I am forwarding this to the list at Johanna's request. It seems to me
if you want to make a case for modals as conveying (overlapping?)
tense, there are some clear examples. Johanna, I think, is presenting
this in relation to historic change, also arguing that the presence of
something isn't negated by zero marking. With apologies if that's off
track. We have discussed this before, but it's a complex and
interesting issue.
Craig
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: Question about modal verbs
From: "Johanna Rubba" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, March 29, 2006 3:59 pm
To: "Craig Hancock" <[log in to unmask]>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi, Craig,
Could you forward this to the list?
There are regular cases in which the historic past/present relationship
holds:
1) Usually I can lift a heavy box, but I tried to lift that one, and I
couldn't.
2) First he told me, "I'll help you with your term paper," but when
push came to shove, he wouldn't.
It looks like this only holds when the modal has its deontic meaning --
ability in the case of "can" and intention or willingness in the case
of "will."
The absence of marking on modals is not proof that syntax and semantics
aren't related. Plenty of categories have both zero-marking and
explicit marking, such as plural ("shoes" vs. "sheep") and past tense
("hit" and "hit", "beat" and "beat"). Does "hit" have abstract past
tense, while "smashed" doesn't? Does "sheep" have abstract number?
Modals are certainly interpreted as pertaining to the past or present.
3) I should call my mother today.
is interpreted as a situation that holds in present time. I do like to
use "finite" for this reason. I, too, distinguish tense (a
morphological or syntactic marking) from time (signaling the time at
which the named event happened). Finiteness is what makes a clause able
to be a sentence, so I don't want to let that go. (The other
requirement is that the clause not be a constituent of a "higher"
clause -- the old "stand alone" criterion).
The modals have been changing for millennia, and not all at the same
rate or with the same outcomes ("shall" is dying out altogether). The
process of change is a continuum, and various processes, including
metaphor, metonymy, lexicalization of contextual implicature are at
work. "Can" began life meaning "having learned or come to know" (Oxford
Ditc. of English Etymology), and is cognate with other kVn stems such
as German "können" (and, I would guess,"kennen"). This meaning is
retained in the fixed expression "out of my ken" and in related words
such as "cunning" and the word "know" itself, which comes from the same
Indo-European root. To learn or know something implies that, if it is
an action, you are able to do it (in German, you can say "Ich kann
Deutsch", lit. "I can German", which means you are able to speak
German; notice that we do this with the other word from the "knowledge"
root: we ask, "do you know German," meaning "are you able to speak
German."
The implied "ability to do if you know" lexicalized, that is, it became
part of the intrinsic meaning of the word, no longer dependent on
inference or context.
Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel.: 805.756.2184
Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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