Series of items

Before I present my comments on your opinion, let me ask if you are a native speaker of English or not.

What is your nationality, may I ask?

Yes, Taka, I'm a native speaker.

Hi. And where are you from?

Well, I'm afraid talking about that matter might derail the main point of the original question, but I say this much.

Personally, I don't think that 'should' is for the professional use only. I think 'should' implies strong conviction of one's logic.

About your 'You should be coming down with something', the sentence seemes to connote that the speaker thinks there is something medically wrong with 'you', whether, from a professional medical point of view, his diagnosis is right or not.

In the same way, I'm not a a palaeontologist, but knowing that nobody except zookeepers or, say, some extreme annimal lovers would like to keep otters, I strongly believe my reasoning that otters were not domesticated at that time is logically valid. To show such strong belief, I therefore used 'should (have)'.

I beleive the usage 'should' be right.

"«Wild» modifies «sheep» alone. It is to distinguish «wild sheep» from «domestic sheep»."

Good morning, Goldmund,

It hardly seems possible that in this sentence there is any attempt to distinguish between wild and domestic sheep. As this is not my area, I've had to rely on other sources. This site, below, states that Peking Man lived long before animals were domesticated.

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[link]

"The fossils [Peking Man] found have been determined to be approximately 130,000 years old, which would make the pre-humans to be from the Middle Pleistocene era."
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The first domestic animal was probably the dog, possibly as early as 10000 BCE in the Natufian culture of the Levant, though there is evidence of an association between humans and wolves going back 150000 years. The next three - the goat, sheep and pig - were domesticated around 8000 BCE, all in western Asia.

[link]

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Goldmund, why do you think the author says 'otter, boar, and wild sheep, buffalo, rhinocoros, even tiger', not 'otter, boar, wild sheep, buffalo, rhinocoros, and even tiger'?

ORIGINAL SENTENCE: Otter and boar shouldn't have been domesticated either.

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Taka wrote:
Well, I'm afraid talking about that matter might derail the main point of the original question, but I say this much.

Personally, I don't think that 'should' is for the professional use only. I think 'should' implies strong conviction of one's logic.

(b)RanchHand: I'm afraid you don't understand. I should have made myself more clear. 'should' isn't of course, just for "professional" use. That would be silly. Language is for everyone. But I believe that you're mistaken when you say that " 'should' implies strong conviction of one's logic". It's not quite as simple as that.

'should' equates to 'likely/probably' but they can't always be used in the same circumstances.

'should' like 'must' entails that there is a deductive manner to the reasoning. When there isn't, we ENLs TEND to use 'likely/probably'. (/b)

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Taka wrote:
About your 'You should be coming down with something', the sentence seemes to connote that the speaker thinks there is something medically wrong with 'you', whether, from a professional medical point of view, his diagnosis is right or not.

In the same way, I'm not a a palaeontologist, but knowing that nobody except zookeepers or, say, some extreme annimal lovers would like to keep otters, I strongly believe my reasoning that otters were not domesticated at that time is logically valid. To show such strong belief, I therefore used 'should (have)'.

I beleive the usage 'should' be right.

(b)RanchHand: It's not so much a question of right, Taka, it more a question of understanding the nuances of language. ESLs can use many collocations that are understood, but that doesn't mean that they are natural.

Epistemic 'should' is quite fragile; it doesn't work well in all situations.

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The CGEL states; "The deontic [social] use of is more basic than the epistemic [level of certainty] use. An epistemic reading is hardly possible with past time situations. Note, for example, the contrast between and in:

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i She must/may have left yesterday.

ii She should/ought to have left yesterday.

More generally, there are many cases where the interpretation is purely deontic, but few where it is purely epistemic."
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Maybe, because of this tendency to interpret past examples as deontic, we shy away from attempting to use 'should' as you used it. Or perhaps, we interpret this because that's the meaning our language has given this use.

In any event, I still believe that neither the expertize level nor the deductive processes were apparent enough in this situation to justify the use of a epistemic 'should'.