【摘要】 will是否系将来时态助动词反映了当今英语语法界两种截然不同的时态观。以Palmer为代表的传统语法和以Langacker为代表的认知语法主张英语没有将来时态,主要因为will通常不表示纯将来意义,也不属于形态上屈折变化的时态系统。而以Halliday为代表的系统功能语法提倡时态三分制,将will的意义进行了情态与时态的区分。后一观点值得商榷,因为它否认了will的将来预测意义的情态性质,will的纯将来意义缺乏基于语料库研究的实证支持,will的句法、语义以及形态特征与情态动词系统完全一致,把will分析为情态助动词不仅有传统语法和认知语法情态理论的支持,而且也符合功能语法自身的情态观,同时还符合语法描述的简便原则。更多还原

【Abstract】 Whether will can be labeled as a future tense marker reflects two different points of view on English tense.Both the traditional grammar represented by Palmer and the cognitive grammar represented by Langaker maintain that English does not have a future tense mainly because will does not often indicate pure future,nor does it belong to the morphologically marked tense system.However,the functional grammar represented by Halliday advocates a three-fold division of tense(i.e.past,present,future),therefore distinguishes the modal meaning of will from its future one.This paper argues that the latter viewpoint is still open to discussion because it negates the modal interpretation of will predicting a future event,the corpus-based investigation cannot support the pure futurity of will,will patterns exactly like modals morphologically,syntactically and semantically,the analysis of will as a modal is not only consistent with the modality theories of traditional,cognitive and functional grammar,but also accords with the principle of grammatical simplicity.更多还原