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