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Question

Does "wollen" ever function like English "will" (or "be going to" if in the past tense) to signal a future event without any element of volition?

Question Explained

I came to have the question upon reading passages like these.

A: Da erzählte er [der Königssohn] ihr, er wäre von einer bösen Hexe verwünscht worden, und niemand hätte ihn aus dem Brunnen erlösen können als sie allein, und morgen wollten sie zusammen in sein Reich gehen. (Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich.)

B: Wenn du [der Arzt] zu einem Kranken gerufen wirst, so will ich [der Gevatter Tod] dir jedesmal erscheinen: steh ich zu Häupten des Kranken, so kannst du keck sprechen, du wolltest ihn wieder gesund machen, und gibst du ihm dann von jenem Kraut ein, so wird er genesen; steh ich aber zu Füssen des Kranken, so ist er mein, und du musst sagen, alle Hilfe sei umsonst und kein Arzt in der Welt könne ihn retten. (Der Gevatter Tod.)

C: Der Tod stellte sich, als ob er seinen Wunsch erfüllen wollte, langte ein frisches, grosses Licht herbei, aber weil er sich rächen wollte, versah er’s beim Umstecken absichtlich, und das Stöckchen fiel um und verlosch. (Ibid.)

In the following I try to explain what the question is by making it concrete.

The question, as applied to the passages, would give us:

  • For A, is the prince declaring his, her or their volition, intention, etc. that a certain event (i.e. their going to his kingdom) should occur tomorrow, or is he simply making a prediction* that it will?

  • For B, is Death instructing the doctor to declare his intention to heal the sick or simply to make a prediction that a certain event (the doctor's healing the sick) will occur?

  • For C, does Death pretend as if he intended to fulfill his godson's wish or simply as if he were going to?**

(*Please don't read too much into this word prediction. I only mean what may be involved in answering, "Will she be here tomorrow?" with "Yes she will," to mean that that was the itinerary. **If this distinction is not clear, consider pretending as if the door were going to open, e.g. by standing next to it and not any other door.)

If your answer is that wollen signals volition of some sort in these passages, could you then explain the strangeness as follows?

  • In A, the prince comes out saying that he and the princess want or intend to go to his kingdom. How does he know her mind so well? Shouldn't he just speak for himself? It'd be far more natural for him to address simply what they were going to do the next day. (What I mean is that that would be the more natural characterization the narrator can give to the prince.)

  • In B, Death comes out instructing the doctor to say that he wants or intends to cure the patient. Now, isn't that what the doctor wants or intends every time? Does any doctor ever need to say that? Again it'd be more natural for the doctor to say (or Death to instruct him to say) simply what he was going to do this time.

  • In C, it comes out Death pretends as if he wanted to do something. But if you read the whole story, Death was angry with his godson and the most he would pretend would be going to let him off though he does not want to.

In all these passages, reading wollen as a mark of volition seems to do violence to the narrative.

Addendum

Please see this and this related question on wollen.

I asked a similar question on sollen and indeed got answers to the effect that sollen in certain contexts signals a possibility rather than expectation. Thanks.

