| 词组 | shall, will |
| 释义 | shall, will Shall and will have attracted a great deal of attention from usage commentators. Let us begin with a clear expression of present-day American use: • The old distinction between these words is no longer observed by most people. Shall, which was once considered the only correct form for the expression of the simple future in the first person, has been replaced by will in the speech and writing of most people.... In a few expressions shall is the only form ever used and so presents no usage problem: Shall we go? Shall I help you? To use will in these expressions would change the meaning. With the exception of these special uses, will is as correct as shall — Warriner 1986 And let us contrast that with the traditional rule, as expressed in a British usage book: • In its simplest form, the rule governing the use of shall and will is as follows: to express a simple future tense, use shall with I or we, will with you, he, they, etc.; to express permission, obligation, determination, compulsion, etc., use will with I and we, shall elsewhere—Chambers 1985 Chambers goes on to note that there are "many exceptions" to this rule, especially in American, Scottish, and Irish English (as distinguished from the English of England itself). • The reason that things have come to this pass is history, or rather two histories—the history of the words and the history of the rules. Let us consider the words first, drawing heavily on Jespersen 1909-49 (vol. 4) and Strang 1970. Shall and will were originally finite verbs and came only gradually into their present use as auxiliaries. Will originally carried the sense of volition, and shall that of obligation. Both, it appears, were used in Middle English to express future time. Jespersen and Strang point out that in the 14th century there were signs that will was beginning to prevail in this use—it does in Chaucer's works, for instance. But shall received assistance about this same time from the schools and from John Wycliffe, a 14th-century religious reformer and one-time master of Balliol who instituted the first full English translation of the Bible. It was the practice of the schools to use will to translate Latin volo; shall had no exact Latin equivalent, so it was used to mark the future tense. The school practice was followed in the translated Bible. The twin influences of the English Bible and the school tradition seem to have had an effect on writing, particularly that of a solemn or serious sort. Strang suggests that this countervailing force saved shall in England from the relative extinction it has experienced as a future marker in the English of North America, Scotland, and Ireland. The traditional rule given by Chambers was first set down in the 17th century by John Wallis, a bishop and a well-known mathematician. Wallis's grammar was written in Latin for the edification of foreigners; modern commentators assume it was a sort of learner's grammar, but Thomas De Quincey, in an 1839 article, described it as "patriotically designed as a polemic grammar against the errors of foreigners." Whether designed for instruction or reproof, Wallis's rules were probably simplified. Strang says they do not reflect the practice of the preceding century (although McKnight 1928 detects a tendency in their direction in Shakespeare's usage), and thinks they might have been closer to the actual usage of Wallis's own time than that of any other. A few randomly collected examples of 17th-cen-tury usage cast doubt even on that cautious assessment; sometimes usages match the rules and sometimes they do not. A good part of the problem is in interpretation— both of the terms used by the grammarians to make the distinctions and of the intentions of old writers. With this warning, here are some 17th-century examples: • If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts —Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 1605 • For if it may please any to compare but the Lords Prayer in other languages, he shall finde as few Latine and borrowed forraine words in ours, as in any other whatsoever —William Camden, The Languages, 1605 • ... I shall speak when I have spoken of the Passions —Thomas Hobbes, Of Speech, 1651 • But, it may be you will object that this was Asper, Macilente, or, Carlo Buffone: you shall, therefore, hear him speak in his own person —John Dryden, "Defence of the Epilogue," 1672 • ... I hope I shall not be thought arrogant —John Dryden, "Defence of the Epilogue," 1672 • ... I will only add this in defence of our present Writers —John Dryden, "Defence of the Epilogue," 1672 • "He that will have a May Pole shall have a May Pole." This is a maxim with them —William Con-greve, "Concerning Humour in Comedy," 1695 • LOVELESS. Let me see his wound. SERRINGE. Then you shall dress it, sir; for if anybody looks upon it, I won't.