Shall

The specificity of “shall” usage in legal contexts can be observed by comparison to its usage in a general corpus. A search for trigrams beginning with a modal “shall”

identified just over 100 combinations in the non-translational English corpora that meet the criteria of 20 occurrences per million words and across five texts. Taking into account the POS tags of the n-gram results, the grammatical structures of frequent

“shall” trigrams are strikingly homogeneous.

As an example, Table 4.9 below shows a list of the eight most frequent trigrams beginning with “shall.” The basic structure of the n-grams can be represented as:

 shall (not) VB

A majority of the combinations has the word “be” occurring as the verb in base form succeeding “shall,” either directly or after an adverb “not.” This pattern is then followed by a past-participle verb to form a passive voice structure, or by an adjective:

Table 4.9

Top Eight Trigrams Beginning with “Shall” in English Corpora

MD (RB) VB Collocate POS Frequency Range

shall not be 9981 52

shall not apply 5622 50

shall be made VBN 4905 50

shall be treated VBN 3735 44

shall be subject JJ 3152 48

shall be construed VBN 3097 49

shall be deemed VBN 2983 50

shall submit to 2722 46

Note. The range column refers to document frequency, or number of documents the n-gram occurs in; the total number of documents is 52.

 shall (not) be VBN

 shall (not) be JJ

This same POS sequence is shared by all of the most frequent “shall” trigrams.

The Brown Corpus, on the other hand, does not contain a single modal “shall”

trigram that meets the criteria of 20 occurrences per million words across five texts, being a general corpus instead of representing any one specific register. From the trigrams that could be found to occur in at least two texts, it was observed that while they share the same POS sequence as legal English trigrams, “shall” in the Brown Corpus seems to be less often succeeded by passive voice and tends to co-occur with vocabulary of a different register.

The first of the two differences observed above are confirmed by using concordance searches, which showed that the structure “be + VBN” occur 7% more frequently after a modal “shall” in the legal English corpora, including occurrences with and without an adverb in between. No additional results were identified for reversed subject and modal order followed by passive voice usage in the general corpus.

Concordance and bigram searches also discovered that collocation of “shall”

apparently differs in general purpose language and legal language. For example, the phrase-like units “shall apply” and “shall not apply,” which recur frequently throughout the legal English corpora (245 and 281 occurrences per million words), were found only once in the Brown Corpus and not at all outside the “Miscellaneous: Government &

House Organs” category. Co-occurrence of the verb “forget” with “shall,” though rare in the Brown Corpus, was not found at all in the English corpora. Co-occurrence of the words “show” (VB), “find” (VB), and “never” (RB) are also rarer in proportion in the non-translational legal texts.

Study of sampled concordance lines confirmed the basic grammatical structure

succeeding “shall” that was identified during n-gram analysis. Contextual information drawn from the concordance samples also made it possible to further elaborate on the pattern so that it applies to a wider range of situations. In addition to the possibility of containing an adverb “not” within the “shall + VB” structure, it was observed that a selection of other adverbs may be used in place of “not.” This pattern is discernable from the following concordance samples containing “shall” followed by an adverb (extended information are omitted so as to show the sentence components directly pertaining to the use of “shall”):

1 expenses paid to or on behalf of [...] shall not exceed the aggregate of

2 the postmaster at the place [...] who shall promptly notify the sender of said 3 if found to [...], the State inspector shall so notify the postmaster at the

In addition to “so” and “promptly,” which occur in the above examples, bigram searches also identified “also,” “only,” “immediately,” and “annually” as some of the more frequent adverbs to be found in the same pattern. A sampling of concordance lines containing the “shall-adverb” pattern further confirms that the basic structure of “shall”

usage can be revised to include more adverbs other than “not,” while revealing a few more adverbs that apply to this pattern:

1 voluntary agencies and cooperatives shall also be eligible to receive 2 such investigation , and the Secretary shall immediately begin a study of-- 3 Board of Governors and the Corporation shall jointly issue final rules implement 4 The leave described in this paragraph shall only be available during a single 5 , which modifications or revisions shall thereafter be treated as a part of

 shall (RB) VB: “immediately begin,” “jointly issue”

 shall (RB) be VBN: “be treated”

 shall (RB) be JJ: “be eligible,” “be available”

A comparison of the previously sampled concordance lines against concordances

sampled from the Brown Corpus quickly show a distinctive trait of “shall” usage in legal texts with regard to sentence subjects; whether in active or passive voice, all the sentence subjects (indicated with waved underline in the concordance samples) have thus far been noun phrases and none of them first or second person pronouns, which are quite often found in the Brown Corpus outside the government documents category:

1 . When it comes to this , I shall prefer emigrating to some country 2 is the strength of my life ; of whom shall I be afraid '' ? ( Psalm 27 : 1 3 core for all undergraduates ? Or shall we permit early specialization 4 was right when he said , `` We shall never negotiate out of fear 5 experiment . Mathematically , we shall not distinguish the experiment 6 jumping platform , aku . Later , you shall know it better . Is it not well-

In The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Huddleston and Pullum (2002) associated the meaning of “shall” when taking a first or second person subject with indication of speaker’s guarantee, instruction-seeking questions, and non-deontic uses denoting futurity, consequence, or volition/determination. The above sample 4 from the Brown Corpus can be seen as an example of speaker’s guarantee; samples 2 and 3 are instruction-seeking questions; samples 1 and 5 can be interpreted as

expressing volition; while sample 6 most likely denotes futurity.

