1) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he may stop making noise.
2) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he might stop making noise.
3) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he should stop making noise.

Are all of the above grammatical and do they mean the same?

4) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he will stop making noise.
5) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he shall stop making noise.
6) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he would stop making noise.
7) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he should stop making noise.
8) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he may stop making noise.
9) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he might stop making noise.

Are all of the above grammatical and do they mean the same?

--

Gratefully,
Navi

Lost in the Twilight Zone of the English language
Obsesses with ambiguity
Interested in strange structures

navi wrote:

> 1) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he may stop making noise.
> 2) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he might stop making noise.
> 3) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he should stop making noise.

> Are all of the above grammatical and do they mean the same?

None of them sound right to me. I'd say "will" if I hope the threat
will work now, or "would" if I hoped so when I made it but don't
any more.

> 4) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he will stop making noise.
> 5) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he shall stop making noise.
> 6) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he would stop making noise.
> 7) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he should stop making noise.
> 8) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he may stop making noise.
> 9) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he might stop making noise.

> Are all of the above grammatical and do they mean the same?

Only 4 works for me. Have you seen examples of any others?

--
Jerry Friedman

Thank you very much, Jerry,

I don't recall having heard any of the other verbs used in such cases, but if I come across something, I will be sure to let you know.

Interestingly, 'A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language' by Quirk et al. (Longman) says:

"Finite clauses of purpose are introduced by so that or (less commonly and more informally) by so, and (more formally) by in order that:

The school closes earlier so (that) the children can get home before dark.
The jury and the witnesses were removed from the court in order that they might not hear the arguments of the lawyers on the prosecution's motion for an adjournment.

These finite clauses, which are putative (cf 15.49), require one of these modal
auxiliaries: can, could, may, might, should, would."

Pages 1107, 1108.
section 15.48 Clauses of purpose

As you can see 'will' is not listed among the verbs that can be used in such clauses! A native speaking friend of mine told me that this was a mistake. Now it has been confirmed!

Thanks again.

--
Respectfully,
Navi

Lost in the Twilight Zone of the English language
Interested in strange structures
Obsessed with ambiguity

Le 09/04/2024 à 21:48, navi a écrit :
>
> 1) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he may stop making noise.
> 2) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he might stop making noise.
> 3) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he should stop making noise.
>
> Are all of the above grammatical and do they mean the same?
>
> 4) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he will stop making noise.
> 5) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he shall stop making noise.
> 6) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he would stop making noise.
> 7) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he should stop making noise.
> 8) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he may stop making noise.
> 9) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he might stop making noise.
>
> Are all of the above grammatical and do they mean the same?

I don't like any of them. The endings seem wordy and cumbersome to me,
even if changed to read "making /a/ noise".

I threatened to sue him in order to shut him up.

Simples!

jerryfriedman wrote:

> navi wrote:

>> 1) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he may stop making noise.
>> 2) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he might stop making noise.
>> 3) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he should stop making noise.

>> Are all of the above grammatical and do they mean the same?

> None of them sound right to me. I'd say "will" if I hope the threat
> will work now, or "would" if I hoped so when I made it but don't
> any more.

>> 4) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he will stop making noise.
>> 5) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he shall stop making noise.
>> 6) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he would stop making noise.
>> 7) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he should stop making noise.
>> 8) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he may stop making noise.
>> 9) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he might stop making noise.

>> Are all of the above grammatical and do they mean the same?

> Only 4 works for me. Have you seen examples of any others?

They all work for me, however I have to say that your preferred
options, "will/would," have some of the highest frequencies in
the American corpora.

