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70
extraneous circumstances or by any special influence except the speaker's option; this is its exhaustive
characteristic. In keeping with this, the form of the will-future in question may be tentatively called the
"voluntary future".
On the other hand, comparing the environmental characteristics of shall with the corresponding
environmental background of will, it is easy to see that, as different from will, the first person shall expresses a
future process that will be realized without the will of the speaker, irrespective of his choice. In accordance
with the exposed meaning, the shall-torm of the first person future should be referred to as the "non-voluntary",
i.e. as the weak member of the corre-sponding opposition.
Further observations of the relevant textual data show that some verbs constituting a typical environment of
the non-voluntary shall-future (i.e. verbs inherently alien to the expression of voluntary actions) occur also with
the voluntary will, but in a different meaning, namely, in the meaning of an active action the performance of
which is freely chosen by the speaker. Cf.:
Your arrival cannot have been announced to his Majesty. I will see about it (B. Shaw).
In the given example the verb see has the active meaning of ensuring something, of intentionally arranging
matters connected with something, etc.
Likewise, a number of verbs of the voluntary will-environmental features (i.e. verbs presupposing the actor's
free will in performing the action) combine also with the non-voluntary shall, but in the meaning of an action
that will take place irrespective of the will of the speaker. Cf.:
I'm very sorry, madam, but I'm going to faint. I shall go off, madam, if I don't have something (K.
Mansfield).
Thus, the would-be same verbs are in fact either homonyms, or else lexico-semantic variants of the
corresponding lexemes of the maximally differing characteristics.
At the final stage of our study the disclosed characteristics of the two first-person futures are checked on the
lines of transformational analysis. The method will consist not in free structural manipulations with the
analysed constructions, but in the textual search for the respective changes of the auxiliaries depending on the
changes in the infinitival environments.
Applying these procedures to the texts, we note that when the construction of the voluntary will-future is
expanded (complicated) by a syntactic part re-modelling the whole collocation into one expressing an
involuntary action, the auxiliary will is automatically replaced by shall. In particular, it happens when the
expanding elements convey the meaning of supposition or uncertainty. Cf.:
Give me a goddess's work to do; and I will do it (B. Shaw). > I don't know what I shall do with Barbara (B.
Shaw). Oh, very well, very well: I will write another prescription (B. Shaw). > I shall perhaps write to your
mother (K. Mansfield).
Thus, we conclude that within the system of the English future tense a peculiar minor category is expressed
which affects only the forms of the first person. The category is constituted by the opposition of the forms will
+ Infinitive and shall + Infinitive expressing, respectively, the voluntary future and the non-voluntary future.
Accordingly, this category may tentatively be called the "category of futurity option".
The future in the second and third persons, formed by the indiscriminate auxiliary will, does not express this
category, which is dependent on the semantics of the persons: normally it would be irrelevant to indicate in an
obligatory way the aspect of futurity option otherwise than with the first person, i.e. the person of self.
This category is neutralized in the contracted form -'II, which is of necessity indifferent to the expression of
futurity option. As is known, the traditional analysis of the contracted future states that -'II stands for will, not
for shall. However, this view is not supported by textual data. Indeed, bearing in mind the results of our study,
it is easy to demonstrate that the contracted forms of the future may be traced both to will and to shall. Cf.:
I'll marry you then, Archie, if you really want it (M. Dickens). > I will marry you. I'll have to think about it
(M. Dickens).
>
I shall have to think about it.
From the evidence afforded by the historical studies of the language we know that the English contracted
form of the future -'ll has actually originated from the auxiliary will. So, in Modern English an interesting
process of redistribution of the future forms has taken place, based apparently on the cbntamination will
> 'll
< shall. As a result, the form -'ll in the first person expresses not the same "pure" future as is expressed by the
indiscriminate will in the second and third persons.
The described system of the British future is by far more complicated than the expression of the future tense
in the other national variants of English, in particular, in American English, where the future form of the first
person is functionally equal with the other persons. In British English a possible tendency to a similar levelled