Habitual actions are intentional. The speaker and his four year old will have an argument regularly and by intention. Or at least they can control the process.
What idea will convey will if we talk about unexpected, uncontrolled events that do not depend on someone's will/intention/plans? For example:
I will occasionally find/notice new plants in the forest.
There's nothing intentional here. This shows that
will is not used in its volitional sense. Both the original sentence and the sentence about finding plants use
will in its
epistemic sense. I think a good way of understanding this is by the notion of
predictability. Both arguing with the child and finding plants are in some way predictable outcomes of looking at microbes and walking in the forest, respectively. That's what the extra modality brings that the normal present simple sentences don't have—the speaker's attitude about the possibility of the outcomes.
Does that make sense?
OK, some habitual actions are unintentional and subconscious. But even these ones are still regular by definition and can, in principle, be recognized and put under control because we have an active doer/agent in this case. While in my forest example noticing is a random event and the subject is just a passive recipient of visual information. New plants catch his/her eye accidentally, randomly. That's not a habit in any sense.
I don't agree it's random. On the contrary, I think there's an idea that the outcomes are to some degree predictable. In other words, they're
characteristic outcomes.
Does habitual characteristic have a definition?
That's what we're trying to do here—get to what it means insofar as it relates to this use of
will.
I'm asking because there is a grammar terms called habitual aspect used to indicate actions that occur regularly or repeatedly. The Present Simple usually indicates that aspect. But 5jj didn't use that term, from which I conclude he meant something else.
I will occasionally have an argument with my four-year-old about the size of microbes.
I occasionally have an argument with my four-year-old about the size of microbes.
The latter has the habitual aspect, but according to 5jj it doesn't have the habitual characteristic. I don't understand what exactly that should mean.
This term is normally used of the
used to form, and sometimes of
would to denote past habitual action:
https://www.usingenglish.com/forum/threads/287575-Tense-and-Aspect-7-The-Habitual-Aspect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitual_aspect#English
In itself, it doesn't. Simple tense forms do not show aspect.I used the adjective
habitual and the noun
characteristic to mean what they normally mean.
It doesn't. There is no auxiliary there to indicate aspect.
Personally, I don't think the notion of grammatical aspect can shed any light on this at all. We need a semantic analysis. If we're going to use the idea of aspect at all, it should relate to modality (i.e. semantics), not grammar.
The habitual aspect isn't stick to the past, right? I go to the park every day is also habitual.
Where does it say that aspect requires an auxiliary verb? Here's what the wiki article says: "Habitual aspect is frequently expressed in unmarked form in English, as in I walked to work every day for ten years, I walk to work every day."
The form go is a present-tense form. It does not show aspect. I have said this before, but you seem to be ignoring it.
I think that
I go to the park every day does show aspect, but not in the normal sense that grammarians talk about. (Anyway, that's a separate discussion, I think, and not relevant to this question.) We're talking about the modality of
will.
The habitual characteristic of 'I' is shown by will.
I don't know what this comment means. Is it anything to do with subject-orientation, i.e., as with volitional
will?
I don't think the habitual characteristic is really about 'I', but rather about the outcome of my having arguments with my 4-year-old child.
In what sense is habitual characterizing the subject? Isn't it the action that is habitual?
I think so, yes. It characterises the possible outcome.
The sentence describes an irregularly repeating action that is habitual in the sense that it's a constant part of their relationships and life.
I basically agree. This repeatability is understood as predictability. Given a certain situation (walking in the forest), it is noticed that there is a predictable outcome. The frequency word occasionally tells us something about the 'strength' of this predictability. So it's the predictability of the outcome that is characteristic.
So is it in the variant without will.
But the version without
will lacks the modality. It lacks the speaker's understanding of how the outcome is predictable. In the version with
will, the speaker is saying that the outcome is characteristic.
Once the speaker has said the words I will occasionally have an argument with my four year old about the size of microbes, we can reasonably predict future arguments.
Yes, I think this is what I'm saying too. Any future instances of my having discussion about microbes with my child can be reasonably predicted to end up with an argument. It's in this sense that the outcome is characteristic.
The action is habitual. It is a characteristic of the subject of the verb that this is so.
This is perhaps the only place I can see we disagree then. I don't think it's characteristic of the subject.
I haven't really thought about 'habitual characteristic' in the sense of closely defining it. Perhaps I should have,
Please let me know where you think what I've said is wrong, or badly worded.
