Microsoft Word Elmi Mecmue 28

Modal verbs in modern English
 
 
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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 
 

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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. 

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