LINGUIST List 14.1400

Thu May 15 2003

Qs: Moroccan Linguists; English Shall/Will

Editor for this issue: Naomi Fox <foxlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Lu, Wen-ying, looking for linguists in Morocco
2. Andrew Elfenbein, Future Tense

Does anyone have the email addresses or contact information of

Bentahila, Adelali
UNIVERSITE SIDI MOHAMMED BEN ABDELLAH - FES, MOROCCO

Davies, E.
Ecole Super Roi Fahd Traduct, BP 410, Tanger, Morocco
Ecole Super Roi Fahd Traduct, Tanger, Morocco
UNIVERSITE ABDELMALEK ESSAADI, Fac Lettres, Tetouan, Morocco

I need to contact them to request for copyright permission for an
article of theirs so that the upcoming LSA Institute
(http://lsa2003.lin.msu.edu/) can place it on electronic course packs.
If you are whom I am looking for or if you know how to contact either
one of them, would you reply to me off the list at
luwmail.lib.msu.edu?

Thank you in advance for your help!!!

Lu
Wen-ying Lu (Although "Lu" is my last name, I am perfectly comfortable 
if you just call me Lu.)
Catalog Librarian and Linguistics Bibliographer
100 Library
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1048
Tel. 517-432-9120
FAX: 517-353-8969
e-mail: luwmail.lib.msu.edu

Dear Members of the Linguist List:

I would like your help in interpreting a textual crux in Mary
Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN involving the future tense.

Having promised to create a mate for his creature, Victor Frankenstein
destroys her at the last minute. The creature sees this destruction
and leaves Victor with the following threat: ''I go; but remember, I
shall be with you on your wedding-night.''

A few sentences later, Victor recalls the creature's words: ''And then
I thought again of his words, 'I will be with you
on your wedding-night.'''

Many pages later, after receiving a letter from his fiancee, Victor
once again thinks of the creature's words: ''This letter revived in my
memory what I had before forgotten, the threat of the
fiend, 'I will be with you on your wedding
night!'''

A few pages after this, Victor remembers the words for the last time:
''Nor can you wonder, that . . . I should almost regard him as
invincible; and that when he had pronounced the words, 'I shall
be with you on your wedding-night,'' I should regard the threatened
fate as unavoidable.''

As you can see, the crux involves how to understand the shuttling back
and forth between ''will'' and ''shall'' in the text. I have checked
the facsimile edition of Shelley's manuscript, and found that this
vacillation is indeed hers (rather than Percy Shelley's or a later
editor's).

I am familiar with the Wallis rules and Leslie Arnovick's treatment of
them in her DIACHRONIC PRAGMATICS. I have also examined the
discussions of the future tense in Traugott and Dasher's REGULARITY IN
SEMANTIC CHANGE, Denison's chapter on syntax in the CAMBRIDGE HISTORY;
Suzanne Fleischman's THE FUTURE IN THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE; Leo Hoye's
ADVERBS AND MODALITIY IN ENGLISH; Robert Binnick's TIME AND THE VERB;
and articles on ''shall'' and ''will'' by Julian and Zelda Boyd, van
Ostade, and Taglicht. I would be grateful for other references that
might help clarify Shelley's usage, as well as more general
reflections on the history of shall/will in British written English.

Subject-Language: English; Code: ENG