Picture a small child saying: "Can’t, shan’t, won’t!" They are using modal verbs to show their feelings and attitude to something. Maybe they are refusing to go to bed or eat their peas. Modal verbs ...

The modal system in English is unique among verbs (lack of an -s ending, occurrence without to before an infinitive, tense forms without corresponding time reference), with individual modals-partly ...

This is a preview. Log in through your library . Abstract Epistemic modal verbs and adverbs of necessity are claimed to be positive polarity items. We study their behavior by examining modal spread, a ...