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
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