Date: Fri, 1 Jul 1994 11:12:12 CST

From: salikoko mufwene mufw[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU

Subject: Re: Double modals in Utah



In Message Fri, 1 Jul 1994 16:02:00 +1200,

"George Halliday 09483-9039" HALLIDAYG[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]schools.minedu.govt.nz writes:



Defining Modals



Within the context of this thread, modals are assumed to be

a small set of verbs defined by both their morphology and syntactic

behaviour. Morphologically these verbs lack particples and the

third person singular form in -s.

...

Be and have too, are not modals in this sense ever. Although of

course the term modal is sometimes used in a semantic sense and

in this sense has some cross-linguistic validity. That usage is

perfectly legitimate but not the way I understood the term to be

used in this thread.



I agree with the observation that a subset of modals in English are

associated with some morphosyntactic peculiarities but not with the

stipulation that the class is morphosyntactically defined or based. Note

that by your criteria "ought [to]" and perhaps "used [to]" qualify as

modals, just like "must" and "may" but all these verbs do not have the same

morphosyntactic peculiarities. For one thing, they have different patterns

of complementation. In following your position we might wind up with a

a very small subset of verbs that behave alike but exclude a bunch of others

that express modality.

Salikoko S. Mufwene

Linguistics, U. of Chicago

s-mufwene[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uchicago.edu

312-702-8531