Very detailed and fascinating history. I immediately recognized that Spanish and French still use the same verb to express *owing* and *obligation*. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me when I was first learned these languages.
Question about “should”: I can see from reading old books that people in the 19th Century said “should” when we would say “would.” They might write something like “I should like to try it” or “If I had the choice, I should do it.”
I’m not sure when we made the transition from using “should” to “would” to mark the conditional, but is there an explanation that is consistent with your hypothesis?
This is juicy! I want to do a full explanation of this in a post one day, but basically what happened is that, in the Early Modern Period (1500–1700), shall/will began to be used as an auxiliary verb marking the future. Due to their different etymologies (shall = obligation/will = volition), there was an asymmetry between how often each was used in different persons. After all, we know our own will, but we have to ask others about theirs. So asking 'will you' or 'will she' was common. This sort of thing seems to have cemented a relationship between the second/third person and will. The whole story is a bit complex, but the result was that a tendency emerged where shall was used in the first person (I/we) and will was used in the second (thou/you) and third persons (he/she/it/they). Ditto for should/would, which are etymologically just the past-tense forms of shall/will.
When I was young my family had an old dictionary that showed all the conjugations for English verbs, and it showed this asymmetry:
. I shall go, you will go, he will go, we shall go, you will go, they will go
vs.
. I will go, you shall go, he shall go, we will go, you shall go, they shall go
It mystified me, and I can't recall which conjugation was which. To the me of then, as of now, "will" indicated "is going to happen," while "shall" indicated "bloody well *is* going to happen." Thanks for answering a question I've had for so long I'd forgotten I had it!
Strunk and White put it this way: “A swimmer in distress cries, ‘I shall drown; no one will save me!’ A suicide puts it the other way: ‘I will drown; no one shall save me!’”
But even that example doesn’t get in amongst me well enough for it to be natural to me. I’d love it if Colin would do a historical dive that might give me some more hooks to hang my understanding on.
Thank you for raising this. A related thought came to me as a was working in my kitchen after reading this and another completely unrelated post. The exact context is unimportant. The narrow context was that my reaction to a question in the other post was “I should have thought that question was conclusively answered by Hobbes.” It struck me that my use of should there was closer to would than to ought to have. I would like to hear Professor Gorrie’s thoughts on this.
Your great learning is put to great use here. We're indebted to you.
The obligation aspect of the move from "owe" to "ought" reminded me of the way that obligation, or indebtedness, relates to thankfulness as well, from "much obliged" to "obrigado."
Thanks for another enlightening post. I've come several common words recently that turn out to originate in past tenses of others.
Could "do" be considered a modal verb, in the sense used to negate (i don't eat)/question (do you eat?)/emphasize (I do eat) another verb? Unlike the other examples (can/should/must/will) it does take an altered form (does) in 2PS.
Finally - the example of "Redde quod debes" as an example of the use of "scealt" as a lexical verb gave me pause. Is it possible the scribe read "debes" in its modal sense, interpreting it as "pay what you should"?
That 'do' is an auxiliary like the modals are (full name, modal auxiliaries), but it's not usually thought of as modal, since it doesn't express any meaning, modal or otherwise. It's a dummy form present because English no longer allows inversion or negation of non-auxiliary verbs without it.
Re, whether debes could have been read as modal, that's a good question. I think if we look at the context, it leads us to believe that it refers to a particular debt rather than a general duty to pay things:
Egressus autem servus ille invenit unum de conservis suis, qui debebat ei centum denarios: et tenens suffocavit eum, dicens: Redde quod debes.
'But that servant went out, and found one of his fellow servants, who *owed* him one hundred denarii, and he grabbed him, and took him by the throat, saying, 'Pay me what you owe!'
The first use of debere (debebat) is unambiguously a lexical verb since it takes an object centum denarios '100 denarii,' which helps us interpret the later debere in that light.
When you write "dummy form present", can we assume present means "word that is there", rather than "present tense"?
When you write that it doesn't express any meaning, is that a technical usage? To me, the word "do" certainly carries meaning by drawing attention to something that would otherwise seem like a detail. ("I do walk to the store" is primarily about walking, rather than about a trip to the store.)
