Res facta quae tamen fingi potuit (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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linguaphiles2022-02-23 11:19 am
pauamma) wrote in linguaphiles2022-02-23 11:19 am
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I shall bend words to my will. Or something.
Important note: I'm planning to point Lingthusiasm here because I'd love to read their take on it. If you comment on this, please state whether you're willing for them to use it in a future podcast episode. (Obviously, I am, both for this and for anything I reply to others' comments with.
This MJD blog post about their own use of "shall" and "will" got me wondering about historical use of them in context. I find that historical graph of English use patterns interesting.
There are 2 clearly separated groups, a high-use group of two ("we shall see" and "you will see") and a low-use group of a dozen or so ("I will see", "You will see" with an uppercase y, "We will see" with an uppercase w, "We shall see" with an uppercase w, "I shall see", "you shall see", "he will see", "ye shall see", "they will see", "You shall see" with an uppercase y, "He will see" with an uppercase y, "they shall see", "They will see" with an uppercase t, "he shall see" (both lowercase and uppercase h), "who shall see", and "who will see"). These two groups and the large separation between them appear to be largely American English, as they're much less visible in British English. As uppercase and lowercase pairs ("You/you" and "We/we") end up split between groups, sentence-initial usage patterns may be different from patterns in other sentence positions.
Frequencies in the high-use group wobble substantially and there's a large intra-group gap between the mid 1950s and the mid 1990s. Frequencies in the low-use group are much steadier and the (much shorter) intra-group gap there is "you shall see" between the mid 1800s and the mid 1810s with a peak in 1809 that's below the high-use group but much closer to it than to the rest of the low-use group. That brief excursion from the low-use group is absent from Google's American English corpus and wholly due to its British corpus, which also shows two excursions up by "you will see", one between 1910 and 1923 peaking halfway between groups in 1918 and the other between 1938 and 1950 peaking in 1944; both might be due to an influx of American English speakers in Great Britain then, although I don't see those peaks having an steadier American English equivalent.
And then there's "we will see", which after being in the low-use group until about 1970, detaches from it then, with its frequency going up sharply, and essentially enters the high-use group between 1980 and 1985 depending on where you place the boundaries of that group. British English also shows you will see splitting off in the early 1920s and ending up alone about half-way between the two groups.
I'm also curious about similar patterns in other regional English corpora. Anyone knowing of any is welcome to explore it and report or discuss their findings in comments. (If you do, please link to them. I don't know nearly enough about English corpora available online.
This MJD blog post about their own use of "shall" and "will" got me wondering about historical use of them in context. I find that historical graph of English use patterns interesting.
There are 2 clearly separated groups, a high-use group of two ("we shall see" and "you will see") and a low-use group of a dozen or so ("I will see", "You will see" with an uppercase y, "We will see" with an uppercase w, "We shall see" with an uppercase w, "I shall see", "you shall see", "he will see", "ye shall see", "they will see", "You shall see" with an uppercase y, "He will see" with an uppercase y, "they shall see", "They will see" with an uppercase t, "he shall see" (both lowercase and uppercase h), "who shall see", and "who will see"). These two groups and the large separation between them appear to be largely American English, as they're much less visible in British English. As uppercase and lowercase pairs ("You/you" and "We/we") end up split between groups, sentence-initial usage patterns may be different from patterns in other sentence positions.
Frequencies in the high-use group wobble substantially and there's a large intra-group gap between the mid 1950s and the mid 1990s. Frequencies in the low-use group are much steadier and the (much shorter) intra-group gap there is "you shall see" between the mid 1800s and the mid 1810s with a peak in 1809 that's below the high-use group but much closer to it than to the rest of the low-use group. That brief excursion from the low-use group is absent from Google's American English corpus and wholly due to its British corpus, which also shows two excursions up by "you will see", one between 1910 and 1923 peaking halfway between groups in 1918 and the other between 1938 and 1950 peaking in 1944; both might be due to an influx of American English speakers in Great Britain then, although I don't see those peaks having an steadier American English equivalent.
And then there's "we will see", which after being in the low-use group until about 1970, detaches from it then, with its frequency going up sharply, and essentially enters the high-use group between 1980 and 1985 depending on where you place the boundaries of that group. British English also shows you will see splitting off in the early 1920s and ending up alone about half-way between the two groups.
I'm also curious about similar patterns in other regional English corpora. Anyone knowing of any is welcome to explore it and report or discuss their findings in comments. (If you do, please link to them. I don't know nearly enough about English corpora available online.