Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Shall and will. Shall. and. will. Shall and will are two of the English modal verbs. They have various uses, including the expression of propositions about the future, in what is usually referred to as the future tense of English. Historically, prescriptive grammar stated that, when expressing pure futurity (without any additional meaning such ...
The English modal auxiliary verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality, properties such as possibility and obligation. [a] They can most easily be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participles or plain forms [b]) and by their lack of the ending ‑(e)s for the third-person singular.
Modal verb. A modal verb is a type of verb that contextually indicates a modality such as a likelihood, ability, permission, request, suggestion, order, obligation, necessity, possibility. Modal verbs generally accompany the base (infinitive) form of another verb having semantic content. [1] In English, the modal verbs commonly used are can ...
The first English grammar, Bref Grammar for English by William Bullokar, published in 1586, does not use the term "auxiliary" but says: All other verbs are called verbs-neuters-un-perfect because they require the infinitive mood of another verb to express their signification of meaning perfectly: and be these, may, can, might or mought, could, would, should, must, ought, and sometimes, will ...
you’dn’t’ve. you would not have / you wouldn’t have. you’ll. you shall / you will. you’re. you are. you’ve. you have. ^ Ain’t is used colloquially by some speakers as a substitute for a number of contractions, but is considered incorrect by others.
The King's English is less like a dictionary than Modern English Usage: it consists of longer articles on more general topics, such as vocabulary, syntax, and punctuation and draws heavily on examples from many sources throughout. One of its sections is a systematic description of the appropriate uses of shall and will.
The question concerns "formality." By that I mean not wanting to sound too formal, or snooty, or condescending, in spoken language or in a piece of writing that is written in conversational English. One of the topic headings in this article could have said something like "The use of will or shall in conversational English."
English lacks a morphological future tense, since there is no verb inflection which expresses that an event will occur at a future time. [2] However, the term "future tense" is sometimes applied to periphrastic constructions involving modals such as will, shall, and to be going to.