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Shall indicates the speaker is taking the responsibility for the carrying out ofthe
action:
The law says the people shall share.
I shall see to it that he is punished.
Will, according to Sweetser (1990:55) does not indicate some force or barrier,
but a completed path to an action or intention. It is not clear how this fits into a forcedynamic
analysis, but some past analysers have regarded the future will as always
epistematic; whereas like all modals except present-tense shall have both a root and an
epistematic modality and the epistematic use of will is an extension of the purely
futurity use. Sweetser exemplifies this with two sentences:
l4a.
l4b.
He will be home in three hours - root modality: real futurity
He will be home by now; I just saw the lights -epistemic
modality (Sweetser 1990:55)
Here the understanding is that the person is or is not at home, but on future
verification it will be discovered that he is at home.
There is also the future-perfect form where the event is both past and present i.e.
it is between a root and an epistemic will e.g.
He will have recovered by July - he will then be able to work.
By the time you arrive, he will have been here for a week.
According to Talmy (1988:79) will not is another modal that seems to have
regular physical reference:
"The knob wouldn't come off, no matter how hard1pulled. "
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