Norwegian Modals [Reprint 2013 ed.] 9783110899634, 9783110179965

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Norwegian Modais

W DE G

Studies in Generative Grammar 74

Editors

Henlc van Riemsdijlc Harry van der Hulst Jan Köster

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Norwegian Modais

by

Kristin Melum Eide

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter G m b H & Co. KG, Berlin.

The series Studies in Generative Grammar was formerly published by Foris Publications Holland.

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

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Eide, Kristin M„ 1965 — Norwegian modals / by Kristin Melum Eide. p. cm. — (Studies in generative grammar ; 74) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-017996-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Norwegian language - Verb. 2. Norwegian language - Modality. 3. Germanic languages — Modality. I. Title. II. Series. PD2661.E33 2005 439.8'256-dc22 2005011454

ISBN-13: 978-3-11-017996-5 ISBN-10: 3-11-017996-2 Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche

Bibliothek

Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at .

© Copyright 2005 by Walter de Gruyter G m b H & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Acknowledgements

There are numerous w a y s to separate one group o f linguists from another. W e distinguish between formalists and functionalists, between descriptivists and theoreticians, between semanticists and syntacticians. A distinction much more important for my motivation to work as a researcher in linguistics is the difference between linguists w h o exploit the field to advance themselves and linguists w h o exploit themselves to advance the field o f linguistics. I am fortunate to know many o f the latter kind, people eager to help advance any linguistic project they believe can bring n e w insights, regardless o f specifics such as framework, premises, or general approach (with w h i c h they may disagree completely). These people are much more important to the field than they are given credit for. M o s t linguists I know are severely underpaid and severely overworked, and many o f us are working on projects dependent on continuous funding, so there is no telling when w e might be out o f a job. One could not keep this up for many years if there were nothing to provide a sense o f calling, a sense o f mission, a sense o f common enterprise. This is provided by the linguists w h o exploit themselves to advance the field. B y generously sharing their knowledge, their motivation, and their fascination with the field, they provide the rest o f us with a sense o f greater cause, which in my experience is crucial for one's motivation to put in another six hours on another Saturday night. Thus, I want to thank Elly van Gelderen for her help during a crucial phase o f my work on this book, for reading and making a range o f valuable comments, and for helping tor. I also thank Jan Terje Faarlund for making Elly aware tion, thus being instrumental in this process.

and motivation my dissertation me find an edio f my disserta-

M y gratitude also goes to Tor A . Äfarli, Inghild Flaate, Heidi Broseth, and Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson for reading parts o f the present manuscript and making valuable comments. There are a number o f (tense and) modality researchers in the Scandinavian countries w h o provided valuable reading material, interesting data, and fruitful discussions. I want to mention in particular Kasper B o y e , S0ren Brandt, Helge D y v i k , Jin Fufen, Marit Julien, Helge Lodrup, Halldor

vi

Acknowledgements

Ärmann Sigurdsson, Sten Vikner, and Olaf Jansen Westvik. Also, I need to thank Virginia Brennan for lending me not one, but two versions of the manuscript of her book Modalities (the 1997 and 2004 versions). I am

really looking forward to its publication! Thanks to the countless linguists (and non-linguists) w h o inquired about the book project (and, previously, about my dissertation) and expressed interest in reading the finished product. This remained a great motivation to finish the book. I also want to thank my editor Viktorija Todorovska, who has done an outstanding j o b editing the chapters of this book, and the publisher's agent Ursula Kleinhenz for her support throughout the process. M y gratitude also goes to the publisher's reviewer, whose extensive comments and suggestions made m e rethink and rewrite substantial parts of this book. These comments are hence partly responsible for the tardy appearance of the book; on the other hand, the finished product is certainly much better because of them. Furthermore, I need to thank Tor A. Äfarli, Inghild Flaate, and Hilde Sollid for countless lunches and telephone conversations and in particular for their continuing encouragement. M y boss Wim van Dommelen and the students I am supervising, Guro Busterud in Trondheim and Anna Wärnsby in Lund, deserve my gratitude for their patience while I was desperately working on this book. My former supervisor Torbjorn Nordgärd has also been encouraging throughout the entire project. 1 also want to thank all informants who shared their intuitions about their native languages: some of you are mentioned in footnotes throughout the text. Also, thanks to all informants who took part in the two larger informant tests, one on ville and one on non-specific subjects and tags. I would also like to thank the local community theatre where I live, M0lna Teaterlag, who strangely enough elected (and re-elected) me their leader. A special thanks to the board as well as to all the members for providing lots of laughter and a spirit of community, which helped me maintain my sanity this past year. Most of all, however, I thank Hans, my husband of 21 years: you remain the light of my life, your love and friendship continue to be the most important influence of my day. To our three sons, Jon Gunnar, Thomas, and Einar: thanks for your mere existence, allowing me to follow your development and reminding me of what is truly important in this world. More

A cknowledgements

ν ii

prosaically, thanks to all three of you for providing technical and computer support, all types of support. If there are still people who feel they deserve my gratitude and yet received no mention in this list, I ask for forgiveness. Thanks to all I might have forgotten to mention. You know who you are.

Kristin

List of abbreviations

DEF INF INFL IPP PART PASS PERF PLUR PRES PRET PROG REFL SUBJ2

definite article (suffix) infinitive Inflection-projection (I) Infinitive pro perfect particle passive perfect participle plural present preterite progressive reflexive particle past subjunctive (Konjunktiv zwei)

Table of contents

Chapter 1: Introduction 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Norwegian modals: main verbs and auxiliaries The central subjects of this investigation The root-epistemic distinction The framework The data

1 3 4 10 13

Chapter 2: Norwegian Modals: the Facts 1. 2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7.

Introduction Morphological characteristics Semantic characteristics 3.1. A brief overview of some central modality terms 3.2. Two seminal formal semantic descriptions of modals 3.3. A semantic field of modality 3.4. The semantic properties ofNorwegain modals 3.5. Modals, readings and η-place relations Syntactic characteristics 4.1. Complements of Norwegian modals 4.2. Modals, ellipsis, and tags 4.3. Summary of findings Summary and preliminary inventory 5.1. Examining our results Three potential candidates Final inventory and inventories of seven other languages 7.1. Norwegian modals: final inventory 7.2. Inventories of modals in seven other languages

15 17 24 25 28 33 39 47 53 56 63 72 73 73 75 82 82 83

Chapter 3: Analyzing Modals: a Survey of Recent Proposals 1.

2.

Two central notions 1.1. Theta-roles 1.2. Functional projections Some earlier proposals

92 92 97 102

χ

Table of contents 2.1. Roberts (1985) 2.2. Roberts (1993) 2.3. Roberts and Roussou (2002, 2003)

2.4. Cinque (1999)

3. 4.

2.5. Vikner (1988) 2.6. Thräinsson and Vikner (1995) 2.7. Barbiers (1995, 2002) 2.8. Ledrup (1996a) 2.9. Dyvik (1999) 2.10. Wurmbrand (1999, 2001) 2.11. Butler (2003) 2.12.vanGelderen (2003, 2004) 2.13.Picallo (1990) Modals and theta-roles Insertion or merger point of root and non-root modals

103 108 111

115 121 124 132 143 147 151 156 161 164 167 170

Chapter 4: Norwegian Modals: Argument Structure 1. 2. 3.

4.

Introduction The control versus raising analysis Modals in pseudoclefts 3.1. The relevant generalization: ± proposition scope 3.2. The pseudocleft construction 3.3. Modals and subject scope 3.4. Competing for subject positions: Theta relations vs. subject scope 3.4.1. The argument from nobody/somebody 3.4.2. The argument from some/every 3.4.3. The argument from the ambiguity of indefinites 3.5. Subject-orientedness and subject positions 3.6. Reanalysis verbs 3.7. Raising verbs and pseudoclefts 3.7.1. The Case solution 3.7.2. The "op" solution 3.7.3. The ungoverned trace 3.7.4. Access to subject positions 3.7.5. Controllability 3.7.6. ± Theta-role Explaining subject-orientedness 4.1. It is not a real Theta-role

171 172 192 197 201 205 217 217 218 220 228 236 240 241 242 242 244 245 246 248 249

Table of contents

5. 6.

4.2. Occational redefinition of argument structure 4.3. Double entries 4.4. Optional Theta-assignment 4.4.1. Hornstein (1998, 1999, 2000) 4.4.2. Optional versus obligatory Theta-assigners 4.5. Evaluating the alternatives The source of modality: Two semantic levels Summary

xi 252 253 255 255 260 264 268 284

Chapter 5: Norwegian Modals, Aspect and Tense 1. 2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Introduction Tense and aspect 2.1. Tense 2.2. Aspect Aspect and tense of complements 3.1. Directional small clauses 3.2. The perfect 3.3. The progressive 3.4. The iterative Modality, tense, and aspect: Scope, readings, and universality 4.1. Creole TMA systems and universalist hyotheses 4.1.1. A digression on mood and modality 4.2. TMA markers in Norwegian 4.3. Modal-aspectual sequences in other languages 4.4. Universalist approaches and the modal-tense-aspectual data 4.4.1. Modals and the perfect 4.4.2. Modals and tense 4.4.3. The positions of modals A compositional tense system for Norwegian 5.1. Julien (2000a, 2001) 5.2. A different approach 5.2.1. Tense chains and temporal relations 5.2.2. The preterite 5.2.3. The present 5.2.4. The infinitive 5.2.5. The past participle and the perfect 5.3. The function of ha 'have' The properties of the complement: tense and aspect

286 287 288 290 294 299 301 305 306 309 312 318 319 324 329 331 324 337 342 342 347 352 353 354 355 359 367 376

xii

Table of contents

7.

6.1. 6.2. The 7.1. 7.2.

8.

Default and overrride Truth values and tenses, verbs and directionals tense properties of root and non-root modals The tense of root modals The tense of non-root modals 7.2.1. Non-root modals and finiteness 7.2.2. Non-root modals for the past and future 7.2.3. Sequence of tenses, non-root modals, and generics Summing up

376 384 390 391 392 392 395 399 407

Chapter 6: Summing up 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduction The facts Earlier proposals Argument structure Modals, aspect, and tense Concluding remarks

410 411 414 416 421 427

References

428

Index

453

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.

Norwegian modals: main verbs and auxiliaries

The subject of this book are those linguistic elements in Norwegian the literature refers to as modal verbs, modal auxiliaries, or modals. For the most part, I will employ the term modal, as it is more neutral than the other two with regard to the categorial status of these linguistic elements. The list of Norwegian modals serving as my (pre-theoretical) point of departure is determined by tradition. For every well-studied Germanic language, there is a canonical list of "proper modals," determined by a long tradition going back to descriptive grammars. According to this tradition, the syntactically distinguishing trait of modals is their ability to take bare infinitival complements. However, an element is typically considered no less of a modal if it also takes all other kinds of complements, such as finite clauses or DP direct objects. Thus, according to this descriptive tradition, the class of modals includes elements with different properties, semantically and syntactically. The confusion and lack of consensus surrounding the properties of modals stem from the failure to distinguish between modal auxiliaries and what I have dubbed modal main verbs. Modal auxiliaries take bare infinitival complements only. When a modal takes a DP direct object or a finite clause as its complement, it is no longer an auxiliary (a natural assumption, given wide-spread definitions of auxiliaries as dependent on the presence of a main verb complement). 1 It follows that the properties of modal main verbs should not be used to analyze the properties of modal auxiliaries or modals in general. In my view, any sound analysis of modal auxiliaries hinges on the distinction between modal main verbs and auxiliaries. 1

There is an exception to this generalization: when a modal auxiliary takes as its complement a proform that semantically equals a verb phrase (a VP or IP), it is still an auxiliary, even though its complement is categorially a noun phrase (a DP). In a construction like Jeg mä dette Ί must (do) this', the modal behaves like an auxiliary with respect to ifo-replacement in tag questions and ellipsis.

2

Introduction

Figure 1 Modals

Modals with DP/finite clausal complements = Main verbs

Modals with bare infinitival complements = Auxiliaries

When discussing modals, most authors aim to describe modal auxiliaries. However, the inventories of modals, typically inherited from traditional descriptive works, often include modal main verbs as some sort of stowaway, since modal main verbs have the same forms as modal auxiliaries. 2 Consequently, problems and confusion arise when the properties of modal main verbs are ascribed to modal auxiliaries. Distinguishing modal main verbs from modal auxiliaries hence brings a great deal of clarity to the picture. My findings suggest that modal main verbs differ substantially from modal auxiliaries with regard to semantic and especially syntactic properties. Modal auxiliaries take bare infinitival complements and behave like raising verbs in most (though not all) respects. Modal main verbs take proper arguments (DPs and finite clauses) as direct objects and pattern with transitive lexical verbs with respect to c/o-replacement and passive formation. What they do have in common with modal auxiliaries is an overlapping lexical semantics. The main reasons for including modal main verbs in any investigation of modals are the fact that they are the lexical Doppelgänger of modal auxiliaries and the pressure of the descriptive tradition. 3 My decision to include modal main verbs in the present investigation is only indirectly determined by tradition. The fact that modal main verbs have traditionally been considered modals is not reason enough to include them, if that leads to a confusion of terms. However, many authors have used the properties of modal main verbs to support analyses of modal auxiliaries, failing to distinguish between the two. An adequate response to such

2

This is not a problem for works exclusively concerned with Modern English modals, which take no complement besides bare infinitivals. 3 Although there are also recent, more theoretically based works that seek a unified account for (what I call) modal main verbs and modal auxiliaries, e.g. the analysis of Dutch modals proposed in Barbiers (1995, 2002).

Central subjects of investigation

3

analyses thus requires a careful m a p of the entire landscape of modals; because of this, it becomes important to k n o w the properties of modal main verbs and their position in this landscape. Hence, in keeping with descriptive tradition, I have granted modal main verbs status as modals and allowed t h e m into the revised inventory of N o r wegian modals in Chapter 2, section 7. However, I emphasize that the properties of modal main verbs m a k e t h e m atypical representatives of the class of modals.

2.

The central subjects of this investigation

T h e literature on modals in Germanic languages is comprehensive: it covers a vast array of topics associated with these verbs and the debate never seems to fade. S o m e of the topics in this debate have been around for centuries (cf. Öhlschläger 1989: 19 f f ) , reinvented and rephrased by n e w generations of linguists and philosophers. Thus, no contemporary w o r k on Germanic modals can claim with any credibility to cover all aspects of this debate; at best, one can strive to shed some light on select aspects of the discussion. The t w o main topics of this book, constituting the t w o m a j o r chapters, are the argument structure of N o r w e g i a n modals (Chapter 4) and their interaction with aspect and tense (Chapter 5). Chapters 2 and 3 present the preliminaries to the discussion in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 2 examines the morphological, semantic, and syntactic properties of N o r w e g i a n modals and offers a revised inventory of Norwegian modals, including an overview of their main readings. For comparison, I provide the inventories of modals in s o m e closely related languages. Chapter 3 reviews 13 recent analyses of modals, starting with Roberts (1985) and Vikner (1988) as the earliest of these proposals and going all the w a y to van Gelderen (2003, 2004) as the most recent. With the exception of Picallo's (1990) paper, w h i c h deals with R o m a n c e modals, the proposals surveyed focus on modals in Germanic languages. In my review, I focus on what these proposals have to say about the t w o issues central to this investigation: the argument structure of modals and their possible insertion or merger point in a syntactic structure. T h e latter is a syntactico-centric take on how modals interact with major syntactico-semantic categories such as aspect and tense.

4

Introduction

Chapter 6 offers a brief summary of what I consider the major achievements of the present work: it sums up the important empirical findings, generalizations, and theoretical innovations of this investigation.

3.

The root-epistemic distinction

Almost every work on modals is, to some extent, concerned with the modal's ability to have two different readings. The epistemic reading qualifies the truth value of the proposition. The root reading denotes obligation, permission, or volition on behalf of a responsible agent. See (1), where the root reading is paraphrased in I, the epistemic in II. (1)

a.

Jon mä vcere pä kontoret. Jon must be in office-DEF 'Jon must be in his office.'

(I) (II)

'Jon is obligated to be in his office.' 'It must be the case that Jon is in his office.'

Cross-linguistically, modals and similar elements often display these two readings, and their ability to do so is considered a crucial and, in some works, defining property of modals. Thus, the root vs. epistemic distinction, established as the main opposition between modals by Hofmann (1976), has been an important topic in the modal literature. In section 1, I stated that sometimes modals behave like transitive main verbs, notably when they take finite clauses or DPs as complements. A modal with a bare infinitival complement, I argue, is always an auxiliary (even if it takes DP or finite clausal complements in other cases); this assumption was illustrated in Figure 1, repeated here as Figure 2. Figure 2 Modals

Modals with DP/finite clausal complements = Main verbs

Modals with bare infinitival complements = Auxiliaries

The root-epistemic distinction

5

A recurring question in the literature on Germanic modals, however, has been whether (some or all) modals with a bare infinitival complement should be viewed as main verbs. More specifically, the discussion has revolved around the hypothesis that the set of modals that seem quite uniform in taking bare infinitival complements may still syntactically be two different categories—main verbs and auxiliaries. The aforementioned root vs. epistemic distinction is often considered the demarcation line, not only between the two types of readings, but also between two categorial syntactic types of modals. Figure 3 Modals

Modals with DP/finite clausal complements

Modals with bare infinitival complements

= Main verbs?

= Auxiliaries?

The two readings, root and epistemic, have often been claimed to covary with specific structural traits and, crucially, to differ with respect to a range of formal properties. These claims have given rise to a whole tradition of analyses, starting with Ross (1969). In this tradition, root modals are analyzed as some kind of control verbs (i.e. main verbs) and epistemic modals as raising verbs (e.g. auxiliaries). Accordingly, these analyses are known as "control versus raising" analyses. I will examine and later reject the type of analysis suggested by Figure 3. According to my findings, both root and epistemic modals are modal auxiliaries, which is evident, for instance, from their behavior with respect to ifo-replacement in tag questions and ellipsis. What has been called the epistemic readings of Germanic modals includes evidential and metaphysical readings (cf. below for a brief discussion of the terms). Thus, I will use the opposition root vs. non-root instead of the more familiar root vs. epistemic. Crucially, 1 use the term non-root for modals that "qualify the truth-value of a proposition;" these modals are

6

Introduction

referred to as epistemic in many works. 4 Hence, my version of Figure 3 is presented in Figure 4. Figure 4 Modals

Modals with DP/finite clausal complements = Main verbs

Root modals: Deontic Dynamic

Modals with bare infinitival complements = Auxiliaries

Non-root modals: Epistemic Evidential Metaphysical

M o s t syntactic works on modals use the opposition root vs. epistemic. Deviating from this practice thus deserves some justification. Although metaphysical modality (modality about the possible futures of a given situation) could easily be argued to be a variant of epistemic modality, one important reason to chose the cover term non-root for epistemic, metaphysical, and evidential readings is that m a n y Germanic languages include at least one non-root modal with an evidential reading. As emphasized in many semantically based works on modals, epistemic modality is concerned with reasoning based on the speaker's (present) knowledge. Evidential modality, on the other hand, is concerned with the (speaker-external) evidence a speaker has for the truth of a given proposition (cf. Chapter 2, section 3 for a more detailed discussion of the terms). The relevant f o r m of evidentiality in our case is hear-say or quotative evidentiality, which means that the speaker conveys a statement made by another party. This type of modality is actually not subsumed by the term epistemic. O n e important reason w h y authors ignore this fact is that none of the proper English modals have an evidential reading, and they have been center stage in modality research for

4

In principle, even the modal main verbs on the left-most branch could be considered non-root, but I use the term non-root modal to exclude the modal main verbs.

