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The Historical Development of the English Modal Verb Can MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature The historical development of the English modal verb can Bachelor thesis Brno 2015 Author: Bc. Lenka Novotná Supervisor: Mgr. Radek Vogel, Ph.D. Prohlášení Prohlašuji, že jsem bakalářsku práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů. Souhlasím, aby práce byla uložena na Masarykově univerzitě v Brně v knihovně Pedagogické fakulty a zpřístupněna ke studijním účelům. Brno, 27. březen 2015 Bc. Lenka Novotná .................................. Acknowledgements Hereby I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, Mgr. Radek Vogel, PhD., who always devoted his precious time and provided valuable advice and active encouragement as regards my writing this thesis. Table of contents 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1 2 The modal verb: theoretical approaches ........................................................................ 3 2.1 Auxiliariness ................................................................................................................ 4 2.2 The modal verb and the primary verb ......................................................................... 6 2.3 Modality ....................................................................................................................... 7 3 Can in Modern English and in early English ............................................................... 10 3.1 Can in Modern English .............................................................................................. 10 3.2 Can in early English .................................................................................................. 11 4 Commencement of the English language and its treatment of verbs ........................ 13 4.1 Some aspects of Old English ..................................................................................... 14 4.2 Old English verbs ...................................................................................................... 17 4.3 OE preterite-presents ................................................................................................. 19 5 The verb in Middle English and in Early Modern English ........................................ 22 5.1 Verbs in Middle English ............................................................................................ 23 5.2 Verbs in early Modern English .................................................................................. 24 6 Research framework ...................................................................................................... 26 6.1 Statement of the problem ........................................................................................... 26 6.1.1 Lightfoot‘s ‗radical re-structuring‘ ..................................................................... 26 6.1.2 Goossens‘ reaction to Lightfoot ......................................................................... 28 6.1.3 Objectives and hypotheses ................................................................................. 30 6.2 Employed methodology and data collection ............................................................. 30 6.2.1 Methodology description .................................................................................... 31 6.2.2 Sample description ............................................................................................. 32 6.2.3 Analysis description ........................................................................................... 34 7 Interpretation of findings .............................................................................................. 37 7.1 Syntactic development ............................................................................................... 37 7.2 Semantic development ............................................................................................... 42 7.3 Evaluation of hypotheses ........................................................................................... 51 8 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 54 Works cited ............................................................................................................................. 57 List of figures .......................................................................................................................... 60 List of tables ............................................................................................................................ 60 List of abbreviations 1st Pret. preterite of first and third persons 2nd Pret. preterite of second person singular and all persons plural AUX auxiliary verb can-mod can in the function of modal verb can-V can in the function of main verb E final position in terms of sentence arrangement eModE Early Modern English I initial position in terms of sentence arrangement inf. infinitive ME Middle English mod. modal ModE Modern English OE Old English pl. plural Ptc. participle sg. singular SoA State of Affairs V main verb v. verb 1 Introduction English modal verbs have been attracting the attention of the linguistic community for a long time. Not only have there been heated discussions with respect to their present morpho- syntactic and semantic roles, but a substantial amount of research has also been devoted to their historical development. The dispute on the process of auxiliarization, in other words the syntactico-semantic development of the auxiliary verbs, reached its climax during the 1970s-80s, which unquestionably occurred on account of the rapid technological progress; various historical texts from then onwards thus could be compared and analysed on an international scale. Conclusions based on these analyses have been further restructured by renowned historical linguists, beside others, by Goossens, Lightfoot, Traugott, or Warner, who provided fundamental knowledge for later research. However, these linguists are not always in concordance, they rather complement one another, or even differ in such aspects as the causes of auxiliarization or the approximate period of the individual changes. Lightfoot (1979), for instance, understands that the process of auxiliarization occurred predominantly on the morpho-syntactic grounds, whereas Goossens‘ and Warner‘s theories emphasise the semantic change. Present studies in this field, e.g. by Fischer (2002) or Lowrey (2012), reflect the former conclusions as well as bring new insights into that controversial issue. Next, respecting the general attitude to their development, researchers claim that the modal verbs each gained modal properties at a different time of the English history. For example, the historical counterpart of shall, sculan, was relatively frequently used to express modality as early as in the early Old English period; on the contrary, cunnan, the historical counterpart of can, is considered to have been quite reluctant to drop its full-verb properties. Additionally, there is another widely recognized conclusion that any process of grammaticalization, along with its subordinate auxiliarization, is irreversible, that is, the modal verbs can never obtain their lexical meanings back. The fact that their development is not yet completely finished is also one of the common scholarly viewpoints. The purpose of this thesis is to try to shed light onto that widely discussed, interesting issue with the aim of providing further knowledge on the subject of the historical development of the modal verb can, and thus, hopefully, contribute to the investigation into the process of auxiliarization. Moreover, two contradictory concepts relating to the auxiliarization of can are here introduced, namely Lightfoot's and Goossens'. The former provides very persuasive arguments why auxiliarization should be seen as a process purely syntactic. The latter then asserts that there definitely exists a semantic aspect in this transformation. Therefore, the 1 research here is primarily devoted to the investigation of possible connections between the syntactic and semantic changes of can. Methodologically, the analysis of a single modal verb enables to focus on its gradual change during the historical periods, rather than at a particular time, which is the prevailing linguistic approach presumably employed for its potentiality to cover all the modal items. This is especially the case of Goossen‘s study. In this thesis, however, the investigation is extended over the three major historical periods of English, i.e. Old English, Middle English and early Modern English. Furthermore, when required, the periods are sub-divided according to the purposes of the analysis. The outline here is as follows. Firstly, the theoretical background is divided into the present and historical parts. The former deals with present properties and puts forward both morpho- syntactic and semantic features of can. The latter then introduces the most significant theoretic observations in the field of historical English with emphasis on the process of auxiliarization. Besides,
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