UNIVERSITE PARIS III - LA SORBONNE NOUVELLE
U.F.R. D’ANGLAIS
PhD Thesis
Linguistique
Céline ROMERO
THE SYNTACTIC EVOLUTION OF MODAL VERBS IN THE
HISTORY OF ENGLISH
Under the supervision of Prof. Jacqueline GUERON
Submitted on November, 18th 2005
Jury :
Mr Claude DELMAS, President of the Jury, Prof. Paris III
Mrs Jacqueline GUERON, Supervisor, Emeritus Prof. Paris III
Mrs Annie LANCRI
Mrs Jacqueline LECARME, Research Director CNRS/Paris VII
Mrs Susan PINTZUK, Prof. University of York

---

2

---

A mon grand-père, en souvenir du temps où nous mangions des glaces sur la plage de
Rochelongue et des pâtés à la viande les matinées de pêche sur le bord de l’Hérault.
3

---

4

---

Acknowledgements
Life is made out of encounters, and their consequences can be more than fruitful...
I would like to express my greatest gratitude and respect to Jacqueline Guéron my
supervisor: she was the first to make me want to do linguistics, even long before I thought
about doing it as a full-time job. The years I spent working with her have been productive,
and still will be. Once again, I would like to thank her for her patience and support which
have been invaluable to fulfill this work. The pertinence she shows will never cease to
impress me.
I am also more than grateful to Susan Pintzuk who always answered my several emails
when I was beginning to work on Old English. I will never thank her enough for having
welcomed me within the English department at the University of York for one year and a
half. She let me take part in working sessions and present my ideas, but above all, thanks
to her, I discovered two very valuable tools for historians of the English language: an
electronic annotated corpus of Old English texts, as well as a research software to fully
use it. Her help was valuable and her patience tremendous − her presence as a member
of my Jury is then a great honour to me. I would also like to thanks the following persons
at York for their advice: David Adger, Ann Taylor, George Tsoulas and Anthony Warner.
I would like to warmly thank Annie Lancri for taking part in this jury: she was the first
to give me lectures on Old English and she knew how to lead me through the complexities
5

---

6
of this language. I still have a lot to learn from her. She also supported me to have my
work known − for that, I am grateful.
In Sophia Antipolis, the help Jacqueline Lecarme gave me has also been more than
valuable. Sometimes, fate is doing great: I am grateful for her patience and attention
towards me for our discussions have always been fruitful (whatever the subjects) and they
gave me the necessary energy and morale to keep on searching when I was on the verge
falling into an abyss or making straight for a wall. Finally I would like to thank her for
help concerning some TEX problems: TEX users have to help each other out.
I would like to warmly thank Claude Delmas to have agreed to take part in this jury
and for the interest he constantly felt and still feels towards my work. His advice and
discussions have always helped me a lot.
At last, I would like to thank the persons who helped me present my works, namely,
Jan van der Auwera, Dominique Boulonnais, Pierre Busuttil, Claude Delmas, Annie Lan-
cri, Paul Larreya, Jean-Claude Souesme and Fabienne Toupin. Thank you also to all
the persons with whom I was given the opportunty to discuss, and particularly David
Adger, Viviane Arigne, David Denison, Jean-Louis Duchet, Jo Emons, Eric Haeberli, An-
thony Kroch, Christiane Migette, Ian Roberts, Ann Taylor, George Tsoulas and Anthony
Warner.
I also want to thank the persons who gave me the possibility to teach in different uni-
versities: Anthony Hind and Christiane Migette at the University of Paris XIII, Josiane
Paccaud-Huguet and James Walker at the University of Lyon II, and Jean-Georges Hein-
rich, Gilles Leydier and Dairine O’Kelly at the University of Toulon.

---

7
Finally, thanks to my parents for their unfailing support, to my closest relatives for
their encouragements, to Yvette for my very first lessons of English, to Danièle, Lisa,
Gilles, Carine and Jessica my companions in misfortune, to José Grimm, the LATEX mae-
stro who, quite often, got me out of Mr Knuth’s unfathomable abyss, and thanks to my
pets: my St Bernard, my panther, my gnu and Allan ("I am an A.I. being, I am not an
animal").
And, last but not least, all the thanks of the Ummo worlds to my partner Alban for
his constant support, his more than wise advice, his patience, time and love.

