Jed,
   Just to add to the alternate understandings in the hope it will help
and not confuse:
   I like to take a functional approach, leaning heavily on systemic
functional grammar.  The ROLE of the finite verb is to help set up a
relationship between the speaker and listener, whether statement,
question, request, command, and so on. You can't have a statement or
question without the grammatical subject and finite verb, which SFG
calls the "mood element."  For that reason, finite moves out of the
main verb when needed for question, negation, and so on.
   What are the ways in which a statement can be grounded to the point
where I can agree or disagree?  An historical event is one.  If you say
"I did my homework," I can agree or disagree (no, you did not), but
"Jed doing his homework" won't allow me to do that.  So tense helps
ground it that way.  The modals are more like present time assertions
about possibility, probability, desirability, ability, and so on, which
also tend to ground the statement or qualify the statement in some way.
 "He can go" or He may go" or "He must go" and so on are definite
positions on the part of the speaker or writer, and they can make a
statement a predicated position or even help focus the kind of
information you want out of a question. "Can he go?"  "Should he go?"
and so on.
    So the role the finite plays in not a TIME role per SE.  If we are
making a statement, these other notions can take primacy.  ("You must
not chew with your mouth open." "I did not chew with my mouth open."
We agree or disagree about these in a different way--whether it
happened or whether or not it should happen.)>
   Even when about past time, modals tend to give present time (time of
the telling) assessments.  "You should have called to tell me you were
going to be late." "She might have done it." And so on.  It's the
attitude of the speaker that is being expressed. In one case,
obligation.  In the other, possibility.
   I hope that doesn't just muddy the waters.  It's easiest for me to
understand that these forms accomplish certain things. A verb phrase
can be grounded in tense or modality because either allows it to be a
statement.

Craig



 Hi Jed,
>
> The verb-expansion rule that I teach, thanks to Chomsky, looks like
> this, where MV stands for "main verb" and the parentheses mean
> "optional"; the only two requirements are Tense and Verb:
>
> 	MV = T + (M) + (have + -en) + (be + -ing) + V
>
> This rule describes your comment that the first element in the verb
> string carries the tense (i.e., is the "finite" verb).
>
> An alternate version of this formula has a different opening slot:  a
> choice of T or M.  That choice is not optional.  In other words, a
> verb string has either tense or modal, not both.  The tense then,
> present or past, would apply to either the have or the be or the
> verb, depending on what comes next. For this version, the list of
> modals includes can, could, will, would, etc. without a present or
> past designation.
>
> So if there's a "rule" somewhere that says a sentence always has a
> finite verb and that  a finite verb always carries tense, then this
> alternate version of the verb-expansion rule is simply not accurate.
> In practice, however, it works.  Both versions work.
>
> My way of getting around the problem (if, indeed, it is a problem) is
> to avoid using the term "finite verb."  I simply refer to the verb
> phrase slot in the sentence patterns as the "predicating verb"--as
> opposed to nonfinite verbs, those used as adverbials, adjectivals,
> and nominals.
>
> Martha
>
>
>
>>Hi all,
>>    I have another question that has come out of some recent class
>>discussions. Perhaps someone can help me out.
>>    My question is this: are modal verbs finite (carrying grammatical
>>tense) even though they are not inflected or marked in any way to
>>show that tense? Do syntacticians (sp?) consider the tense to be
>>there (perhaps marked with some kind of abstract zero morpheme) even
>>though we can't see it? I've always read (and it makes sense with
>>most examples) that the first verb in a verb string is the finite
>>one, and since modals appear first in the verb string (or in my
>>Southern grammar, appear first, second, or even third in a string of
>>modals) then they must be finite!?
>>    Thanks for any help you can offer on this -- I've checked several
>>references only to get very ambiguous answers.
>>Jed
>>
>>
>>*****************************************************************
>>John (Jed) E. Dews
>>Instructor, Undergraduate Linguistics
>>MA-TESOL/Applied Linguistics Program
>>Educator, Secondary English Language Arts
>>English Department, 208 Rowand-Johnson Hall (Office)
>>University of Alabama
>>
>>
>>
>>
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