On the semantics of Old Church Slavonic xotěti / iměti + infinitive constructions

The paper examines the Old Church Slavonic “quasi-futures”, analytical constructions consisting of a xotěti / iměti auxiliary and an infinitive. It is shown that the first construction has prospective meaning, while the second denotes future tense with reinforced assertion. The modern Bulgarian future paradigm consists of two parts; the positive goes back to xotěti forms, while the negative derives from iměti forms. We propose a hypothesis that explains the development of this paradigm in the light of the theory of grammaticalization.