A related point that interests me is that "need to" has come to mean "must." It's logical that the meaning of the first-person "I need to" shades off into "I must." However, it has been generalized to others to that "you need to" means "you must," even when the person addressed would disagree heartily. "Hey, you need to stop using that kind of language in front of my wife!"
This occurred over my lifetime. When I heard a character in Downton Abbey using "need to" this way, I cringed. Now, I find myself telling my two-year-old granddaughter, "You need to sit in your car seat and let me buckle you in so we can go home," and I realize she doesn't think she needs to at all!
One interesting thing about modal verbs that they tend to shift their meaning very quickly. 'Must,' for instance, was originally a past tense form of a verb meaning 'be allowed'. And if you study German, you'll see that the verbs that are etymologically related to our modals often have different modal meanings. It's a jungle out there!
I suppose most change begins in some dialects, and then spreads. I (born 1970, Michigan, USA) can't remember a time when "need to" (as opposed to mere "need") didn't mean required to.
I also remember an intense feeling of nostalgia for something I hadn't heard since early childhood (in the rural Upper Peninsula, rather than where I went to school or college) when learning of Pittsburgh-ese "needs washed". (The meaning is similar to the more standard "needs to be washed".) That usage isn't quite the same, but it seems related.
The mind can play tricks of course, but I seem to recall my grandparents using 'need to' in the sense of must when I was a nipper in the 1950s. I recall it had had a certain menacing tone to it, due I suppose to its formality.
I had a quick look at the OED; sense II.8.a 'to require (a person) to do something'. Thus (c.1500) 'Thow ned the to fyght..With youre flesche, and with the fende.' (fende, I think, means enemy, like the German 'Feind')
The scriptwriter of the blessed Downton is saved from anachronism, one hopes.
Solid breakdown of grammaticalization. The connection between āgan tō ġieldenne and modern modal verbs is one of those etymological chains that seems obvious once explained but totally invisible before. Makes you wonder what other abstract grammar is just concete metaphors we forgot about.
That is very useful context. I wonder if future European cooperation would be less difficult if the English version of proposals talked about finance or at least borrowing, rather than taking on "debt".
If I read correctly, You direct the origin of “can” back to “Ken/know. “ Could that reasonably extend to our modern usage of “able/capable”?
And then … your indication of “Magan” denoting ability and strength while we use it today as possibility or permission.
It seems that there must be more to this story. Mayhaps just refinement in usage? It seems to me though, that “can “ underwent the greater change in this case.
Hi Debbie! The 'can' verb is also used in a modal sense in Old English with the meaning 'to know how to.' From there it's a very small distance to travel to get to 'be capable of', e.g.:
Ic can ēow lǣran
'I know how to teach you' or 'I am able to teach you'
Regarding 'may', the ancestor magan is also used to express permission in Old English. So you're right to view the change as a refinement, or narrowing, of usage. Now I dare say that 'may' to express permission is also on the way out, as many an elementary school teacher over the years will tell you: "Yes, you CAN go to the washroom. But you MAY not."
Modal verbs tend to be very slippery in general. They love to change their meanings.
The difference between "know how" and "able" is so subtle that I am curious about how anyone even detected it. Are there several examples where "know how" makes sense, but "able" doesn't?
Had such a blast reading this! Thank you for sharing your learning with us.
This is a subject I ponder quite a bit. I'm mostly engaged with ancient legal texts, were the "owe-to-ought pipeline" is a very noticeable phenomenon. In legal contexts, it often passes through the concept of obligation - the Latin 'obligatio'. Obligation, for the jurists, is a sort of relationship necessitating that the debtor provide a service for a "creditor". Justinian describes it as "a legal tie" (Juris vinculum) .
I would add that debere, as you've mentioned, does indeed take the meaning of ought - and nowhere more so than in the Digest. There you often find "debere" operating rather like χρή in Greek. It is also the verb denoting one's duty (the "debitor") towards another (the "creditor") through an obligation.
(A propos Greek, I'm sure the affinity between δεῖ and δέομαι doesn't escape you).
Finally, I suspect that the connection between owe and ought in Hebrew is as close an it is in early Saxon and Latin. From חוב, our word for debt, derives חובה, which signifies an obligation (and relatedly, a sentence that one is obliged by law, or likewise a sentence of guilt). חובה, and the correlative verb לחוב, are not to my knowledge Biblical terms, but they abound in the Mishnah, as in - "כל שחבתי בשמירתו, הכשרתי את נזקו" - which loosely means, "whereof I am obliged in custody, thereof I must make amends for damage". Their coincidence in Halakhic texts is accordingly very large.