The root-epistemic distinction

7

many decades. However, the English compound be supposed to has an evidential reading in its non-root version; John is supposed to be an architect can mean that the speaker is reporting a claim, made by someone else, that John is an architect. This is exactly the reading w e find with the German proper modal sollen and its Norwegian counterpart skulle. In my analysis, modals include main verbs and auxiliaries. Modal auxiliaries include non-root modals—subsuming epistemic, metaphysical, and evidential modals—and root modals, subsuming deontic and dynamic modals. Each subtype of modal auxiliaries has particular syntactic and semantic properties. However, there is no convincing evidence that these subtypes belong to different categories syntactically; instead, I will argue that the differences can be explained on semantic grounds. In this work, the question of the possibly different syntactic categorial status of root and non-root modals is rarely addressed explicitly. Nevertheless, it underlies the entire discussion. For instance, this question is relevant in addressing the alleged formal differences between root and non-root modals. My findings suggest that most of the differences do not amount to sound generalizations. For instance, there are a variety of claims regarding the argument-taking properties of root and non-root modals; as mentioned above, these differences constitute the basis of many analyses in the Ross (1969) tradition. I address-and reject-these claims in Chapter 4. Root modals, just like non-root modals, can be construed as one-place ('intransitive', in Ross' terms) predicates. Root modals differ from non-root ones in that they also allow a two-place construal; it is on this reading that root modals behave somewhat differently from non-root modals. Furthermore, the claim that there is a finiteness requirement pertaining to non-root (or epistemic) modals but not to root ones is wide-spread. In Norwegian, even non-root modals may occur in non-finite forms (the infinitive and the perfect participle); 5 thus, this cannot be a universal constraint on non-root modals. There are also claims about the m o d a l ' s ability to interact with tense and aspect, depending on its reading as root or nonroot. M y findings show that the picture is a lot less clear than many authors, particularly within universalist approaches, have assumed. It is true that non-root modals are much less susceptible to tense alternations than their root counterparts, but contexts where such alternations are possible do ex-

3

The latter is not found in written standard dialects, but in northern and western dialects and in many other Germanic and Romance languages (cf. Chapter 5).

8

Introduction

ist. However, different types of non-root modals (epistemic, evidential, and metaphysical) behave differently with regard to tense alternation. It has also been widely claimed that root and non-root modals select for different aspect feature matrices of their complements: root modals allegedly select for dynamic (eventive) predicates only and non-root modals for stative predicates only (this is discussed in detail in Chapter 5). This claim is often supported with the assumption that root readings are impossible with progressive and perfect complements (which are in a sense stative aspectually). In (2a) the stative predicate gives rise to a non-root (epistemic) reading of the modal, in (2b) and (2c) the perfect and progressive complements, respectively, seem to yield no reading beside the non-root one (again, epistemic). However, note that when w e add a purpose clause or a particular type of temporal adverbial, as in (2d), (2e), and (2f), the nonroot reading becomes unnatural and the reading is root. (2)

a.

Jon mä virkelig like pannekaker. Jon must really like pancakes 'Jon must really like pancakes.'

b.

Jon mä ha spist. Jon must have eaten 'Jon must have eaten.'

c.

The water must be boiling.

d.

Jon mä virkelig like pannekaker Jon must really like pancakes for at svigermora skal like ham. for that mother-in-lawDEF shall like him. 'Jon must really like pancakes for his mother-in-law to like him.'

e.

Jon mä ha spist fer han kommer. Jon must have eaten before he arrives 'Jon must have eaten before he arrives.'

f.

The water must be boiling when you pour it over the tomatoes.

The root-epistemic distinction

9

The analysis exploiting an 'opposite selectional requirements' approach can usually account for data like (2a), (2b), and (2c), but fails to account for data like (2d), (2e), and (2f). An analysis based on a universal ordering of syntactic heads, where the non-root (epistemic) modal has one fixed position above (i.e. preceding) the aspectual, and the root modal follows (and scopes under) the aspectual, faces the same issue. The data in (2) suggest instead that there is some kind of default-and-override system, where the stative, progressive, or perfect complement gives rise to a non-root reading of the modal by default. A root reading of the modal ensues when a purpose clause or a (future-denoting) temporal adverbial triggers an override effect on the semantic construal. It is hard to account for this 'default-andoverride' pattern in a garden variety universalist approach; what we need is a more flexible system and in Chapter 5, I propose a compositional tense system for Norwegian. There have also been recurring claims about the possible combinations of modals and other modals. This question has become particularly popular since the seminal work of Cinque (1999), who predicts that certain combinations and sequences ought to be possible and others not (but cf. also Thräinsson and Vikner 1995). My findings suggest that the range of possible combinations is in fact wider than predicted by Cinque; once again, the constraints seem to be semantically determined. Only a few of the semantic and formal differences claimed to exist between root and non-root modals amount to sound generalizations for Norwegian modals, according to my investigations. (3)

a. b. c. d.

Only root modals take directional complements. Only root modals take a pseudoclefted complement. Only root modals take the definite VP-proform dette 'this' as a complement. A non-root modal will always scope over a root modal, if they occur in the same clause.

I argue in Chapter 5, section 6.2, that (3a) is explained on the assumption that directionals lack a potential truth value. Non-root modals target truth values and qualify them, but in a directional complement there is no tense element, hence no truth value to qualify. (3b) and (3c) also concern the complement-taking properties of modals, in this case, the theta-properties of the modal. The correlate det 'what' of a pseudocleft complement and a definite VP-proform dette 'this' each occu-

10

Introduction

pies one argument role; in the constructions under consideration (4), the subject of the sentence (Jeg Τ and du ' y o u ' ) also depends on the modal for the assignment of a subject-role. (4)

a.

Jeg mä dette. I must this Ί must do this/

b.

Det du skal, er a sove. it you shall, is to sleep. ' W h a t you must do, is to sleep.'

However, non-root modals can never be construed as two-place predicates (that is, not in a semantic level close to syntax); instead, they take the proposition, including the subject, as their one argument. Hence, they have no semantic role to assign to the subject. Root modals may be construed as two-place or one-place predicates, and only on their two-place reading may they take a pseudoclefted or a definite complement. It is plausible, then, that their complement-taking properties in some way depend on their ability to assign a semantic role to the subject. This could be argued to be a consequence of the semantic properties of root and non-root modals, not their categorial or syntactic status. I have no satisfactory explanation for (3d). I have found no counterevidence to this generalization in any language included in this investigation. Neither have I found any convincing explanation for it (although an explanation rooted in the argument-taking properties of modals, such as the one in Thräinsson and Vikner (1995), takes us part of the way). It seems that we have to stipulate a universal relative order between non-root and root modals, along the lines of many (recent) universalist approaches. This subject is discussed in detail in Chapter 5.

4.

The framework

The general framework of this book is the (Chomskyan, generativist, structuralist) Principles and Parameters Theory, as outlined in Chomsky (1981, 1986a, 1986b, 1995a, 2000, 2001). No review of the general Principles and Parameters Theory (the P&P framework) is provided here. Readers unfa-

The framework

11

miliar with this theory may consult one or more introductory w o r k s such as H a e g e m a n (1994), R a d f o r d (1997), or Adger (2003). Specific theoretical assumptions will be defined and discussed at relevant points in the discussion. A fundamental assumption of the P & P research program is that the language capacity constitutes an autonomous component of the h u m a n brain, specific to all and only humans and part of the human genetic endowment. This designated component is often referred to as "Universal G r a m m a r , " described in C h o m s k y (1980: 187) as follows: What many linguists call "universal grammar" may be regarded as a theory of innate mechanisms, an underlying biological matrix that provides a framework within which the growth of language proceeds.... Proposed principles of universal grammar may be regarded as an abstract partial specification of the genetic program that enables the child to interpret certain events as linguistic experience and to construct a system of rules and principles on the basis of this experience. H o w e v e r , the principles and generalizations proposed in this book are not formulated to refer to this "biological matrix" of language learning, though they should be translatable in principle into a language that refers directly to such biological phenomena. Moreover, the hypothesis of innateness has not played any part in the formulation of the principles and generalizations presented here; cf. N e w m e y e r (1998: 89). To read the critical literature, one would think that there is some logical connection between the generativist research program and the need to posit a set of purely syntactic innate universale - a distasteful conclusion for so many. But innateness is a conclusion, not an assumption, and plays no role in the formulation of the principles. In other words, the question of the adequacy of such principles is independent of the question of where they 'come from'. If somebody were able to show that they could be learned inductively, then well and good. The generative research program would not have to budge one centimeter. It is also not a goal of this book to employ an extensive formalism to express generalizations that can be formulated accurately without any formalism at all. This is a conscious choice, as I agree with Jackendoff (1997: 4) that an excessive preoccupation with formal technology can overwhelm the search for genuine insight into language; and a theory's choice of formal-

12

Introduction ism can set up... barriers to communication with researchers in other frameworks.... [On the other hand,] at a more methodological level, formalization permits one to be more abstract, rigorous, and compact in stating and examining one's claims and assumptions. And, as Chomsky stressed in a much-quoted passage from Syntactic Structures, a formalization uncovers consequences, good or bad, that one might not otherwise have noticed.

There is a tendency within the P & P f r a m e w o r k for what J a c k e n d o f f considers an excessive preoccupation with formal technology and theoretical ontology. Sometimes, it is obvious to the reader that for certain authors, taking part in molding the emerging theory is more important than explaining and accounting for the linguistic data. Harris (1993: 11) states that Noam Chomsky, in particular, says flatly and often that he has very little concern for language in and of itself; never has, never will. His driving concern is with mental structure, and language is the most revealing tool he has for getting at the mind. Most linguists these days follow Chomsky's lead here. This is not the case in this proposal. I readily confess that I harbor a fascination for language and linguistic data, and I have selected parts of the P & P Theory with the explicit aim to account for and explain these data (a comm o n tactic for linguists within our f r a m e w o r k , one which gives rise to w h a t one might be inclined to dub 'shopping linguistics'). Of course, this does not amount to rejecting the hypothesis that language reflects mental structures and cognitive capacities. Instead, I find this hypothesis to be most credible; it constitutes the context within which I conduct my linguistic investigations. N e w m e y e r (1998:7) describes the field of linguistics as follows: There are... two broad orientations in the field.... One orientation sees as a central task for linguists characterizing the formal relationships among grammatical elements independently of any characterization of the semantic and pragmatic properties of those elements. The other orientation rejects that task on the grounds that the function of conveying meaning (in its broadest sense) has so affected grammatical form that it is senseless to compartmentalize it. It is the former orientation, of course, that I have been referring to as 'formalist' and the latter as 'functionalist'. I quote a number of functionalist works in this book. O n e important reason for this is that the literature on modals within this orientation is comprehensive. This is not surprising, as modals constitute a class of linguistic elements argued to illustrate the fundamental functionalist assumption: their

The data 1 3 formal properties cannot be characterized independently of their semantic (and, in part, pragmatic) properties, independently of their root vs. non-root reading. Another important reason for my quoting a number of functionalist proposals is that there are many interesting observations and close-to-data generalizations in these works. To me, however, data are interesting and fascinating only in so far as they support or contradict specific syntactic hypotheses or trigger a line of thought leading to the formulation of new syntactic hypotheses and generalizations. M y choice of framework signals that my perspective in this book will be a comparative one. A large number of the works quoted discuss research conducted on languages other than Norwegian. Thus, modal auxiliaries, modal particles, and inflectional mood from various languages constitute important evidence and the background against which I study Norwegian modals. However, this book does not formulate specific parameters in Germanic languages relevant to the behavior of modals in these and other languages. This does not mean, for instance, that the theory of tense chains in Chapter 5 does not carry over to other Germanic languages. It is simply not tested on other Germanic languages. Thus, this is, first and foremost, an investigation of Norwegian modals.

5.

The data

The data in this book come from a number of sources: books, newspapers, TV, radio, and my shameless eavesdropping on other people's conversations on the bus and in other contexts. After observing a piece of data, my next step is to test my judgments against those of a number of informants. Normally, any set of data would be presented to at least six or seven informants. Where grammaticality judgments differ significantly, I ask more informants. On two occasions, I distributed informant tests to a larger number of people; in one case (where the question regarded the modal properties of the non-root modal ville 'will'), 35 informants participated in the test. The informants range from linguists and highly educated individuals such as teachers and journalists to people with no linguistic training. M y claims about the English, German, Dutch, Faroese, Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic data are made on the basis of the existing literature as well as the grammaticality judgments and intuitions of native speakers of those languages. In some cases, I have tested specific hypotheses by presenting native speakers with a number of sentences illustrating a phenome-

14

Introduction

non. These sentences were usually not provided in context, nor did I try to hide in any way what I was looking for. In addition to consulting informants to test specific hypotheses, I have used the language resources on the internet. To test hypotheses on cooccurrence facts of Norwegian modals, I used S0k i norske tekster med IMS CWB at the University of Bergen, a corpus containing approximately 14 million Norwegian words, mainly texts from newspapers. My own intuitions and grammaticality judgments play a significant role in this book, especially when I translated sentences from other languages into Norwegian to investigate whether or not a certain generalization holds for Norwegian. However, even in many other cases, my own grammaticality judgments constitute the basis for specific hypotheses. Nowhere in the book do I present hypotheses that rest solely on my own grammaticality judgments, however. Thus, this book draws on a number of empirical sources beyond my own intuitions about Norwegian.

Chapter 2 Norwegian Modals: the Facts

1.

Introduction

Within the tradition going at least as far back as Chomsky (1965), linguistic theory has faced two levels of adequacy. First, our theory (or grammar) of a given language should be descriptively adequate, i.e. generate all and only the grammatical sentences of the language and provide a principled account for native speakers' intuitions about the structure of these sentences. Secondly, our theory should be explanatorily adequate, i.e. account for a child's acquisition of the language. However, as pointed out by Davies and Dubinsky (2004: 154), linguists have come to recognize a third level of adequacy, observational adequacy. [...OJbservational adequacy involves the not always trivial task of determining which are the well-formed expressions in a language, and which are not (and presumably being able to state whether the ill-formedness, where it occurs, is syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic). It is truly no trivial task to describe the properties of modals in any language in an observationally adequate manner, in part because of diverging intuitions about the facts. In addition, a good description should include all and only the relevant data. A broader picture, on the other hand, serves to acquaint the reader with the domain of investigation, provides an overview, and a body of data for further explorations. In this chapter, I will describe the broad landscape of Norwegian modals, including their morphological, semantic, and syntactic properties, in a theory-neutral way. Of course, any non-trivial description of linguistic elements inevitably employs terms and basic premises related to a set of theoretical assumptions; however, in the present chapter, I will try to avoid any commitment to a specific formalism or framework that would impede the accessibility of the insights I present. As a first approximation, I define the class of Norwegian modals as being composed of five members (Faarlund et al. 1997: 527):

16

Norwegian modals: the facts

(1)

burde 'should' kunne 'can' mätte 'must'

skulle 'will' ville 'want to/will' 1

These modals have root and epistemic (non-root) readings. I discuss the terms root and epistemic in detail in sections 3.1 through 3.5. For now, the preliminary definition provided by Platzack (1979: 44) will suffice: The epistemic sense...qualifies the truth value of the sentence containing the modal; the root sense...expresses necessity, obligation, permission, volition, or ability on behalf of an agent which usually, but not necessarily, is expressed by the... subject of the sentence. The sentence in (2), for example, is ambiguous between a root reading— here an obligation reading, paraphrased in I—and an epistemic reading, where the modal qualifies the truth value of the sentence, paraphrased in II: (2)

Jon mä vcere pä kontoret. 'Jon must be in his office.' I. Jon is obligated to be in his office, (root reading) II. It must be the case that Jon is in his office, (epistemic reading)

In sections 2 through 4 , 1 consider the morphological, semantic, and syntactic properties of Norwegian modals. When possible, I postpone the theoretical discussion and focus on the empirical findings. However, in section 3, a discussion of semantic modality terms is provided to aid the understanding of the remainder of the chapter. My findings are summarized at the end of each section. In section 5, I summarize the observations and examine what characterizes Norwegian modals according to these findings. In section 6, I consider three potential new candidates for the class of modals and, as a result, I revise my inventory of Norwegian modals in section 7. The chapter concludes with a table of Norwegian modals and their prototypical readings and, finally, a brief inventoiy of the modals in other Scandinavian and Germanic languages.

1

The former is the root reading, the latter is the epistemic reading.

Morphological characteristics 2.

17

Morphological characteristics

In English grammars, modals are characterized as morphologically distinct from other verbs because they have no -s form for the 3rd person singular present tense (Palmer 1986: 33). Their German counterparts behave in much the same way: the lack of explicit agreement marking in 1st and 3rd person singular present tense indicative 2 is typically one morphological feature of Germanic modals (Öhlschläger 1989: 4). 3 As expected, Norwegian modals lack agreement marking too, but since Norwegian has no subject-verb agreement with any type of verb, 4 lack of agreement is not specific to modals. Thus, the single morphological property that separates modals from almost any other verb in Norwegian is their status as preteritepresent verbs (Faarlund et al. 1997: 526). 5 Preterite-present is the term used to describe a group of Germanic verbs of which modals constitute the major part. The term alludes to the fact that their "present forms...are traceable to strong preterites 6 even though their meaning is clearly present" (Bybee et al. 1994: 77). Although this is a diachronic language development, not likely to have any bearing on the way synchronic internalized language is organized in a language user, 7 one

2

Modern Norwegian does not productively employ a system of morphologically expressed mood oppositions such as indicative-subjunctive, though it does have a designated imperative form. Interestingly, the modals skulle and matte productively take on a subjunctive-like function in certain constructions (see fn. 30). 3 Two other morphological features of German modals (neither of which applies to Norwegian) mentioned by Öhlschläger (1989: 4) are that i) the stem vowel changes from indicative present sg. to indicative present pi. ii) the stem vowel changes from infinitive to indicative preterite. 4 In Nynorsk and some dialects, the passive participle may have agreement displaying a gender (neuter [N] vs. non-neuter [NN]) and number distinction: (i) Ho/Han vart skoten /Dyret vart skote/Dyra vart skotne S/he was shot-NN/The animal-N was shot-N/The animals were shot-PLURAL 3 There is, however, an inconsistency in this work concerning the verb burde 'ought to': first, burde is listed as a weak verb (Faarlund et al. 1997: 485), class 2b, whereas later burde is a preterite-presentic verb (526). 6 For the claim that the present form of these verbs is in fact the original preterite form, see Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca (1994: 77-78), Faarlund (1991: 63), Faarlund, Lie, and Vannebo (1997: 491), and Öhlschläger (1989: 4, fn.7). 7 Andrew Carnie's review of Newmeyer's (1998) Language Form and Language Function posted on Linguist List on January 15, 2000, launched a long and heated debate between formalists and functionalists on this question. The trigger for this

18

Norwegian modals: the facts

might quite justifiably claim that the m o r e tangible consequences of this diachronic shift in the paradigm of preterite-presents, and thus modals, synchronically set them apart 8 f r o m other verbs (particularly strong verbs 9 ) in the speaker's internalised vocabulary. In Norwegian, some of the consequences are the following:

debate was the following statement: "Perhaps it is my MIT training showing through and blinding me to the obvious, but I simply fail to see how it is at all possible that a two-year old child has direct access to diachronic influences like OE word order or the great vowel shift. As far as I can tell, without time-machines or university degrees, infants only have access to what they hear spoken around them, which makes this approach psychologically incoherent." On January 21, Pavel Oratro objected to this post: "No functionalist makes the absurd claim that children practice a form of mental time-travel (though didn't Chomsky and Halle sort of say this in Sound Pattern of English ?). What they do say is that language isn't fixed at the age of two. It keeps on changing. That means that the processes that cause language change are also functional in the language facilities of individual speakers. So the grammar of a speaker of a language exhibits diachronic change through his life." On January 23, Debra Ziegeler wrote: "While a Child's acquisitional paths of grammatical development may not coincide with complete accuracy with the paths of diachronic development of a grammatical item, the motivation for the development in either case may be similarly built on the pragmatic forces which mechanise the process of grammaticalisation, and create latent grammatical material out of existing lexical items. There is no question of the individual 'accessing' the diachronic developments.... The coincide of ontogenic grammaticalisation with diachronic grammaticalisation is not a factor of individual awareness; the parallels exist merely because the processes are similar, and the similarity appears to be created by similar levels of pragmatic inferencing with different contexts." 8

Lightfoot (1974: 237; 1979) argues that the prerequisite for the categorical shift of pre-modals [category: verbs] into modals [category: aux] is the fact that these verbs were a morphologically identifiable class: "One can only assume that it was an accident that in this inflexional class [i.e. preterite-presents] only the pre-modals survived.... On the other hand, it does not seem possible to define a class of modals (and therefore of preterite-presents) on semantic grounds, and furthermore preterite-presents in different languages encompass a very wide range of verbs semantically ('hate', 'know', 'grant', 'be able', 'think', 'need', etc.). However, the crucial effect of the loss of the non-pre-modal present-preterites was that the pre-modals... became an identifiable class of verbs, with the unique characteristic that they did not have a fricative suffix for the 3rd person singular." 9 Modals do morphologically differ from weak verbs, as the latter have no vowel shift from present to preterite while most modals (like strong verbs) do.

