Morphology-based explanation of modal auxiliary syntax in present-day English

Abstract

This paper addresses restrictions on the formation of verb phrases containing modal auxiliaries in present-day English. It will be argued and demonstrated below that well-known data about the English modals can be interpreted and understood as a matter of inflectional morphology. In particular, the possibility that non-indicative mood is an inherent feature of the English modals is a concept that remains to be investigated. It appears that an analysis focusing on non-indicative mood may indeed open up new explanatory perspectives on modal auxiliary syntax in present-day English. The proposal to be presented below is that we should investigate the morphology of non-indicative mood as an interesting concept for the explanation of the morphosyntactic restrictions. It may account for not only the English-internal facts, but also for certain cross-linguistic syntactic differences between English and other Germanic languages in the area of modal auxiliary syntax.