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Abstract
This paper examines the history and use of the future subjunctive tense in Spanish. Although there is much discourse about the future subjunctive, at this point the only thing that linguists can agree on is that the tense does not exist in the language today and that it came from a combination of the future perfect of the Latin indicative and the present perfect of the Latin subjunctive. The traditional uses of the tense and the reasons for its disappearance remain debatable. Thus, this paper proposes the hypothesis that the future subjunctive has always been a written, not spoken tense. Originating as an error in translation from Latin, it has never had autonomous functions and has always been in competition with other tenses. This indicates that the use of the future subjunctive in writing is generally a deliberate choice on the part of the writer to emphasize words or phrases. Without the conscious intervention of writers, the future subjunctive tense probably would have disappeared from the Spanish language completely some time ago, and may very well disappear in the future. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]