Bob,

You're right, of course, that native speakers don't tend to be historical linguists and that our theories of language much explain the language as it is today.  Also, because of processes like analogy and leveling, odd changes that happen by accident tend to either disappear, get isolated to a few relic forms, or generalize.  In the latter case, they become a part of the theory.  In the former they end up in the lexicon.

My objection to the CIV model as an explanation for the lack of overt tense marking on modals, and Johanna is right that deontics tend to behave more as if they have tense than do epistemics, is that it pretty much ignores a very good historical reason for modals not to have tense marking.  But then I tend to look more at historical relics in language than at syntactic theory, an admitted weakness of mine. I find the historical approach fits in better with sociolinguistic theory than does a syntactic theory approach, to give a vastly over-broad generalization about how I look at these problems.

Herb



 
A couple of points.

Herb,
I know that you have forgotten more about linguistics than I would ever
know.  However, I am sure that users of the language today don't have
knowledge of historical accidents.

> I'm not sure whether I want to make a theoretical argument out  > of a
historical accident.

**************
Martha's representation of the verb expansion rule is  a good example of
how a description is a theory. 

*****
  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.

******
If (T) -- tense is separate from modals, then modals are without tense. 
That predicts a sentence like 1 is grammatical.

1)  *Bob wants to can drink English.

And, it needs to tell a story why (-s) does not go on to modals, but
does on have and be.  

Martha's alternative (T or M) does not have these problems. 

Bob Yates
Central Missouri State University

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