—Sir John Vanbrugh, The Relapse, 1696 • ... the two great Seminaries we have, are without comparison the Greatest, I won't say the Best in the World—Daniel Defoe, Of Academies, 1697 These examples seem to us to follow the theory sometimes and sometimes not. If the usage of Wallis's own century was not exactly uniform, you can well imagine that over time the rules came to match actual usage even less. By the 18th century, grammarians were finding Wallis's rules too simple. Lowth 1762 added rules for interrogatives, and later grammarians elaborated even further. William Ward in 1765 put the rules into verse, presumably the better to memorize them. But William Cobbett 1823 did not bother with rules; he told his son, to whom his grammar was addressed, that the uses of the auxiliaries, "various as they are, are as well known to us all as the uses of our teeth and noses." He had nothing more to say about shall and will, relying instead on the native speaker's instinct. Such reliance was not uncommon in the 19th century. Alford 1864 commented that he never heard an Englishman who misused shall and will but had never heard an Irishman or Scotchman who did not misuse them sometimes. On this side of the Atlantic, Richard Grant White 1870 was employing the same method to distinguish the "correct" New England use from that of the provincial folk and immigrants (mostly Irish at that time). A somewhat similar attitude can be found in Fowler 1926, in which a distinction is made between those "to the manner born"—in this case, the English—and those not so lucky. Fowler listed several pages of what he regarded as misuses culled from British newspapers, but his faith in the English English rules never wavered, perhaps because of his belief that the British press was controlled by Scots. Had he looked to literary rather than journalistic sources, however, he could have found plenty of variation among non-Scots: • If you procure the young gentleman in the library to write out... , I will send to Mr. Prince the bookseller to pay him —Samuel Johnson, letter, 7 Aug. 1755 • If I come to live at Oxford, I shall take up my abode at Trinity —Samuel Johnson, 1754, quoted by Thomas Warton, in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791 • I have no desire to return to England, nor shall I, unless compelled —Lord Byron, letter, 12 Nov. 1809 • I will write when I can —Lord Byron, letter, 12 Nov. 1809 • As plainly as I behold what happened, I will try to write it down —Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850 • His French author I never saw, but have read fifty in the same strain, and shall read no more —Thomas Gray, letter, 18 Aug. 1758 • ... as soon as I am settled there, I will propose a day for fetching my newest little friend —Lewis Carroll, letter, 1 July 1892 Notice how easily first person will slips in when it is part of a contraction: • I'll send her book from Oxford —Lewis Carroll, letter, 9 June 1892 • Well, I won't talk about myself, it is not a healthy topic —Lewis Carroll, letter, 29 July 1885 Notice too that will and would can be used with second and third persons to give directions or to show determination: • You will therefore retain the manuscript in your own care —Lord Byron, letter, 23 Aug. 1811 • ... he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill favordly, because 'we did not know how indispens-ible it was for a Barrister to do all those sort of things well...' —Charles Lamb, letter, 24 May 1830 Fowler dismissed the use of shall and will in the same construction as "elegant variation." We have seen two or three examples of such usage from the 17th century already. Here is one from the 19th century: • ... I shall delay it till it can be made in person, and then I will shorten it as much as I can —Lord Byron, letter, 29 Feb. 1816 It is clear that even in the English of England there has always been some deviance from Wallis's (and Fowler's) norm. In America, of course, there has been considerable straying from the Wallis rules. Will has by no means entirely supplanted shall for marking simple futurity, but will and would are certainly fully established as standard with the first person: • I'm a poor Underdog; But tonight I will baric With the Great Overdog That romps through the dark.