Cambridge Grammar of English Hardback with cd-rom a comprehensive Guide

Û

539 Glossary for any unfamiliar terms

Speech acts | 687

---

Declaratives with can, could, may and might

414a

Can, could

Can

and could in declarative clauses can be used to make suggestions. Could is

generally heard as less forceful than can and is much more frequent. Tags often

also occur:

[speakers are discussing possibilities for making framed pictures as craft items

to sell]

A: 

You can make little designs

.

B: 

We can do like little designs to put in them can’t we

. 

C: Mm. 

B: And sell them off as like individual little pictures. 

[speakers are discussing the problems of camping out, and the possibility their

tents could be stolen while they were away from them; wanna represents the

informal spoken form of ‘want to’]

A: We don’t wanna have to pack them up every time we go out. 

B: 

We could stay in a hotel

. 

A: Mm. 

[speakers are planning how to organise a set of personal accounts]

A: We need a register for deposits. 

B: 

You could have four columns. You could have ‘opening’ ‘deposit’

‘withdrawal’ ‘closing’

. 

Could always

is often used in making suggestions in everyday conversation:

[speakers are discussing the need to have a guide book for a trip they are

planning; Lonely Planet is a popular series of guide books]

A: So we need to look at if there’s a sort of basic thing about different regions. 

B: Most probably get this from the libraries. You should have that in your

Birmingham library. We’ve got it in Manchester. 

A: Mm. Yeah. I’ll go and get it out tomorrow. 

B: Or 

you could always get Lonely Planet, Japan

. 

A: Yeah. Buy it. 

B: Yeah you could. 

May

May

is used in advice-giving and suggestions, most typically in the formulaic

expressions may as well (

Û

414e

), may (well) find (that), may want/wish to:

Travellers intending to fly from Canada are likely to find that, with less

competition on these routes … fares are somewhat higher than they are for

flights wholly within the US. 

You may well find that it’s worth the effort to get

to a US city first, and fly on to California from there

.

[advice to language teachers in a teaching manual]

Give students ten minutes or so to prepare and practise their conversations.

Don’t let them make them too long. If they come up with amusing dialogues,

you may want to let them perform for the class

.

688 | Speech acts

Cambridge Grammar of English

---

Might

Might

is also used in advice and suggestions, particularly in the routine expression

you might want to

:

[during a university linguistics class, where students are analysing English

sentences; B is the tutor]

A: Erm, there’s a difficult sentence here.

B: I think there’s an argument for thinking that’s part of the verb phrase. But

you might look at that

.

[interviewer (A), recording an interview, addressing interviewee (B)]

A: 

You might want to move your chair a little bit closer

.

B: Right.

[advising an applicant for an educational course]

A: The only other person I think that 

you might want to come and talk to

is

Patricia Matthews. Now Patricia Matthews is our finance officer. So she

deals with anything to do with grants or awards. And 

you might want to

come and talk to her about what are realistic options in terms of funding

this course

. 

B: Right. 

A: And it’s just a question of ringing the college, making an appointment and

coming to talk to Margaret. 

B: Right.