Will and shall as markers of modality and/or futurity in Middle English

Abstract

In the following paper I will approach the question of how will and shall lost their modal meanings to become future markers, i.e. in what constructions they were used and what specific meanings they conveyed in these linguistic contexts that allowed an interpretation in a mere future sense. Bybee et al. (The Evolution of Grammar. Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World, University of Chicago Press, 1994: 244) define a genuine future tense as “a prediction on the part of the speaker that the situation in the proposition, which refers to an event taking place after the moment of speech, will hold”. Thus, as a mere future a linguistic item must be devoid of any modal meaning and express just a prediction. Although willan and sculan still occurred as lexical verbs in Old English, they had already developed auxiliary status and were used in periphrastic constructions (cf. Wischer, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 42: 165–178, 2006). Here they most often conveyed a deontic modal meaning (of volition or obligation). On the basis of data drawn from the ME part of the Helsinki Corpus I hope to shed some light on the use of will and shall in ME, as well as to contribute to a better understanding of the grammaticalisation process of future grams in general.

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