Shall and will

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Look up shall in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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Shall and will are both modal verbs in English used to express propositions about the future. According to the New Oxford Dictionary of English, In modern English the interchangeable use of shall and will is an acceptable part of standard British and US English.^[1]

Contents 1 Etymology 2 Historic "pure" system 3 Usage in the 20th century 4 Non-current/former usage 4.1 Simple future 4.2 Coloured future use of shall 4.3 Past time use and reported speech 4.4 Conditional mood 4.5 Shall as obligation 4.6 Shall in protasis 4.7 First person offers 4.8 Will as desire or willingness 4.9 Will as habituation 4.10 Will as expectation 4.11 Legal use 4.12 Technical specifications 5 Pronunciation 6 See also 7 External links 8 References

Etymology

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Both shall and will are verbs of ancient Germanic ancestry. In Proto-Indo-European, an inflected future tense existed, but that tense was lost in Germanic. In all Germanic languages, the future tense is formed with auxiliary verbs; this was the case in Gothic and the earliest recorded expressions of Germanic languages.

The verb shall represents Old English sceal, and is cognate with Old Norse skal, German soll, and Dutch zal; these all represent *skol-, the o-grade of Indo-European *skel-. All of these verbs function as auxiliaries in each language, and represent either simple futurity or necessity.

The verb will is cognate with the noun will, of course, and continues Old English willan, which represents *willjan. It occurs in Old Norse vilja, German wollen, Dutch willen, Gothic wiljan; it has many relatives outside of Germanic as well, including, for example, Latin velle "to wish for" or Polish (West Slavic) "ja wolę" - I would rather / prefer ("ę" is for a nasal open "e"); the root also occurs in voluptas, "pleasure." All of these forms derive from the e-grade or o-grade of Indo-European *wel-, meaning to wish for or to desire.

In addition to shall and will, other verbs were used as future auxiliaries in Old English, including mun, directly related to Old Norse munu and a defective verb that is the immediate source of Scots maun, and related to Modern English must.

Both verbs are preterite-present verbs in Old English, as they were generally in Germanic. This means that in their conjugation, they were conjugated in the preterite tense with present meaning. They show this status by the fact that they are conjugated in the third person as she shall (as opposed to *she shalls.) Will can be conjugated in both ways (she will, she wills) with a difference in meaning; the simple present form is not used as an auxiliary verb. The forms should and would were derived from the dental suffix of the weak verbs.

Old English did not have a future tense, but because the verbs shall and will hint at one, they became modal verbs used for this purpose. In the simple future usage, the different meanings of shall and will depending on which grammatical person is being used is an example of suppletion, the commingling of words from separate roots into a single paradigm.

According to Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, the distinction in meaning between shall and will as markers of a simple future arose from the practice of English schools in the fourteenth century and their Latin exercises. It was the custom in these schools to use will to translate Latin velle; because shall had no exact equivalent in Latin, it was used to translate the Latin future tense. The usage of the schools kept shall alive in this role. John Wycliffe used it consistently in this manner in his Bible translation into Middle English. Will was already beginning to predominate as the marker for the simple future through all grammatical persons in English, and is the usual marker for a simple future in Chaucer.

The most influential proponent of the distinction was John Wallis, whose 1653 Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae stated "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".

Historic "pure" system

Shall and will are now most often used as auxiliary or modal verbs. However, they have their origins as main verbs and in what is known as the pure system are still used in their original Old English senses, regardless of grammatical person. Thus shall was used with the meaning of obligation and will with the meaning of desire:

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Francis Bacon.^[2]

Usage in the 20th century

Whether the prescribed usage had basis in common usage or not, it is largely ignored by American, Irish, and Scottish speakers of English, who are a majority of English-speaking people.^[3] 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". The rule has even less force in American English, where shall has a much more restricted role, and the negative contraction shan't does not occur. Indeed, in America, "I will" and "we will" are the usual forms, and anyone using "shall" in all but a few situations runs the risk of being thought haughty or pretentious.^[4]

