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 To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/