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Catomic
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  • @A: It's a fairy tale where the prince can assume that every girl wants to come with him to his kingdom.^^ – Chris Jul 19 '15 at 15:09
  • Additionally, at second thought, it has something to do with reported speech. I can imagine person X calling person Y and saying "Ich komme gleich zu euch." Some time later person Z asks Y "Warum ist denn X noch nicht hier?" and Y answers "Keine Ahnung, er wollte eigentlich gleich kommen." – Chris Jul 19 '15 at 15:17
  • @Chris Just so I understand properly, you mean that Y in your example could not be understood to mean what X wanted to do at any time, but only what X was going to do and that therefore there must be a use of wollen having nothing to do with volition? – Catomic Jul 19 '15 at 16:00
  • Well, for me "going to" contains volition. What I wanted to express: Even if there isn't "wollen" in direct speech, if it is transformed to indirect speech "wollen" can be there. - Y, who transforms X's direct speech to indirect speech, makes an assumption about X's volition; although X didn't use "wollen" in his direct speech. – Chris Jul 19 '15 at 16:26
  • @Chris If so, can X's initial statement have been about A (= X's wife)? I.e. X says to Y, "A kommt gleich"; and when Z asks Y, Y answers, "Keine Ahnung, sie wollte eigentlich gleich kommen." Can Y answer like this? If you say yes, then are you going to see a volition in this wollte as well? Namely, is Y attributing a volition to A based on X's statement about what A, his wife, will do? (If you say no to the earlier question, this last question does not arise.) – Catomic Jul 19 '15 at 16:32
  • It's getting tricky!^^ Idiomatically I would expect "Keine Ahnung, sie sollte eigentlich gleich kommen." - Here, Y hasn't talked to A in person and doesn't know her intentions. Y only knows what X said about A's intentions. - I know, it gets complicated! I cannot explain this phenomenon in its entirety; so don't let yourself be confused by my comments, please. :-) – Chris Jul 19 '15 at 16:39
  • Yes, "der Vulkan wollte..." would be totally unidiomatic. (And the most common word would be "ausbrechen" for "eruptieren".) – Chris Jul 19 '15 at 16:46
  • @Chris I'm sorry I asked you a question on "Keine Ahnung, der Vulkan sollte eigentlich gleich eruptieren," but deleted it because the system said don't be chatting. But that left your answer dangling. – Catomic Jul 19 '15 at 16:49
  • I'm a little confused... "wollte" is either a past form or a subjunctive. As such it CANNOT be "will" because that is present tense (and has no past form). So as it stands the whole first part of the question contains examples that in no way exemplify the problem. Think you could fix that? – Emanuel Jul 19 '15 at 22:05
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    As much as I do believe that all your edits are helpful in clarifying your question I somehow feel that the text body became a bit long to read, Any chance to make all this a bit shorter so that future visitors could see more quickly what your question was about? – Takkat Jul 20 '15 at 07:09
  • I'm voting -1 now because I really think the "wollten" -examples are a problem. Why are they in there? They have NOTHING to do with the question. – Emanuel Jul 20 '15 at 20:07
  • @Emanuel The question is on wollen in all its inflections, including wollten. Do you think wollte, wolltest etc. work very differently and should be treated separately from will, willst etc.? Can you say more what the problem is? – Catomic Jul 21 '15 at 02:30
  • Yes. You're asking whether "wollen" can express the same as future-will. The example you give contain past tense or subjunctive...meaning, there is NO future-will in them. Whatever the "wollte(n)" expresses. It's NOT English "will". So they have nothing to do with the question. – Emanuel Jul 21 '15 at 20:42
  • @Emanuel The question is about whether wollen can be 100% future (or perhaps more accurately 0% volition) and the English will is meant to be just an example of such a word. The question does not ask whether wollen and will behave alike in all their inflections. In other words, the question is not even about will and can be stated without it. But it's not critical as many members, including yourself, addressed the thing I wanted to know. – Catomic Jul 22 '15 at 01:52
  • The point is that NO verb in its past tense can EVER talk about the future. To me, the way you phrased your question is the same as having this title "Can 'to drink' talk about the future?" and then give as an example "I drank a tea." The example makes no sense in that context. To address your question I only went by the title. I started to read the body but then stopped because it was confusing. – Emanuel Jul 22 '15 at 10:28
  • @Catomic... yes, that's what I want to restrict it to because you explicitly mention English "will" and this one is restricted in that way. Same as the German future auxiliary "werden". It speaks about a future relative to time of utterance, not time of story. – Emanuel Jul 23 '15 at 10:19
  • c) agreed. a+ b) Take a look at this: http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/verbs/modal-verbs/will-or-would The definition for "will" say (among other things): talks about the future. The definition for "would" does not contain that sentence. – Emanuel Jul 23 '15 at 14:25
  • WEll, that's what I'm saying. Future refers to time of utterance. You're complicating things by throwing reported speech and it's forms in there. I know you've probably studied this well but let me tell you that to me as a native speaker of German, the "wollte(n)" in A and C (especially A) do not feel the least bit like a subjunctive/Konjunktiv (whatever). They feel like past and I REALLY have to force my brain to read anything but simple past. – Emanuel Jul 23 '15 at 14:29
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – Catomic Jul 23 '15 at 14:35

3 Answers3

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Short answer: No, not in contemporary German.

Slightly longer answer:

"wollen" implies an intention, not a prediction. It literally translates to "want" in English - and works the same in every way I can think of right now.

The translation for "will" (referring to the future) is "werden".

That being said, the sentences you quote are written in outdated German, and today no one would use those constructions any longer - but this might actually be where engl. "will" and germ. "wollen" have a common root (pure speculation though).

  • In A, I would still interpret it as a contemporary "wollen", although I agree that there are undertones of "werden" in it.

  • In B, one would replace "wollten" with "würden" in today's language.

  • In C the situation seems quite clear to me that it means "wollen" in a contemporary sense.

Sorry, if this makes the answer slighly confusing...