Morphological characteristics (3)

a. b. c.

19

These verbs lack the ending -er/-r in the present tense. The stem vowel changes from infinitive to present tense. No change in stem vowel from infinitive to past tense.

This produces the paradigm in Table 1 for Norwegian modals. I have provided the ordinary strong verb drikke for comparison: Table 1 Infinitive burde kunne mätte skulle ville

Present ber kan mä skal vil

Preterite burde kunne mätte skulle ville

Perfect burdet kunnet mattet skullet villet

'should' 'can' 'must' 'will' 'want/will'

drikke

drikker

drakk

drukket

'drink'

As can be readily observed, (3 a) does not apply to burde, but here the -r belongs to the stem and is not an inflectional suffix. Furthermore, (3b) does not apply to mätte 'must' and ville 'want to'. With these exceptions, the properties in (3) are characteristics of modals in modern Norwegian. However, modals are not the only preterite-present verbs in Norwegian; the preterite-present verb vite 'know', for example, is not a modal, judging from its semantic and syntactic properties (Faarlund et al. 1997: 491). 10 In contrast to the incomplete paradigm of modern English modals, Norwegian modals have an almost full formal paradigm of finite and non-finite forms. There are, admittedly, three striking gaps in this paradigm: all Norwegian modals lack present participles and almost all lack imperatives and passives. While these features are sometimes considered morphological properties of modals (Öhlschläger 1989: 59 fn 10; Palmer 1986: 33), there is some evidence that the gaps in the formal paradigm could, and should, be given a syntactic or semantic explanation. However, since we are at present concerned with the range of forms available to a Norwegian modal, these gaps deserve a place in a discussion of morphological properties of Norwe-

10

Note however: Han vet α komme seg fram 'He knows (how) to advance himself. Also, ville 'want to' is historically not a present-preterite verb.

20

Norwegian modals: the facts

gian modals, even if the explanations for them are semantic, syntactic, or pragmatic. Lodrup (1996a: fn. 5) notes that [modals]11 lack present participles. In Norwegian, present participles are adjectives. The conditions for deriving them are not absolutely clear. However, the main rule seems to be that they can only be derived from verbs that take one syntactic argument" (Sveen 1990: IV.3). If this is correct, it is reasonable to consider the lack of present participles a syntactic property of modals. As implied by the quote above, modals are part of a large group of verbs lacking present participles in Norwegian; this group also contains weather verbs, transitive verbs, and others. Although modals do not generally passivize, two modals marginally undergo the s-passive 12 in Norwegian, kunne 'can' and ville 'want to' (data from L0drup 1996a). (4)

a.

Leksen mä kunnes i morgen. The lesson must can-PASSIVE tomorrow 'You should know your lesson by tomorrow.'

b.

Dette mä ikke bare onskes, det mä villes. This must not only wish-PASSIVE, it must will-PASSIVE 'You must not only wish this, you must want it.'

The lack of an imperative form in modals is sometimes ascribed to a semantic (Faarlund et al. 1997: 590; Öhlshcläger 1989: 59) or a pragmatic constraint; it is seen as belonging to the language user's knowledge of the world and stemming from an incompatibility between the lexical meaning of a modal and the task performed by an imperative form. For instance, the use of an imperative normally requires some amount of real-world control on the pail of the addressee over the situation described by the verb. Modals, on the other hand, typically denote relations beyond the subject's con-

11

Lodrup talks about root modals, but non-root modals have the same property. The s-passive, unique to Scandinavian languages, is a morphological passive. Diachronically, it stems from a reflexive (or middle-like) form, where the -Λ- at some point was a full-fledged argument. In addition, there are periphrastic passives, with an auxiliary bli 'become' preceding a perfect (passive) participle. Äfarli (1992) provides a detailed discussion of Norwegian passives. The periphrastic passive is impossible with modals, even with the two modals in (4). 12

Morphological characteristics

21

trol (see Chapter 4, section 6, for a full description). This yields a semanticpragmatic incompatibility between the lexical content of the modal and the communicative function of the imperative. However, one modal, kunne ' k n o w ' , seems to be more compatible with the meaning expressed by the imperative form and does occur in the imperative, as shown in (5): (5)

Kunn dette diktet til i morgen! know this poem by to-morrow ' K n o w this poem by tomorrow!'

Although the semantics of the modal kunne on a root reading allows the modal to occur in the imperative, no context, however farfetched, allows for an imperative that simultaneously yields an epistemic (i.e. non-root) reading of kunne, as shown in (6). This lends support to the hypothesis that controllability is a key ingredient in the felicitous use of an imperative. An epistemic reading denotes a particular propositional attitude on behalf of the speaker and is not under the control of the imperative's addressee. Thus, the lack of controllability is absolute in this case. (6)

a.

Jeg vil ikke akseptere konklusjonen, Ί will not accept this conclusion, med mindre det viser seg at Jon kan vcere tyven. unless it turns out that Jon may be the thief.'

b.

#Kunn vcere tyven da, Jon! # ' M a y be the thief then, Jon!'

I mentioned earlier that Norwegian modals display an almost full paradigm of non-finite and finite forms. While this is typically the case for root modals in Germanic languages, it is much more controversial to ascribe the same property to epistemic modals. It has often been claimed (Plank 1984) that epistemic modals in Germanic languages occur in finite forms only, whereas no fmiteness requirement applies to root modals. However, epistemic modals, as well as modals with other truth-qualifying readings such as evidential and metaphysical (see section 3.2 for discussion), most certainly occur in the infinitival form in Norwegian, as the data in (7) show.

22

Norwegian modals: the facts

(7)

a.

Neveen pästäs ä skulle vcere morderen. n e p h e w D E F claim-PASS to shall be the killer ' T h e nephew is claimed supposedly 1 3 to be the killer.'

b.

Dette antas ä mätte vcere en misforstäelse . this supposePASS to must be a misconception O n e supposes that this certainly is a misconception.'

c.

Denne tabben fryktes ä kunne ha kostet dem oppdraget. this mistake fearPASS to m a y have costed them the j o b O n e fears that this mistake possibly m a d e them loose the job.'

d.

Dette arises ä burde vcere et tilbakelagt stadium. this regardPASS to ought-to be an endured stage 'This is regarded as most likely a thing of the past.'

e.

For andringen forventes ä ville oke salget. c h a n g e D E F expectPASS to willINF increase saleDEF ' T h e changes are expected to increase the sales (in the future).'

Tn the same vein, Dyvik (1999) claims that the perfect (or past) participle is reserved for root modals (although he does note that epistemic modals occur as infinitives): In the previous examples epistemic modals are never complements. Examples where they are seem possible, but then only as a complement of another epistemic modal.... From these syntactic facts it follows that epistemic modals only occur in finite forms (present and past tense) and the infinitive, while the past participle is reserved for the root modals. A t first glance, this seems to be a sound generalization for the standard dialects of N o r w e g i a n (Bokmäl and Nynorsk); however, in the northern and

13 Stacking of these verbs sounds less idiomatic in the English translation, thus I have chosen to translate the Norwegian infinitival modal as an adverbial with a similar modal meaning. This should not be taken to mean that the modal in these examples has an adverbial-like or "less auxiliary-like" flavour in Norwegian.

Morphological characteristics

23

western dialects, 14 there is no restriction ruling out the epistemic reading of a modal past participle, as shown in (8). (8)

a.

Han har mätta arbeidd med det i heile natt. He has mustPERF workPERF on it all night 'He must have worked on it all night.'

b.

Hu har kunna vorre her ogforre igjen. She has canPERF bePERF here and leavePERF again 'She might have been here and left again.'

It is tempting to dismiss this type of data as a minor quirk of some obscure Norwegian dialects. However, I will return to these data in Chapter 5, section 2, and show that although data like these have received almost no attention in the literature, many languages in fact allow for epistemic readings of a perfect participle modal. Norwegian modals also occur in counterfactuals. One typically uses a preterite form of the modal here, but a pluperfect construction with a preterite auxiliary hadde 'had' preceding the modal is also possible; in this case, the modal is a perfect participle. Crucially, the modal may very well get an epistemic reading under these circumstances. 15 Epistemic modals may occur in the apodosis, (9a), or the protasis, (9b). (9)

a.

Dersom tyngdekraften ikke fantes, if gravityDEF not existed, 'If gravity had not existed, hadde det mattet vcere vanskelig ä holde beina pä jorda! had it mustPERF be hard to keep legsDEF on groundDEF it would have to be difficult to stay grounded!'

14

Some speakers of dialects closer to bokmäl report that this restriction is lacking in their dialects as well. Vikner (1988: 7) presents the same type of data from Danish: Der har mäske nok kunnet vcere tale om en fejl- there has maybe PART couldPERF be talk about a mistake, 'There might have been a mistake'. See chapter 5, sections 4.3 and 4.4.1, for more data, scope possibilities, and readings. 15 Teleman et al. (1999: 292) offer data from Swedish, where a perfect participle modal gets an epistemic reading in an irrealis construction with this form.

24

Norwegian modals: the facts b.

Hvis jeg hadde kunnet vcere morderen, herr Holmes, if I had can-PERF be killer-DEF, mr.Holmes, 'If it were possible that I was the killer, Mr. Holmes, hadde politiet arrestert meg for lenge siden. had police-DEF arrested me for long since had the police arrested me long ago.'

To sum up, the morphological characteristics of Norwegian modals derive from their status as preterite-present verbs; this means that they lack the ending -er/-r in the present tense, their stem vowel (normally) changes from infinitive to present tense, and their stem vowel does not change from infinitive to past tense. These properties separate modals from almost all other verbs (the non-modal vite 'know' is a preterite-present). Modals lack present participles, but so do some other verbs such as weather and transitive verbs. Certain modals marginally occur in the spassive (kunne 'know' and ville 'want to') and the imperative (kunne 'know'). Neither of these properties thus separates all modals from all other verbs. However, it is important to note that the modal kunne 'can' is the only modal compatible with the imperative and that only two modals, kunne 'can' and ville 'want to', may undergo passivization. These idiosyncrasies of the modals kunne and ville will be important to our investigation later on. The finiteness requirement for epistemic modals, claimed by Plank (1984) to pertain to "probably all" Germanic languages, does not hold for Norwegian, as shown in (7). Finally, the generalization in Dyvik (1999) that epistemic modals do not employ a perfect participle does not hold for a number of non-standard Norwegian dialects, as the examples in (8) show, and even standard dialects allow for an epistemic (metaphysical) reading of the perfect participle modal in pluperfect counterfactuals, as shown in (9).

3.

Semantic characteristics

In this section, I examine the semantic properties of Norwegian modals. To lay the groundwork for such an investigation, section 3.1 provides an overview of some central modality terms. Sections 3.2 and 3.3 address some lines of work I consider central to the debate concerning the semantic prop-

Semantic characteristics

25

erties of modals in Germanic languages. Section 3.4 contains a list of prototypical readings of the individual Norwegian modals, and section 3.5 discusses some crucial semantic features of these modals.

3.1. A brief overview of some central modality terms In section 1, I provided Platzack's (1979: 44) preliminary definition of the terms epistemic and roof. "[t]he epistemic sense.. .qualifies the truth value of the sentence containing the modal; the root sense...expresses necessity, obligation, permission, volition, or ability on behalf of an agent which usually, but not necessarily, is expressed by the.. .subject of the sentence." Since Hofmann (1976) coined the term root—as opposed to epistemic— modality, this dichotomy has been used to make generalizations about these two main groups of modals (or modal meanings/senses, uses, or readings, depending on the perspective). Hofmann himself argued that these "two senses in which modals may be used" (93) covary with specific structural properties, a standard assumption in subsequent generativist (and numerous other) studies on modals. Many works focusing on the syntax of modals thus consider the dichotomy epistemic-root the major and syntactically most interesting division, and most authors in this vein make use of the dichotomy, possibly with certain subdivisions within each group (Dyvik 1999; Faarlund, Lie, and Vannebo 1997; Lodrup 1996a; Thräinsson et al. 2004; Thräinsson and Vikner 1995; Vikner 1988, to mention but a few studies on Scandinavian modals). However, within the realm of philosophy and modal logic, modal expressions are given a much more fine-grained and sophisticated semantic description. Brennan's (2004: 3) excellent overview, for instance, lists a number of modality terms central to these fields: These Greek terms [epistemic, deontic, and bouletic] re-entered philosophical and linguistic discourse in the twentieth century, and are used both by philosophers and linguists to describe the reasoning that lies behind the modal claim. 'Epistemic', from Greek episteme 'knowledge', means that the reasoning is based on knowledge; it is generally the case that the relevant knowledge is the speaker's knowledge. 'Deontic', from Greek dei 'it is right', means that the reasoning is based on some normative system. (The term 'deontic' is used by Mally 1926; von Wright 1951b led to its widespread use in philosophy.) 'Bouletic' means that the reasoning is relative to

26

Norwegian modals: the facts desire, and in fact bouletic modal sentences always relate to the speaker's (purported) desires. 'Doxastic', from Greek doxa 'opinion, expectation, repute, glory', means that the modal reasoning is based on the speaker's beliefs. 'Alethic', [? from Greek a- 'not' + lethe 'forgetfulness, oblivion'], means that the modal reasoning is based strictly on logic. 'Dynamic', a term first introduced for referring to interpretations of modal sentences by von Wright 1951 (who attributes it to Peter Geach), means that the modal expression concerns an individual's actions or disposition.

It is possible to ascribe all these partly overlapping senses to one and the same modal, as shown in ( 1 0 a - f). We could even argue that there is an evidential reading of this modal, where the reasoning is based of what evidence the speaker has for his or her claim, as in (10g): (10)

John must be in his office now. a. b. c. d. e. f. g.

Epistemic: The speaker reasons, based on knowledge accessible to him, that John is in his office now. Deontic: It is required, e.g. by society, that John be in his office now. Bouletic: The speaker has a strong desire that John be in his office now. Doxastic: The speaker strongly believes that John is in his office now. Alethic: The only logical possibility is that John is in his office now. Dynamic: John has an inner compulsion to be in his office now. Evidential: The speaker concludes, based on e.g. observable evidence (the lights are on in John's office /his briefcase is visible from outside) that John is in his office now.

Another term borrowed from the philosophico-logical vocabulary in the literature on modals is metaphysical modality. latridou (1990b) and Condoravdi (2002), for instance, distinguish metaphysical modality from epistemic modality. latridou states that "metaphysical predicates express the knowledge-independent state of the world" (e.g. possible, probable), whereas "epistemic predicates express the knowledge and belief of individuals and are thus time-sensitive just as states of knowledge" (e.g. evi-

Semantic characteristics

27

dent, obvious; it was evident to χ at time t that p)16 (Iatridou 1990b: 125). Condoravdi (2002: 61-2) agrees that "epistemic modality has to do with knowledge or information of agents," whereas "metaphysical modality [e.g. counterfactual modality] has to do with how the world may turn out, or might have turned out, to be." Note the two readings of (11). (11) I. II.

He might have won the game. He might have (already) won the game (# but he didn't). 17 At that point he might (still) have won the game (but he didn't in the end).

Brennan (1996) analyzes the "quantificational modal construction." The term was coined by Carlson (1977), but the phenomenon, illustrated in (12), is mentioned at least as early as von Wright (1951a). (12)

Lions can be dangerous.

(Leech 1969: 223)

This modal construction is sometimes called quantificational because it can be paraphrased as "some lions are dangerous," or "sometimes, lions are dangerous." According to Palmer (1986), von Wright would probably refer to this type of modality as existential, but terms such as weak epistemic, potential, and theoretical possibility are also evoked for this type of reading (Wärnsby, forthcoming, provides a discussion of this modality). However, as far as many logicians are concerned, all modality is quantificational. Brennan (2004: 13) notes that Since Aristotle, logicians have analyzed necessity and possibility as QUANnecessity being a UNIVERSAL QUANTIFIER and possibility an EXISTENTIAL OPERATOR. Aristotle, like many others after him, held that modals quantified over times. Thus, 'Socrates is necessarily mortal' means that Socrates is mortal at all times, whereas 'Possibly, Socrates is sitting' means that at some time, Socrates is sitting. Not everyone takes the domain of quantification to be times; others have held that modal operators quantify over alternative histories (Gilbert of Poitiers, Duns Scotus), state descriptions (Carnap), possible worlds (Leibniz, Kripke, Montague), models (Kanger), model sets (Hintikka), indices (Montague), according to their TIFICATIONAL,

16

See also section 3.2 for the terms objective and subjective epistemic modality. Condoravdi's original example illustrates the fact that may is also possible on the first reading, but impossible on the second one. 17

28

Norwegian modals: the facts view of the semantics of propositions. In general, the domain of quantification is taken to be whatever propositions are true of.

Οφ = 3 γ suchthat φ ( γ ) Π φ = Vy, φ ( γ ) where φ is a property of objects of the type of γ (for example, φ is a proposition and γ is a world). Οφ encodes possibility and is expressed by linguistic elements such as may p, be possible for e to v, there exists the possibility that p, e is v-able (where ρ is a proposition, e is an entity, and ν is a predicate). Likewise, φ encodes necessity and is expressed by linguistic elements such as must p, necessary for e to v, there is a necessity that p, etc.

3.2.

T w o seminal formal semantic descriptions of modals

Lewis (1973: 4) is one of the authors holding that modals qua operators of necessity and possibility quantify over worlds; he claims that A necessity operator, in general, is an operator that acts like a restricted universal quantifier over possible worlds. Necessity of a certain sort is truth at all possible worlds that satisfy a certain condition. We call these worlds accessible, meaning thereby simply that they satisfy the restriction associated with the sort of necessity under consideration. Necessity is truth at all accessible worlds, and different sorts of necessity correspond to different accessibility restrictions. A possibility operator, likewise, is an operator that acts like a restricted existential quantifier over worlds. Possibility is truth at some accessible world, and the accessibility restriction imposed depends on the sort of possibility under consideration. If a necessity operator and a possibility operator correspond to the same accessibility restriction on the worlds quantified over, then they will be a dual, interdefinable pair. K r a t z e r ' s (1981, 1991, 2002) seminal w o r k follows a similar approach. Formalizing the role of the context in fixing the interpretation of modal expressions, her w o r k is described as "a watershed for linguistic treatments of m o d a l i t y " (Brennan 2004: 51), and as an unavoidable point of reference in any semantic description of modals. Take, for example, the utterances of the sentences in (13), from Kratzer (2002): (13a) could be a felicitous (and true) claim at some point in time, but infelicitous (and false) at some later point in time because the speaker

Semantic characteristics

29

has gained new evidence in the meantime, making (13b) a more correct description of the situation. This, says Kratzer, shows that at least two features are needed to interpret a modal: a conversational background, which

contributes the premises from which the conclusions are drawn, and a modal relation, which determines the force of the conclusion. (13)

a.

