Are there human general communication languages without a future tendency?

Question

In Thai language there is no past tense, at least not for negative sentences:

• A Thai person might say "I don't go" (ฉัน ไม่ ไป) while the listener is expected to guess from the context if it means past (I did not go) or present (I don't go)
• A present marker such as กำลัง or อยู่ could be utilized to emphasize if something doesn't or does happen presently, but it won't necessarily be used

In contrast, Thai language does have a past marker as "already" (แล้ว) for positive sentences such as "I go (went) already" (ฉัน ไป แล้ว).

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That said about past; it is interesting to note that Thai language does have a future tense as with "I will not go" (ฉัน จะ ไม่ ไป) or as with "I will go" (ฉัน จะ ไป).

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All of this brought me to wonder if there are human general communication languages without a future tense and if not, how can it be explained that all languages include present and future tenses but at least one lacks past tenses?

Answer 1

Many languages have a distinction between past and non-past that doesn't explicitly mark the future. Japanese, for example:

• 食べます tabemasu "eat, eats, will eat"
• 食べました tabemasita "ate"

English sometimes does the same thing:

After I finish this report, I'll come to the meeting.

The "finishing" is clearly in the future, but there's no explicit marking of that. In Latin, on the other hand, an explicitly future form would be used here (fēcerō "I will have finished").