Now, it's difficult to search and get any hits for the above
full sentences, thus I think we should reduce the search to

"so that he [modal]"

In the British National Corpus (BNC)
at
https://www.english-corpora.org/bnc/
one finds:

SO THAT HE WILL 6
SO THAT HE SHALL 0
SO THAT HE MAY 20
SO THAT HE MIGHT 38
SO THAT HE SHOULD 5
SO THAT HE WOULD 63
Now,
In the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
at
https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/
one finds:

SO THAT HE WILL 91
SO THAT HE SHALL 3
SO THAT HE MAY 140
SO THAT HE MIGHT 183
SO THAT HE SHOULD ? [have to come back, as I've hit my limit of searches for 24 hours]
SO THAT HE WOULD 455
Of course, COCA provides full examples for all hits.

From the above and GB one can say safely that "shall" is mostly obsolete, just for Biblical texts.

Quirk is mainly about BrE, and he's confirmed by
SO THAT HE WILL 6
that "will" is not much used in BrE in such constructs.

I would say Navi should be using more some searches at COCA ...

--
Marius Hancu

On 2024-04-11 08:18:05 +0000, Marius_Hancu said:

>
> [ … ]
>

> From the above and GB one can say safely that "shall" is mostly
> obsolete, just for Biblical texts.
> Quirk is mainly about BrE, and he's confirmed by
> SO THAT HE WILL 6
> that "will" is not much used in BrE in such constructs.

The paragraph above strikes me as so confused that I can't work out
what you're trying to say. Anyway, "shall" may be mostly obsolete in
American English, but it's alive and well outside the USA. Even then,
it's used in questions in American English ("Shall I ...?"; "Shall we
....?" are much more usual than "Will I ...?"; "Will we ...?").

--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly
in England until 1987.

arthurvarr@gmail.com (navi) wrote or quoted:
>6) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he would stop making noise.

Sonny, you gotta threaten that young whippersnapper with a good
ol' fashioned lawsuit if you want him to pipe down and stop making
such a ruckus.

The use of the word 'would' there suggests that the threat of
legal action is meant to bring about a desired outcome - you
know, a hypothetical result if you will.

Now, "threaten him with a lawsuit so that he would stop making noise"
- that's about as natural and straightforward a way to put it as
you can get, compared to using some other fancy-schmancy verbiage.

But hey, us old academics like to sprinkle in a few choice
idioms and turns of phrase now and then, don't we? Keeps the
young'uns on their toes, ya know? So in a nutshell, give that
young rapscallion an earful about the lawsuit if he doesn't pipe
down. That oughta do the trick and put a sock in his yap. Capiche?

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote or quoted:
>But hey, us old academics like to sprinkle in a few choice

Dislaimer: I'm not an "academic" in the sense of "a teacher
in a college or university" currently, but I used to teach
at a kind of college (German: "Fachhochschule", which today
has rebranded itself as "Hochschule") and I do still teach
at adult education centers (German: "Volkshochschule"),
though I'm taking a little break from this right now.

Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

> On 2024-04-11 08:18:05 +0000, Marius_Hancu said:

>>
>> [ … ]
>>

>> From the above and GB one can say safely that "shall" is mostly
>> obsolete, just for Biblical texts.
>> Quirk is mainly about BrE, and he's confirmed by
>> SO THAT HE WILL 6
>> that "will" is not much used in BrE in such constructs.

> The paragraph above strikes me as so confused that I can't work out
> what you're trying to say. Anyway, "shall" may be mostly obsolete in
> American English, but it's alive and well outside the USA. Even then,
> it's used in questions in American English ("Shall I ...?"; "Shall we
> ....?" are much more usual than "Will I ...?"; "Will we ...?").

I was making reference only to constructs
of the
SO THAT HE [SHALL]
kind, not about the utilization of "shall" in general.

--
Marius Hancu

In article <would-20240411094925@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>,
ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de says...

> Sonny, you gotta threaten that young whippersnapper with a good
> ol' fashioned lawsuit if you want him to pipe down and stop making
> such a ruckus.

Stefan, you're talking even more fucked-up shit than you
used to when you wrote **** and ****.

