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Why are English modals this way now? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Papashaw1 Newbie Australia Joined 4033 days ago 30 posts - 35 votes | Message 1 of 9 28 December 2013 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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English modals are defective. You can't combine them with periphrastic tenses and there is no infinitive,
gerund/present participle, or past participle. The word "must" no longer has a past tense equivalent. Need and ought are falling out of usage in the sense with a bare infinitive. You can't use a modal with an object, you can't make a future or perfect, no modal stacking in standard speech, or creating IPP sentences. Tharf has died and so has the preterite of it. Does this represent a transitions to newer methods, did something happen along the way, what info can explain these happenings? While there is records of transitioning and how some uses fell, I haven't found anything pointing to a definitive answer. Edited by Papashaw1 on 28 December 2013 at 4:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 9 28 December 2013 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Can you give examples of what you mean?
For the past tense of "must", it seems we have "had to". Similarly, for future of "must", we have "we will have to". And the future perfect, "we will be having to". To me, it seems the simplified verb system in English is a bonus. E.G. The past, future, and future perfect (as well as many other tenses of "must" are the same as "to have to". This is not unlike languages such as Spanish where a verb like hacer does double duty as "to make" or "to do" and similarly with "faire" in French. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 9 28 December 2013 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | ||
Languages change over time. Especially a language like English which has to deal with influences from all over the place because it's so global. Change is not a bad thing. Otherwise you can argue that we should all speak like Proto-Indo-Europeans, or using tam-tam, or better yet, cackle randomly and make noises like animals. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 9 28 December 2013 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | ||
There's quite a bit out there on the development of modal verbs in English. The Syntactic Evolution of Modal Verbs in the History of English Modals in English and Irish The history of modal verbs in the Middle English period Why is “can” such an odd verb? Modals and auxiliary verbs in English The Development of the Modals in English: Radical versus Gradual Changes On a related note, modal verbs are in a class of their own in some of the languages that I've studied, although there is a matter of degree in that the verb translateable as "can" has an infinitive (perhaps better thought of as corresponding to "to be able to" in English). Off the top of my head I can think of examples in BCMS/SC, Finnish, French, Hungarian and Polish. The complexity of modal verbs is definitely not a peculiarity of English. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Papashaw1 Newbie Australia Joined 4033 days ago 30 posts - 35 votes | Message 5 of 9 28 December 2013 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Or the relative lack of complexity? All those things I listed above can't be done in English but can be done in other
Germanic languages. Dutch also lost their equivalent of tharf, I think English has expanded the number of pseudo modals (supposed to, about to, have to, be able to, want to, had better/best/rather) when compared to other Germanic languages. Edited by Papashaw1 on 28 December 2013 at 8:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4292 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 6 of 9 28 December 2013 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had an acquaintance recently who was an immigrant whose English was probably B1, B2
at most, and said, "Tomorrow I will can come over." I noticed that that certainly should be incorrect, but I started to think, that that is the logical way that Germanic modal verbs work, like Dutch kunnen in "Morgen zal ik kunnen doorkomen". I think that English used to have the verb "cunnan" which was related, but why English cannot say "to can" I am unsure, i.e., "I want to can speak Portuguese" is poor English, but ironically, logical English. Exactly the same phenomenon occurs with "may", because usually in English one cannot say "to may", but rather, "to be permitted to" or "to be possible to", so a sentence such as, "I think that I shall to can may cook dinner tonight", which is logical, but incorrect. Likewise, do-support is another phenomenom that is like a modal verb, but to me serves almost no purpose except to complicate already oversimplified modern English. Why it is awkward for Anglophones to say something like, "Come you over tomorrow for dinner?" when many languages simply invert the word-order in questions, or for declarative clauses, simply make a statement directly, viz., "I eat not aubergine". I still cannot find a reason after years of wondering, why "I do not eat aubergine" instead. Edited by 1e4e6 on 28 December 2013 at 11:35pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Papashaw1 Newbie Australia Joined 4033 days ago 30 posts - 35 votes | Message 7 of 9 29 December 2013 at 9:51am | IP Logged | ||
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It is the result of some pseudo prescriptivism, I don't notice anything really new for English.
For Example:German speakers are starting to use double perfects. (He said: He have had slept) (I would have had slept) to add in a plusquamperfect for the conjunctives as a way to fill in a gap. And there is the rhineland verlaufsform too. Now we have our languages created from a high literary variety heavily prescribed for the sake of communication and made complex. Then we have something like English or Beijing Mandarin. Beijing Mandarin is the perfect example, it has been heavily prescribed to be as plain as possible, just compare it to Shanghainese. English didn't have this done but there is a tendency to a similar thing. We don't allow in stuff people would logically want to use. It really bugs me when people lament the death of the English languages because of things like ending sentences with prepositions, modal stacking, "y'all", or non standard tenses. No, their inability to accept these new helpful things is the darned problem! One big question is why English articles and adjectives don't inflect for plurality, we still have plurals unlike gender or case. Edited by Papashaw1 on 30 December 2013 at 10:18am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4034 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 8 of 9 31 December 2013 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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My hypothesis is that modal verbs are becoming uninflected auxiliaries.
Can and could will be seen as different instead of verb forms of one verb as in other Germanic languages. We may even then say "I can see/ I can saw" "I could see, I could saw" just to distinguish tense. We are lose shall because it doesn't have a distinguished meaning. And might may not have an equivalent past tense then but it would not need one if the use changes. But this is a mere guess and my linguistic knowledge is rusty. Edit: It is interesting though why double modals stopped being used since the middle English era yet are making a comeback for some reason. Edited by Stolan on 31 December 2013 at 8:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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