Microsoft Word Elmi Mecmue 28

Yeganə Qaraşova
 
 
76
ME EME 
present past 
Witen - 
- 
Owe - 
- 
Dugen - 
- 
Unnen - 
- 
Cunnen Can 
Could 
Ðurfen - 
- 
Durren Dar 
- 
Mon - 
- 
Sculen Shall 
Should 
Moten Must 
- 
Magen May 
Might 
Willen Will 
Would 
[Niedan - Neadian] 
Need 
- 
 
This table allows us to note the following points:  
 1. The class of the preterite presents is now limited, and we are now dealing with 
the class of modal verbs. Some of the members have disappeared (WITEN, DUGEN, 
UNNEN, MON and ĐURFEN), but one is also a lexical verb (WITHEN).  
E.G. (1) Full well I wot the ground of all this grudge.  
 (2) Ah, Marcus, Marcus, brother, well I not/ Thy napkin cannot drink a tear of 
mine. [8, 208] 
As for ĐURFEN, it has been replaced by NEED.  
2. In EME, DURREN has only one present form, but whenever it is past, it is a 
lexical verb.  
E. G.(1) I durst, my lord, to wager, she is honest. [10, 229] 
It will be the same for OWE:we can find instances where it is used both lexically 
and modally.  
E. G.(2) Do you perceive in all this noble company,/ Where most you owe 
obedience? 
(3) Look where he comes: not poppy, not mandragora,/ Nor all the drowsy syrups 
of the world/ Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep/ Which thou owedst 
yesterday. [7, 256]  

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Modal verbs in modern English
 
 
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3. MOTEN only has one form in EME: it is morphologically a past form, but 
grammatically, it is present in meaning. For most of the examples, MOTEN could 
have been replaced by OUGHT TO.  
E. G. (1) mostenedes be doone, with thy charte…  
 (2) Simon, thou moste suffer as well as I myself;  
4. We have only found one example of MON,  
E. G. (1) none of your servants shall not pas the dowers, but they mon be 
trobled…  
5. Finally, we can notice the absence of infinitive forms in EME, as well as the 
standardization of the past forms of CAN, SHALL and WILL.  
 Compared to OE and ME, the meaning of modal verbs in EME has changed. 
This change seems to go along with the grammatical change they have undergone.  
  MAY had a meaning very close to CAN. IN EME, it is to keep the meaning 
of permission and possibility, but CAN is now to have the meaning of physical 
ability, whereas in OE and ME, it referred to knowledge and capacity.  
  In OE, MUST had the meaning of “be allowed, have the capacity” as well as 
“must”. 
By the end of ME, it had the meaning of “must, ought”, which is the same in 
EME.  
  In OE and ME, OUGHT had the meaning of “have, possess, own”. In EME, 
OUGHT is (semi-) modal, and we have the lexical verbs owe, own.  
  MON is no longer used in EME; neither is WITEN, which is only to be found 
as a lexical verb (or under nominal and adjectival forms).  
  As for NEED, DARE and WILL, they are the only verbs to be both lexical 
and modal; concerning NEED, its morphological form is taken from NIEDAN, 
NEADIAN, the from ĐURFEN has disappeared.  
We recalled the EME structures of modals. With examples, let us see what their 
structures are in EME (showing no differences between epistemic and deontic modals 
yet). The following examples display contracted forms.  
E. G.(1) they’d think surely we kept a bawdy house… [5, 57 - 62] 
 (2) you’d be taught at soundly,  
 (3) I’ll give thee twenty for it.  
 (4) we’ll drink his Health.  
These are all instances of WILL. Now, all modals are generated under T, because 
they merge with the subject. Thus, they have become functional heads.  
E. G. (1) ’twill doe the childe noe harme…  
 (2) ’would be a lest through the whole Vniuersitie.  
Nevertheless this second type of contraction is not specific to WILL and WOULD, 
but also to the auxiliary BE: the subject pronoun it merges with these verbal forms; or, 
in some contexts, that is when it is an object, it becomes the free morpheme’ t. Those 
contractions tell us modals are in indeed grammatical items generated under T.  

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Yeganə Qaraşova
 
 
78
It is noteworthy that the use of dummy- DO has not been generalized yet: we still 
find negative imperatives and questions without DO, or finite verbs followed by the 
negation not; but the EME language is already using the emphatic DO, as well as DO 
bearing tense and the contraction of the negation. [4, 260] 
E. G. (1) Doth she not think me an old murderer. 
 (2) what doeth hinder me to be baptized?  
 In examples displaying DO, the syntactic position for this constituent is the same 
as modals: it is base-generated under T as it bears tense and the bound morpheme for 
negation. The use of dummy- DO implies the verb does not raise to T anymore (in 
terms of DM, we have shifted form Fusion to Merge). In affirmative sentences, Affix 
Hopping then applies.  
E. G. (1) not any in the court durst but have sought him, which this man did,  
In EME, the main negation becomes not and it immediately follows the modal.  
E. G. (1) I hate the moor,/ and’ tis thought abroad that’ twixt my sheets/ H’ as 
done my office; I know not if’t be true…  
 (2) Doth she not think me an old murderer.  
 When using the terms “historical survey”, we intend to sum up what the situation 
of the preterite-present verbs is form a diachronic and a synchronic point of view.  
We use the word ancestors of modal verbs for many of them have become modal 
verbs in contemporary English. The status of the preterite-presents is the same 
whoever the different authors or grammarians are. Let us briefly sum up what has 
been written about them, both by French and Anglo-saxon writers.  
 About these verbs, Fernand Mossé said that “They are combined verbs with 
vowel alternations which belong to most of the known classes of strong verbs”. As for 
André Tellier, he had chosen (…) to undertake this semantic and syntactic study 
considering [the preterite-present verbs] not as elements of a whole but as isolated 
terms (…). [10, 181 - 193] 
In his grammar of Old English, dealing with the different classes of verbs, Alistair 
Campbell added:  
There is also a class of verbs known as the preterite-present verbs: they are not 
numerous, but most of them are very common [12: 295]. 
Furthermore, Cynthia Allen considered that there existed no class nor category 
for modal verbs:  
There is no justification for including the category “modal” in the grammar of 
Old English unless it can be demonstrated that modal verbs behave differently from 
other verbs [5: 92] 
As for Ian Roberts, he drew a parallel between Old English, Middle English and 
contemporary English:  
(…) modals were formerly much closer in distribution to main verbs than they 
are in present-day English.  
(…) we assume that at least some of the premodals [les perfecto-présents] were 
_- assigning verbs base-generated in V. Since we have no evidence that a given 

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