Abstract
The Afrikaans verb wil, a cognate of English will but closer in meaning to ‘want to’, is usually employed as an auxiliary rather than a main verb and is defined, inter alia, as ‘to wish, desire, intend, be able, resolve, be prepared, be willing, be on the verge of’, and is used to express wishes and as a reduplication form (wil-wil). This paper endeavours to show that most of these nuances of meaning and usages are derivable form a core meaning of ‘preparatory action’ and two perspectives on this. If wil is compared to other modal verbs, it appears that though it has certain syntactic and semantic features in common with them, it nevertheless differs greatly from them in many other respects.
Historically, wil differs from most other modal verbs in being semantically stable. Afrikaans wil differs from other Afrikaans modals in several respects. (a) Wil is not used epistemically. (b) Wil can be used as a transitive verb and is the only modal to have a past participle, viz. gewil. (c) Only wil has a derivation resembling a present participle, viz. welwillende ‘benevolent’. (d) In passive sentences, wil remains subject oriented, i.e. retains the grammatical subject as its agent – for example Sy wil gesien word ‘She wants to be seen’. (e) Wees doubles with word as a passive auxiliary in a construction such as Sy wil gesien wees deur die mense ‘She wants to be seen by the people’. (f) Only wil (and its preterite form wou) reduplicates, as in wil-wil and wou-wou...