Janet

Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

> On 2024-04-11 08:18:05 +0000, Marius_Hancu said:

>>
>> [ … ]
>>

>> From the above and GB one can say safely that "shall" is mostly
>> obsolete, just for Biblical texts.
>> Quirk is mainly about BrE, and he's confirmed by
>> SO THAT HE WILL 6
>> that "will" is not much used in BrE in such constructs.

> The paragraph above strikes me as so confused that I can't work out
> what you're trying to say. Anyway, "shall" may be mostly obsolete in
> American English, but it's alive and well outside the USA. Even then,
> it's used in questions in American English ("Shall I ...?"; "Shall we
> ....?" are much more usual than "Will I ...?"; "Will we ...?").

But much less, I'd say, than "Should I/we...?", "You want to...?"
and others.

--
Jerry Friedman

On 11/04/24 22:13, Janet wrote:
> In article <would-20240411094925@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>,
> ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de says...
>
>> Sonny, you gotta threaten that young whippersnapper with a good ol'
>> fashioned lawsuit if you want him to pipe down and stop making such
>> a ruckus.
>
> Stefan, you're talking even more fucked-up shit than you used to
> when you wrote **** and ****.

Stefan is no longer posting in AUE. His place has been taken by two
different AIs, one of which apparently never went to school.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW

Marius_Hancu:
> Now, it's difficult to search and get any hits for the above
> full sentences, thus I think we should reduce the search to
>
> "so that he [modal]"
>
> In the British National Corpus (BNC)
> at
> https://www.english-corpora.org/bnc/
> one finds:
>
> SO THAT HE WILL 6
> SO THAT HE SHALL 0
> SO THAT HE MAY 20
> SO THAT HE MIGHT 38
> SO THAT HE SHOULD 5
> SO THAT HE WOULD 63

For comparison, you also need "so that he [non-modal verb]",
don't you?
--
Mark Brader | "One must scythe the thickets of metaphor
Toronto | if one wishes to harvest the grain of reason."
msb@vex.net | --Robert Ludlum

Thank you all very much,

Marius, your post was very interesting and useful. Thanks. I joined the site and plan to use it.

I'll add to what Mark said that we also have to consider whether what comes before 'so that' is in the past tense or not.

I am threatening him/threatened him with a lawsuit so that...

This is an interesting issue and Marius's theory about the difference between American English and British English is definitely well worth exploring.

Thanks again to all of you.

--
Respectfully,
Navi

Lost in the Twilight Zone of the English language
Obsessed with ambiguity
Interested in strange structures

Marius_Hancu wrote:

> jerryfriedman wrote:

>> navi wrote:

>>> 1) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he may stop making noise.
>>> 2) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he might stop making noise.
>>> 3) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he should stop making noise.

>>> Are all of the above grammatical and do they mean the same?

>> None of them sound right to me. I'd say "will" if I hope the threat
>> will work now, or "would" if I hoped so when I made it but don't
>> any more.

>>> 4) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he will stop making noise.
>>> 5) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he shall stop making noise.
>>> 6) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he would stop making noise.
>>> 7) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he should stop making noise.
>>> 8) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he may stop making noise.
>>> 9) Threaten him with a lawsuit so that he might stop making noise.

>>> Are all of the above grammatical and do they mean the same?

>> Only 4 works for me. Have you seen examples of any others?

> They all work for me, however I have to say that your preferred
> options, "will/would," have some of the highest frequencies in
> the American corpora.

> Now, it's difficult to search and get any hits for the above
> full sentences, thus I think we should reduce the search to

> "so that he [modal]"

> In the British National Corpus (BNC)
> at
> https://www.english-corpora.org/bnc/
> one finds:

> SO THAT HE WILL 6
> SO THAT HE SHALL 0
> SO THAT HE MAY 20
> SO THAT HE MIGHT 38
> SO THAT HE SHOULD 5
> SO THAT HE WOULD 63

> Now,
> In the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
> at
> https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/
> one finds:

> SO THAT HE WILL 91
> SO THAT HE SHALL 3
> SO THAT HE MAY 140
> SO THAT HE MIGHT 183
> SO THAT HE SHOULD ? [have to come back, as I've hit my limit of searches for 24 hours]
> SO THAT HE WOULD 455

> Of course, COCA provides full examples for all hits.

