Craig,
The OE infinitive of "shall" was sculan. Its preterite form was
scolde.
tj
On Monday 06/06/2011 at 7:35 am, Craig Hancock wrote:
> Gregg,
> The spelling I am used to seeing is "deontic" and "epistemic"
> for any
> of you who want to do more research.
> My Old English is very rusty and the books are in Albany, but
> "shall"
> derived from a verb meaning something like "be obligated, owe." It
> actually grammaticalized earlier than "will" (from "willan"? to want?
> Someone can correct me on that one.) "Cunnan" meant "know". "Magan"
> meant "have power". For a very good source on grammaticalization, I
> would recommend Joan Bybee's "Language, Usage, and Cognition"
> (Cambridge, 2010).
> These modals invert with the subject to form questions, take a
> negative
> directly after, and don't have a third person inflection for present
> tense. They have also lost their ability to act as the main verb in a
> sentence.
> You raise a controversial issue that relates to our belief in
> whether
> grammar is innately wired into the brain or is socially semiotic,
> growing in interaction with other language users over a lifetime. If
> grammar is wired in, then there isn't (can't be?) a large difference
> between reading/writing and speaking beyond what it takes to represent
> language in graphic form and learn the largely arbitrary graphic
> conventions that arrive with that. If grammar evolves in social
> interaction, then we might expect a far more complex (or lexically
> dense) grammar to evolve within written registers, especially within
> technical fields. I believe the latter is the case, which means we
> have an obligation to understand those differences and help mentor our
> students along the path toward competence in those registers. This is
> difficult these days precisely because knowledge about language has
> been undervalued for several decades.
> The great value (and occasional frustration) of ATEG is that
> participants bring different perspectives to the table. These views
> are certainly not shared by everyone in the group.
>
> Craig
> >
>
>
> Bill & Craig & Kathleen,
>>
>> Bill, I love how terms of obligation are put so politely. And,
>> Craig, thank you for including Kathleen's reference to deonatic use
>> and epistemical use of modals. Anyone stepping into the ATEG pool
>> soon discovers the waters there run very deep, indeed.
>> But I want to get back to some of what was offered by Craig in terms
>> of modals. Craig, you say, "All the pure modals were once main
>> verbs. . ." Do you have any instances of their use in this manner?
>> I have no doubt that you are correct.
>> I also appreciate that you add that now they "serve to ground a
>> statement within the judgement of the speaker." Too often we miss
>> point of view. But this reminds me of something I have barely read,
>> Constructions at Work by Adele E. Goldberg, writing about argument
>> structure constructions. This reminds me of another work I have read
>> from beginning to end, Endangered Minds by Jane M. Healy, in which
>> she writes that forms of language that contain "more complex
>> grammatical devices are called elaborated codes. Those conveying
>> ideas without such complex grammatical structures are called
>> restricted codes and are the ones viewed as more 'primitive.'" She
>> claims that, unless 'literature is carefully taught by a skilled
>> teacher who knows how to make the text come alive and who is able to
>> make the huge time commitment to help students with unfamiliar
>> vocabulary, grammar, and voice, I can tell you what many kids do--
>> they simply don't read it. Instead, they continue to practice--and
>> to embed in their brains--language that some linguists refer to quite
>> descriptively as 'primitive.'"
>> John R. Searle writes in Making The Social World that language not
>> only moves from identifying real things to identifying imaginary
>> things (and metaphors connected to real things) to conceptualizations
>> (that are approached through metaphor), but it also creates a new
>> reality through laws that show themselves to be real in that they
>> entail punishment and create jobs for those who carry out those
>> punishments--which brings us back to Bill's reference to "shall,"
>> where "the party of the first part" shall carry out a certain act or
>> be subject to punishment. Thus, we move beyond the being "primitive"
>> in our use of language.
>> This shows how important grammarians are to educators. And it shows
>> why language seems so intimidating to our students. They sense its
>> power to create the social world that has grown out of the natural
>> world in which language first evolved.
>> Shall the world ever recognize the worth of the grammarian? Time
>> will tell. Meanwhile, I hope to hear more about how these modals
>> became conceptual shells encasing our words with judgment.
>>
>> Gregg
>>
>>
>> On Jun 5, 2011, at 7:31 PM, Spruiell, William C wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I suspect at least some of the motivation for "shall" in this
>>> statement is the statement's status as a fulfillment of a legal
>>> requirement. "Shall" isn't just (very) formal in American English,
>>> it's heavily associated with legal and pseudo-legal genres (like
>>> bylaws). Ask someone to imitate legalese, and "shall" will
>>> typically show up right alongside "party of the first part" and
>>> "make known and publish." I think OSHA requires a sign like that,
>>> although I don't think the "shall" part is mandatory (if it's not
>>> OSHA, then it's just about every state government in the country).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --- Bill Spruiell
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 10:09 PM, Kathleen Ward <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I've always heard it called the deonatic use ofnthe modal --
>>> something
>>> that imposes an obligation on the hearer of an utterance. It
>>> is a
>>> characteristic of modals in English that they have both
>>> deonatic and
>>> epistemically (degree of certainty) uses.
>>>
>>> Kathleen M. Ware.
>>>
>>> University of California, Davis
>>>
>>>
>>> On Saturday, June 4, 2011, Jane Saral <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Friends have just returned from their annual pilgrimage to
>>>> Ashland, Oregon, and on one flight they saw a sign in the flight
>>>> attendants' area that said, "Hands shall be washed before serving
>>>> food or drink."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What is this use of "shall" called?
>>>>
>>>> Jane Saral
>>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
>>>> interface at:
>>>> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
>>>> and select "Join or leave the list"
>>>>
>>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>>>>
>>>
>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's
>>> web interface at:
>>> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
>>> and select "Join or leave the list"
>>>
>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>>>
>>>
>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
>>> interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and
>>> select "Join or leave the list"
>>>
>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
>>> interface at:
>>> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
>>> and select "Join or leave the list"
>>>
>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>>
>>
>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
>> interface
>> at:
>> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
>> and select "Join or leave the list"
>>
>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>>
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> interface at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/