Johanna,
  I find your analysis very rich and interesting.  It's interesting to 
think of this in relation to Bob's question, which is whether to 
consider form as more important than function.  You could think of 
''would" as a modal in both uses primarily because it's invariant, is 
always followed by the plain form of the main verb (or following 
auxiliary), takes on the finite role of negation, fronting for 
questions, and so on.  If that's so, then we could conclude that modals 
can take on aspectual functions.  But if we thought that function was 
the most important concern (as you do here), we can then ask what 
structures carry out a certain function (like aspectual meaning), and 
thus say "would" is an aspectual marker in some instances.  If we do 
either one consistently or thoughtfully, we will probably end up 
agreeing on what the entity is and is like, but not necessarily on how 
to classify it.
    If you decide ahead of time what functions the modals carry out, 
then you can use that to test for classification. If you decide ahead of 
time what words are modals, you can then ask how they function.  I'm not 
quite ready to concede that "would" should be outside the system in its 
past time (rather than conditional) referents, in part because it's 
possible to take sentences out of context that could be either.  ("I 
would go if the rain permitted" and so on.)
   One modal category is possibility or probability, and it might be 
possible to see "would" as something we are certain about (in relation 
to past time) just as "will" expresses certainty about something that 
hasn't occured yet. (Not just intention.  If I say "The Red Sox will win 
the world series", I don't mean that they intend to do it.)  In that 
sense, it might not be any more aspectual than "could" in a sentence 
like "when I was young, I could throw a ball from center to the catcher 
on the fly." This, too, gives us a sense of pattern no longer operative. 
 "Used to", I think, would fit right in.
   But I notice that you don't include "could" in your modal ist.  I 
don't know if that was accidental.
    I tend to love the trees and be suspicious of the forest, so 
classification discussion interest me by provokiing attention to the 
patterns and nuanced differences.  
    Bob's point is interesting.  We want to be consistent in how we 
approach the task.

Craig

 
Johanna Rubba wrote:

> Not all auxiliaries are modal. "Be, do, have" are not modal 
> auxiliaries. The core modals are can, could, may, might, must, shall, 
> should, will, would. Other verbs, such as "ought to, have to", express 
> modal meanings. Modals have what are called "deontic" meanings, having 
> to do with ability (can), possibility (can, may, might), permission 
> (can, may), obligation (should, must), and intention (will) and 
> "epistemic" meanings, which indicate the speaker's surmise or a 
> conclusion reached without direct evidence ("The lights are on; they 
> must be home").
>
> "Used to" is an aspect marker: it marks past habitual actions ("Back 
> then, I used to run 5 miles every morning") or past durative states 
> ("That house used to be green"). It is similar in this way to 
> aspect-marking "would" ("Back then, I would run 5 miles every 
> morning") (note that aspect-marking "would" is not the same as modal 
> "would", as in "If I could, I would run 5 miles every morning"). 
> Huddleston & Pullum (p. 115) call it "the most marginal of the 
> auxiliaries" and "highly defective" (in the sense that it doesn't have 
> usual verb forms such as present tense, gerund or participle or past 
> participle (in its habitual meaning).
>
> I recently read a biography of Samuel Pepys, who lived in the 
> 1500-1600's. I wish now that I had made a note of the examples, but 
> quotations from his writings had "use" as an indicator of habit, 
> perhaps in tenses other than past. It has fossilized so that now we 
> only use the past tense form, and the "to" is not really separable 
> from the "used" (this is similar to the obligation sense of "have 
> to"). Note the completely fixed form of it in expressions like "I'm 
> not used to it."
>
> The whole area of verbs that accompany other verbs (with and without 
> "to") is complex and interesting in English, with changes under way 
> that take centuries and are at different points for different verbs. 
> The modals listed above used to have non-auxiliary meanings and used 
> to inflect fully, like main verbs. We can't expect things to fit 
> neatly into pigeonholes in this area of grammar. The verb "use" as an 
> indicator of habit is clearly on its last legs.
>
>
> 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/
>

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/