Gerhard
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    There is one way it doesn't work like English want: Die Frau will ein UFO gesehen haben = *The woman claims to have seen UFO*. But well this is probably a higher level of German language. – Liglo App Jul 19 '15 at 15:54
  • @Barth Zalewski By "higher level" do you mean that a "deep grammar" analysis of wollen in your example would go e.g. the woman wanting it known, accepted etc. that she has seen UFO, where wollen is at a higher grammatical node than is suggested by surface grammar? – Catomic Jul 19 '15 at 16:03
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    I mean that this way of usage of modal verbs is taught at higher levels of German. It means that is her opinion that she saw Ufo and nobody actually believes her but she claims so. Each modal verb in German can be use in an extended way. For example Sie dürften schon weit weg sein means *They are probably very far away already*. – Liglo App Jul 19 '15 at 16:07
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To answer the question: wollen can never serve as an exact replacement for werden; werden is the neutral form of something happening in the future. However, wollen almost always refers to an event in the future, when used in Indikativ Präsens; also, it can serve to express wishes or intentions:

  1. Ich will einen Keks essen. (wish, and if I could do it, I'll eat it in the future)
  2. Ich will eine Runde laufen gehen. (intention, and this will happen in the future)

Especially (2) is a strong indicator for a future event and I suppose it is the reason why wollen became the future auxiliary of choice in many germanic languages. But it will never be as neutral as "werden", as volition/intention will always be retained, which can be demonstrated easily:

  1. Morgen werde ich in den Krieg ziehen.
  2. Morgen will ich in den Krieg ziehen.

The first sentence is a neutral statement about a future event, wich does not allow to discern whether the speaker wants to take part in war or not; but in (4), it can safely assumed that he does not object. Someone who does not want to partake in a war, would stick to werden or use müssen/sollen instead.

This is why it is usually impossible to use it when there is no subject that is able to have wishes/intentions:

  1. *Das Schiff will sinken.
  2. *Laut Wettervorhersage will es morgen regnen.

It has never been different for German, as far as I know. But let's replace wollen with werden in (2):

  1. Ich will noch eine Runde laufen gehen.
  2. Ich werde noch eine Runde laufen gehen.

Concerning the question whether the event will take place or not, it will basically the same in many everyday situations. Therefore wollen can indeed serve to express a temporal category, with an additional connotation of intention.

Another Edit:
Middle High German did not yet have a grammaticalized future tense. The future events therefore had to be expressed by other means, which, AFAIK, where:

Ich werde arbeitend ("I become working", inchoative aspect)
Ich muss arbeiten (I have to work ("must"))
Ich will arbeiten (I want to work ("will"))
Ich soll arbeiten (I am supposed to work ("shall"))

To develop into a grammaticalized, syntactical structure, it is necessary to erase the lexical meaning of words. This happened to english will, which does no longer carry the lexical meaning of "want". Most likely, the inchoative aspect was fully grammaticalized, in a way the similar Passiv is grammaticalized today (werden + Partizip Präsens = Inchoativ, werden + Partizip Perfekt = Vorgangspassiv). It was just that the -d of the Partizip Präsens was dropped. With a fully grammaticalized future tense in place, the process, that would most likely have led to the erasure of the lexical meanings of either wollen, müssen, sollen, stopped. Therefore, wollen/sollen and certainly not müssen can never be used exactly as werden is used, simply for the fact that they do not ever come without their lexical meaning.

Sollen is somewhat of an exception: it is often used when the Vorgangspassiv is put into the future, as otherwise one either had to drop future tense or use werden two times. Example:

Die Straße soll wegen Bauarbeiten für sechs Wochen gesperrt werden.

It is quite clear that "sollen" has little modal meaning left here. But I'm not decided whether it is viable to assume a separate grammaticalized future tense with sollen or not.