In modern Hebrew, we use חייב like you use both "owe" or "ought" in English (e.g. אני חייב לך means "I owe you one"). When also use the חובה for a moral duty (or obligation). I've been trying to find earlier examples for this usage, and it appears to go back to the 9th century at most.
>But if we want to put try with another verb, to appears in the middle: I try to eat.
Is the use of "go" as something modal-like an ESL-ism? E.g. "I'll go get it."
>If I had to guess, I would venture that it was the influence of Christianity and the Biblical metaphor of sin as debt which opened up the owe-to-ought pipeline in European languages in particular.
Do we find this phenomenon in languages with heavy influence from, e.g. Eastern Orthodox or other Abrahamic religions?
Using "go" that way is not at all limited to second language learners. I think of it as one of the canonical examples of how language (thought in general) develop by analogy. (On a better day via a different UI, I would provide references.)
I'm also curious about the "European" distribution of owe->ought. Does it occur in non-lE languages like Basque or Hungarian? Does it not occur in Indic/Iranian/Tocharian?
All very interesting, Colin. As you say, 'deber' in Spanish straddles these meanings in one single form: I must/I owe.
In the other accounting column, literally, the 'Credit' side is labelled as 'Haber', which these days is confined largely to a role as an auxiliary verb, and in a few odd grammatical constructions, but no longer having the meaning of 'have' in standard speech.
Might the difference between Am. and Br. English in the use of "shall" (Br. "I shall go" vs. Am. "I will go") arise from a New World democratic aversion to debt (which was, for most, impossible to avoid n the mother country with no "free" land to grab)?
Very detailed and fascinating history. I immediately recognized that Spanish and French still use the same verb to express *owing* and *obligation*. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me when I was first learned these languages.
Question about “should”: I can see from reading old books that people in the 19th Century said “should” when we would say “would.” They might write something like “I should like to try it” or “If I had the choice, I should do it.”
I’m not sure when we made the transition from using “should” to “would” to mark the conditional, but is there an explanation that is consistent with your hypothesis?
This is juicy! I want to do a full explanation of this in a post one day, but basically what happened is that, in the Early Modern Period (1500–1700), shall/will began to be used as an auxiliary verb marking the future. Due to their different etymologies (shall = obligation/will = volition), there was an asymmetry between how often each was used in different persons. After all, we know our own will, but we have to ask others about theirs. So asking 'will you' or 'will she' was common. This sort of thing seems to have cemented a relationship between the second/third person and will. The whole story is a bit complex, but the result was that a tendency emerged where shall was used in the first person (I/we) and will was used in the second (thou/you) and third persons (he/she/it/they). Ditto for should/would, which are etymologically just the past-tense forms of shall/will.
When I was young my family had an old dictionary that showed all the conjugations for English verbs, and it showed this asymmetry:
. I shall go, you will go, he will go, we shall go, you will go, they will go
vs.
. I will go, you shall go, he shall go, we will go, you shall go, they shall go
It mystified me, and I can't recall which conjugation was which. To the me of then, as of now, "will" indicated "is going to happen," while "shall" indicated "bloody well *is* going to happen." Thanks for answering a question I've had for so long I'd forgotten I had it!
Strunk and White put it this way: “A swimmer in distress cries, ‘I shall drown; no one will save me!’ A suicide puts it the other way: ‘I will drown; no one shall save me!’”
But even that example doesn’t get in amongst me well enough for it to be natural to me. I’d love it if Colin would do a historical dive that might give me some more hooks to hang my understanding on.
Thank you for raising this. A related thought came to me as a was working in my kitchen after reading this and another completely unrelated post. The exact context is unimportant. The narrow context was that my reaction to a question in the other post was “I should have thought that question was conclusively answered by Hobbes.” It struck me that my use of should there was closer to would than to ought to have. I would like to hear Professor Gorrie’s thoughts on this.
Hi George! I'm not sure if it has notified you, but I wrote a response to LV's post just above which might satisfy your curiosity.
Your great learning is put to great use here. We're indebted to you.