---

8

---

Contents
List of abbreviations
v
Introduction
xi
0.1
Historical survey: the ancestors of modal verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
xi
0.2
Theoretical framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
0.2.1
Some general points on language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
0.2.2
Some theoretical notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi
0.2.3
New hypotheses of work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviii
0.2.4
Distributed Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xx
0.3
Working tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxi
0.4
General outline of the PhD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxii
1 Old English
1
1.1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1
1.1.1
The different syntactic structures in contemporary English . . . . .
4
1.2
The preterite present verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9
1.3
Syntax and functional heads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3.1
The functional heads C, T and the lexical head V . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.4
Preterite presents and vModal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4.1
The functional head v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
1.5
Existence of two positions for the preterite presents . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
1.5.1
Infinitive structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.5.2
Causatives structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
1.5.3
The vModal position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
1.6
Negation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
1.6.1
Negative Concord and Neg Criterion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
1.6.2
The negative adverbial particle ne and NegP . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
1.6.3
ne and noht . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
1.6.4
Consequence(s) of negative concord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
1.7
Adverbs and functional heads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
1.8
Tense, mood and modality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
1.8.1
Tense and mood
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
1.8.2
Modality and aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
1.8.3
Preterite presents : raising verbs? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
1.9
Summary of the chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
i

---

ii
CONTENTS
2 Middle English
109
2.1
A few generalizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
2.2
Preterite presents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
2.3
State and syntactic changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
2.4
Grammaticalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
2.4.1
Consequences on the preterite presents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
2.5
Infinitive structures: general points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
2.6
Modality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
2.6.1
Epistemicity and deonticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
2.6.2
Modality and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
2.6.3
Modal functional heads and infinitive structures . . . . . . . . . . . 140
2.6.4
Consequences on the functional heads T and Mood . . . . . . . . . 145
2.7
Syntax and negation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
2.7.1
Negative concord and Neg criterion ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
2.7.2
Coexistence of ne and not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
2.7.3
Negation and adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
2.7.4
Negative polarity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
2.8
Adverbs and functional heads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
2.9
Summary of the chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
3 Early Modern English
181
3.1
Generalities and summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
3.1.1
Continuity of the forms from Middle English . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
3.1.2
Particular case : the contraction of modals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
3.2
Forms and semantic changes of modal verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
3.2.1
Two morphological forms: present and past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
3.2.2
Semantic shifts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
3.3
Syntax of modal verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
3.3.1
Is there still a syntactic competition? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
3.3.2
Morphologically inflected forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
3.3.3
Negation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
3.3.4
Infinitive and modal verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
3.4
Tense, mood and modality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
3.4.1
Tense and aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
3.4.2
Past form, past tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
3.4.3
Past form, irrealis mood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
3.4.4
Mood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
3.4.5
Adverbs and modality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
3.5
Epistemic and deontic modals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
3.5.1
Status of these verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
3.5.2
Analyzing further Mood and vModal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
3.6
Summary of the chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

---

Document Outline

• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
  • Historical survey: the ancestors of modal verbs
  • Theoretical framework
    • Some general points on language
    • Some theoretical notions
    • New hypotheses of work
    • Distributed Morphology
  • Working tools
  • General outline of the PhD
• Old English
  • Introduction
    • The different syntactic structures in contemporary English
  • The preterite present verbs
  • Syntax and functional heads
    • The functional heads C, T and the lexical head V
  • Preterite presents and v2Modal
    • The functional head v
  • Existence of two positions for the preterite presents
    • Infinitive structures
    • Causatives structures
    • The v2Modal position
  • Negation
    • Negative Concord and Neg Criterion
    • The negative adverbial particle ne and NegP
    • ne and noht
    • Consequence(s) of negative concord
  • Adverbs and functional heads
  • Tense, mood and modality
    • Tense and mood
    • Modality and aspect
    • Preterite presents : raising verbs?
  • Summary of the chapter
• Middle English
  • A few generalizations
  • Preterite presents
  • State and syntactic changes
  • Grammaticalisation
    • Consequences on the preterite presents
  • Infinitive structures: general points
  • Modality
    • Epistemicity and deonticity
    • Modality and syntax
    • Modal functional heads and infinitive structures
    • Consequences on the functional heads T and Mood
  • Syntax and negation
    • Negative concord and Neg criterion ?
    • Coexistence of ne and not
    • Negation and adverbs
    • Negative polarity?
  • Adverbs and functional heads
  • Summary of the chapter
• Early Modern English
  • Generalities and summary
    • Continuity of the forms from Middle English
    • Particular case : the contraction of modals
  • Forms and semantic changes of modal verbs
    • Two morphological forms: present and past
    • Semantic shifts
  • Syntax of modal verbs
    • Is there still a syntactic competition?
    • Morphologically inflected forms
    • Negation
    • Infinitive and modal verbs
  • Tense, mood and modality
    • Tense and aspect
    • Past form, past tense
    • Past form, irrealis mood
    • Mood
    • Adverbs and modality
  • Epistemic and deontic modals
    • Status of these verbs
    • Analyzing further Mood and v2Modal
  • Summary of the chapter
• Morphology of the preterite presents
  • Old English
  • Middle English
• Article à paraître
  • Introduction
  • Agan in Old English
    • The distribution of agan
  • Agen in Middle English
    • The distribution of agen
  • Syntax and grammaticalization
    • Old English syntax of agan
    • Middle English syntax of agen
    • What about grammaticalization?
    • Grammaticalization and tense
  • Conclusion
• Conclusion

---