A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

56 Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

Prescriptive grammar note

Some people insist that can is not to be used in a deontic sense - that pennission should be

expressed by may instead. There is absolutely no truth to this claim about can, which is used

frequently in all of the three types of meaning we have distinguished, and has been for cen­

turies. No evidence whatever supports the view that the deontic use is in some way incorrect.

8.2 Futurity, modality, and will

In this section we treat a special feature of the meaning of one modal,
will. There are some languages that have a three-term tense system contrasting past,
present and future. Contrary to what is traditionally assumed, English is not one of
them: it has no future tense. It does have several ways of talking about future time,
and the most basic one does involve the auxiliary will. Nonetheless, will belongs
grammatically and semantically with the auxiliaries that mark mood rather than
with the various markers of tense.
There is an intrinsic connection between future time and modality: we don't have
the same kind of knowledge about the future as we do about the past and the present,
so it isn't possible to be fully factual about future events or situations. It shouldn't be
too surprising, then, that a modal auxiliary might be used for talking about the future.
The close association between will and modality may be illustrated with the fol­
lowing sets of contrasts:

[5 6] a. She beat him in under an hour. b. She will beat him in under an hour.

11 a. He likes you. b. He will like you.

[57] a. She left Paris yesterday. b. She will have left Paris yesterday.

11 a. That is the plumber. b. That will be the plumber.

[58] a. Australia meets Sweden in the b. Australia will meet Sweden in the

Davis Cup final in December. Davis Cup final in December.

The examples in [56] illustrate the difference that is commonly found between

statements about the past or present and those about the future: [ia] and [iia] will

be construed as statements of fact, whereas [ib] and [iib] have more of the char­

acter of predictions.

In [57], will is used in the [b] versions with situations located in past and present

time, and the difference between them and the [a] versions is clearly one of

modality, not time. The [a] versions are presented as statements of fact, the [b]

ones as inferences.

Both versions of [58] locate the situation in future time, so again the difference

between them is one of modality, not time reference. The [a] version is more

assured, and appropriate only in a context where the finalists have been deter­

mined; the [b] version could be used to make a prediction earlier in the competi­

tion (when it isn't clear who will survive until December without being knocked

out of the tournament).