On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 1:31 PM, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote: > So how does that translate for SHALL->CAN?
Gratuitous: SHALL and CAN are supposed to be orthogonal, and it's perfectly reasonable to require someone to perform an action by a certain mechanism without actually allowing them to (e.g., you SHALL deregister by submitting a Cantus Cygneus rather than by announcement). The special case of a simple 'X SHALL do Y by <mechanism> was established in CFJs 1765 and 1890 to imply the mechanism, but I'd argue that's just an archaic linguistic shortcut, not a necessary side-effect of the SHALL.