> From the above and GB one can say safely that "shall" is mostly obsolete, just for Biblical texts.

> Quirk is mainly about BrE, and he's confirmed by
> SO THAT HE WILL 6
> that "will" is not much used in BrE in such constructs.

> I would say Navi should be using more some searches at COCA ...

Let me indicate now that while I consider all 8 sentences grammatically correct,
I feel that Jerry Friedman is fully justified about their non-appropriateness
in terms of being different from each other in terms of meaning.

This comes into effect as a result of the unique/distinct tree of meanings associated with each modal.

I was inspired here by Snidely's remarks in another thread:
https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=205540&group=alt.usage.english#205540
[where Snidely said: For 4-6, I'd be more likely to use "might" instead of "may"; the latter
suggests that I wanted to fall and needed help.]

The meanings I see [at this late time in the night-))] are:

>>> 1) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he may stop making noise.
means mainly
I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he will be /allowed to/capable to/ stop making noise.
or:
I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he will _feel_ /allowed to/capable to/ stop making noise.
8) is similar

>>> 2) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he might stop making noise.
means mainly
I threatened him with a lawsuit so that the /possibility/chance/ of him /stopping/to stop/ making noise will exist/emerge.
9) is similar

>>> 3) I threatened him with a lawsuit so that he should stop making noise.
means mainly
I threatened him with a lawsuit in order to make him stop making noise. [injunction/order/putative]

Shorter:
4) and 5) express desired /futurity/event to come/
6) and 7) express more doubtful/conditional /futurity/event to come/

Best.
--
Marius Hancu

marius.hancu@gmail.com (Marius_Hancu) wrote or quoted:
>The meanings I see [at this late time in the night-))] are:

Seein' as this discussion here's been goin' on a spell, and
I already threw my two cents in for the "would" version, if y'all
don't mind, lemme trot out three choice examples to back that up.

|And the Lord turned a mighty strong west wind, which took
|away the locusts, and cast them into the Red sea; there
|remained not one locust in all the coasts of Egypt. But the
|Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that he would not let the
|children of Israel go.
KJV

|He said, in a wheezy old voice, that he was merely showing
|himself to me so that I would recognize him when I saw him
|later.
Mark Twain

|But an account in your name shows a series of deposits adding
|up to more than $300,000. It's from Jamey so that Kyle would
|have enough money in case something happened to her.
TV show

Thank you very much, Marius,

I generally follow Jerry's advice and suggestions. I do believe that at the very least in modern day American English, his versions are the best if not the only valid ones.

I like using GB and COCA will definitely come in handy too, but, as you know, each example has to be examined in its own context. Just having a string of words that matches part of my sentence doesn't mean that my sentence is OK. We have to see if that 'string' has been used in the same way as in my sentence. We have to verify that the tenses are the same. And we have to see when the sentence we have found was written.

I know you are well aware of all that, but mentioning it won't hurt, especially since some novice learners might visit this site from time to time.

--

Respectfully,
Navi

navi wrote:

> I like using GB and COCA will definitely come in handy too, but, as you know, each example has to be examined in its own context. Just having a string of words that matches part of my sentence doesn't mean that my sentence is OK. We have to see if that 'string' has been used in the same way as in my sentence. We have to verify that the tenses are the same. And we have to see when the sentence we have found was written.

Well, this is I recommended to you the COCA site, as it generally provides a context of at least a paragraph for many examples, and the setting is varied too (FICT, ACAD, etc). We don't write and speak in a vacuum.

--
Marius Hancu

navi wrote:

> Interestingly, 'A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language' by Quirk et al. (Longman) says:
...

For everybody, a great reference about Professor Quirk:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2017/dec/tribute-randolph-quirk-towering-ucl-intellect

Respect, indeed.

--
Marius Hancu