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A note on some aspects of the use of WILL in affirmative declarative sentences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Brian Robinson  and
Liliane Haegeman
Brian Robinson
Affiliation:
University of Ghent
Liliane Haegeman
Affiliation:
University of Ghent
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Extract

Although there has been extensive research into the usage and interpretation of the modal auxiliary WILL (Leech, 1971: 52—54; Palmer, 1974: 104—115) sentences of the type (1) John will fight for justice. (2) Men will fight for justice. (3) John will be here. may still present problems of analysis.

Utilizing Palmer's system, we can interpret sentence (I) as implying the following: (i) simple futurity (ii) volition (iii) insistence (closely related to (ii) (Palmer, 1974: III)) (iv) characteristic activity.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 107 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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