Der Kastenjakl kann der Mörder sein. the Kastenjakl can the murderer be 'Kastenjakl may be the murderer.'

b.

Der Gausner-Michl muss der Mörder sein. the Gausner-Michl must the murderer be 'Gausner-Michl must be the murderer.'

Conversational backgrounds are important in this framework because an epistemic conversational background leads to an epistemic interpretation of modal expressions, whereas a deontic conversational background leads to a deontic interpretation of modal expressions. 18 18

Kratzer (1991: 641): "A conversational background is the sort of entity denoted by phrases like what the law provides, what we know, etc. Take the phrase what the law provides. What the law provides is different from one possible world to another. And what the law provides in a particular world is a set of propositions. Likewise, what we know differs from world to world. And what we know in a particular world is a set of propositions. The denotation of what the law provides will then be that function which assigns to every possible world the set of propositions ρ such that the law provides that ρ in that world. And the denotation of what we know is that function which assigns to every possible world the set of propositions we know in that world. Quite generally, conversational backgrounds are functions which assign to every member of W a subset of the power set of W." Two important kinds of conversational backgrounds are defined as follows in Kratzer (2002: 295-6): "Epistemic Conversational Backgrounds: In view of what is known... An epistemic conversational background is a function f which assigns sets of propositions to members of W [the set of all possible worlds] such that for any w e W [any world which is a possible world]: f(w) [the conversational background] contains all those propositions which are established knowledge in w—for a group of people, a community etc. Deontic Conversational Backgrounds: In view of what is commanded... A deontic conversational background is a function f which assigns sets of propositions to members of W such that for any w e W: f(w) contains all those propositions ρ such that it is commanded in w that p-by someone, by the Law etc."

30

Norwegian modals: the facts

At any time, the evidence we have is compatible with a set of worlds each of which could be the real world. For instance, in (13a) we do not know who the murderer is (and so we do not know which world is the real world); if the only people on the planet are John, Mary, the butler, GausnerMichl and Kastenjakl, as we start our investigation, there are at least five possible worlds, each with a different killer. These five worlds are epistemically accessible worlds. However, some of these worlds turn out to be more far-fetched than others, so Mary is a less likely killer than the butler, for instance, because Mary had an alibi. Kratzer introduces an ordering of the set of accessible worlds, an ordering provided by a stereotypical background, 'in view of the normal course of events'. According to this ordering, the worlds closest to the ideal world are those that behave according to the normal course of events (for example, where a person cannot be in two places at once). 19 A sentence such as Kastnjakl may be the killer, containing the possibility modal may, which is taken to denote the existential quantifier, may thus be given an interpretation where at least one accessible world (which is as close as possible to the ideal world) is a world where Kastenjakl is the killer. The sentence Gausner-Michl must be the killer, containing the modal must, is given an interpretation where Gausner-Michl is the killer in all accessible worlds close to the ideal world. The conversational background, which in this case is epistemic, determines for every world the set of worlds which are accessible from it; the given conversational background forms the modal base. The interpretation of modals, according to Kratzer (2002: 300), "depends on a modal base and an ordering source where either parameter may be filled by the empty conversational background." Say we have an epistemic conversational background, an empty ordering source and a modal relation 'necessary that p'. What we have is a "pure epistemic" interpretation: in all accessible worlds (with no ordering imposed on them), U (necessary that) p. Kratzer's analyses of modals have been very influential, and a range of Kratzer-style analyses of modals exist for various languages. On the other hand, many works on modals question the relevance of the logic concepts of modality for the corresponding linguistic ones. Brandt (1999: 28) expresses the view of numerous authors: Many linguistic studies of modality include an introductory section discussing the notions of modality developed by philosophers or logicians and then 19

There are various kinds of ordering sources: sources of information that may be dubious or less reliable, but nevertheless form ordering sources for modal bases.

Semantic characteristics

31

try to relate linguistic modality to logico-philosophical modality.... This approach we find to be essentially wrong or at best irrelevant.... [TJhere is no a priori reason to expect that concepts relevant to philosophy and logic are relevant to linguistics and that their linguistic relationships reflect the logical ones.20 These authors often express their criticism through what Brandt dubs the philosophical fallacy. According to strict logic, (14a) should be a stronger statement than (14b) since the latter holds only for the actual world, whereas the former presumably holds for all accessible worlds. This does not correspond to our intuitions about the utterances, however (Lyons 1977: 808-9). In natural language, the non-modalized assertion in (14b) constitutes a stronger claim than the modalized assertion (14a) since in (14a) the speaker implicitly leaves open the possibility that he or she could be wrong, unlike in (14b). (14)

a. b.

His father must be a carpenter. His father is a carpenter.

Kratzer (2002: 306) explicitly addresses this type of data. Her response to the natural-language intuitions about the relative strength of the assertions in (14) is that must in (14a) does not express "pure epistemic necessity"; the ordering source is not empty. In this case, the speaker signals that he or she is not reasoning from established facts alone, but also from less reliable sources that function as an ordering source. The result is a slight 'contamination' of the pure epistemic reasoning based on facts. It is by no means unprecedented in the literature on modals to evoke different grades or degrees of epistemic modality. Lyons (1977: 797-8), for instance, argues that In principle, two kinds of epistemic modality can be distinguished: objective and subjective. This is not a distinction that can be drawn sharply in the everyday use of language; and its epistemological justification is, to say the least, uncertain.... It is nonetheless of some theoretical interest to draw the distinction between objective and subjective epistemic modality.

20

Bouchard (1995; chapter 1) and Chomsky (1975: 84) offer the more general version of this view: in spite of the fact that much work in logic has led to important insights into the use of language, it cannot "be argued that the study of formal (or semantic) properties of natural languages should model itself on the study of the formal (or semantic) properties of logic and artificial languages."

32

Norwegian modals: the facts

Kratzer (2002) suggests that we have subjective (as opposed to objective) epistemic modality when the speaker cannot defend his claims on objective grounds, but where the reasoning is rooted in superstition, for example. Again, many authors refuse to accept the relevance of the distinction between subjective and objective epistemic modality for natural language. Palmer (1979: 7) maintains that Epistemic modality in language is usually, perhaps always, what Lyons (1977: 792) calls 'subjective'... it relates to an inference by the speaker, and is not simply concerned with 'objective' verifiability in the light of knowledge. Epistemic necessity, indicated by MUST is thus not to be paraphrased as 'In the light of what is known it is necessarily the case that...', but by something like 'From what I know the only conclusion I can draw is...' In the same vein, Drubig (2001), quoting Westmoreland (1998: 2), argues that all modals normally referred to as epistemic are in fact evidential markers—such as the non-root version of must—and that this modal must be analyzed as an evidential marker labelling the proposition in its scope as a deduction. It relates a proposition φ to some other information that serves as evidence for φ.... [A]n expression such as might φ is used to mean that the context contains causal factors that make φ plausible. In general we may say: just as a question marker takes a proposition and derives a question, an epistemic modal takes a proposition and derives an evidentially labelled proposition. Though evidentiality is typically thought not to exist as a full-fledged system of modality in Germanic, many authors have claimed that German employs two modals with evidential meaning (Palmer 1986: 71-2; 2001: 9), sollen and wollen. Both translate into the English 'be supposed to' (which in my view is also evidential), but wollen signals that the proposition is the animate subject's own claim, whereas sollen implies that the claim is neither the speaker's nor the subject's, but a claim made by a third party, yielding the reading 'hear-say': (15)

a.

Er soll steinreich sein. he shall stone rich be 'He is supposed to be filthy rich (so I've heard).'

b.

Er will Schauspieler gewesen sein. he will actor been be 'He is supposed to have been an actor (so he claims).'

Semantic characteristics

33

Evidentiality, then, does exist as a subdomain in Germanic modal systems. What is new about Drubig's (and Westmoreland's) approach is the claim that all "epistemic" modals (in English) are better analysed as evidentials. What authors want to express by distinguishing between such non-root, or deictic (Diewald 1999), modal readings as alethic, metaphysical, (subjective and objective) epistemic and evidential, I believe, is the degree of speaker involvement in a judgement or qualification of a truth value. Thus, it is possible to place these terms on a spectrum, where alethic is the most reliable, least subjective, and least speaker-involved point. The opposite end of the spectrum is evidentiality, where the speaker signals what kind of evidence he or she has for the truth of the proposition; for example, the evidential/hear-say reading in (15) signals that ρ is something the speaker has heard from someone else, so not even the speaker is responsible for granting the truth of the proposition p. Table 2 Reading:

alethic

quantificational; metaphysical; objectiveepistemic

(subjective) epistemic

evidential

What grants the truth of p?

logical knowledge

abstracted empirical knowledge

speaker's knowledge

speaker's evidence

This table is simply intended as an aid for the reader and should not be taken to signal any commitment on behalf of the present work. The potential viability of this classification will be discussed in section 3.4.

3.3. A semantic field of modality Considering how difficult it seems to be to isolate 'an area of meaning' encompassing all modals, the core inventory of modals in different languages is surprisingly similar from a semantic point of view. 21 This is also true of so-called semi-modals (Picallo 1990) and quasi-modals22 (Hopper

21

See section 7 for inventories of modals in some other Germanic languages. These terms are typically used for compounds that have some but not all of the properties of'proper modals'; for example, have to is an English 'quasi-modal'. 22

34

Norwegian modals: the facts

and Traugott 1993: 48; Plank 1984: 320) in various languages; their semantic and conceptual similarity to verbs traditionally considered modal is usually an author's main argument for employing these and related terms. Even so, a "semantic field of modality" is typically extremely hard to formulate. O n e reason for this is that necessity, possibility, obligation, permission, volition, ability and speaker's j u d g m e n t of the truth or likelihood of a proposition (Platzack 1979: 44) hardly constitute what is intuitively conceived of as a coherent conceptual-semantic field. T h e challenge, in Byb e e ' s (1985: 191) words, is to "define the general conceptual domain covered by the category" of modals. Lightfoot (1974: 237) seems highly pessimistic with regard to the potential success of such a mission: "it does not seem possible to define a class of modals... on semantic grounds." Nevertheless, several attempts have been made to find a conceptual domain c o m m o n to both root and epistemic (or non-root) modals. In particular, this endeavour has been undertaken within the f r a m e w o r k of forcedynamic analyses, i.e. in terms of (potential) forces and barriers (Boye 2005; Sweetser 1990; Talmy 1981, 1988). Thus, Sweetser (1990: 59) analyses the c o m m o n traits of the English modal may as follows: May is an absent potential barrier in the sociophysical world, and the epistemic may is the force-dynamically parallel in the world of reasoning. The meaning of epistemic may would thus be that there is no barrier to the speaker's process of reasoning from the available premises to the conclusion expressed in the sentence qualified by may. My claim, then, is that an epistemic modality is metaphorically viewed as that real-world modality which is its closest parallel in force-dynamic structure. A method often chosen by authors in the quest for a single, coherent semantic field of modality is to focus on some (prototypical) subset of modals, a subset argued to share a conceptual domain. Particularly susceptible to this are modals denoting a point on a scale f r o m necessity/obligation {must) to possibility/permission (may). Thus, investigating Danish modals, B o y e (2005: 41) states that Without claiming a one to one relationship between linguistic and philosophical-logical modality..., we may definitely observe a linguistic correlate to the latter. First, we find a range of linguistic items that share two characteristics central to philosophical-logical modality. 1) The meanings of these items may be paraphrased by terms such as necessity and possibility. 2) The meanings of these items often exist in a number of variants that correspond to the epistemic and non-epistemic (deontic and dynamic) meaning variants in modal logic.... Second, we find that these linguistic items are often

Semantic characteristics

35

grouped together in formally delimited paradigms. Such paradigms, then, actually code the above-mentioned meanings as a semantic field. Evidently, it is easier to establish a common semantic domain for deontic modals and their epistemic counterparts than for dynamic modals and their epistemic counterparts. Here deontic is taken to denote 'modality of necessity or possibility of acts performed by morally responsible agents' (Lyons 1977: 823; von Wright 1951); epistemic denotes necessity or possibility of situations in the real world, according to the speaker's knowledge (Chung and Timberlake 1985: 246): There is considerable parallelism between the epistemic and deontic modes. Both can be described in terms of alternative worlds.... As a morphosyntactic realization of this parallelism, modal auxiliaries in many languages, notably English, often have both epistemic and deontic senses.... The crucial difference between the two, then, is that the epistemic mode deals with a set of alternative worlds at a given time [the alternative worlds are those that could exist instead of the given world], while the deontic mode deals with a set of alternative worlds that develop out of a given world and time [alternative futures of a given world]. Boye (2005) also suggest that the semantic field of modality should be defined conceptually with reference to force-dynamic potential. This concept could be seen as designating a complex physical situation that may be split up into three causally related subsituations: a source S produces a force to affect an agonist A (subsituation 1), who is driven, but not compelled, towards a goal G, which gives the potential (subsituation 2) for the result where the agonist reaches the goal (subsituation 3; my figure, adapted from Boye 2005). Figure 1

>

A

•

G

force

Initial situation

potential

result

Diewald (1999) rejects the force-dynamic framework's assumption that a barrier is necessarily a part of the semantic description of modals although the concept of barriers and forces may be a conversational implicature of modals in certain situations. However, she does use a feature [+/- reactive]

36

Norwegian modals: the facts

to capture a semantic difference between various modals in German, where [+reactive] encodes that a certain intention or wish is dependent for its realization on some other party's intentions, whereas [-reactive] encodes the independence of some other party's intentions. Table 3 Sollen 'be supposed to' - reactive

dürfen 'be allowed to' + reactive

wollen 'want to' - reactive

möchte 'would like to' + reactive

müssen 'must'

können 'can'

- reactive

+ reactive

Surely, this feature resembles the concept of forces and barriers in forcedynamic approaches. Diewald also crafts her description of modals in terms of directed relations, similar to B o y e ' s description above (Figure 1). Diewald considers the semantics of a deontic modal to be the result (the passive correspondent, so to speak) of a source (usually not represented) imposing a directive on a subject, who thus gets an experiencer role in this relation. But the subject also receives a second role, the agent role of the main verb relation. Figure 2: Description of relations in We must/can wait. Experience^ (modal —> Inner goal (= source; —> goal)) We (must/can ( we wait)) Diewald supports her analysis 23 with the fact that all German modals diachronically develop out of more simple experiencer verbs. 24 Within the functionalist 25 literature, the common domain of meaning for deontic and epis23

The arrow pointing both ways between the modal and the experiencer signals that the relation does not have one particular direction, i.e. it does not originate in the subject with direction towards the modal, or vice versa. 24 Roberts (1993: 315) claims that (pre-)modals in Middle English assign an experiencer role to their subjects. 25 Newmeyer (1998: 7) states that "[tjhere are...two broad orientations in the field.... One orientation sees as a central task for linguists characterizing the formal relationships among grammatical elements independently of any characterization of the semantic and pragmatic properties of those elements. The other orientation rejects that task on the grounds that the function of conveying meaning (in its broadest sense) has so affected grammatical form that it is senseless to compart-

Semantic characteristics

37

temic modals is often believed to hinge on the fact that epistemic uses of modals derive diachronically from the use of their deontic counterparts (a second step in the development). Bybee et al. (1994: 195) argue that It is clear that the epistemic senses develop later than, and out of, the agentoriented senses. In fact, for the English modals, where the case is best documented, the epistemic uses do not become common until quite late. Horn 1972, Steele 1975, and Coates 1983 all point out that the force of the epistemic sense expressed by a modal is directly related to the force of the agent-oriented sense from which it derives. Horn further points out that the strength of the modal meaning in both domains is scalar: agent-oriented: strong obligation weak obligation ability

gives gives gives

epistemic: inferred certainty {must) probability (should) possibility (may)

Note that, once again, a subset is picked out, a subset of root modals and their epistemic counterparts that in some sense belong to the same conceptual domain, ranging from necessity to possibility. A m o n g those authors who opt for semantic criteria to define the entire class of modals, Thräinsson and Vikner (1995: 53) propose "the following tentative 'definition' of modal verbs: Modal verbs are verbs that can have both an epistemic and a root modal sense." Note that in order to maintain even this rather basic description, 26 the authors have to use the term epistemic in a broad sense to encompass all of the non-root readings of Scandinavian modals. At least some of the verbs listed as Icelandic and Danish modals have readings comparable to the evidential modal sollen in German (Danish skulle, Icelandic munu). Whereas epistemic is traditionally reserved for the type of modality where the reasoning is rooted in the speaker's knowledge and beliefs, evidential modality deals with what kind of evidence the speaker has for assuming the truth of the proposition. As mentioned above, it is not uncommon, within the syntactically oriented literature on modals, to extend the term epistemic to encompass evidentiall y and other non-root modalities.

mentalize it. It is the former orientation, of course, that I have been referring to as 'formalist' and the latter as 'functionalist'." 26 This is not always used as a defining property of modals; Picallo (1990) lists as modals several verbs that have only one of these readings.

38

Norwegian modals: the facts

The fact that the same linguistic form may be used for deontic/dynamic and epistemic/evidential modality suggests the existence of a semanticconceptual field of modality or possibly two conceptually adjacent fields, where elements keep leaking from one into the other. 27 But it is very hard to identify the relevant level of abstraction, and the features conceptually connecting the two, that make the transition from one field into the other easy (but cf. Butler 2003 for an attempt). As Palmer (1986: 96) points out There are two features that they share: subjectivity..., i.e. the involvement of the speaker, and non-factuality. Yet it must be admitted that the chief reason for treating them as a single category lies in the fact that in English, and many other languages, the same forms (e.g. modal verbs) are used for both. There are possibly some deeper reasons. It is not inconceivable that the perceived forces of society are extended (metaphorically?) by the language user to the perceived forces of the universe (Sweetser 1990), but I will assume the existence of a more 'mechanical' explanation. The syntactic and semantic features of root modals and their complements evidently conspire to facilitate a reanalysis as an evidential or epistemic marker. Children acquire root modality before epistemic modality (Stephany 1986; Wells 1985) and, diachronically, epistemic modal elements develop out of root modal elements (Bybee et al. 1994: 195). Thus, it seems that root modality is in some sense more fundamental. It is a cross-linguistic fact that verbal elements taking (infinitival) complements denoting unrealised but potential situations may gradually take on a reading where the complement denotes a temporally anchored proposition and the verbal element changes into an evidential or epistemic marker. This is true even for elements normally not considered modal. (16)

a. b. c. d.

He insists that I leave him. He insists that I left him. John is supposed to become an architect. John is supposed to be an architect.

In (16a) and (16c), the complement sentences that I leave him and to become an architect are reported directives, denoting potential, but as yet unrealized situations. The complement sentences in (16b) and (16d), on the other hand, are reported claims about a situation perceived as real (by someone other than the speaker). 27

Roberts and Roussou (2002) provide a minimalist analysis of this phenomenon.

Semantic characteristics

39

I leave the question of one single semantic field of modality for now. However, I will return to these questions in Chapter 4.