Veredomon
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  • I disagree with "never", see my answer for examples – Emanuel Jul 19 '15 at 22:21
  • That is why I wrote "can never serve as an exact replacement". Wollen always "taints" the temporal category with a modal one. – Veredomon Jul 19 '15 at 23:09
  • @Emanuel: enhanced my answer. – Veredomon Jul 19 '15 at 23:18
  • Still, take my last example and explain how this sentence is any different with "wollen". When it comes to translating it to English you CLEARLY get "will" and not "want to" so from a students perspective "wollen" does mean "will" there. I think the words are synonymous there and synonyms can have differences in nuances... otherwise we would have very few synonyms of anything. – Emanuel Jul 19 '15 at 23:24
  • I think what would be okay to say is that "wollen" can never be English "will" that has NO component of volition whatsoever... like "The sky will be dark." There's zero volition in that and "wollen" wouldn't work. – Emanuel Jul 19 '15 at 23:29
  • @Emanuel: About your last example: Yes, it would be translated into "will", which doesn't mean werden and wollen is exactly the same there in German. It just means that English doesn't have a modal system which is as sophisticated as the German one. – Veredomon Jul 19 '15 at 23:56
  • An interesting find regarding the olden days: https://books.google.de/books?id=LLVQAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA125&dq="will+ich+mich+stellen"&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAWoVChMIoIHRvrLoxgIVQ7UUCh1f_wUU#v=onepage&q=%22will%20ich%20mich%20stellen%22&f=false ... point 45 says "... und ich will unter den Söhnen Isreals wohnen und will ihr Gott sein." Wäre interessant, ob da wirklich "wollen" gemeint ist. – Emanuel Jul 20 '15 at 00:00
  • Little comment regarding "das Schiff will sinken" and "es will regnen": Actually, those two would have been correct two hundred years ago (Adelung's dictionary from 1801 mentions the first as an example for his 8th definition of the word [http://www.zeno.org/Adelung-1793/A/Wollen]); there's also "es will Abend werden" in Lukas 24:29 - which is the title of Bach's cantata BWV 6. – Mac Jul 20 '15 at 08:18
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    Grimm is also interesting in this context: "die eigenbedeutung [i.e. "to want"] von wollen kann weiter zu einem auxiliar verblassen, das in verbindung mit einem inf. temporale oder modale funktion übernimmt, eine entwicklung, die nicht auf das deutsche beschränkt ist, sondern auch an. und besonders ags./engl. für die verbalflexion wichtig wird. ein rest der eigenbedeutung bleibt dem verbum wollen aber in der deutschen sprache immer, auch wo es hilfsverb ist." [emphasis mine] [http://woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/?sigle=DWB&mode=Vernetzung&lemid=GW26466#XGW26466] – Mac Jul 20 '15 at 08:21
  • "Die Straße soll..." - if I wanted to express the future, I'd drop the Futur and use "Die Straße wird ... gesperrt". I'd understand your example sentence to mean "I've heard that they will...". Do you have more contemporary examples for this? – wolfgang Jul 20 '15 at 11:06
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As I have said in the comments, the examples you give do not illustrate the question. "will" is a present form. It has a subjunctive/conditional form (would) but no past form. And it wouldn't make sense. Either something will happen in the future (from now) or not. You cannot form a past tense of a future tense (I think that is impossible in any language but I don't know).

The other answers say that "wollen" can never be used as future-"will". I have to slightly disagree with that.

Ich will das mal überhören.
Ich will das mal so stehen lassen.
Vereinfachend will ich das im Folgenden nur noch als „Bereich der Gesamtinotropie“ bezeichnen.

To me, this is more a statement about what you will do than it is about what you want. The idea of "wollen" is in there, too, of course and the overlap is natural since statements about intentions for the future are inherently both... a statement about the future and a statement about volition. That's how English "will" became what it is. It was volition at first, too. But as for my examples I'd say they're about 70% future focused. You can replace the "will" in the examples with "werde" and have essentially the same sentence.

Especially the last one, since it contains a future marker "im Folgenden". If it were strictly volition the statement would express that you are going to want to call it that from now on... never mind whether you actually will or not.

Emanuel
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  • As you are referring to me: I said that "wollen" can never serve as an exact replacement, however, it can serve as a proper replacement to signal a future event. But different from werden, wollen is not neutral, as it puts emphasis on the speakers intentions. – Veredomon Jul 19 '15 at 23:12
  • @Veredomon... if I say "Ich werde das ab jetzt so machen." then I am stating my intentions. Whether they'll become a reality is not known yet because it's future. "werden" is often used to talk about intentions that way. – Emanuel Jul 19 '15 at 23:16
  • Yes, but you stay neutral about your feelings. Werden is about a future event, wollen is about modality that implies/will lead to a future event. That's a difference. – Veredomon Jul 19 '15 at 23:23
  • @Veredomon... in the last example, you don't actually know that. Maybe the author doesn't like that simple term but he uses it anyway for simplicities sake. I know this sounds super nit-picky, and it is, but you wrote "never" and that's always a slippery word when it comes to language. – Emanuel Jul 19 '15 at 23:25
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    I did statistical studies on the use of wollen recently, so I ran into that question before. When I say "Ich will am WE meine Steuer machen", it is safe to assume that I don't like to do my taxes. However, I came to the conclusion that intention and wish, may it even be remote, cannot be separated: although I don't like to do taxes, it is still my wish to do them this WE and not, say, next one. Next problem is that you can only assume, but not discern for sure what the speaker meant. So when he used wollen instead of neutral werden, it is prudent to assume he had a reason. – Veredomon Jul 19 '15 at 23:38