Modal verbs in modern English
81
be classified in a homogenous fashion. The other difficulty they present us with is the
confusion which arises between morphological from and morphological content.
Another way of putting this would be to describe this as the confusion between
preterite-present and modals, for the point is that not every preterite-present has modal
features, and equally not every modal was a preterite-present verb. Add to this the fact
that the modal category is not particularly
robust in Old English, with some verbs
showing modal syntactic features and others showing only semantic indications, and
it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the situation is a mess. It has to be said,
however, that much of the mess is of our own devising, and reflects the results of
attempting to use a nomenclature which can be shred between
Old and present-day
English. There is a judgment to be made about whether or not this wise, and although
the nomenclature does seem preferable, nevertheless a ‘health warning’ needs to be
issued. [1, 117 - 175]
The above having been said, we can list the following modal verbs:
Cann ‘know’,
dear, ‘dare’,
m□g ‘be able’,
mōt ‘can, must’,
sċeal ‘must’,
ƥearfan
‘need’, ‘
while’ ‘want’, but note that the last of these is not a preterite-present verb,
although it shares many features with them. Note also that
I have used as the citation
form for these verbs the 3
rd
sing. Present indicative rather than the infinitive. The
reason for this is that two of these verbs,
mōt and
sċeal, do not appear to have had
infinitive forms. The others did, but where they did, the infinitive has been lost
whenever the verb is modal in present-day English. The
absence of an infinitive is,
therefore, one of the incipient developments of the modal category. Similarly, all these
verbs, with the exception of
wile, are without present and past participle forms, and
here too the comparison with present-day English is instructive.
Given below, in a slightly summarized form, the paradigms of these verbs, form
which it will be clear that there they are all somewhat irregular in comparison with
most of the other verbs we have encountered. In these summaries
I give only present
tense singular and plural and the past tense 1 sing., since the other forms are easily
derivable from those paradigms:
Cann
dearr
m□g
mōt
1 Sing.
Cann
dearr
m□g
mōt
2
Sing.
canst
dearst
meaht
mōst
3
Sing.
Cann
dearr
m□g
mōt
Plural
cunnon
durron
magon
mōton
Subj.
Sing.
Cunne
durre
m□ge
mote
Past
cūðe
dorste
meahte
mōste
Sċeal
ƥearf
wile
1 Sing.
Sċeal
ƥearf
wille
2 Sing.
Sċealt
ƥearft
wilt
3 Sing.
Sċeal
ƥearf
wile
Yeganə Qaraşova
82
Plural
sċulon
ƥurfon
willað
Subj. Sing.
Sċyle
ƥurfe
wille
Past
sċeolde
ƥorfte
wolde
Clearly there are some unexpected forms there, such as the presence of i-
mutation in the present subjunctive of,
say, sċyle, and ist absence in
ƥurfe, but in fact
that is merely virtually free variation and exactly the opposite forms can also be found.
Note
also that many forms of m□g, especially in the past tense, are found with i-
mutated variants, e.g.
mihte alongside
meahte. The infinitives, where they exist (see
above), are as follows:
cunnan, durran, magan, ƥurfan, willan. There still remains to
discuss the few preterite-present which do not have any modal values. Perhaps the
most
frequent of these, although, as a whole, most of the group are relatively frequent,
is
witan ‘know’ with 3
rd
singular
wāt. The basics of its paradigm are as follows:
1 Sing. wāt
2 Sing wāst
3 Sing wāt
Plural witon
Subj. Sing. wite
Past witað
Unlike most of the modals it has both a present and a past participle, namely
witende and
gewiten. The other preterite-presents have paradigms similar
to parallel
modals. Hence
unnan‘grant’ is like
cunnan; like
ƥurfan is
gemunan ‘remember’;
āgan‘own’, which might be included as a semimodal, compare present-day English
ought, and
dugan ‘avail’ are parallel to
mōt.
THE LIST OF USED LITERATURE
IN AZERBAIJANI
1. Aslanov A.Ə. (1957). “Müasir Azərbaycan dilində modal sözlər”. Nizami
adına Ədəbiyyat və Dil İnstitutuunun əsərləri. X cild.
2. Aslanov A.Ə. (1960). “Modal sözlər. Azərbaycan dilinin qrammatikası”.
Azərbaycan SSR EA nəşriyyatı.
3. Cahangirov F. (2005). “İngilis və Azərbaycan dillərində modallığın struktur-
semantik tədqiqi”. Bakı.
4. Cavadov Ə. Modal sözlər II Müasir Azərbaycan dili (morfologiya), Bakı Elm,
1980, s.461-467.
5. Musayev O. İngilis dilinin qrammatıkası. Bakı , Maarif, 1996, s. 392.
IN ENGLISH
6. Aitchison J.(1980). Rewiev on Lightfoot 1979. Linguistics18.