3.4. The semantic properties of Norwegian modals Considering the subject of the present investigation—the semantic properties of Norwegian modals—the dichotomy epistemic~root is too coarsegrained. On the other hand, I have no need for a classification as finegrained as that in Table 2, repeated here for convenience as Table 4. Moreover, note that these are only the non-root readings, the readings dealing with the truth-value of the proposition qualified by the modal, not modality concerned with required or possible actions. I will return to the various root readings (or 'event modality' readings; Palmer 2001) below. Table 4 Reading:

alethic

quantificational; metaphysical; objectiveepistemic

(subjective) epistemic

evidential

What grants the truth o f p ?

logical knowledge

abstracted empirical knowledge

speaker's knowledge

speaker's evidence

I agree with authors, such as Palmer (1979), who claim that modality in natural language is always subjective in nature; this leaves no place in my description for the modality dubbed alethic. Grammar, I believe, is fundamentally a mental construct internal to speakers, constantly modifying another mental construct, our model of the world. I cannot convince myself that the internalized grammars of speakers make use of a category such as alethic or, for that matter, objective-epistemic modality. Recall that Kratzer (2002) claims we have objective epistemic modality only when w e can defend our claims on objective grounds, when our claim is not, for instance, rooted in superstition; this is even more so in the case of aletic modality. However, superstition is never perceived as such by the speaker. If you have a firm belief that a string of wool worn around your leg for seven subsequent nights could cure arthritis, then this is a state of affairs stored as a (possible) fact in your model of the world, not as superstition. Therefore,

40

Norwegian modals: the facts

when you start getting better, you could say The string must have worked, firmly believing in a causal relationship between the string and the improvement in your health, perceiving no difference between this must and that of a sentence such as Two plus two must be four. Alethic and objectiveepistemic modality, I believe, are artificial constructs appropriate for artificial languages, not notions that can be expected to shed light on the uses and senses of modals in natural languages. I also question the application of the concept metaphysical modality to natural language. I believe the distinction latridou (1990b) makes is one between evidential modality (her epistemic) and epistemic modality (her metaphysical). Her prototypical epistemic predicates are evident and obvious, suggesting a reading along the lines of 'it is suggested to χ by evidence visible to χ that'. Iatridou's metaphysical predicates are probable and possible, modalities otherwise categorized as prototypical epistemic predicates, latridou states that probable and possible are knowledge-independent states of the world. Again, I disagree that properties such as probability and possibility could be ascribed to the world. Instead, the modalities expressed by these predicates are properties of modalized propositions, encoding bits of information in our mental model of the world. The information making up this model can be more or less reliable, but in fact, we don't know what the world is like. All we have is our concept of it and, in most cases, we rely on others to tell us their view and use this as our own 'knowledge'. A language is an internalized, symbolic system manipulating mental, symbolic elements. Non-root modals do not refer to states in the world, but to elements of this symbolic system, propositions in our model of the world. Thus, ρ is always possible or probable to someone; if no-one accepted the model these terms refer to, these notions would simply not exist. These considerations suggest that my view on non-root modalities is more in the line with Drubig (2001) and Westmoreland (1998), mentioned above. Non-root modalities are all speaker-oriented in the sense that they are the speaker's way of encoding his or her graded commitment to the truth or factuality of the proposition modified by the modal (Palmer 1979, 1986, 2001). Thus, non-root modals are semantically not very different from speaker tags signalling graded commitment: I believe, I think, 1 guess, They say, It seems, I've heard, and many others. Condoravdi's (2002) notion of metaphysical modality rests on the assumption that it must be impossible to have epistemic knowledge about the future. We cannot verify statements about the future until it has become the

Semantic characteristics

41

present. Hence, the future world, which will be verifiable only in the future, could be any one of a list of metaphysically possible worlds. The viability of this use of the term metaphysical thus depends entirely on the definition of epistemic modality. If you believe that (17a) displays a radically different modality than (17b)—since (17b) refers to a possible future situation, whereas (17a) refers to a situation verifiable in the present—then epistemic modality and metaphysical modality can be considered two ontologically different modalities. If you assume that the same type of modality is encoded by may in both cases, although the situations referred to in the propositions are temporally different, then metaphysical modality is not a modality distinct from epistemic. (17)

a. b.

The parcel may have arrived already. The parcel may arrive tomorrow.

However, one could easily argue that metaphysical modality is a convenient label for epistemic modal statements about the future, even if what we are talking about is fundamentally the same modality, whether the proposition qualified describes a present or a future situation. This is exactly the view I will adopt here. All Norwegian modals can yield non-root (i.e. epistemic and evidential) readings, where the proposition modified is 'future, with respect to the modal.' Thus, the modals in (18) may all yield non-root readings, qualifying propositions referring to a possible future situation. 28 (18)

Pakken ber/kan/mä/skal/vil ankomme imorgen. Parcel-DEF should/may/must/is supposed to/will arrive tomorrow 'The parcel should/may/must/is supposed to/will arrive tomorrow.'

If the ability to have in its scope a future-denoting proposition is considered a sufficient feature for a non-root modal to be a metaphysical modal, all non-root modals in Norwegian are metaphysical modals. Moreover, in the discussion of example (10) above the modal must was ascribed an evidential reading. However, although we could in principle ascribe this type of reading to any modal in Norwegian, this is not to say that we are dealing with an evidential modal. I agree with Anderson (1986: 274; here quoted

28

They also have root readings that are at least as prominent, but we leave that aside here.

42

Norwegian modals: the facts

from Boye 2001: 83) that "[T]he term 'evidential'... does not simply include anything one might consider to have an evidential function..., evident i a l have the indication of evidence as their primary meaning, not only as a pragmatic inference." I will argue that metaphysical modals have the same type of restriction: to be classified as an evidential or metaphysical modal, a modal should have evidentiality or metaphysical modality as its primary, core meaning. Quantificational modality, illustrated in (19), has sometimes been dubbed weak epistemic modality. I will argue that this reading is subsumed by the root dynamic modality, dealing with the abilities of individuals and potentiality of situations, a view defended by numerous other authors (see Wärnsby (forthcoming) for discussion). (19)

a.

Biler kan vcere vanskelige. cars can be difficult 'Cars can be difficult.'

b.

Mar it kan vcere uforsiktig. Marit can be careless 'Marit can be careless.'

Hence, I use the terms epistemic, evidential, and metaphysical to describe the non-root readings of Norwegian modals. The root readings of Norwegian modals display the two-way split between deontic modality, "modality of necessity or possibility of acts performed by morally responsible agents" (Lyons 1977: 823; von Wright 1951), and dynamic 29 modality, the modality of dispositions and abilities of individuals. Palmer (2001: 9) argues that In the simplest terms, the difference between them is that with deontic modality the conditioning factors are external to the relevant individual, whereas with dynamic modality they are internal. Thus deontic modality relates to obligation or permission, emanating from an external source, whereas dynamic modality relates to ability or willingness, which comes from the individual concerned. 29

One also finds the term dispositional for this reading, a term ascribed to Klooster (1986) by Barbiers (1995). Öhlschläger (1989: fn. 53) attributes the term dispositionell to Wunderlich (1981: 116): "innere Dispositionen einer Person...als deren Fähigkeiten gelten." This seems to be the same term as Klooster's. Following the advice of an anonymous reviewer for Mouton de Gruyter, I will try to avoid this term, since it has a range of different meanings in the literature.

Semantic characteristics

43

In what follows, I will modify Palmer's statement, and assume that deontic as well as dynamic modality encompasses impersonal readings, where the potential of a state-of-affairs is not always inherent in an individual or agent, but can sometimes be inherent in a preceding situation. I return to this modification below. As already hinted at, the line between non-root and root modalities can be very difficult to draw, and where an author draws this line seems at times almost arbitrary. Thus, I will thoroughly discuss the distinction I make towards the end of this subsection. However, this discussion would benefit greatly from examples of the various readings I claim for Norwegian modals. Thus, I will offer a short description of all modals in Norwegian with their prototypical readings. This description is primarily meant to provide some useful points of reference for the discussion in this chapter and is not an exhaustive discussion of each individual modal (a detailed discussion is provided in Chapter 4, section 6). As is evident from the discussion above, diachronic developments are sometimes used to argue for certain views on modal meanings. Hence, I include a short etymological description of each Norwegian modal although this etymology will not serve as an argument in my present discussion of Norwegian modals and their meanings. The etymological description is quoted from Falk and Torp ([1903- 06] 1992). In addition, my short semantic description of Norwegian modals addresses some of the more pressing potential objections to my descriptive decisions. bürde

Jon ber vcere pä kontoret. 'Jon should be in his office.' It is likely that Jon is in his office, (epistemic) Jon has a weak obligation to be in his office, (deontic)

Old Norse byrja was an impersonal verb denoting 'to belong, to become the right or duty to, to lift up or carry'. In modern Norwegian, it has a reading of preference: in its epistemic sense, the reading is 'it is more likely that ρ than not-p'. Likewise, in its root sense, it has the reading 'it is preferred that p'; here, 'it is preferred that Jon is in his office'. kunne

Jon kan vcere pä kontoret. 'Jon may be in his office.' It is possible that Jon is in his office, (epistemic) Jon is allowed to be in his office, (deontic) Jon is capable of being in his office, (dynamic)

44

Norwegian modals: the facts

Old Norse kunna meant 'to know (how to), to understand, to be capable o f . The contemporary modal kunne has one epistemic reading—'it is possible that p ' — a n d two prominent root readings, one deontic and one dynamic. It is suggested in the literature that the dynamic reading and the ability reading of kunne's cognate can are specifications of a common, more overall meaning of potentiality (Papafragou 1998). This is not the argument I will follow here. In my description, the deontic and dynamic readings of kunne are kept separate. mätte

Jon mä vcere pä kontoret. 'Jon must be in his office.' It must be the case that Jon is in his office, (epistemic) Jon is obligated to be in his office, (deontic)

Old Norse mega meant 'to manage, have access to, have a possibility to, have permission to'. The necessity reading is a later development, according to Falk and Torp, and the reading of an existing possibility (mä vera similar to English may be) is lost. However, I believe this meaning is preserved in one specific, still productive construction, where matte takes on the function of a subjunctive: De situasjoner som mätte oppstä 'those situations that might occur'. skulle

Jon skal vcere pä kontoret. 'Jon is supposed to be in his office.' Somebody claims that Jon is in his office, (evidential) Jon is required (by someone) to be in his office, (deontic)

The most prominent meaning in all Old Germanic languages of Old Norse skulu was 'to owe, to be indebted'. The non-root reading of this modal is evidential (specifically, 'hear-say, report') and its root reading is deontic (specifically, 'intention of x, where χ is typically some authority, that p'). Like mätte, skulle has a subjunctive reading in specific constructions: Skulle en sliksituasjon oppstä 'should such a situation occur'. 3 0 30

Interestingly, skulle and mätte seemingly have complementary distribution. Skulle occurs in conditional clauses and mätte occurs in relative constructions: i. Skulle/*mätte en slik situasjon oppstä... 'should /might such a situation occur,' ii. De situasjoner som mätte/*skulle oppstä... 'Those situations that might/should occur'

Semantic characteristics ville

45

Jon vil ν a.· re pä kontoret. 'Jon will/wants to be in his office.' It will be the case that Jon is in his office, (metaphysical) Jon wants to be in his office, (dynamic)

Old Norse vilja meant 'to wish, to want, to desire, to covet, to choose'. According to Falk and Torp ([1903- 06] 1992: 934), this verb almost always had an animate subject in Old Norse, "unlike in German, where an impersonal subject is possible." Many authors exclude ville and its English cognate will from the inventory of proper modals, insisting that this linguistic element is a pure tense element. Having repeatedly encountered this claim in the literature, I decided to consult the intuitions of Norwegian informants on this question. My own intuition as a native speaker of Norwegian suggested that ville always includes some degree of prediction (or in the present terms, metaphysical possibility). If so, it has the semantic characteristics of a modal, not a tense element. As is well-known, future tense is very often expressed by means of the present in European languages. Therefore, I designed a simple test to investigate whether ville or the present form is used when the speaker wants to express firm confidence in some future situation, not simply a less committed prediction about the future. This test was presented to the informants as shown in Figure 3; the results are summed up in Figure 4. Thirty-five native speakers of Norwegian participated in the test. Twenty-four of them found option a, without ville, to be more natural in this context. For the purpose of expressing a firm belief in a future situation, the present tense of the verb felt more suitable than the modal ville. Eight speakers found the sentence to be equally natural with and without ville, and three speakers prefer ville in this context. Figure 3 Informant test: ville Question: What is the more natural complement of this sentence? Alternatives: a is more natural, b is more natural, both are equally natural. Jeg vedder tusen kroner pä ... Ί bet you a thousand kroner...' a. ...at renta gär opp for forste januar. '.. .that the interest rate increases before January 1st.' b. ...at renta vil gä opp for forste januar. '.. .that the interest rate will increase before January 1st.'

46

Nonvegian modals: the facts

Figure 4

Β a more natural Β b more natural • equally natural

Several of the informants volunteered the additional information that ville + infinitive sounds forced, bookish, and less confident than the present tense in this context. If it is correct that ville sounds bookish, this may indicate that many speakers perceive ville + infinitive as a high standard norm but still less natural than a simple present to express pure future. Thus, I take the results of this test to indicate that the element of prediction is present in the lexical representation of the modal ville for most informants and is not perceived simply as a tense marker. Figure 5 presents the readings of Norwegian modals in a tree structure summing up our current assumptions (to be revised in section 7.1). Figure 5 Norwegian modals (to be revised)

Root

Non-root

Deontic Dynamic Evidential Epistemic Burde 'should' Kunne 'can/know' Skulle 'be suppose ' Matte ίmust' Ville 'want to' Kunne 'may' Skulle 'be required to' Epistemic Metaphysical Burde 'should' Ville 'will' Matte 'must' Kunne 'may'

Semantic characteristics

47

In summary, deontic modality deals with "the necessity or possibility of acts performed by morally responsible agents" (Lyons 1977: 823). Dynamic refers to the specific abilities, capacities or tendencies of a subject (von Wright 1951) or the inherent potential of a situation. Evidential refers to modalities where the speaker indicates what kind of evidence he or she has for assuming the truth of a proposition (Boye 2001; Palmer 1986, 2001); in the case of skulle, the type of evidence is 'hear-say'. Finally, epistemic is used in a broad and a narrow sense, the broad sense encompassing metaphysical modality (Condoravdi 2002), regarding the possibility and probability of future situations; the narrow sense includes only 'proper' epistemic senses related to the speaker's knowledge and beliefs about present situations. The modal kunne is listed with two different root senses—one deontic (denoting permission) and one dynamic (denoting the subject's mental and physical abilities). This will be an important point later on.

3.5. Modals, readings and η-place relations It has often been assumed in the literature on modals that the root senses denote two-place semantic relations, whereas the epistemic (or more generally, non-root) senses denote one-place relations. Thus, on the root reading of must "there is such a role as someone who must something" (Vikner 1988: 14); there seems to be a predication between the subject referent and the modal, unlike on the epistemic (non-root) reading, where no such relation between the two exists. Dyvik (1999: 4) argues that Every modal can be interpreted either as a one-place epistemic modal or as a two-place root modal. Under the epistemic interpretations the subject referent is not an argument of the modal, which only takes the entire proposition as an argument.... Under the root interpretation the subject referent is an argument of the modal. While this generalization holds to some extent for non-root vs. dynamic root modals, it certainly does not hold for the deontic root senses. As pointed out by numerous authors (Brennan 1993; Eide 2002a; Huddleston 1974;31 Newmeyer 1975; Pullum and Wilson 1977; Wurmbrand 1999), 31

Huddleston claims that only two English modals lack a proposition-scope reading, dare and volitional will; Pullum and Wilson (1977) show that even dare is used 'intransitively': Inflation is a problem which dare not be neglected.

48

Norwegian modals: the facts

deontic root modals may very well yield so-called proposition-scope readings; thus even root modals seem capable of taking the entire proposition as an argument. Feldman (1986: 179) notes that Sometimes, instead of saying that a certain person ought to do a certain thing, we may say that a certain state of affairs ought to be, or ought to occur .... The ought-to-do involves a relation between an agent and a state of affairs. The ought-to-be involves a property of a state of affairs. The latter sense, 'ought to be', is sometimes referred to as the non-directed root reading (Barbiers 1995), since the obligation or permission is not directed towards the subject referent. Thus, it is not the subject who has an obligation or permission to do something. I will adopt the term nondirected deontic here for the readings in (20). (20)

a.

Jon skal do. Jon shall die 'Jon must die.' (# Jon has an obligation to die)

b.

Skilpadden bßr vcere i badekaret. turtle-DEF ought-to be in bath tub-DEF 'The turtle should stay in the bath tub.' (#The turtle has an obligation)

c.

Det mä komme minst femti personer. there must come at-least fifty people 'At least fifty people must show up.' (# There are fifty people & each has an obligation to come)

d.

Det kan komme ti gjester ifedselsdagen din. there can come ten guests in birthday-DEF yours 'There may come ten guests to your birthday (party).' (# There are ten guests & each has the permission to come)

These proposition-scope, or non-directed, readings of deontic modals contrast with the directed deontic readings, which may easily be construed as two-place relations. On this reading, it is the subject referent who has an obligation or permission; thus, a language user will typically perceive a predication relation between the modal and the animate subject referent. This reading, often treated as the prototypical reading of deontic modals (Diewald 1999), is illustrated in (21) below.

Semantic characteristics (21)

49

a.

Jeg mä Τ must Ί must (I have

vcere pä kontoret i hele dag. be on office-DEF in whole day stay in my office all day.' an obligation to stay in my office all day)

b.

Du skal rydde pä rommet ditt. you shall tidy on room-DEF yours 'You must clean your room.' (You have an obligation to clean your room.)

c.

Hun her gjßre leksene fer hun gär. she ought-to do homework-DEF before she goes 'She should do her homework before going.' (She has an obligation to do her homework before going.)

This reading is also frequently referred to as the subject-oriented reading. The distinction between directed and non-directed is a feature of deontic modality, whereas subject-oriented vs. non-subject-oriented is a more general feature, possibly pertaining to all root modals, including dynamic ones. However, if dynamic root modals are taken to denote the capabilities, dispositions and potential of individuals, one would expect them always to yield a subject-oriented reading, and accordingly, always to denote twoplace relations. This is typically the case, as the data in (22) show. Notice that while (20d) is perfectly acceptable on the deontic (permissive) reading, it cannot be forced into a proposition-scope reading in the dynamic (ability) sense in (22d). Likewise, (22c) does not yield a 'volition' reading, only a non-root 'prediction' reading, due to its expletive subject. A volition reading, one would expect, requires the presence of an animate subject. (22)

a.

Marit vil reise til Venezia. Marit will travel to Venice 'Marit wants to go to Venice.'

b.

Jon kan sykle. Jon can ride-a-bike 'Jon can ride a bike.'

50

Norwegian modals: the facts c.

Det vil komme en mann hit i morgen. there will come a man here to-morrow '#There wants to come a man here tomorrow.' # dynamic

d.

Det kan komme ti gjester i fodselsdagen din. there can come ten guests to your party. '# There are able to come ten guests.' #dynamic

However, there are data where the reading of ville certainly resembles a dynamic 'volition' reading even with an expletive, as in (23a), and with a weather-zY subject, as in (23b). (23)

a.

Han arbeider hardt, men det vil bare ikke lykkes for ham. he works hard, but it will simply not succeed for him 'He works hard, but he simply won't succeed.'

b.

Det ville ikke slutte ä regne denne dagen. it would not stop to rain this day 'It wouldn't stop raining that day.'

The readings in (23a) and (23b) do not seem to be instances of animation or metaphor; they are rather impersonal uses of a volitional modal, although it is a widespread assumption that this combination of features is impossible. I also believe that this is a productive construction and not a relic or limited to idioms. In any case, this is certainly not a 'future' or 'prediction' reading; it is not a non-root reading. 32 I also believe, like Coates (1995) and numerous other authors, that what has been dubbed the quantificational reading of can, sometimes also classified as weak epistemic possibility (Hermeren 1978; Wärnsby 2004), could be argued to be the impersonal (non-subject-oriented) version of dynamic can and its Norwegian cognate kunne. The personal or subject-oriented ability-reading could be paraphrased as 'the physical or mental properties of the subject cause the potential for p', as in (22b), where Jon's properties cause Jon to have the potential to ride a bike. Correspondingly, one could easily argue that certain physical properties of the world or certain situations cause the potential for heavy rain in Bergen, Marit's carelessness, or cause the wrong person to become the suspect, as in (24). This reading is

32

Section 7.2 discusses the 'tendency to' reading of Icelandic vilja.

Semantic characteristics 51 paraphrased as 'it does happen sometimes that', rather than 'it may be true that' and, in my opinion, this is root or event modality (Palmer 2001), modality concerned with potential states-of-affairs, not modality qualifying the truth of a proposition. (24)

a.

