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Modal Verbs II
Will, as a modal verb
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, has four meanings: WILLINGNESS, INSISTENCE, INTENTION, and PREDICTABILITY
A. WILLINGNESS = weak volition
Who will lend me a cigarette? I will.
My chauffeur will help you.
This meaning of will is common especially in second-person requests: Will you please open the
door for me?
weak-volitional Will is normally unstressed and can be contracted to ll

B. INSISTENCE = strong volition
He will go swimming in dangerous waters.
Jane, why will you keep making jokes about Aunt Betty?
I will go to the dance and no one shall stop me.
This meaning of will is not very common, possibly because of the strong emotional overtones
accompanying the idea of insistence.
With second and third person subjects, the feeling of exasperation at someone elses obstinacy
is uppermost
With a first person subject, the speaker makes his own uncompromising determination felt, with
a force the verbal equivalent of banging ones fist on the table.
strong-volitional Will is always stressed and cannot be contracted to ll

C. INTENTION = intermediate volition
I will write tomorrow.
Well celebrate this very night! (= Lets)
Well stop your pocket money if you dont behave.
Somewhere between the submissive volition of willingness and the assertive volition of
insistence comes the intermediate concept of intention.
It occurs mainly with the first person subjects and conveys the sense (depending on the context)
of: a promise, a threat or a corporate decision.
The volitional element of meaning is reinforced by a feeling that in the act of speaking, a
decision has been made, and that the fulfillment of the intention is guaranteed.
This will is generally contracted to ll
All three volitional uses of will are limited to human or at least animate subjects




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Will was described as a future time auxiliary as well. See Future Tenses lecture.
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D. PREDICTABILITY
By now he will be eating dinner.
That will be the milkman.
They will have arrived by now.
This meaning of will can be parallel to those of logical necessity MUST, which can replace will
in all the three examples above with only a slight change in meaning.
The predictability sense of will is naturally suited to scientific or quasi-scientific statements: If
litmus paper is dipped in acid, it will turn red. Such conditional statements are of the general
form: Whenever X happens, it is predictable that Y happens.
In many general statements, whether of a proverbial, scientific or some other kind, habitual
predictability comes to have the force of typical or characteristic behaviour: A lion will attack
a man only when hungry./ Truth will out.
Characteristic behaviour is also the meaning of will in descriptions such as: Hell go all day
without eating./ On racing days, hell be in the betting shop by ten oclock, and there hell stay
till the pubs open./ Shell chatter away for hours on end if you give her the chance.
predictability Will is normally unstressed and can be contracted to ll

Shall
In statements with second- and third-person subjects SHALL has two infrequent uses
corresponding to those of WILL, as INSISTENCE and WILLINGNESS, the difference however is
that SHALL implicates the will of the speaker rather than that of the subject of the sentence.
With first-person subjects it has the meaning of INTENTION

A. WILLIGNESS = weak volition, on the part of the speaker
He shall be rewarded if he is patient.
Good dog, you shall have a bone when we get home.
You shall stay with us as long as you like.
The implication here is that the speaker is conferring a favour, so one is unlikely to hear this use
of SHALL except in address to pets or young children
B. INSISTENCE = strong volition, on the part of the speaker
You shall obey my orders!
No one shall stop me!
He shall be mine!
This meaning is also of very restricted use and carries strong overtones of imperiousness
It suggests that the listeners will is entirely subservient to that of the speaker
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C. INTENTION = intermediate volition, on the part of the speaker
I shall write tomorrow.
We shall celebrate tonight.
We shall stop your pocket money if you dont behave.
SHALL has an intermediate volitional sense of intention, which does not overlap with the
previous two meanings, as it occurs only with first-person subjects.

RELATION between VOLITIONAL SHALL and WILL

WILL
A. Weak volition of subject

B. strong volition of subject

C. intermediate volition of
subject
SHALL
A. Weak volition of speaker

B. strong volition of
speaker

C. intermediate volition of
speaker

MODAL AUXILIARIES in questions
when we ask questions we anticipate the attitude of the person being asked, and use the form
appropriate for his reply. MAY, MUST = indicate the listeners authority
May I open the window? (Will you permit ?)
Yes, you may. (Yes, I do permit)
Must they lock the door? (Will you oblige ?)
Yes, they must. (Yes, I do oblige)
such a change of person is also found in questions with SHALL: (SHALL = the will of the listener)
Shall I carry your suitcase? (Do you want me to carry your suitcase?)
Shall we have dinner? (Do you agree with my intention to have dinner?)
MAY in its possibility sense does not occur at all in questions, where its function is usurped by
CAN.
NEED as an auxiliary verb may be considered the negative and interrogative counterpart of
MUST in both the sense of compulsion and that of logical necessity. In questions, however,
the semantic distinctions which obtain between MUST and HAVE(GOT) TO in statements seem
to fade away, so NEED is virtually interchangeable with DO HAVE TO or HAVE..GOT TO:
Need I have a passport? Yes, Im afraid you must.
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Do I have to have a passport? Yes, Im afraid you have to.
Need anyone be lying? Yes, they must be.
Does someone have to be lying? Yes, they have to be.
MUST occurs alongside NEED and DO...HAVE TO in questions, but rather in special
circumstances: to express obligation imposed by the speaker, or when the question form
presupposes some positive assertion that has been mentioned in or suggested by the preceding
conversation:
MR. X.: Well, the purse isnt here, so wed better look for it at the station.
MRS. X: Must it be at the station? We could have dropped it elsewhere, you know.
Must = in this example means = Your attitude suggests that the purse must be at the station, but I am
asking you to question that view.
MUST, NEED and DO HAVE TO are all used in querulous type of question, usually with a
second-person subject Although the logical meaning of these auxiliaries is Is it obligatory?
the force of the question is probably ironic, communicating at two levels: Is it a fact that you
cant help this annoying behavior ? (but of course, I know that you could stop if you wanted
to).
Must you make that dreadful noise?
Do we have to have jam roll every day?
Need you drop ash all over my best carpet?