I've only been following this list for about a year, and I'll be you  
have thrashed this topic around more than once in the past.  But I  
wasn't here for those thrashings, so I'm inviting another round.

How do you analyze tense and modals?  Is "might" the past tense of  
"may"?  Is "could" the past tense of "can"?  Or is it more accurate  
to say that modals don't inflect for tense?  There are ten (?) modals  
(will, would, shall, should, can, could, may, might, must, and ought  
to, and none of them is past tense.

Peter Adams

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