—Robert Frost, "Canis Major," 1925 • I have no idea on what continent I will be in September —Alexander Woollcott, letter, 8 Jan. 1936 • We would all like it if the bards would make themselves plain, or we think we would —E. B. White, in The Practical Cogitator, ed. Charles P. Curtis, Jr. & Ferris Greenslet, 1945 • The mechanics ... were perfect, I would say — Philip Hamburger, New Yorker, 12 Aug. 1950 • Tomorrow morning I will wake up in this first-class hotel suite ... and I will appreciate its elegance — Tennessee Williams, Story, Spring 1948 • Tell Stan I have a textbook out, on English usage and style, and will send him a copy —E. B. White, letter, 16 June 1959 • ... since I will be seeing you in a fortnight, we can then talk until the cows come home —Groucho Marx, letter, 16 Sept. 1960 I know beforehand what I will not like about Jane later (she'll be too thin, of course What will I • find to talk to her about? ... ) —Joseph Heller, Something Happened, 1974 As for shall, it has become a bit fashionable in recent years to disparage its use in American English. Its critics allow that it is entrenched in legal usage and in the questions mentioned at the beginning of the article, but in other uses they tend to regard it as affected or precious. Some allowance is made for the expression of determination or resolve, in which it is used with pronouns of all persons: • I shall return —General Douglas MacArthur, on leaving the Philippines, 11 Mar. 1942 • If we can succeed in persuading every man and woman, every nation to do their utmost, we shall master this famine —Herbert Hoover, quoted in Time, 27 May 1946 • I can't approve of such goings on and I shall never approve it —Harry S. Truman, letter, 18 Aug. 1948 • ... those who frustrate communication and threaten identity by insisting that everybody else shall speak and write as they themselves do —James Sledd, in Greenbaum 1985 Shall and should are also used in more ordinary functions, however, by those Americans to whom they are natural (some of whom also use will and would in the same ways). • So I've sent Hopkins to Moscow and Davies to London. We shall see what we shall see —Harry S. Truman, diary, 22 May 1945 • ... I shall be in Washington for a few days —Alexander Woollcott, letter, 20 Oct. 1936 • Perhaps I shall get down in January —Flannery O'Connor, letter, 15 Dec. 1948 • We shall call I, we, he, she, and they the subject forms —Roberts 1962 • I shall always remember two sentences he handed me —James Thurber, letter, 21 May 1954 • ... and "I did not think to tell them"—I should use in conversation without a second thought —Barnard 1979 • There was one I shall never forget —Gerald Holland, Atlantic, May 1971 • ... I shall be embarrassed by the check —Archibald MacLeish, letter, March 1972 • ... I should love to settle myself uncomfortably into a chair by Josef Hoffmann but I can't afford it —William J. Gass, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 3 Aug. 1986 Our conclusion is that the traditional rules about shall and will do not appear to have described real usage of these words very precisely at any time, although there is no question that they do describe the usage of some people some of the time and that they are more applicable in England than elsewhere. The historical tendency described by Strang toward the use of will only has developed further in America than in England, but not quite as far as the British writer Pamela Hansford Johnson suggests: • And then you suddenly find out, if you're an English writer, that no American really says "shall" and "should." —Pamela Hansford Johnson, quoted in The Writer's Place, ed. Peter Firchow, 1974 In current American English, shall and should, will and would are pretty much interchangeable, with the second pair more common. There is perhaps only one thing to concern the learner of English, and that is the business of questions mentioned by Warriner. Consider these two examples: • ... shall I be compassionate or shall I be uncompas-sionate? —William Faulkner, 25 Feb. 1957, in Faulkner in the University, 1959 • Shall we be relativists, and leave everybody's language alone ... ? —James Sledd, American Speech, Fall 1978 Both of these ask for an opinion, a preference, a decision. What do we want to do? If will replaces shall, the meaning changes. A prediction is asked for. What is going to happen? Shall also occurs in an interjected question of fixed rhetorical form. No answer is expected, and will is simply not used: • He was 6 foot 2.1 was somewhat shorter, shall I say, and from the city —Stephen A. Howard, quoted in Wallace Terry, Bloods, 1984 See also should, would. |
| 随便看 |
英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南，基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。