English Language & Usage Asked on December 25, 2020
Reading elsewhere on this forum, it seems that "will" when used as a modal auxiliary is not regarded as having tense (despite that dictionaries seem to regard "would" as its past tense), even though it is used to convey future tense. Instead, posted comments seem to regard "will" has having mood. If that’s the case, what mood? Often related modals like would, could, should, and might are considered to have "conditional" mood, I don’t see what their counterparts (will, can, shall, may) mood designations are.
I found this, https://www.thoughtco.com/tense-grammar-1692532, to be helpful in that it seems to imply that "tense" is more of a syntactical classification and that may be separate from the semantic role of a verb. But it also seems to imply that "can" and "may" are conditional moods, and possibly that "will" is also, but perhaps that is intended to refer to the construction of the modal with the verb it is supporting, as in "I may walk" is present conditional.
Answered by tangosquared on December 25, 2020
Historically, the English modals had tense, and mostly came in pairs of present/past: can/could, will/would, shall/should, may/might, dare/durst.
There are vestiges of this pairing still, so can, will, shall become could, would, should in past-tense reported speech. ("I will!" "He said he would!")
But all the originally past-tense forms also have independent uses, and in those uses it does not make sense to talk of any of them as having a tense.
In my view it does not make any sense to talk of mood in relation to them either. vaguer and less clear by saying "the volitional" instead of "modal will".
Answered by Colin Fine on December 25, 2020
Get help from others!
Recent Answers
Recent Questions
© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP