[lit-ideas] Re: Shall But Won't
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 13:21:52 -0400
In a message dated 10/31/2014 11:49:42 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
The original Serbian is: "teći će rijeke krvi", but as we see, in this
case the ambiguity is perfectly translatable into English. (Or any other
language that has future tense, I suppose.) True, there is no "I" in Šešelj's
statement - he does not say "I shall make rivers of blood flow" - but as he
was a chief of a political party (which was formally in opposition a the
time, but close to the government policy in some respects) and had some
paramilitary troops under his control (at least partially), there are reasons
to think that he was in the position to at least contribute to the outcome
that he was ostensibly predicting.
Well, perhaps we can get into the grammatical-syntactical detail of
i. Teći će rijeke krvi.
And compare it with German, and English, and Latin, and Italian.
We assume the verb is 'flow'. In Latin, 'flow' in the future, possibly in
some sort of 'neutral' sense, would just add a verb ending to the root and
stem.
In German it's still different.
In modern English, the use of 'will' seems to be a development from an
older use of 'will' (will to). Note that this use of 'will' is still operative
in German, where 'willen' means 'wish', more or less.
In Italian, and French, etc., the future is made up of the infinitive plus
a verb ending of the verb to 'have', and it's quite a complication from the
simpler Latin.
So, we may compare (i) with
ii. Rivers of blood will flow.
Grice writes:
"Sensitive Englsh speakers (which most of us are not) may be able to mark
this distinction by discriminating between 'shall' and 'will', Grice
regrets, and goes on to say:
"'I shall-I go to London' stands to 'I intend to go to London'
analogously to the way in which 'Oh for rain tomorrow!' stands to 'I wish for
rain
tomorrow'."
which we can express in a sort of proportion:
a c
--- = ----
b d
I.e. Grice is saying that
ii. Rivers of blood will flow.
with 'will' understood 'intentionally' stands to
iii. Rivers of blood 'intend' to flow.
"analogously to the way in which"
iv. Oh for rivers of blood to flow!
stands to
v. I wish for rivers of blood to flow.
-- by which I take it that Grice is proposing that the 'willing' element is
MERELY implicated, rather than explicitly stated in the 'intentional' use
of 'will' (versus a rather hypothetical merely 'indicated or factual' use
of 'will' -- cfr. Hume on 'to cause' meaning 'to will').
Omar: "in Šešelj's statement - he does not say "I shall make rivers of
blood flow" - but as he was a chief of a political party (which was formally
in opposition a the time, but close to the government policy in some
respects) and had some paramilitary troops under his control (at least
partially),
there are reasons to think that he was in the position to at least
contribute to the outcome that he was ostensibly predicting."
The subject heading I chose is "shall but won't" because I think the
phenomena is indeed semantic, rather than implicatural or pragmatic, in that
"I shall but I won't"
sounds like a logical contradiction.
The element (perhaps atavic or a relic) of 'willing' in the use of 'will
flow' (from 'will to flow') does make it sound of paradoxical that an utterer
could EVER predict a NOT desired (not willed) outcome.
And Šešelj's defense may (?) claim that an expansion of the original claim
could be rendered as:
vi. We don't like a civil war; but I can tell you and predict you that, if
such a civil war should take place, then it 'will' VERY UNFORTUNATE for us
Serbians that, if I may speak hyperbolically, rivers of blood are a future
state.
I wonder how they are discussing this in The Hague.
-- And cfr.
vii. Rivers of blood will flow, but they shan't!
viii. Rivers of blood will flow but they shouldn't.
And so on (The 'shouldn't' usage is still operative in German, where the
equivalent of English 'shall' (German 'sollen') means some kind of obligation
or duty).
Cheers,
Speranza
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