In total, more than 36.9% of the “shall” occurrences identified through bigram searches are directly preceded by first or second person pronouns in the Brown Corpus.

“Shall” is also succeeded by first or second person pronouns in some cases, such as in the questions mentioned above. The combinations “we shall,” “shall we,” “shall I,” and

“you shall” are not found at all in the legal English corpora, however; only the combination “I shall” occurs twice (out of almost 258 thousand “shall” occurrences), both of which being in oaths.

The vast majority of “shall” usages in the legal English corpora fall under the

constitutive or regulative use of “shall,” described by The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language as occurring frequently in legal or quasi-legal documents and associated with third-person subjects. These usages, as was observed in the legal English concordance lines above, appear to be in association with the prescribing of directives or obligations to take a specified (course of) actions.

The English legal corpora enabled identification of usage patterns of “shall” as well as their differences from general-purpose language use. On the other hand, parallel corpora offered an opportunity to study the strategies that legal translators have

employed when the modal is needed.

Bilingual concordance samples showed that “shall” is also used with third person subjects in the translational corpora, indicating the employment of the word in its constitutive or regulative sense. The modal is frequently found when the corresponding Chinese segment either comprises the Chinese words “應” (should, is to be), “不得”

(shall not), or conveys a sense of prescribing rules without an explicit Chinese equivalent present. For example:

1 訴願 有 理由 者. 受理 訴願 機關 應以 決定 撤銷 原 行政 處分 之 全部 或 # 部. 並 得視 事件 之 情節. 逕為 變更

appeal is sustainable, the agency with jurisdiction of administrative appeal shall revoke the administrative action as a whole or 2 所管 公有 土地. 非經 該 管區 內 民意

機關 同意. 並經 行政院 核准. 不得 處分 或 設定 負擔 或為 超過 #年 期間

public lands under the jurisdiction of the Municipal, or County (City) Government shall not be disposed of, or encumbered, or leased 3 本館 掌理 下列 事項 . The NTM shall be in charge of the following

matters

As “shall” translates the prescription of laws or directives by direct statement or specifying a prohibition, with or without a particular Chinese word to explicitate the meaning, translators often insert the “shall” when this regulative sense is implied, in addition to using the modal as an equivalent of sorts to “應” and “(不)得.” Conversion

to passive voice is another strategy often observed in translating legal stipulations; from the examples below, the contexts in which such a strategy are considered most likely involve reversed sentence structures or covert agents:

1 前 項 甄試 審查 委員會 委員. 由 司 法院 指派 人員 並 遴聘

The Judicial Yuan shall appoint [...] to be members of the Review Committee

2 學士、碩士、博士 學位 由 大學 授予 . degree, master's degree, and doctor's degree shall be conferred by universities.

3 且 審判 程序 尚未 終結 或 違反 組織 犯罪 防制 條例 案件 者 外. 至遲 應於 資料 製作 完成 時起 #年 內 銷毀 之.

Data preserved as per the proviso to paragraph

# shall be destroyed no later than # year after they are needed unless they are required for 4 前 項 委任 應 提出 委任書 狀於 檢察

官 或 司法 警察 官. 並 準用 第# 條

A power of attorney shall be presented to public prosecutor or judicial police officer

5 前 項 情形. 應 將 委託 事項 及 所 依 據 之前 項 規定 公告 之. 並 刊登 於

case as described in the preceding Paragraph, the authority in charge shall make a public announcement specifying the matters delegated

Though all conveyed in active voice in the Chinese source text, translators have opted for a switch to passive voice in three of the above five examples. The first two examples, while explicitly specifying “司法院” (Judicial Yuan) and “大學” (universities) as the overt agents in the Chinese sentences, have moved the direct object up to the beginning of the sentences, inserting the preposition “由” before the overt agent, which would have started the sentences had they retained the traditional subject-verb-object structure. The translator therefore had to either revert back to the traditional order as in sample 1, or change to passive voice in order to move up the verb complement, as was done in sample 2.

Meanwhile, the translators were prompted to opt for passive voice in two of the latter three examples as no overt agent was stated in the Chinese source text.

Interestingly, however, sample 5 adopted a strategy of supplying an overt agent for the English translation, possibly deduced from the extended context in nearby sentences, in

order to retain the active voice. This strategy is arguably applicable to other cases where directives are set forth without mention of the overt agent. If such information can be uncovered in the nearby context, sample 4 might, for instance, be translated in the active voice by supplying an overt agent such as “the applicant” or “the principal.”