At the beginning of the 20th century, the various special cases made it necessary for Fowler's The King's English to devote 20 pages to the rules for shall vs. will, with 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". According to the English grammarian Charles Talbut Onions, the "correct" idiomatic use of shall and will was an infallible test of the true English speaker, since American, Irish, and Scottish speakers have such difficulty using the words in the same manner as the English. There is an illustrative old joke about the Scotsman who drowned in a river because he had cried "I will die! Nobody shall help me!" Dwight D. Eisenhower was reputed to have fired an aide who could not understand a distinction between "shall" and "will."^[5]

Non-current/former usage

According to the New Oxford Dictionary of English, In modern English the interchangeable use of shall and will is an acceptable part of standard British and US English.^[1]

These modal verbs have been used in the past for a variety of meanings.^[6]

In questions, the traditional usage according to Fowler is that the auxiliary used should be the one expected in the answer: "Shall you accompany me?" – "I shall." To use will here would be a request; going-to future would express more the intention than mere futurity. For example: "Should you like it?" expects the answer "Yes, I should" or "No, I should not", whereas "Would you like it?" expects the answer "Yes, you would" (or the corresponding negative) from the same speaker (or used rhetorically), since "you would" is the right form for the speaker, but not for the respondent (if he exists).

Simple future

In declarative sentences under the pure system, shall is not used in the first person, since one does not usually give commands to oneself. Therefore, shall became the auxiliary verb for expressing simple futurity in the first person. Will, on the other hand, is not often used in the second and third persons in statements under the pure system and so second and third person will became the auxiliary verb for expressing simple futurity in the second and third persons:

• Shall denotes simple futurity in the first person.
• Will denotes simple futurity in the second and third persons.

Hence, the following were supposed to be the proper forms of expressing simple futurity:

• I shall/you will die some day. (Declarative)
• Shall I/will they be here to-morrow? (Interrogative)

However, will is commonly used in all persons to express simple futurity.

Coloured future use of shall

Shall is used in the second and third persons to imply that the will of the subject is not being taken into account, such as to make a promise, command or threat:

• You shall repent it before long. (My threat)
• He shall not have any. (My command)
• You shall go to the ball. (My promise)

Other uses of shall include:

• Songs and poetry may use "shall," as in "I Shall Be Released", "We Shall Overcome", and "Shall We Gather at the River?"
• A speaker who normally says "I will" or "I'll" may use "I shall" as a marker of irony.

Shall is sometimes stronger than will: "You will stay?" – "I shall not."

Past time use and reported speech

Would and should are used in the same way as other preterite modal verbs to talk about situations seen from the perspective of an earlier time. Use of shall in the traditional simple future sense in this past time use can give rise to ambiguities for hearers. The sentence "The Archbishop of Canterbury said that we should all sin from time to time." is reporting the sentence "We shall all sin from time to time" (assuming the archbishop is including himself in the proposition), where shall is used to denote simple futurity. In the preterite, however, listeners would tend to interpret shall in the sense of ought to, giving a comical and contradictory effect.

Conditional mood

Would and should are used in the same way as other preterite modal verbs in the apodosis clause when the conditional mood is being used. Would is the most common modal verb used in this sense, as it expresses simple consequence (as opposed to the uncertainty involved with might or could). Some speakers may additionally use should in the first person for the same purpose. Such usage is confined to those who would use shall in the first person to express simple futurity. It remains in stock phrases such as "I should think" and "I should expect".

• We should/he would have consented if you had asked.
• Should we/would he have missed you if you had been there?
• I should/you would like a bath.
• Should I/would he like it myself, himself?
• You should do it if we could make you. (Our conditional command.)
• They should have had it if they had asked. (My conditional consent.)

Shall as obligation

Should is used with a sense of obligation for should, synonymous with ought to:

• You should not say such things.
• Why should you suspect me? (What reason do you have to suspect me?)