Det kan regne ganske kraftig i Bergen. there can rain quite heavily in Bergen 'It sometimes rains quite heavily in Bergen.'

b.

Mar it kan vcere litt uforsiktig. Marit can be a-little careless 'Marit can be a little careless.'

c.

Feil person kan bli mistenkt for handlingen. wrong person can become suspected for action-DEF 'The wrong person is sometimes suspected for the action.'

As mentioned above, it is sometimes very difficult to draw the line between non-root and root modalities. In the present work, this line may seem particularly blurred between what I call metaphysical modality and the impersonal use of dynamic modality illustrated in (23) and (24). Metaphysical modality consists of epistemic statements about the future and amounts to the speaker making a prediction about what will be true at some future point in time. Impersonal dynamic modal statements, on the other hand, are statements about tendencies, strong tendencies, as in (23), or weaker ones, as in (24). A perceived tendency arises when one induces from observing several (ville) or some (kunne) instances of a situation that this situation will occur again. Thus, it is a statement about recurring situations, not a statement about the truth of some proposition. The degree of speaker involvement is also different in the two cases. Impersonal dynamic modalities may be paraphrased by means of adverbs such as sometimes, at times or often, usually (this modality is often dubbed quantificational). Metaphysical modality, in contrast, is translatable into adverbs denoting graded commitment to the truth of p. Thus, (25) is ambiguous between a metaphysical reading, or 'prediction', and an impersonal dynamic reading. (25)

a.

Dette vil bli et problem for salgsavdelingen. this will become a problem for sales-departmentDEF 'This will be a problem for the sales department.'

52

Norwegian modals: the facts

However, if we add the adverb garantert 'certainly' after the modal, the reading becomes metaphysical, resulting in a prediction about the future. On the other hand, adding the adverbial vanligvis 'usually' in the same slot gives an impersonal dynamic reading of the modal, indicating a strong tendency of a (recurring) situation. The latter reading, I claim, is a root reading; it is a statement about recurring states of affairs in the world. The former reading is a non-root reading, a speaker's commitment to the truth of a future situation, in accordance with and referring to propositions in the speaker's model of the world. On the other hand, both readings are impersonal, proposition-scope readings, where the modal takes the entire proposition as an argument, and neither denotes a relation between an agent and an action. Although the one-place vs. two-place relation cannot be maintained as a dichotomy between root and non-root modals, non-root modals can never be construed as a relation between the subject and the embedded proposition, whereas root modals typically favour exactly such a relation. However, deontic root modals are nearly always ambiguous between two possible readings—an 'ought to do' and an 'ought to be' reading. Dynamic modals typically display two-place, subject-oriented readings, but they also occur in proposition-scope constructions. This is summed up in Table 5. Table 5 Readings available for Norwegian modals: Dyadic: subject-oriented Root:

Dynamic: Monadic: non- subject-oriented

Modals

Dyadic: directed deontic Deontic: Monadic: non-directed deontic Non-root:

Monadic (proposition-scope)

Hence, my findings suggest that non-root modals are always one-place (monadic) predicates, dynamic root modals are mostly two-place (dyadic) predicates, and deontic root modals are notoriously ambiguous between a monadic and a dyadic construal (Barbiers 1995; Brennan 1993).

Syntactic characteristics 4.

53

Syntactic characteristics

A much debated question in the literature on the semantic and syntactic status of Germanic modals has been whether modals should be considered main verbs or auxiliaries. According to Öhlschläger (1989: 19), this is a question which—at least for German modals—goes back to the seventeenth century (Bödiker 1690: 82, 109). One line of argument in this debate raises the question of whether modals contribute any lexical meaning at all, or whether their contribution is exclusively grammatical. Öhlschläger (1989: 56) comments on this view, die Auffassung, nach der sich Hilfsverben - bzw. allgemeiner: Nichtvollverben - dadurch von Vollverben unterscheiden, dass sie keine lexikalische, sonern nur grammatische Bedeutung besässen, dass sie keinen semantischen Eigenwert hätten. Bezogen auf die Modalverben äussert sich diese Auffassung meist darin, dass es als ihre semantishe Funktion angesehen wird, dass sie "den Inhalt eines anderen Verbs modifizieren" (DudenGrammatik 1959; 1984: 94). [the view, that auxiliaries—or more general, non-main verbs—unlike main verbs, supposedly have no lexical meaning, only grammatical meaning; that they have no independent semantic value of their own. Applied to modals, this view is expressed as the idea that the semantic function of modals is conceived to be "the modification of the content of another verb".] Öhlschläger himself rejects the idea that modals as a class lack lexical semantic content and I agree with his argument. However, numerous authors have claimed that there exists a semantic continuum ranging from epistemic modals, expressing the speaker's commitment to the truth of the embedded proposition (Palmer 1986: 51) and displaying the least "lexical content," to dynamic modals, which are often thought to have the richest lexical content among modals. Öhlschläger (1989: 50) discusses Plank's (1981: 59) claim that ...es bei den Modalverben eine Hierarchie von Modalitätstypen" gebe "die ihre Entfernung von autonomen lexikalischen Vollverben" abbilde, wobei die "epistemische Modalität die stärkste Auxiliarisierungstendenz" aufweise, während die dynamische Modalität noch am ehesten an der "lexikalischen Autonomie" teilhabe. [among modals there exists a hierarchy of modality types that display their distance from autonomous lexical main verbs, where epistemic modality

54

Norwegian modals: the facts show the strongest tendency towards auxiliary status, while dynamic modality possess more of a lexical autonomy.]

The question of the possible auxiliary status of modals (or at least some modals) will be examined in sections 4.2 and 5.1. For the moment, I argue that the status of a linguistic element as auxiliary or main verb should be determined not by the linguist's intuitions about degree of lexical semantic content, but by testable distributional and formal criteria—the linguistic element's syntactic properties. While Norwegian modals, like their counterparts in other Scandinavian languages, German, and Middle English, 33 share many of the properties of lexical verbs, modals in contemporary English have a range of syntactic properties characteristic of their category. Thus, Jackendoff (1972: 100) observes the following for contemporary English modals: Consider the differences. Modals do not undergo number agreement, though all verbs do. Modals do not occur together, and they do not appear in gerunds and infinitives.... Modals also differ from all main verbs but be and some uses of have in that they undergo subject-aux inversion, precede not, and block do-support.... Thus we can treat modals as verbs only if we are willing to concede that they represent a remarkable coincidence of a large number of purely syntactic aberrations. Jackendoff (1972) thus proposes that English modals do not belong to the category of lexical verbs. Instead, he suggests that modals are auxiliaries in modern English. However, even the advocates of this view (Jackendoff 1972; Lightfoot 1974) admit that although modals in contemporary English should be considered auxiliaries and not lexical verbs, this issue is a lot less settled for modals in Old and Middle English and contemporary German (Jackendoff 1972: 100). Some propose that modals are auxiliaries in contemporary English only, while in Old and Middle English and German they are to be considered main verbs (Jackendoff 1972; Lightfoot 1974; Roberts 1985). Since Norwegian and other Scandinavian modals resemble their German and 33

For the claim that Middle English modals were a lot like contemporary German and Norwegian ones, see Lightfoot (1974: 241): "[There was] a whole series of changes taking place in the sixteenth century.... (a) The old pre-modals could no longer appear in infinitive constructions... (b) The old pre-modals could no longer occur with -ing affixes.... (c) As from the mid-sixth century there could only be one modal in any clause.... (d) The old pre-modals could no longer occur with have and an -en affix." Denison (1993: chapter 11) also discusses this issue.

Syntactic characteristics

55

Old/Middle English counterparts, these authors would presumably consider Scandinavian modals main verbs, not auxiliaries. There are observable syntactic differences between modals in modern English and Norwegian: for example, the contemporary Standard English 3 4 ban against co-occurrence of modals does not hold for Scandinavian (as shown in (26a)) or German although there are certain restrictions on cooccurrence even in these languages (Thrainsson and Vikner 1995). Furthermore, in English, provided a modal is at all present, it will always be the leftmost verb in any verbal sequence, since English modals do not occur in non-finite forms. Mainland Scandinavian modals, although frequently found in this leftmost position, may also occur as complements of aspectual auxiliaries (26b) or embedded under lexical verbs (26c). (26)

a.

Det ma kunne finnes en l0sning. there must canINF findPASS a solution 'It must be possible to find a solution.'

b.

Ofrene hadde mattetflykte. victimsDEF had mustPERF flee 'The victims had had to flee.'

c.

Jon antas ä mätte vcere morderen. Jon presumePASS to mustINF be killerDEF 'Jon is presumed to have to be the killer.'

These differences between English and other Germanic languages indicate that the distribution of English modals is much more restricted than that of their counterparts in other Germanic languages. A modern English sentence may contain at most one proper modal, 35 and the modal is always the leftmost verb. A Norwegian, German, or Dutch sentence may contain pairs or

34

There are English dialects where co-occurrence is allowed (Denison 1993: 294) but only for a limited set of constructions and only for specific combinations of modals. Thrainsson and Vikner (1995: 72) also discuss some differences between double modal constructions in English dialects and those found in Scandinavian. 35 Obviously, English sentences may express the same content as their Norwegian and German counterparts by means of lexical combinations semantically corresponding to modals, such as have to, be to, be able to, etc. Such combinations are considered (quasi-)modals by many authors (Hopper and Traugott 1993: 143).

56

Norwegian modals: the facts

clusters of proper modals, 3 6 and a modal may or may not be the leftmost verb. There are, however, certain syntactic differences between modals and most other verbs even in Norwegian, which we will consider below. Section 4.1 deals with the complement-taking properties of Norwegian modals. Section 4.2 examines the behaviour of modals in ellipsis and tags and section 4.3 sums up the findings on the syntactic characteristics of Norwegian modals.

4.1. Complements of Norwegian modals Norwegian modals take as their complements bare infmitivals, perfect participles, directional adverbials, and pseudoclefts. The last two cases apply to root modals only. In addition, the two dynamic root modals seemingly take CP or DP complements. Specifically, the modal kunne 'can' takes DP complements, whereas ville 'want to' takes CP complements, finite clauses headed by the complementizer at 'that'. We will address the latter property of these two modals in section 4.2. Here, we consider the remainder of the properties listed above. As mentioned earlier, Norwegian modals take bare infinitival complements, whereas most other verbs taking infinitival complements require the presence of the infinitival marker ä 'to'. 3 7 In many descriptions of Ger-

36

Some extreme examples follow. Thanks to Herbert Pütz for the German example in (i). The Dutch example in (ii). is from van Gelderen (2004: 165). (i) Wer können soll muss wollen dürfen. who canINF shall must wantINF mayINF 'He who is expected to be able, must be allowed to have a will' (ii) Je zou hier eigenlijk moeten kunnen mögen kamperen you should here really must can may camp 'You should really be able to be allowed to camp here.' 37 According to Thräinsson and Vikner (1995: 67), this is true for Danish modals as well, but not for all Icelandic modals: "some of the Icelandic modals take complements with the infinitival ad whereas Danish modals take bare infinitives." German modals take bare infmitivals (without the infinitival marker zu), according to Öhlschläger (1989: 4). These apparent differences between Norwegian, Danish and German on one hand and Icelandic on the other may very well be a question of definition. Although based on semantic properties and communicative function there are other modal candidates (vcere nodt til ä 'be obligated to', ha a 'have to'),

Syntactic characteristics

57

manic modals, the ability to take bare infinitivals is considered their most distinctive syntactic property, and this property is often used to distinguish proper modals from non-modals (Lodrup 1996a). 3 8 (27)

a.

Jon bor (*ä) vcere pä kontoret. Jon ought-to to be in his office 'Jon should be in his office.'

b.

Marit kan (*ά) sv0mme. Marit can to swim 'Marit can/may swim/be swimming.'

c.

Pasienten mä (*ä) behandles forsiktig. patient-DEF must to treated-PASS carefully ' T h e patient must be treated carefully.'

d.

Begge skal (*ä) reise i morgen. both shall to travel to-morrow 'Both of them are supposed to leave tomorrow.'

e.

Myndighetene vil (*a) rive huset. authorities-DEF will to demolish house-DEF ' T h e authorities want to/will demolish the house.'

these candidates are not considered proper modals precisely because they fail to take bare infinitival complements; please consult the tables 8 - 13 in section 7.2. 38 The presence of the infinitive marker is allowed in some Norwegian nonstandard dialects for certain constructions such as the modal kunne in the 'ability' sense. For these dialects (and Faroese; Thräinsson et al 2004: 308), the presence or absence of the infinitival marker ä disambiguates the modal kunne; + a gives the modal an unambiguous reading of 'ability', while the absence of this marker results in a 'permission' reading. In my dialect (Trondersk) as well as northern dialects, skulle is also found with infinitivals + ä : (i) Skull dokker ä fesk? (ii) Skull dokker fesk? shallPRET youPLUR to fish shallPRET youPLUR fish 'Were you going fishing?' 'Were you going to fish?' Again, the presence or absence of the infinitival marker ä disambiguates the meaning not of the modal itself but of its complement: the presence of a gives the complement a progressive reading and the absence indicates lack of progressive aspect.

58

Norwegian modals: the facts

The ability to take bare infinitival complements thus sets modals apart from almost any other lexical verb in Norwegian. 3 9 Moreover, since taking bare verbal complements is a property modals share with perfect auxiliaries, this is frequently invoked as an argument in favour of the hypothesis that modals are auxiliaries even in Norwegian. The data in (27) are all ambiguous between a root reading and a non-root reading, although in most cases the root reading is more natural out of context. Norwegian modals, like their Faroese counterparts (Thräinsson et al. 2004: 309), also take verbal complements in the form of perfect participles, provided the modal has a preterite form, as the data in (28) demonstrate. (28)

39

a.

Jon bürde (ha) vcertpa kontoret. Jon ought-to have been on office-DEF 'Jon ought to have been in his office.'

b.

Marit kunne (ha) sv0mt. Marit could have swum 'Marit could have swum.'

c.

Pasienten mätte (ha) blitt behandlet straks. patient-DEF must-PRET have become treated immediately ' T h e patient had to have been treated immidiately.'

d.

Begge skulle (ha) reist i morgen. both should have left in morning 'Both of them were supposed to have left tomorrow.'

e.

Myndighetene ville (ha) revet huset. authorities-DEF would have torn-down house-DEF ' T h e authorities would have demolished the house.'

But according to Johannessen (1998: 87, 2003) various other Norwegian verbs may take bare infinitival complements when they occur with the negation ikke 'not'. Johannessen argues that these NPI (Negative Polarity Item) verbs are on their way to full modalityhood, displaying several, but not all of the hallmarks of proper modals, as these hallmarks are described in Eide (2002a). Also, perception verbs, la 'let' and be 'ask' may take ACI small clause complements without the infinitival marker, but with a visible small clause subject different from the matrix subject (or a reflexive): Marit sä Jon/seg selv bade 'Marit saw Jon/herself take a bath'.

Syntactic characteristics

59

In each of the sentences in (28), a perfective verb ha 'have' may be inserted between the modal and the perfect participle; therefore, numerous authors have considered this phenomenon to be best described as the workings of a phonological reduction, a phenomenon known as ha-stryking, '/za-deletion/ /za-omission' (Nordgärd and Äfarli 1990: 100). One reason to assume that there is an underlying, phonologically omitted (infinitival) perfective verb ha in these instances is the fact that modals normally take infinitival complements, while the perfect participle ought to be licensed by a perfective auxiliary. Moreover, some authors have claimed that the reading of the sentence remains the same with or without ha (Faarlund et al. 1997: 526). 40 However, Taraldsen (1984) claims that this is not correct (cf. also Julien 2000b). Recall that the modal needs to have a preterite form in order to take a perfect participle complement; a present form of the modal rejects a participle complement. Taraldsen observes that haomission is only licit on a counterfactual reading of the modal; whenever the preterite marking signals 'past', not counterfactuality, 41 Aa-omission is illicit, as shown in (29): (29)

Han krevde at vi skulle *(ha) gjort det innen mandag. he demanded that we should have done it by Monday 'He demanded that we should have done it by Monday.'

Thus, the reading of a modal with a perfect participle complement is always counterfactual in Norwegian; this is also the case in Faroese, as pointed out by Thräinsson et al (2004: 309). Furthermore, the readings in (28) are coun-

40

Wiklund (1998) advocates a different view. In Swedish, the phenomenon hadeletion affects a wider range of constructions than in Norwegian; Wiklund (1998: 14) maintains that "A tensed auxiliary ha can always be omitted in subordinate clauses in Swedish, whereas an untensed ha can be omitted if preceded by a modal verb in past tense.... Footnote 10: Tensed ha can never be omitted in Norwegian (see Taraldsen 1984). In Swedish it may also occasionally be omitted in raising contexts (see Hedlund 1992)." Julien (2000b) argues that finite ha cannot always be omitted in subordinate clauses in Swedish, only when "some other element can identify the +finite feature of the clause". She also shows that there is individual variation among speakers of Swedish as to where an infinitival ha can be left out. 41 Faarlund et al. (1997: 575, 587) discuss the 'modal' uses of preterite in Norwegian, which is particularly frequent with modals. Fretheim (1977) discusses the 'modal' use of plus perfect in Norwegian.

60

Norwegian modals: the facts

terfactual readings of root modals with the exception of (28e), which may have a metaphysical reading. We return to these constructions in Chapter 5. Unlike their contemporary English (and Icelandic 42 ) counterparts 43 and similar to their German and Dutch counterparts, 44 Norwegian modals take adverbial complements, particularly adverbs or preposition phrases denoting directional locatives and resultatives, as (30) demonstrates. Notice that this property applies to root modals only, as non-root readings are definitely unavailable in these constructions (in Chapter 5, section 5.4.3 I offer an explanation). (30)

42

a.

Mar it bor hj em. Marit ought-to home 'Marit should go home.'

b.

Jon mä pä skolen. Jon must to school 'Jon must go to school.'

c.

Greina skal av. The branch will off 'The branch will be cut off/in two.'

d.

Alle vil tilbake tidlig. All want-to back early 'Everyone wants to get back early.'

e.

Jeg kan ikke pä kino likevel. I can not to cinema anyway Ί cannot go to the cinema anyway.'

According to Höskuldur Thräinsson, p.c.. Denison (1993: 305) claims that "modal+directional adverbial is often used in Germanic languages as if a verb of motion is to be understood. The usage is virtually dead in Present-day English... but was common in earlier periods." 44 Dutch allows for a greater range of small clause complements than German and Norwegian. See section 7.2. Barbiers (2002) says: "I discuss Dutch data only. The construction also exists in German and Afrikaans, but with more restrictions on the complement of the modal: these languages allow only a subset of the complements that can occur with a modal in Dutch." 43

Syntactic characteristics

61

According to my own intuitions, directionals are acceptable with all modals; however, not all speakers allow all modals in these constructions. All speakers allow matte, skulle or ville, but some speakers do not allow burde, and some do not allow kunne. Non-standard dialects (especially in the western and northern parts of Norway) tend to be more liberal than standard dialects in this respect. However, the restriction on burde seems to work in the opposite direction, as burde + directional is rejected by speakers of non-standard dialects but not by speakers of standard dialects (one explanation might be that burde itself does not belong to the active vocabulary of many non-standard dialects). It is debatable whether the constructions in (30) contain a phonologically empty motion verb or not. If there is an invisible or PF-deleted motion verb between the modal and the directional, this is tantamount to saying that these constructions are in fact not instances of modals with non-verbal complements after all. Thus, whereas van den Wyngaerd (1994) proposes that there is a PF-deleted motion verb (also Faarlund et al. 1997: 527, 582), Barbiers (1995) argues that there was no verb there in the first place. A third hypothesis, put forth in van Riemsdijk (2002a, 2002b), is that there is a "super-light motion verb [e] G o" in most Germanic languages, a verb with semantic, but no phonological features. Certain data from the Norwegian dialect Trondersk offer support for van Riemsdijk's (or generally, the invisible verb) analysis. As discussed above, Norwegian modals take bare infinitival complements in addition to directional complements. However, there are other verbs denoting propositional attitudes (verbs semantically similar to modals) that take directionals and infinitival complements, but not bare infinitival complements; they require the presence of the infinitival marker. These verbs require the presence of the infinitival marker even with directionals in this dialect, which strongly suggests that there is a (phonetically empty) verb here, as shown by the two minimal pairs: (31a) and (31c) with the modal villa 'want to' and (31 b) and (3 Id) with the non-modal construction ha lost te 'want to'. (31)

a.

