss of communication, but a boss who works a lot...

Gerund 

We keep seeing more verb periphrasis classes, now with a gerund.

The gerund is a non-personal form of the verb that is often used to express a duration or process of an action.

The gerund is formed as follows:

• Adding -ANDO to verbs ending in -AR.
• Adding -IENDO to verbs ending in -ER or -IR.

Examples of gerunds: 

Amando, beganando, dialogueando, I answerediendo, moviendohaveiendo, livediendo, transmitiendo...

Could you tell us what the infinitive of these gerund verbs is? Sure you do, right?

There are also irregular gerunds in verbs that have two vowels together before the infinitive. Here we put the letter "y".

For example:

believe – believeyendo

flee – huhyendo

read – himyendo

Or some verbs that present a vowel change in hey/ou.

For example:

Mentir–miI understand

Molaugh – mulaughing

Dormir-dusleeping

Sentir–siI understand 

Do you know which periphrasis is most often used with a gerund?

Es TO BE + GERUND. Super familiar, right? 

Surely you have used it many times without even knowing that it was a verbal periphrasis. 

It is used to express actions in progress (in the present tense):

For example:

At this point I'm studyingiando Spanish.

Want to know more verb periphrases with gerunds?

Here are some:

• Follow + gerund.
• Finish + gerund.
• Go + gerund (there are more verbs with goNot only go + to + infinitive)
• Carry + gerund + amount of time.
• stay + gerund
• Etc.

Participle

El participle is another non-personal form of the verb. It is formed as follows:

• Adding -ADO in verbs ending in -AR.
• Adding -GONE in verbs ending in -ER or -IR.

Examples of participles:

Spoken, finished, kissed, stopped, read, built, replaced...

This non-personal form has many irregular forms. Here I present the irregular participles major:

See seen

break – broken

write – written

fry – fried

die – dead

do – done

To say said

put- put

cover- covered

do- done

open – open

Etc.

¿Examples of verb periphrasis with participle?

There they go!

• TO TAKE + PARTICIPLE (expresses accumulated quantity of something)

For example:

I have to study 20 topics for the exam. for now I have read 10 themes.

• STAY + PARTICIPLE (final consequence after an action)

For example:

After the slam, the door it stayed closed.

Other verb periphrases with participle we have:

• To be + participle.
• walk + participle
• Have + participle.
• stay + participle
• Follow + participle.
• Etc.

Go + a + infinitive: future periphrasis

After seeing the different types of verb periphrases with examplesFinally the time has come to talk about go + to + infinitive. 

First of all, do you remember what the conjugation of the verb to go in present? Let's go for refreshmentscarla!