The obligation aspect of the move from "owe" to "ought" reminded me of the way that obligation, or indebtedness, relates to thankfulness as well, from "much obliged" to "obrigado."
That's a great parallel!
Thanks for another enlightening post. I've come several common words recently that turn out to originate in past tenses of others.
Could "do" be considered a modal verb, in the sense used to negate (i don't eat)/question (do you eat?)/emphasize (I do eat) another verb? Unlike the other examples (can/should/must/will) it does take an altered form (does) in 2PS.
Finally - the example of "Redde quod debes" as an example of the use of "scealt" as a lexical verb gave me pause. Is it possible the scribe read "debes" in its modal sense, interpreting it as "pay what you should"?
Excellent questions!
That 'do' is an auxiliary like the modals are (full name, modal auxiliaries), but it's not usually thought of as modal, since it doesn't express any meaning, modal or otherwise. It's a dummy form present because English no longer allows inversion or negation of non-auxiliary verbs without it.
Re, whether debes could have been read as modal, that's a good question. I think if we look at the context, it leads us to believe that it refers to a particular debt rather than a general duty to pay things:
Egressus autem servus ille invenit unum de conservis suis, qui debebat ei centum denarios: et tenens suffocavit eum, dicens: Redde quod debes.
'But that servant went out, and found one of his fellow servants, who *owed* him one hundred denarii, and he grabbed him, and took him by the throat, saying, 'Pay me what you owe!'
The first use of debere (debebat) is unambiguously a lexical verb since it takes an object centum denarios '100 denarii,' which helps us interpret the later debere in that light.
When you write "dummy form present", can we assume present means "word that is there", rather than "present tense"?
When you write that it doesn't express any meaning, is that a technical usage? To me, the word "do" certainly carries meaning by drawing attention to something that would otherwise seem like a detail. ("I do walk to the store" is primarily about walking, rather than about a trip to the store.)
A related point that interests me is that "need to" has come to mean "must." It's logical that the meaning of the first-person "I need to" shades off into "I must." However, it has been generalized to others to that "you need to" means "you must," even when the person addressed would disagree heartily. "Hey, you need to stop using that kind of language in front of my wife!"
This occurred over my lifetime. When I heard a character in Downton Abbey using "need to" this way, I cringed. Now, I find myself telling my two-year-old granddaughter, "You need to sit in your car seat and let me buckle you in so we can go home," and I realize she doesn't think she needs to at all!
One interesting thing about modal verbs that they tend to shift their meaning very quickly. 'Must,' for instance, was originally a past tense form of a verb meaning 'be allowed'. And if you study German, you'll see that the verbs that are etymologically related to our modals often have different modal meanings. It's a jungle out there!
I suppose most change begins in some dialects, and then spreads. I (born 1970, Michigan, USA) can't remember a time when "need to" (as opposed to mere "need") didn't mean required to.
I also remember an intense feeling of nostalgia for something I hadn't heard since early childhood (in the rural Upper Peninsula, rather than where I went to school or college) when learning of Pittsburgh-ese "needs washed". (The meaning is similar to the more standard "needs to be washed".) That usage isn't quite the same, but it seems related.
The mind can play tricks of course, but I seem to recall my grandparents using 'need to' in the sense of must when I was a nipper in the 1950s. I recall it had had a certain menacing tone to it, due I suppose to its formality.
I had a quick look at the OED; sense II.8.a 'to require (a person) to do something'. Thus (c.1500) 'Thow ned the to fyght..With youre flesche, and with the fende.' (fende, I think, means enemy, like the German 'Feind')
The scriptwriter of the blessed Downton is saved from anachronism, one hopes.
Solid breakdown of grammaticalization. The connection between āgan tō ġieldenne and modern modal verbs is one of those etymological chains that seems obvious once explained but totally invisible before. Makes you wonder what other abstract grammar is just concete metaphors we forgot about.
In contemporary German Schuld means debt and guilt. This played a role in the Euro Crisis when Germany was reluctant to help Greece and Italy.
That is very useful context. I wonder if future European cooperation would be less difficult if the English version of proposals talked about finance or at least borrowing, rather than taking on "debt".
Immensely fascinating!
And for more philosophical take on debt, there's Graeber's, "Debt: The First 5,000 Years".
Thanks, again, Colin.
My question is about the usage of “may” vs “can.”