Han villa itj fcerrα heim. he wanted not go home 'He didn't want to go home.'

b.

Han hadd itj lost te äfcerra heim. he had not will for to go home 'He didn't want to go home.'

62

Norwegian modals: the facts c.

Han villa itj 0 heim. he wanted not home 'He didn't want to go home.'

d.

Han hadd itj lest te ä 0 heim. he had not will for to home 'He didn't want to go home.'

Section 4.2 also offers data showing that the modal behaves like an auxiliary, not a main verb, in these constructions with regards to tags and elliptic constructions. This would be hard to explain if there were no phonetically null verb between the modal and the directional since, in that case, we would have an instance of an auxiliary (i.e. the modal) not needing a main verb, a highly unlikely scenario. Finally, Thrainsson and Vikner (1995) claim that pseudocleft constructions serve to distinguish root modals from epistemic modals in Scandinavian languages, as root modals allow their complement to be pseudoclefted, whereas epistemic modals do not, as (32) shows. (32)

a.

Det eneste du skal, er ä legge deg. the only you shall is to lay you 'The only thing you will do, is to get to bed.' (root reading only)

b.

*Det eneste Jon skal, er ä ha stjälet en bil. the only Jon shall is to have stolen a car Intended: 'The only thing Jon is supposed to have done, is stolen a car.' (*non-root reading)

c.

Det Jon mä, er ä vcere hyggelig. it Jon must is to be nice 'What Jon must be, is nice.' (root reading only)

d.

*Det Jon mä, er ä vcere morderen. it Jon must is to be killer-DEF 'What Jon must be, is the killer.' (*non-root reading)

Thrainsson and Vikner's (1995) generalization is not wrong, but it is somewhat inaccurate. The more accurate generalization is that root modals accept a pseudoclefted complement provided they have a 'two-place' (or

Syntactic characteristics

63

subject-oriented) reading (described in section 2). In constructions where a proposition-scope reading of the root modal is the natural reading, root modals reject a pseudoclefted complement, just like non-root modals: (33)

a.

*Det en kvinne b0r, er ä bli vär neste statsminister. it a woman should, is to be our next prime minister. (Intended: 'What should happen is that a woman becomes our next prime minister.')

b.

*Det apene ikke mä, er ä mates αν besekende. it the monkeys not must, is to feed-PASSIVE by visitors (Intended: 'What must not take place is that the monkeys are fed by visitors.')

These facts are analysed in chapter 4.

4.2. Modals, ellipsis, and tags English modals are characterized by what Huddleston (1976: 333) dubbed the N I C E properties, alluding to the fact that modals take part in syntactic processes where an ordinary lexical verb would require the assistance of a semantically devoid do, a phenomenon known as do-support. These properties, quoted from Palmer (1986: 90-91), are illustrated in Table 6. Table 6 Negative: Inversion: Code: Emphatic affirmation:

I can't go Must I come? He can swim and so can she He will be there

vs. vs. vs. vs.

He doesn't go Does he go? He goes and so does she He does go

It has sometimes been claimed in the literature on English modals that these N I C E properties do not apply equally to root and non-root modals. Specifically, it has been claimed that non-root modals are unavailable in interrogative sentences and focalized constructions, both of which require subjectauxiliary inversion in English, as (34), taken from Brennan (2004), shows.

64

Norwegian modals: the facts

However, as noted by Jackendoff (1972), although non-root modals typically resist subject-auxiliary inversion, this is not an absolute constraint, as (35a), also from Brennan (2004), and (35b) demonstrate. Therefore, Jackendoff claims, this should be considered a semantic, not a syntactic constraint. (34)

a. b.

Must Carrie leave? Only three people may Mary see.

(35)

a.

Few people must your father have seen, and fewer saw him. OK, so John is a thief. Must he therefore be a murderer?

b.

Norwegian modals behave like other verbs with regard to subject-verb inversion, as shown in (36a) and (36b), but the availability of non-root readings in interrogative or focalized constructions is subject to the same semantic restrictions in Norwegian as in English: non-root readings are marginal in such constructions, but not ruled out, as (36c) and (36d) prove. (36)

a.

Kommer Mar it οgsä? comes Marit too 'Will Marit come, too?'

b.

Kan Marit ogsä komme? can Marit too come 'Can Marit come, too?'

c.

Mä Jon vcere morderen, ettersom han er en tyv? must Jon be killerDEF, since he is a thief 'Does Jon have to be the killer, since he is a thief?'

d.

Sjokoladen din mä Marit ha spist. chocolateDEF yours must Marit have eaten 'Marit must have eaten your chocolate.'

e.

Uansett kommer ikke Jon i kveld. in-any-case comes not Jon to-night 'In any case, Jon won't come tonight.'

Syntactic characteristics f.

Uansett kan ikke Jon komme i kveld. in-any-case can not Jon come to-night 'In any case, Jon cannot come tonight.'

g.

Jon sover vel? Jon sleeps particle ' J o h n does sleep, right?'

h.

Jon skal vel sove? Jon shall particle sleep 'Jon should be sleeping, right?'

65

In fact, N o r w e g i a n modals behave no differently than other verbs with regard to negation, as shown in (36e) and (36f); inversion, (36a) and (36b); or emphatic affirmation, as in (36g) and (36h). Thus, a m o n g the N I C E properties, only " c o d e " is relevant in distinguishing N o r w e g i a n modals f r o m lexical verbs. Lexical verbs are replaced by the light verb gjore ' d o ' in elliptical constructions, as in (37a), while modals are repeated, as in (37b). In this respect, Norwegian modals follow the English pattern. (37)

a.

Marit svommer og det *svommer/gj0r Jon Marit swims and that swims/does Jon too 'Marit swims and so does J o n . ' 4 5

ogsä.

The pro-form det must pertain to the whole VP, including the verb, for the proverb gjere 'do' to be required here (Lodrup 1994). If the pro-form pertains to the direct object only, for instance, one may repeat the lexical verb, (i). In this case, the lexical verb may just as well be replaced by another lexical verb, (ii). (i) Marit spiser pannekaker og det gjor/spiser Jon ogsä. Marit eats pancakes an that does/eats Jon too 'Marit eats pancakes and so does Jon.' (ii) Marit spiser pannekaker og det liker Jon ogsä. Marit eats pancakes and that likes Jon too 'Marit eats pancakes and Jon likes them, too.' The important thing to notice here is that in one case det 'that' refers to the whole VP [eats pancakes] while in the other case, it refers to the direct object [pancakes] only. Likewise, in (37c), the sentence Marit har svomt og det gjor Jon ogsä 'Marit has swum as so does Jon.' is possible if the intention is that Jon is presently engaged in the activity of swimming, whereas Marit was formerly engaged in this activity. However, the relevant meaning here is that 'Marit has swum and Jon has swum'. On this reading, the aspectual ha cannot be replaced by gjßre. 43

Norwegian modals: the facts

66

b.

Marit skal sv0mme og det skal/*gj0r Jon ogsä. Marit shall swim and that shall/does Jon too 'Marit is going to swim and so is Jon.'

c.

Marit har svomt og det har/*gj0r Jon ogsä. Marit has swum and that has/does Jon too 'Marit has swum and so has Jon.'

In ellipsis, Norwegian modals behave like aspectual auxiliaries—ha 'have' and vcere 'be'—which are also repeated, as (37c) shows. Closely related to code are tag questions; hence, it is not surprising that modals differ from lexical verbs in these constructions as well, as (38) demonstrates. Note that, once again, modals pattern with aspectuals. (38)

a.

Jon gär i butikken, *gär/gj0r han ikke det? Jon goes in store-DEF, goes/does he not that 'Jon goes to the store, doesn't he?'

b.

Jon mä gä i butikken, mä/*gj0r han ikke det? Jon must go in store-DEF, must/does he not that 'John must go to the market, mustn't he?'

c.

Jon har gätt i butikken, har/*gjor han ikke det? Jon has gone in store-DEF, has/does he not that 'John has gone to the market, hasn't he?'

Again, in the tag question, the lexical verb occurring in the matrix clause cannot be repeated; it must be replaced by the pro-verb gjore, as in (38a). Modals and aspectuals, on the other hand, must be repeated in the tag; they cannot be replaced by gj0re, as shown in (38b) and (38c). The German counterpart of do-so-ellipsis, VP-pronominalization, and its unavailability for epistemic modals was one of Ross' (1969) main arguments for postulating two different argument structures for root and nonroot modals (Ross referred to this phenomenon as S-deletion). Although this may be correct for German (see Öhlschläger 1989: 47), in Norwegian this kind of ellipsis is typically available for both root and non-root modals. VP-pronominalization of the complement of root and non-root modals in Norwegian is examined and discussed in Lodrup (1994) 46 where the data in 46

See also Vikner (1988: 10-11) and Thrainsson and Vikner (1995: 61): "it is

Syntactic characteristics

67

(39a) and (39b) come from. Note also that aspectuals allow for this type of ellipsis, as in (39c). (39)

a.

Kan du strikke ? Ja, jeg kan det. can you knit? Yes, I can that 'Do you know how to knit? Yes, I do.'

b.

Kan bussen ha kommet nä? Nei, den kan ikke det. can the bus have come now? No it can not that 'May the bus have arrived already? No, it may not.'

c.

Har bussen kommet nä? Nei, den har ikke det. has the bus come now? No it has not that 'Has the bus arrived already? No, it hasn't.'

Likewise, in tag questions, there seems to be little or no difference between root modals and non-root modals: tag questions are available and felicitous with both types of modals and the restriction on gjore 'do'-replacement holds for non-root as well as root modals— unlike lexical verbs, the modal is not replaced by gore in tags. Instead, the modal is repeated in the tag in both root (40cd) and non-root (40ab) modals. (40)

a.

Han skal vcere en hyggeligfyr, skal han ikke det? he shall be a nice chap, shall he not that 'He is supposed to be a nice chap, isn't he?'

b.

Marit ma vcere kommet hjem nä, mä hun ikke det? Marit must be come home now, must she not that 'Marit must have come home by now, mustn't she?'

c.

Du b0r vel dra nä, b0r du ikke det? you should well go now, should you not that 'You should probably leave now, shouldn't you?'

usually possible in Danish to get a topicalized object-like det 'it, that' with epistemic modal verbs, although it is much worse when it is not topicalized: (i) Han vil vcere hjemme hele dagen. Det vil hun desuden ogsä. he will be home all day. that will she actually too 'He will stay home all day. So will she, actually'."

68

Norwegian modals: the facts d.

Hun kan gäpä kino, kan hun ikke det? she can go to movie can she not that 'She may go to the movies, may she not?'

However, there are two N o r w e g i a n root modals that allow for replacement by gjere

' d o ' in tags. These are the two root modals listed as dynamic in

Figure 5 above, ville 'want to' and kunne 'can/know', 4 7 the latter on the 'mental ability' reading. (41)

a.

Du vil at han skal komme, vil/gjßr du ikke det? y o u will that he comes, will/do y o u not that ' Y o u want him to come, don't y o u ? '

b.

Du kan fransk, kan/gj0r du ikke det? y o u can French, can/do y o u not that ' Y o u speak French, don't y o u ? '

c.

Du kan nasjonalsangen, kan/gjßr du ikke det? y o u can the national anthem, can/do y o u not that ' Y o u know the national anthem, don't y o u ? '

These two modals are special in other respects as well. For instance, they are the only two Norwegian modals that may take "proper" arguments ( D P or C P ) as complements, as seen in (41) above. Crucially, the proper argument complement is a prerequisite for ^/ore-replacement to be licit. Note that when these modals take infinitival complements, g/ore-replacement is impossible and the modal must once again be repeated: (42)

a.

Du vil komme, vil/*gj0r du ikke det? y o u want come, want/do y o u not that ' Y o u want to come, don't y o u ? '

b.

Du kan snakke Fransk, kan/*gjßr du ikke? y o u can speak French, can/do y o u not ' Y o u can speak French, can't y o u ? '

Not all speakers of Norwegian accept this replacement; typically, speakers of non-standard dialects are more liberal than speakers of standard dialects, and certain speakers accept g/0re-replacement with ville, but not with kunne. 47

Syntactic characteristics

69

Recall also that these are the only two modals, root or non-root, that passivize in Norwegian, albeit marginally. The data (originally from Lodrup 1996a) are repeated here for convenience as (43): (43)

a.

Leksen mä kunnes i morgen. The lesson must can-PASS tomorrow 'You should know your lesson by tomorrow.'

b.

Dette mä ikke bare 0nskes, det mä villes.4H This must not only wish-PASS, it must will-PASS 'You must not only wish this, you must want it.'

Importantly, only in those cases where these two modals behave in a manner reminiscent of ordinary transitive verbs, with an agentive subject and a nominal or clausal direct object, may they undergo passivization (Öhlschläger 1989: 59, footnote 12 makes a similar remark about German modals). With a bare infinitival complement, passivization is unacceptable. Adding the infinitival marker ä makes the construction slightly better, but it is still dramatically worse than the sentences in (43), as shown in (44). (44)

a.

*(??A) sykle mä kunnes i morgen. to ride a bike must can-PASSIVE tomorrow O n e must know how to ride a bike tomorrow.'

b.

*(??Ä) bli danser mä ikke bare onskes, det mä villes. to be dancer must not only wish-PASS., it must will-PASS. O n e must not only wish to be a dancer, one must want it.'

Furthermore, recall that the modal kunne 'can' may occur in the imperative, but only when it takes a DP complement, as in (45a). When it takes an infinitival complement, the imperative becomes impossible, as (45b) shows (though adding ä helps a lot for speakers of non-standard dialects): (45)

48

a.

Kunn dette diktet til imorgen! know this poem by tomorrow '(You must) Know this poem by tomorrow!'

The passive participle of ville occurs in this particular construction: Dette er en villet ntvikling 'This is an intended development'.

70

Norwegian modals: the facts b.

Kunn *(? ä) sykle til imorgen! know ride-a-bicycle by tomorrow '(You must) Know how to ride a bicycle by tomorrow!'

Thus, like lexical verbs, kunne and ville accept g^re-replacement exactly when they take proper arguments (DP/CP) as complements. They passivize, like lexical verbs, only when they take CP/DP complements. The modal kunne occurs in the imperative precisely when it takes a proper argument DP as a complement. Crucially, when these verbs take (bare) infinitival complements, they pattern with modals, not with main verbs, in all these respects. Thus, at this point, there are two possibilities. We might be dealing with two pairs of homonyms of kunne 'can' and ville 'want to': one is transitive, accepts gjare-vtplacement, passivizes, and occurs in the imperative, while the other is akin to modals and perfect auxiliaries. Alternatively, we are dealing with two modals that display radically different behaviours depending on the complement. I find the latter possibility unlikely and I discard it here. We are left with the assumption that the root modals kunne and ville have main verb versions. This is exactly what I will propose. Roberts and Roussou (2002) state that "Scur (1968) (cited in Plank 1984) points out dialectal examples in English where can and will survive as lexical verbs." Evidently, this is the case in Norwegian as well. The Norwegian cognates of can and will—kunne and ville—display the behaviour of main verbs when they take a proper argument, that is, when they function like ordinary transitive verbs. The reason for this, I argue, is that they are in fact ordinary transitive verbs. Thus, kunne and ville have main verb versions, which accept ^/^re-replacement and passivize, and one of them, kunne, also occurs in the imperative. This also implies that I consider the second version of kunne and ville, which takes infinitival complements and patterns with other modals and aspectuals, modal auxiliaries. Since the tag test proved useful for separating a main verb version of kunne and ville from an auxiliary version, I propose that this test be utilized to support the analysis of modals with directional complements as auxiliaries. Recall from the previous subsection that there has been some debate about whether there is an invisible motion verb between the modal and the directional or whether the modal in these constructions must be a main verb since there is no other verb of which the modal may be an auxiliary. The gj0re-replacement test shows that the modal in these constructions is indeed an auxiliary:

Syntactic characteristics (46)

a.

Jon mä hjem, mä/*gj0r han ikke det? Jon must home, must/does he not that 'Jon must go home, mustn't he?'

b.

Marit vilpa kino, vil/*gj0r hun ikke det? Marit wants to movie, wants she not that 'Marit wants to go to the movies, doesn't she?'

71

Furthermore, directional complements of modals behave as VPs as regards VP-pronominalization, not as adverbials. This is illustrated in (47). An adverbial modifying an ordinary lexical verb (or its VP) cannot be replaced by the proform det. VP-pronominalization is completely grammatical, however, with the adverbial complement of a root modal. (47)

a.

A: Jon gär/kommer hjem. Jon goes/comes home 'Jon is going/coming home.'

B: * Gär/kommer han dit? goes/comes he that (Intended: 'Is he? ')

b.

A. Jon skal/vil/ma hjem. B: Skal/vil/mä han det? Jon shall/will/must home shall/will/must he that 'Jon should/will/must go home.' 'Should/will/must he?'

The examples in (46) and (47) thus support our conclusion from the previous subsection that modals with directional complements are auxiliaries, even though there is no visible main verb to which they could be an auxiliary. Our findings suggest that some version of "the invisible light-verb hypothesis" (van Riemsdijk 2002a, 2002b) applies to Norwegian. The tag test, supported by the passive and imperative data, also shows that there are modal main verbs in addition to modal auxiliaries. Whenever a modal kunne or ville occurs with a DP/CP complement, Norwegian grammar recognizes the modal as a transitive main verb instead of a modal auxiliary. A note of caution is in order, however. With ordinary lexical verbs, g7'0re-replacement is obligatory. This is not the case with the main verb versions of kunne and ville. I have no explanation for this fact. Nevertheless, the passive and imperative data lend strong support to the hypothesis that there are modal main verbs in Norwegian.

72

Norwegian modals: the facts

4.3. Summary of findings The syntactic properties of Norwegian modals examined in this section can be grouped in three bundles. There are properties, such as the ability to take bare infinitival complements, that apply to all modals but not to most other verbs. There are properties regarding the range of possible complements, such as pseudoclefts and directionals, that apply to root modals only and properties such as passivization and do-replacement that apply to the modal main verbs kunne 'can' and ville 'want to' only. Syntactic properties of Norwegian modals: All modals: • Lack present participles • Resist replacement by the light verb gjore in elliptical constructions such as "do so" and tag-questions (except: main verb modals kunne and ville) • Take bare infinitival complements (lacking the infinitival marker a) • Accept VP-pronominalization of their infinitival complement • Modals with preterite morphology take perfect complements on a counterfactual reading Root modals: • Take directionals as complements (and these may undergo VPpronominalization) • Take pseudoclefted complements on a subject-oriented reading Modal main verbs kunne, ville·. • Accept replacement of gjore 'do' in ellipsis and tags • Take proper arguments as complements {kunne:DP; ville\C?) • Marginally passivize (and kunne occurs in the imperative)

Summary and inventory 5.

73

S u m m a r y and preliminary inventory

5.1. Examining our results Although Norwegian and other Scandinavian modals are not as different from lexical verbs as their English counterparts, certain properties apply to modals but not to most other Norwegian verbs. What serves to morphologically distinguish modals from most other verbs in Norwegian is that modals are preterite-present verbs. Only one (main verb) modal employs an imperative form. Root modals are more comfortable with nonfinite forms than non-root modals, although non-root infinitivals as well as non-root perfect participle modals exist (especially in conditionals). All Norwegian modals on our list so far have root readings and non-root readings. With regard to other semantic and syntactic properties, w e have seen that several properties apply to some Norwegian modals but not to others. This is significant.

