Re: Will
| From: | BP Jonsson <bpj@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, April 18, 2000, 11:20 |
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At 21:33 17.4.2000 -0400, Nik Taylor wrote:
>I've read that there's a good deal of controversy over whether the
>distinction was *ever* that cut-and-dry, or whether that distinction was
>imposed on "will/shall" by prescriptivists.
Hardly. It is old *and* alive and well in Danish and Danish-influenced
Norwegian.
E.g. _Du vil komme og jeg skal vente_ "You intend to come, and I
emphatically intend to wait/feel obliged to wait."
Swedish would normally use _ska_ as unmarked future, _tänker_ "think(s)" as
unemphatic intention and _kommer_ + infinitive for certainty about what's
going to pass. Obligation is expressed with _måste_ or a stressed
_ska_. (Older Swedish spelling was _skall_, Danish always had _skal_,
whereas modern Swedish and Norwegian have _ska_.)
/BP
B.Philip Jonsson
mailto:bpj@netg.se
mailto:melroch@my-deja.com
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