If I read correctly, You direct the origin of “can” back to “Ken/know. “ Could that reasonably extend to our modern usage of “able/capable”?
And then … your indication of “Magan” denoting ability and strength while we use it today as possibility or permission.
It seems that there must be more to this story. Mayhaps just refinement in usage? It seems to me though, that “can “ underwent the greater change in this case.
Thoughts?
Hi Debbie! The 'can' verb is also used in a modal sense in Old English with the meaning 'to know how to.' From there it's a very small distance to travel to get to 'be capable of', e.g.:
Ic can ēow lǣran
'I know how to teach you' or 'I am able to teach you'
Regarding 'may', the ancestor magan is also used to express permission in Old English. So you're right to view the change as a refinement, or narrowing, of usage. Now I dare say that 'may' to express permission is also on the way out, as many an elementary school teacher over the years will tell you: "Yes, you CAN go to the washroom. But you MAY not."
Modal verbs tend to be very slippery in general. They love to change their meanings.
The difference between "know how" and "able" is so subtle that I am curious about how anyone even detected it. Are there several examples where "know how" makes sense, but "able" doesn't?
The other night I was reading Caedmon's Hymn, and now this post puts "Nū sculon heriġean" in an entirely new light.
Great citation. The modal meaning is there from the very beginning of literary OE!
Had such a blast reading this! Thank you for sharing your learning with us.
This is a subject I ponder quite a bit. I'm mostly engaged with ancient legal texts, were the "owe-to-ought pipeline" is a very noticeable phenomenon. In legal contexts, it often passes through the concept of obligation - the Latin 'obligatio'. Obligation, for the jurists, is a sort of relationship necessitating that the debtor provide a service for a "creditor". Justinian describes it as "a legal tie" (Juris vinculum) .
I would add that debere, as you've mentioned, does indeed take the meaning of ought - and nowhere more so than in the Digest. There you often find "debere" operating rather like χρή in Greek. It is also the verb denoting one's duty (the "debitor") towards another (the "creditor") through an obligation.
(A propos Greek, I'm sure the affinity between δεῖ and δέομαι doesn't escape you).
Finally, I suspect that the connection between owe and ought in Hebrew is as close an it is in early Saxon and Latin. From חוב, our word for debt, derives חובה, which signifies an obligation (and relatedly, a sentence that one is obliged by law, or likewise a sentence of guilt). חובה, and the correlative verb לחוב, are not to my knowledge Biblical terms, but they abound in the Mishnah, as in - "כל שחבתי בשמירתו, הכשרתי את נזקו" - which loosely means, "whereof I am obliged in custody, thereof I must make amends for damage". Their coincidence in Halakhic texts is accordingly very large.
In modern Hebrew, we use חייב like you use both "owe" or "ought" in English (e.g. אני חייב לך means "I owe you one"). When also use the חובה for a moral duty (or obligation). I've been trying to find earlier examples for this usage, and it appears to go back to the 9th century at most.
>But if we want to put try with another verb, to appears in the middle: I try to eat.
Is the use of "go" as something modal-like an ESL-ism? E.g. "I'll go get it."
>If I had to guess, I would venture that it was the influence of Christianity and the Biblical metaphor of sin as debt which opened up the owe-to-ought pipeline in European languages in particular.
Do we find this phenomenon in languages with heavy influence from, e.g. Eastern Orthodox or other Abrahamic religions?
Using "go" that way is not at all limited to second language learners. I think of it as one of the canonical examples of how language (thought in general) develop by analogy. (On a better day via a different UI, I would provide references.)
I'm also curious about the "European" distribution of owe->ought. Does it occur in non-lE languages like Basque or Hungarian? Does it not occur in Indic/Iranian/Tocharian?
All very interesting, Colin. As you say, 'deber' in Spanish straddles these meanings in one single form: I must/I owe.
In the other accounting column, literally, the 'Credit' side is labelled as 'Haber', which these days is confined largely to a role as an auxiliary verb, and in a few odd grammatical constructions, but no longer having the meaning of 'have' in standard speech.
Might the difference between Am. and Br. English in the use of "shall" (Br. "I shall go" vs. Am. "I will go") arise from a New World democratic aversion to debt (which was, for most, impossible to avoid n the mother country with no "free" land to grab)?