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On the Origin of the Grammarians' Rules for the Use of Shall and Will
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The most important study of the future with shall and will in Modern English is the article by Professor Fries published twenty years ago. In Part One, “The origin and development of the conventional rules,” Professor Fries presents a remarkably concise and thorough survey of the treatment of shall and will by English grammarians from 1530 to the early nineteenth century. In Part Two he summarizes the results of an analysis of the use of shall and will in English plays from 1557 to 1915, compares American with English usage, considers the theory of ‘glimmering through’ of ‘primitive meanings,‘ and states his conclusions. Professor Fries reverts to the subject in his recent book, American English Grammar. Here he says:
The conventional rules for shall and will did not arise from any attempt to describe the practice of the language as it actually was either before the eighteenth century or at the time the grammar was written in which these rules first appeared. The authors of these grammars (Lowth and Ward) definitely repudiated usage…. That the general usage of shall and will did not at any time during the history of Modern English agree with the conventional rules is a conclusion that can be reasonably drawn from the facts revealed in the following charts.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1947
References
1 PMLA, xl (1925), 963-1024.
2 New York, 1940, pp. 150-167.
3 Fries's conclusions have been summarized and accepted by Professor Baugh in his History of the English Language (New York, 1935), p. 346.
4 My own results give no justification for the grammarians' rules for use of shall and will in subordinate clauses.
5 Edited by G. B. Harrison (London, 1935).
6 Volume i of Spedding's edition of Bacon's works.
7 Life and letters of Endymion Porter, ed. Dorothea Townshend (London, 1897).
8 In Gosse's Life and Letters of John Donne (New York, 1899).
9 The Oxinden letters 1607-1642, ed. Dorothy Gardiner (London, 1933).
10 The Conway Letters, ed. Marjorie Nicolson (New Haven, 1930). The letters of Lady Conway in the first three hundred pages of the volume.
11 Ed. G. C. Moore Smith (Oxford, 1928), first 100 pp. read.
12 The small body of letters by Dorothy's father, Sir Peter, Osborne printed in the Everyman Library edition of her letters gives the following results: first person shall 7, will 1 in main and subordinate clauses; second and third persons shall 1, will 18.
13 Ed. Rae Blanchard (Oxford, 1941). Letters by Steele only in the first 200 pp. read.
14 Ed. Walter Graham (Oxford, 1941), pp. 1-216 read.
15 But not Swift. In 150 pp. of the Journal to Stella, ed. G. A. Aitken (London, 1901) I found: first person shall 80, will 206; 2nd, 3rd persons shall 39, will 212. Dryden also prefers will to shall in the first person by a ratio of 37:19, and has will predominantly in the second and third persons.
16 PMLA, xl (1925) 971.