In more formal language shall (or the archaic second person variant "shalt") is used for similar purpose: "Thou shalt not steal".

Shall in protasis

Should (and in archaic usage, shall) can be used in the protasis in the conditional mood (and by extension, similar phrases, such as those beginning with "who" or "so long as"):

• If you should require assistance, please just ask
• The prize should be given to whoever shall have done the best

First person offers

In England and other parts of the English-speaking world shall is the normal form for first-person offers and suggestions of the type such as:

• Shall I open a window? (as a response to "It is a bit hot in here")
• Shall we dance?
• Shall I open the door?
• And shall Trelawney die?

Shall is used for this purpose in the United States, but should is a less marked alternative. Will is another possibility.

Will as desire or willingness

Will (and would in the a past time or conditional context) is used to express the willingness, desire or intention of the speaker:

• "I will tell you presently."
• "We would go if we could." (Our conditional intention.)
• "I will have the steak" (more polite than "I shall have the steak")
• "I will lend you £10,000 at 5%" (the speaker is willing to make the loan, but it will not necessarily be made)
• I will have my way.
• I (he) asked him (me) to do it, but he (I) would not.
• I would not have done it for the world.
• Will you come with me?

In archaic usage would has been used to indicate present time desire. "Would that I were dead" means "I wish I were dead". "I would fain" means "I would gladly".

Will as habituation

Will and would can be used to express habitual action in the present and in the past, respectively:

• We would go fishing a lot. ("We used to go fishing a lot.")
• He will bite his nails, whatever I say.
• He will often stand on his head.
• Boys will be boys.
• I would be told to wait a while.

Will as expectation

Will can be used to express that the speaker expects that they would find that a proposition would be true should they later get more information:

• You will still be talking (i.e., you always are).
• A coat will last two years with care.

Legal use

Legislative acts and contracts sometimes use "shall" and "shall not" to express mandatory action and prohibition.

Technical specifications

In many requirement specifications, particularly involving software, the words shall and will have special meanings. Most requirement specifications use the word shall to denote something that is required,^{[citation needed]} while reserving the will for a statement of fact. However, some documents deviate from this convention and use the words shall, will, and should to denote the strength of the requirement. Some requirement specifications will define the terms at the beginning of the document.

Shall and will are distinguished by NASA and Wikiversity as follows:

• Shall is usually used to dictate the provision of a functional capability.
• Will is generally used to cite things that the operational or development environment are to provide to the capability being specified. For example, "The building's electrical system will power the XYZ system."

On standards published by IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission), ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials), IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), requirements with "shall" are the mandatory requirements, meaning, "must", or "have to". The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) defines shall and must as synonymous terms denoting absolute requirements, and ‘‘should’’ as denoting a somewhat flexible requirement, in RFC documents.^[7]

Pronunciation

The negative form of shall is shall not, for which the contraction is shan't. Shall is pronounced in two different ways:

• The non-stressed form: /ʃəl/
• The strong form: /ˈʃæl/

Shan't is pronounced /ʃɑːnt/ in England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa etc.; it is pronounced /ʃænt/ in North America, although it is unlikely to occur in spontaneous speech there. (Compare /kɑːnt/ vs. /kænt/ as the pronunciation of can't.)

See also

• English verbs
• Grammatical person
• Verbs in English Grammar, wikibook

External links

• "Shall and Will." Fowler, H. W. 1908. The King's English - thorough discussion on the subject
• "shall." The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
• "should." The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
• "if." The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. - See usage note.
• Complete descriptions of the English Tenses
• Webster 1913 - Entry for Shall
• "The Origins of some Prescriptive Grammar Rules" - quoting The Origins and Development of the English Language, Pyles and Algeo, 1993
• The Rise of Prescriptivism in English (PDF format)
• Exercises

References

• Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage: (Merriam-Webster, 1989) ISBN 0-87779-132-5