• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.99-122
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• 2006

The purpose of this paper is to explain the meanings and uses of the English auxiliaries SHALL/WILL. The complexity of modern usage of SHALL/WILL has been one of the most disputable themes of traditional English grammar. The paper purported to address the study and analysis of diachronic and synchronic approach to the two auxiliaries. A general view of the figures of Fries'(1925) survey was added for further investigation. The results of the study showed that these auxiliaries express some of various modal meanings associated with the volitional or emotional attitude of the speaker without implying futurity. The findings also suggested that the use of SHALL in present-day English is restricted to non-volitional future with the first person but the practice of this use is also diminished by the expansion of the use of WILL, and the original meaning of WILL, 'to desire or wish', has generally been replaced by other verbs or modal forms. But sentences which seem to indicate futurity are often tinged with modal senses. Therefore, WILL/SHALL should be considered to act either as tense auxiliary or as modal auxiliary depending on situational contexts in which it occurs.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.175-190
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• 2012

The purpose of this article is to explain the meanings and uses of the English auxiliaries will morpho-syntactically, and answer the question of whether will is a tense auxiliary or a modal one. Some writers even exclude will completely from the semantics of the modal auxiliaries. They argue that the semantics of will is fundamentally non-modal and has only a few modal-like uses. There are some people who treat will to be semantically separate from the other modal auxiliaries. In the light of modal will, the semantics of will basically remains anchored in volition because the lack of required speaker subjectivity, but has undergone so much semantic bleaching that it may also express future time without volition. On the other hand, the semantics of will in the exclusionist view is erroneous and that its semantics is in fact closely related to the semantics of the other modals. This view reinforces the argument that the morpho-syntactic kinship of will, can, may and must also reflects semantic kinship. It is suggested that all the modal auxiliaries show that the correspondence relation is non-verified but potential. And the specific place that will holds is that the correspondence is unverified at the time of utterance but will turn out to become verified. The overall conclusion is that idiosyncratic morpho-syntax shared by the modals reflects the semantics and pragmatics of the English modal auxiliaries and is forced also to include will.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.115-121
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• 2020

The primary aim of this paper is to discuss the historical development or grammaticalization of English adverbial -ly suffix and provide a diachronic analysis of manner adverbs and sentence adverbs from the perspective of secondary grammaticalization. The grammaticalization includes both the primary grammaticalization from a lexical to a grammatical and the secondary grammaticalization from a less grammatical to a more grammatical status. The emergence of the manner adverbs is due to the primary grammaticalization from OE adjectival suffix -lic to ME adverbial suffix -ly. In contrast, the emergence of sentence adverbs is due to the secondary grammaticalization from manner adverbs in VP domain to sentence adverbs in TP domain with grammatical features of tense and modality. This paper concludes that the secondary grammaticalization of the English adverbial -ly suffix includes the change from manner adverbs to sentence adverbs which obtain a new grammatical function of tense and modality.

• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.45-59
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• 2013

In his book Worlds and Individuals: Possible and Otherwise, Takashi Yagisawa Yagisawa argues that his own theory is better than Lewis's theory by showing that his own theory can deal with important objections to modal realism more successfully than Lewis's. In particular, Yagisawa claims that by adopting modal tenses, he can respond to many important objections to modal realism in a uniform way. In this paper, I argue that Lewis can also successfully respond to Peacocke's objection in an exactly parallel way to Yagisawa's by distinguishing existence at the actual world from existence at other possible worlds and that Yagisawa's response to van Inwagen's objection does not succeed. I conclude that Yagisawa fails to show that his own theory is better than Lewis's.

• Language and Information
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.33-52
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• 2014

This paper proposes a unified structural account of some instances of the English Modals and Semi-auxiliaries. The classification and the syntactic/structural description of the English Modal auxiliary verbs and verb-related elements have long been the center for many proposals in the history of generative syntax. According to van Gelderen (1993) and Lightfoot (2002), it was sometime around 1380 that the Tense-node (T) appeared in the phrasal structures of the English language, and the T-node is under which the English Modal auxiliaries occupy. Closely related is the existing evidence that English Modals were used as main verbs up to the early sixteenth century (Lightfoot 1991, Han 2000). This paper argues for a bi-clausal approach to English Modal auxiliaries with the infinitival particle 'to' such as 'ought to' 'used to' and 'dare (to)' 'need (to)', etc. and Semi-auxiliaries including 'be to' and 'have to'. More specifically, 'ought' in 'ought to' constructions, for instance, undergoes V-to-T movement within the matrix clause, just like 'HAVEAux' and all instances of 'BE', whereas 'to' occupies the T position of the embedded complement clause. By proposing the bi-clausal account, Radford's (2004, 2009) problems can be solved. Further, the historical motivation for the account takes a stance along with Norde (2009) and Brinton & Traugott (2005) in that Radford's (2004, 2009) syncretization of the two positions of the infinitival particle 'to' is no different from the 'boundary loss' in the process of Grammariticalization. This line of argument supports Krug's (2011), and in turn Bolinger's(1980) generalization on Auxiliaryhood, while providing a novel insight into Head movement of V-to-T in Present Day English.

• Korean Linguistics
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• v.74
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• pp.1-24
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• 2017

This paper investigated -eullanjira sentence as a kind of construction of the Southwestern dialect in Korea. Five informants were selected to form the main corpus of -eullanjira. Through analyzing the corpus, its semantic, syntactic and morphological characteristics were figured out. Firstly, a view of construction grammar was adopted to capture the semantic and syntactic characteristics of -eullanjira. The construction of -eullanjira was established as "Xdo Yeullanjira Z". Syntactically, -do was found to be a common auxiliary particle, which allowed nouns, adverbs, verbs and adjectives to appear at the position of X, while only verbs and adjectives could appear at the position of Y. Subject-honorific, causative and passive prefinal endings could coexist with Y, while tense and modal prefinal endings could not. Z was an embedded clause, which had the semantic feature of [-DOUBT], meaning 'it should be done undoubtedly'. The formation of -eullanjira was next examined both diachronically and synchronically. It was found there was a conjuntive ending of Middle Korean, corresponding -eullanjira, namely, -landai. Finally, -eullanjira was newly analyzed as [[-eulla-]+[-n-ji-ra]].