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Part of
Explorations in English Historical Syntax
Edited by Hubert Cuyckens, Hendrik De Smet, Liesbet Heyvaert and Charlotte Maekelberghe
[Studies in Language Companion Series 198] 2018
► pp. 235–258

Chapter 9
Why Scotsmen will drown and shall not be saved

The historical development of will and shall in Older Scots

| Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München

The divergent use of the modal auxiliaries will and shall in Scots and Standard English was noticed as early as the eighteenth century. The Scottish National Dictionary states that in Scots, first-person will instead of shall is used for predictions without denoting volition, which, in turn, is said to be often expressed by shall. In the second and third person, will may express obligation. This study investigates the use of will and shall in the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (HCOS) with a special focus on the interplay of modal meaning and grammatical person. The corpus data confirm the observations of the Scottish National Dictionary for Modern Scots, with a significant drop in first-person volitional will in the seventeenth century and fairly high counts for first-person volitional shall throughout Older Scots. The prediction uses of both first-person will and shall, however, remain low throughout the period. In addition, several instances of second- and third-person will were found that impose an obligation through an indirect speech act.

Keywords: Older Scots, corpus study, modal auxiliaries, will , shall , modal meaning, grammatical person
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Classification of modal meanings
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4. Will and shall in the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots
    • 4.1The modal meanings expressed by will and shall in the HCOS
    • 4.2The distribution of will and shall by grammatical person
      • 4.2.1First person
        • Volition
        • Prediction
      • 4.2.2Second person
        • Prediction/obligation
      • 4.2.3Third person
        • Prediction/obligation
        • Prediction
        • Volition
        • Probability judgments
        • Low-degree modality
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 13 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.198.10els
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Elsweiler, Christine
2019. Pragmatic and formulaic uses of shall and will in Older Scots and Early Modern English official letter writing. In Norms and Conventions in the History of English [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 347], ► pp. 167 ff. DOI logo

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