Studying Shall with the Help of Corpus Data

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Studying Shall with the Help of Corpus Data

1 Introduction

In this essay I will discuss the use of shall. How frequent and important is it when making statements and asking questions about the future? To begin with, I will introduce material from different grammar books. To make the structure clear, I will discuss the uses in statements and questions separately. Furthermore, I will also distinguish the uses with 1st person subjects from the uses with 2nd and 3rd person subjects. In section 3, I will go on to examine a random sample of 50 examples of shall gathered from the British National Corpus online search facility.

2 Description of shall in the grammars

Shall is a modal auxiliary verb which goes with the infinitive in all persons. Leech (1987, 88-89) argues that the speaker has authority in statements with shall, but in questions, the authority is in the hands of the hearer. In his view, shall is more common in questions than in statements, because consulting someone else’s wishes is more polite than asserting one’s own.

2.1 Shall in statements

2.1.1 Use with 1st person subjects  

       

According to Jespersen (1933, 278), shall is considered the natural auxiliary expressing the future, because will is often associated with volition. Shall is therefore often used to indicate predictions. Jespersen goes on to argue that “When a future state of one’s own feelings is to be mentioned I shall is the natural expression, because one does not like to imply that they depend on one’s will.” This is made clear in examples given by him:

        I shall feel sorry when he dies.

        I shall always remember your kindness.

     Nevertheless, shall in 1st person is also used when indicating intention. According to Leech (1987, 87), it is also possible to use will in this kind of meaning. However, Quirk and Greenbaum (1973, 47) state that this double function that shall has, future and modal, is hard to separate:

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I shall inform you if the situation changes.

We shall succeed where others have failed.

     In future statements which have I or we as the subject, Leech (1989, 426) argues, shall is an older and  more formal equivalent of will often found in English literature written before 1950. Quirk and Greenbaum (1973, 47) also state that will is nowadays generally preferred, except in 1st person questions. However, using the contracted form ‘ll avoids the problem of choosing between shall and will:

        I will/shall arrive tomorrow.

        He’ll be here in half an hour.

     

2.1.2 Use with 2nd and 3rd person subjects

Although COBUILD English Usage (1992, ...

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