SHALL AND WILL IN BRITISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH: A FREQUENCY STUDY 1 BackgroundNo single issue has received more attention in discussions of British-American differences than the use of shall and will. It has been taken up in general descriptions of American English, such as Krapp (1925), Mencken (1936), Fries (1940), Zandvoort (1968), Forgue and McDavid (1972), and Svejcer (1978. The topic has been dealt with in usage books (e.g. Fowler 1965), grammars (e.g. Quirk et al. 1979), and articles and monographs dealing with the English verb (e.g. Joos 1964, Leech 1971). There are also special studies of the use of shall and will in American vs. British English, notably Fries (1925) and Taubitz (1978).In spite of all the attention given to the topic, uncertainty remainsfor a variety of reasons. In the first place, the semantic complexity of the modals makes them notoriously difficult to describe. A particular problem with shall and will is the long-standing conflict between attitude and use, between prescriptive rules and speaker performance. It is further uncertain whether and to what extent observations on shall and will are applicable to should and would. Finally, it has become increasingly clear that language varies according to a range of dimensions, such as medium, regional and social dialect, register, and style. To be adequate, statements on British-American differences must specify what type of American English differs from British English, and in what respect. This necessitates a satisfactory basis of comparison, preferably with a broad representation of comparable text types for each of the two national forms of English.The availability of the Brown Corpus of American English texts and its British English counterpart, the LOB Corpus, has made it possible to investigate the problem of shall and will on the basis of comparable material representing a variety of text types (all from printed sources). Coates and Leech (1980) deal briefly with the modals, including the forms we focus on here, using the two corpora. Krogvig (1981) is a more detailed investigation of shall, will, should, and would made on the basis of the same material. The present paper summarizes some of the main results of Krogvig's study.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.