/ instituut voor de Nederlandse taal / Taalportaal
bibliography glossary about
  • Dutch
  • Frisian
  • Saterfrisian
  • Afrikaans
Show all
    The Frisian verb sille shall and its meaning and selectional restrictions
    quickinfo

    The Frisian verb sille shall is a full-fledged modal. Modals can either have a lexical interpretation or a truly modal interpretation involving possibility and so on. The following pair illustrates this distinction:

    1
    a. Jouke wol wittenskipper wurde
    Jouke wants scientist become
    Jouke wants to become a scientist
    b. It wol mar net reine
    it wants DcP not rain
    It has not rained for a long time

    The lexical interpretation of modals involves a human subject engaging in a mental process characteristic of humans. The truly modal interpretation involves a subject which may or may not be human, and it involves an event, in the case of wolle want, which takes place easily or with difficulty.

    readmore

    The same distinction can be illustrated for kinne can:

    2
    a. Ik kin net swimme!
    I can not swim
    I am unable to swim
    b. Ik kin om healwei fiven swimme
    I can at half five swim
    It is possible for me to swim at half past four

    The lexical interpretation of the modal must involve a human subject, which ties in with the modal's lexical meaning of ability, which is naturally limited to humans (and living creatures). The truly modal interpretation may involve either persons or things in an event, which is possible or not. The two meanings are closely related since in many situations the absence of ability will entail the absence of possibility.

    The modal sille shall also shows this double face. On the one hand, it has a lexical interpretation, in which it refers to planning, an activity restricted to humans, as in (3):

    3
    Ik sil nei Rotterdam ta
    I shall to Rotterdam to
    I intend to go to Rotterdam

    In this interpretation, it can even have an event as its subject, after it has been detransitivised:

    4
    a. Dat soe ik, mar it gie net troch
    that should I but it went not through
    I intended that, but it did not happen
    b. Dat soe, mar it gie net troch
    that should but it went not through
    That was the plan, but it did not happen

    The verb can be found in the form of a perfect participle, as shown in (5):

    5
    Dat ha ik no al jierren sillen
    that have I now already years shall.PfP
    I have been wanting to do that for years

    The verb can be found as a nominalisation:

    6
    Lit it net by sillen bliuwe
    let it not at shall.GI stay
    Good intentions are not good enough

    The verb can be found as the main verb in a proverb:

    7
    Slûge soe ek, mar hy stoar earder
    slow should also but he died earlier
    Mr. Slow also had that intention, but he died beforehand

    The complement of the verb can be replaced by a pronoun, dat in (8):

    8
    Dat soe er, mar it hoegde al net mear
    that should he but it needed already not anymore
    He was going to do that, but it was not necessary anymore

    It is the lexical interpretation of the modal, as illustrated by the sentences above, which is absent from its Dutch counterpart. As a result, the literal translation of all sentences in this section is ungrammatical in Dutch. This also implies that this use of sille shall is under pressure from Dutch which expresses the semantic contents of the sentences above in different ways.

    What Dutch and Frisian have in common is that this modal also functions as a marker of the future and of the irrealis.

    References
      About this article
      Author(s): Eric Hoekstra
      Category: Frisian Syntax
      Keywords: modal
      Version: 1.0, December 2015
      Version history:
      version editor(s) date remarks
      1.0 Eric Hoekstra December 2015
      printreport errorcite
      Jump to:
      X