Use Of Shall And Will Pdf
Ma Layssard
The differences are subtle, but what is important to note is that both will and shall are used with all verbs to form the future tense. The traditional rule of future tense says that shall is used in the first person (I shall eat lunch) and will is used in all other persons (you will eat lunch, she will eat lunch). In practice, most English speakers do not follow this rule and the two words are often considered to be interchangeable when forming the future tense. That being said, will is much more commonly used for this purpose and shall is typically only used to sound more formal or old-fashioned.
Both will and shall can be used to ask questions. Depending on the questions, will and shall may be used interchangeably or have distinct meanings. For example, the questions What shall happen if we add water? and What will happen if we add water? are asking the same thing: what event is going to occur when water is added. However, the questions Shall we arrive at noon? and Will we arrive at noon? are asking different things: the first is asking if noon is an acceptable time to arrive while the second is asking whether or not we will arrive at noon.
In legal contracts, both will and shall are used to note that someone has a legal obligation or duty to do something. The specific rules and conventions regarding these words in legal contexts are often ambiguous or vary from lawyer to lawyer. In the Plain Writing Act of 2010, the US government recommends the use of the word must in place of shall to refer to a legal obligation.
Shall and will are irregular verbs that follow a similar pattern: the past tense of shall is should and the past tense of will is would. The auxiliary verb can also follows a similar pattern: its past tense form is could.
Historically, prescriptive grammar stated that, when expressing pure futurity (without any additional meaning such as desire or command), shall was to be used when the subject was in the first person, and will in other cases (e.g., "On Sunday, we shall go to church, and the preacher will read the Bible.") This rule is no longer commonly adhered to by any group of English speakers, and will has essentially replaced shall in nearly all contexts.
Shall is, however, still widely used in bureaucratic documents, especially documents written by lawyers. Owing to heavy misuse, its meaning can be ambiguous, and the United States government's Plain Language group advises writers not to use the word at all.[1] Other legal drafting experts, including Plain Language advocates, argue that while shall can be ambiguous in statutes (which most of the cited litigation on the word's interpretation involves), court rules, and consumer contracts, that reasoning does not apply to the language of business contracts.[2] These experts recommend using shall but only to impose an obligation on a contractual party that is the subject of the sentence, i.e., to convey the meaning "hereby has a duty to".[2][3][4][5][6][7]
Early Germanic did not inherit any Proto-Indo-European forms to express the future tense, and so the Germanic languages have innovated by using auxiliary verbs to express the future (this is evidenced in Gothic and in the earliest recorded Germanic expressions). In English, shall and will are the auxiliaries that came to be used for this purpose. (Another one used as such in Old English was mun, which is related to Scots maun, Modern English must and Dutch moet)
The modal verbs shall and will have been used in the past, and continue to be used, in a variety of meanings.[8] Although when used purely as future markers they are largely interchangeable (as will be discussed in the following sections), each of the two verbs also has certain specific uses in which it cannot be replaced by the other without change of meaning.
In statements, shall has the specific use of expressing an order or instruction, normally in elevated or formal register. This use can blend with the usage of shall to express futurity, and is therefore discussed in detail below under Colored uses.
The other main specific implication of will is to express willingness, desire or intention. This blends with its usage in expressing futurity, and is discussed under Colored uses. For its use in questions about the future, see Questions.
The verbs will and shall, when used as future markers, are largely interchangeable with regard to literal meaning. Generally, however, will is far more common than shall. Use of shall is normally a marked usage, typically indicating formality and/or seriousness and (if not used with a first person subject) expressing a colored meaning as described below. In most dialects of English, the use of shall as a future marker is viewed as archaic.[9]
According to Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage,[10] the distinction between shall and will as future markers arose from the practice of Latin teaching in English schools in the 14th century. It was customary to use will to translate the Latin velle (meaning to wish, want or intend); this left shall (which had no other equivalent in Latin) to translate the Latin future tense. This practice kept shall alive in the role of future marker; it is used consistently as such in the Middle English Wycliffe's Bible. However, in the common language it was will that was becoming predominant in that role. Chaucer normally uses will to indicate the future, regardless of grammatical person.
An influential proponent of the prescriptive rule that shall is to be used as the usual future marker in the first person was John Wallis. In Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae (1653) he wrote: "The rule is [...] to express a future event without emotional overtones, one should say I shall, we shall, but you/he/she/they will; conversely, for emphasis, willfulness, or insistence, one should say I/we will, but you/he/she/they shall".
Henry Watson Fowler wrote in his book The King's English (1906), regarding the rules for using shall vs. will, the comment "the idiomatic use, while it comes by nature to southern Englishmen ... is so complicated that those who are not to the manner born can hardly acquire it". The Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage, OUP, 2002, says of the rule for the use of shall and will: "it is unlikely that this rule has ever had any consistent basis of authority in actual usage, and many examples of [British] English in print disregard it".
An illustration of the supposed contrast between shall and will (when the prescriptive rule is adhered to) appeared in the 19th century,[11] and has been repeated in the 20th century[12] and in the 21st:[13]
A more popular illustration of the use of "shall" with the second person to express determination occurs in the oft-quoted words the fairy godmother traditionally says to Cinderella in British versions of the well-known fairy tale: "You shall go to the ball, Cinderella!"
Another popular illustration is in the dramatic scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring when Gandalf checks the Balrog's advance with magisterial censure, "You shall not pass!"
Whether or not the above-mentioned prescriptive rule (shall for the unmarked future in the first person) is adhered to, there are certain meanings in which either will or shall tends to be used rather than the other. Some of these have already been mentioned (see the Specific uses section). However, there are also cases in which the meaning being expressed combines plain futurity with some additional implication; these can be referred to as "colored" uses of the future markers.
Thus shall may be used (particularly in the second and third persons) to imply a command, promise or threat made by the speaker (i.e., that the future event denoted represents the will of the speaker rather than that of the subject). For example:
In the above sentences, shall might be replaced by will without change of intended meaning, although the form with will could also be interpreted as a plain statement about the expected future. The use of shall is often associated with formality and/or seriousness, in addition to the coloring of the meaning. For some specific cases of its formal use, see the sections below on Legal use and Technical specifications.
(Another, generally archaic, use of shall is in certain dependent clauses with future reference, as in "The prize is to be given to whoever shall have done the best." More normal here in modern English is the simple present tense: "whoever does the best"; see Uses of English verb forms Dependent clauses.)
Most speakers have will as the future marker in any case, but when the meaning is as above, even those who follow or are influenced by the prescriptive rule would tend to use will (rather than the shall that they would use with a first person subject for the uncolored future).
In questions, the traditional prescriptive usage is that the auxiliary used should be the one expected in the answer. Hence in enquiring factually about the future, one could ask: "Shall you accompany me?" (to accord with the expected answer "I shall", since the rule prescribes shall as the uncolored future marker in the first person). To use will instead would turn the question into a request. In practice, however, shall is almost never used in questions of this type. To mark a factual question as distinct from a request, the going-to future (or just the present tense) can be used: "Are you going to accompany me?" (or "Are you accompanying me?").
This is common in the UK and other parts of the English-speaking world; it is also found in the United States, but there should is often a less marked alternative. Normally the use of will in such questions would change the meaning to a simple request for information: "Shall I play goalkeeper?" is an offer or suggestion, while "Will I play goalkeeper?" is just a question about the expected future situation.
c80f0f1006