Academic Paper |
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| Title: | 'Will': tense or modal or both? |
| Author: | Raphael Salkie |
| Email: | click here to access email |
| Institution: | University of Brighton |
| Linguistic Field: | Syntax |
| Subject Language: |
English
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| Abstract: | Most grammarians refuse to treat 'will' as a marker of future tense in English. We examine the arguments against treating 'will' as a tense and find them weak; the arguments in favour of treating it as a modal also turn out to be poor. We argue that 'will' should be treated as a marker of future tense, and that its so-called modal uses are either not modal or have independent explanations. The one exception is the volitional use of 'will': to account for this, we propose that willingness is a semantic relic from an earlier meaning of the word. |
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This article appears in English Language and Linguistics Vol. 14, Issue 2, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
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