Table 7 Semantics ^ Syntax: Imperative; •

Dyadic only

Monadic only

kunnemain

Accepts do-replacement; villeMMK Takes proper arguments; kunne main Passivizes Takes directional complements; Accepts pseudo-cleft complements; Takes bare infinitival complements; ModalPRET takes perfect complement; Lacks present participle;

Dyadic & monadic

Dynamic root:

Deontic root:

kunne ville

hurde kunne matte skulle

Non-root:

hunk· hnuh' llhlftC skullt· vi IL-

74

Norwegian modals: the facts

Without an accurate semantic and syntactic description, the important premises for our analysis would be merely conjectures. Several works on modals are flawed by the author's tendency to support his or her analysis by invoking properties found only in some modals, implicitly or explicitly assuming that those properties c a n y over to all modals. For instance, it has often been assumed that root modals denote two-place relations whereas epistemic modals denote one-place predicates. W e have seen that this is not correct. Although non-root modals always have one-place predicate readings and dynamic modals are mostly two-place relations, a root modal may be construed as either a one-place or a two-place predicate. Likewise, there are several syntactic properties that apply to some modals only. 49 At this point, another review of Norwegian modals is in order. So far, w e have reached the conclusion that there are main verb modals and modal auxiliaries. Furthermore, among modal auxiliaries, there are non-root modals (encompassing epistemic, i.e. "proper epistemic" and metaphysical, as well as evidential) and root modals, encompassing deontic and dynamic modals. This is represented in Figure 6 below. Figure 6 Norwegian modals (to be revised)

Modal main verbs Kunne 'know' Ville 'want-to' Root

Modal auxiliaries

Non-root

Deontic ]Dynamic Evidential Epistemic Burde 'should' ιKunne 'can/know' Skulle 'be suppc Matte 'must' IVille 'want to' Kunne 'may' Epistemic Metaphysical Skulle 'be required to' Burde 'should' Ville 'will' Matte 'must' Kunne 'may'

49

Note that main verb modals have no present participle either, although this is suggested by the table above.

Three potential candidates 75 6.

Three potential candidates

Three verbs are possible modal candidates in my investigation of Norwegian modals:/ä 'get', behove 'need', and trenge 'need'. I will consider each of these candidates. Note that the last two have very similar properties. Fä is mentioned in Faarlund et al. (1997: 528) as a verb with "clearly a modal meaning" (also L0drup, 1996b: fn. 2). It is semantically akin to the deontic modals (van der Auwera 1999 discusses the Swedish modal fä) in that it frequently expresses permission; fä is normally interchangeable with permissive kunne 'can'. Like modals, it lacks a present participle (*fäende), it takes bare infinitival complements, as shown in (48a), and it may take a perfect participle complement, as in (48b).50 Like root modals, it accepts pseudoclefted complements, as in (48c), and takes directional complements, as in (48d). It has the core properties of main verb modals: it passivizes (48e); takes proper arguments (48f); and accepts cfo-replacement, doing so most readily when it has a proper argument complement, like main verb modals. It allows for a two-place predicate reading, as in (48a), and a one-place predicate reading, as in (48g), like deontic modals. Finally, it occurs in the imperative, as (48h) shows. In short, it seems to have nearly all the properties of main verb modals and modal auxiliaries. (48)

50

a.

Fikk du gäpä kino? got you go to cinema 'Did you get to go to the movies?'

b.

Jeg fikk skiftet olje pä bilen. I got changed oil on car-DEF Ί had an oil change on my car.'

c.

Det eneste Jon fär, er ä gjßre lekser. the only-thing Jon gets, is to do homework 'The only thing Jon gets to do, is his homework.'

I believe this is not mentioned in Faarlund et al. (1997), but fä is different from modals in this particular respect. Modals need the preterite morphology to take a perfect participle as a complement. Not so for fa, as shown in (i), where fä has present morphology and still takes a perfect participle complement, (i) Jeg fär skiftet olje pä bilen. Ί am getting an oil change on my car.'

76

Norwegian modals: the facts d.

Hanfikk ut i verdenfor ä leere, (from Faarlund et al. 1997) he got out in world-DEF to learn 'He got to travel around the world to learn.'

e.

Billetter fäs ved inngangen. tickets get-PASSIVE at the entrance O n e can get tickets at the entrance.'

f.

Marit fär ikke kake/kjore, fär/gjor hun ? Marit get not cake/drive, get/does she 'Marit doesn't get cake/to drive, does she?'

g.

Detfär komme ti gjester ifodselsdagen din. there get come ten guests in birthdayDEF your 'There may come ten guests to your birthday.'

h.

Fä deg en jobb! get you a job 'Get yourself a job!'

However, it is a well-known fact among Norwegian linguists that fä has so many meanings that it would be surprising if at least one of the uses did not turn up with the 'right' property in each case; this amounts to saying that the data in (48) are best described as several different, homonymous verbs with varying properties. Thus, there is an ordinary transitive verb fä meaning 'to receive', as in (48e) and the first reading of (48f); an 'active' verb fä meaning roughly 'to achieve, manage to', one possible reading of (48b) and also (48h); a non-active verb fä, as in (48b) and (48d), meaning that the event denoted by the complement VP takes place to the advantage or disadvantage of the subject (Lodrup 1996b); fa that resembles the deontic modal kunne, meaning 'to be allowed', as in (48a), (48c), (48g), and the second reading of (48f). Obviously, neither the fact that the form fä corresponds to a range of different verbs, nor the fact that it has an inflection for present -r—unlike proper modals—is in and of itself enough to dismiss it from the class of modals. However, there is another important factor jeopardizing the candidacy o f / a as a modal—it seems impossible to get a non-root reading with this verb. Since we have listed this as an important semantic feature of modals, a property distinguishing modals from other verbs, I am reluctant to

Three potential candidates

77

count fä among proper modals and also reluctant to bestow on fä m e m b e r ship in the class of Norwegian m o d a l s . 5 1 5 2 T h e next t w o candidates to be examined are beh0ve and trenge, both meaning ' n e e d ' (mentioned in Faarlund et al. 1997: 600; Thrainsson and Vikner 1995: 54 mention Danish behßve-, van der A u w e r a 1999: 11 m e n tions Danish behave, Dutch hoeven and G e r m a n brauchen). These t w o verbs have some interesting properties. Firstly, they too are inflected for present tense with - r , unlike proper modals. Secondly, they have different properties, depending on whether or not they are used in combination with negation ikke ' n o t ' . T h e non-negated uses have less auxiliary-like or modal-like properties. This is very striking w h e n it comes to possible oneplace or two-place readings, as the negated version m a y have one-place (non-directed deontic) as well as two-place (directed deontic) readings, while the non-negated version has only the latter, as (49) shows. (49)

51

a.

Du trenger/behover ikke (ä) pakke den inn. y o u need not pack it in ' Y o u need not wrap it/There is no need to w r a p it.'

Something resembling a non-root reading is found in (i): Det far bli deg som blir vär neste statsminister. It get become you who become our next prime minister Ί guess you should be our next prime minister.' However, my intuition is that this is still a permissive reading. Brandt (1999: 181) lists a purported epistemic reading offä in Danish, hvis kortets alder stemmer, og det far man tro 'if the map's age is correct, and so one must assume', but even this reading seems to me to be a root reading (but I am not a native speaker of Danish). 52 Elly van Gelderen (p.c.) suggests that this may be too harsh: "The main argument (that it is not used epistemically) is weak if you look at modals in English. For instance, can has basically become only deontic and that's how they started out. It may be that fä is just a late starter." I agree that this is conceivable. Therefore, my exclusion offä as a proper modal may seem arbitrary. However, there are a lot of elements and phrases that display some of the properties of proper modals—such as semi-modals that do have non-root as well as root readings—but are not considered modals in the present work. Likewise, there is a long list of verbs that belong to the same in-between category as fä (Johannessen 1998, 2003) in having the syntactic properties of modals, but lacking the non-root readings. If fä is included, these verbs should be included as well. This is, of course, possible; however, this is not the path I have chosen here. (i)

78

Norwegian modals: the facts b.

Du trenger/behßver * (ä) pakke den inn. you need to pack it in 'You need to wrap it/ #It is necessary to wrap it.'

The difference between the negated and non-negated versions of behßve/trenge is also striking when it comes to their ability to take bare infinitival complements. The negated version optionally takes bare infinitivals or infinitivals with the infinitival marker a, while the non-negated version takes only the latter, as (49) shows (also Johannessen, 1998: 87). Perfect participle complements are dubious with negated and non-negated versions alike, and directional complements are marginal in standard dialects, but acceptable in some non-standard dialects. There is yet another difference: though directional complements are unacceptable for the negated and the non-negated versions in standard Norwegian, the differences in the degree of acceptability are striking, as (50a) and (50b) demonstrate. Again, the negated version is more acceptable than the non-negated version; the negated version is more modal-like. Both versions accept doreplacement, unlike modal auxiliaries, but the negated version more readily allows for repetition in tags, as evident in (50c) and (50d). Both versions take proper arguments as complements (50e) and accept pseudoclefted complements (50f); both versions also marginally passivize (50g). In all these uses, non-negated beh0ve sounds more archaic than trenge for many Norwegian speakers. Both negated and non-negated versions are equally acceptable as present participles, since trenge does employ a(n archaic) present participle, whereas behßve does not (trengende, *behßvende). (50)

a.

IDu beh0ver/trenger ikke pä skolen i dag. you need not to school today 'You need not go to school today.'

b.

*Du behßver/trenger pä skolen i dag. you need to school today 'You need to go to school today.'

c.

Jon trenger/behßver ikke (ä) spise jbrst, Jon need not (to) eat first, gjor/tr enger/behover han vel? does/need he particle 'Jon need not eat first, does he?'

Three potential candidates d.

79

Jon trenger/behßver ä spise ferst, Jon needs to eat first, g]0r/trenger/??beh0ver han ikke? does needs he not 'Jon needs to eat first, doesn't he?'

e.

Du trenger/behßver (ikke) denne spreyten. y o u need (not) this injection ' Y o u (don't) need this injection.'

f.

Det eneste Jon (ikke) trenger/behßver, er denne spreyten. the only Jon (not) need is this injection 'The only thing Jon (doesn't) need(s) is this injection.'

g.

Det trengs/?beh0ves (ikke) mer lys her. there n e e d - P A S S I V E more light here ' W e need more light here.'

In short, the negated versions o f trenge/behove show more modal-like behaviour than their non-negated counterparts, although they lack some syntactic properties that modals have. The final and perhaps crucial reason to dismiss non-negated trenge/beheve as possible modals is that they do not have a non-root reading, unlike their negated versions, as (51) shows. (51)

a.

Jon trenger/behover Jon needs

ikke (ä) vcere

morderen.

not to be killerDEF

'Jon need not be the killer.' (non-root reading acceptable) b.

Jon trenger/behover ä vcere morderen. Jon needs to be killerDEF 'Jon needs to be the killer.' (root reading only)

In summary, there are two good reasons in the semantic domain to support the hypothesis that trenger ikke/behover

ikke 'need not' are modals. Firstly,

they have both root readings and non-root readings, and secondly, they have one-place (proposition-scope) and two-place (subject-oriented) readings. The syntactic property that most strongly supports the candidacy o f these two verbs as modals is their ability to take bare infinitivals. The g^re-replacement facts and the ability to take directional

complements

80

Norwegian modals: the facts

seem less clear-cut, but as we have seen, the case for negated trenge/behßve is much stronger than that for their non-negated counterparts. 53 As mentioned above, negated trenge/behßve take proper arguments, passivize, and accept Mod vo i it j on >Mod o b | i g a t l o r l >Modabiijty/Permission" (Cinque 1999: 90).

Two central notions

99

To maintain such a rich, hierarchically fixed inventory of underlying f u n c tional projections, authors have to account for the fact that no language seems to overtly employ all functional heads on C i n q u e ' s list. Roberts and Roussou (2002: 25) suggest the following: Let us notate a functional feature F that requires a PF-realisation [i.e. a phonological realisation] as F*. Parametrisation is seen as the random assignment of the diacritic * to features typically associated with functional heads. Where the diacritic is assigned to a feature, that feature, F*, must have a PF realisation. Again, * is assigned to F in the lexicon, following Borer's (1984) idea that parametric variation is a facet of the lexicon. The overall conception of the lexicon, then, is that it contains the following elements: a.

Lexical items, specified as +/-V, +/-N, with PF and LF properties given.

b.

Substantive universale encoded as interpretable features of functional heads.

c.

* assigned in a language-particular fashion to (b).

[N]otice that under this view of variation there is no selection among the universal set of features. In other words, all languages have the same set of functional features; what varies is whether and how these features are realised in PF. This seems to be the null hypothesis and is in principle open to falsification, although Cinque's (1999) results suggest that the null hypothesis is correct. Thus there is no parametric variation in this respect [my italics]. There are, however, various w a y s to implement the idea that "there is no selection a m o n g the universal set of features." O n e might imagine that one overt element (e.g. a verb) could realize more than one functional head by m e a n s of external merge of the verb in one head position and subsequent m o v e m e n t to another (Roberts and Roussou 2002). There is also the option w h e r e two or more features could be spelled out by the same head without any m o v e m e n t of that head, which is the case for the English T(ense) and V(erb) features, according to Bouchard (1995: 388): [T]ense in French is a strong morpheme, and so it licenses an independent syntactic node. The complex of features V+T occupies two nodes in syntax, one licensed by the features of T, one licensed by V.... Both the lower position of the V+T complex (the verbal position) and the higher position of the

100 A survey of recent

proposals

V+T complex (the Tense position) are licensed with respect to the semantic representation.... In English, on the other hand, Tense is weak, so the V+T complex licenses only one node in syntax. This could be an example of parametrization selecting one of the two options, whether or not a certain Universal Feature F licenses a separate head H . That is, either F is 'strong' and licenses the projection of a separate functional head H, such as Tense in French, according to Bouchard, or F is ' w e a k ' and must resort to being hosted by a head Η licensed by s o m e other F. This is the case for Tense in English, according to Bouchard: Tense must be hosted by the head V licensed by the verb. In the latter case, F is a freeloader with no projection of its own, but it is still a universal feature and must be represented in the syntactic structure. Furthermore, one might question the hypothesis that there is no selection a m o n g the universal set of features. Äfarli (1995: 140) claims that There is a possibility that the functional structure of clauses is canonically given, such that all languages employ the same set of functional seeds [i.e. features], I find this possibility extremely unlikely and I leave it out of further consideration. The alternative possibility is that the pool of possible functional seeds is universal, but that languages and even different clause types within a language actually employ a subset of seeds from this pool. In that case it is an empirical question whether a given seed is employed in some language or clause type. The empirical evidence for the number and kinds of functional seeds employed in a clause is possibly quite complex. Here, I will briefly discuss two simple criteria that may be relevant: [a] A clause type exhibits a functional morpheme if that clause type employs a corresponding functional seed (& projection). [b] A clause type exhibits a functional morpheme, if and only if that clause type employs a corresponding functional seed (& projection). [a] takes the presence of functional morphology as empirical evidence for the existence of a functional seed and projection, but it does not exclude the possibility that there exist functional seeds and projections without any morphological correlate, (b) excludes the latter possibility, (b) thus amounts to a kind of naive recoverability constraint to the effect that every functional seed, and in particular every covert functional seed, must somehow have a morphologically visible effect (which does not necessarily mean that the seed itself is visible).

Two central notions

101

E v e n in an approach where each language selects f r o m a pool of universal features, one may maintain something along the lines of a universal hierarchy. Thräinsson (1996: 254) 9 notes that Clausal architecture is determined by UG in the sense that UG defines a set of functional categories, {F,, F 2 , ... F n } that languages "select" from. For any functional categories Fj and F,. the sequence will be uniform whenever they occur, i.e. if L^ and L 2 each instantiate both F, and Fj and F, ccommands Fj in L 1; then Fj c-commands Fj in L 2 . O f course, it is possible that not every functional category or feature is subj e c t to selection, as Epstein et al. (1996: fn. 9) point out: One way to think of this is to assume that a small number of inflectional features are present in all languages of the world, whereas a larger number may be relevant to specific languages only. 10 T h e possible locus of parametrization of Functional Categories will vary depending on w h i c h of these assumptions one accepts. To sum up, (2) lists the assumptions discussed above: (2)

9

a.

Functional Categories are not subject to selection. All languages employ all Functional Categories in all sentence types.

a'.

Functional Categories are subject to selection. Not all languages employ all Functional Categories in all sentence types.

b.

Each Functional Category licenses the projection of a separate functional head Η in a syntactic structure.

b'.

Some Functional Categories do not license the projection of a separate functional head in a syntactic structure. Instead, they are hosted by some other head H2.

This is Thräinsson's "weak version" of The Structural Uniformity Hypothesis, (SUH). Thräinsson (1996: 257) presents another hypothesis, The Limited Diversion Hypothesis, which allows for a) selection of only certain Functional Categories in each language; b) variation between clause types within one and the same language with respect to which Functional Categories are employed; and c) variation from one language to another with respect to the dominance relations between the functional projections hosting the Functional Categories. 10 The note continues: "What is syntactically universal, however, is the way the presence of inflectional features determines movement and word order."

102 A survey of recent proposals c.

Not all Functional Categories are spelled out. Only those categories that are marked F* (+phonological realization) in the lexicon of a given language must be given a phonological realization.

d.

An F* (an F which requires a phonological realization) may be satisfied in one of two ways. Either there exists a designated morpheme (e.g. a Tense morpheme) which is merged directly into this position, "satisfaction via Merge," or there does not exist a designated morpheme, and some other element raises to spell out the feature F* (e.g. the verb in languages without designated Tense morphemes), "satisfaction via Move."

The present proposal will follow Äfarli (1995), Thräinsson (1996) and others in assuming that some functional categories are subject to selection; some functional features are universal to all languages, others are language specific. I will also follow Äfarli (1995) in assuming that what counts as evidence for the presence of a specific functional projection in a given clause type is a visible effect—a functional morpheme, a morphological effect, or change in word order. As already hinted at in the brief mention of Cinque's universal hierarchy of functional projections, authors have tried to account for the properties of modals by suggesting specific functional projections that modals may occupy. Typically, the modal is seen as constituting or spelling out the head of a designated functional projection, usually a Mod(ality)P(hrase) of some kind. The various readings and properties of modals are then assumed to be side effects of the specific slot occupied by the modal in a given structure. Different authors embrace different views on the specific slot(s) where modals may occur and whether or not these slots are narrowly designated for specific modals and modality types. In the survey to follow, I will examine the different authors' views on this question.

2.

Some earlier proposals

In this survey of proposals, I will focus in particular on the two questions presented in the expository discussion: firstly, the author's view on the possible θ-properties of modals and, by association, the author's implicit or explicit adoption or rejection of the "control versus raising" analysis, and

Earlier proposals

103

secondly, the assumptions about the merger position/insertion site/ slot/functional projection occupied by the modal in the sentence structure. Some of the proposals in this survey address the diachronic development of English modal auxiliaries and one might very well wonder about the relevance of these works for Norwegian modals. As already discussed in Chapter 2, modals in Modern English exhibit a number of properties not found in their Norwegian counterparts. However, modals in earlier stages of English display a number of properties found in contemporary Norwegian modals. Proposals investigating the diachronic development of English modals, highlighting the differences between Old/Middle English modals and Modern English modals, may thus indirectly provide insights into the underlying differences between contemporary Norwegian and English modals. The proposals are not discussed in chronological order. I start out with the oldest proposal (Roberts 1985) and then present the analyses building on this proposal—Roberts (1993) and Roberts and Roussou (2002, 2003). Cinque (1999) is discussed next, since this proposal shares many of the assumptions of Roberts and Roussou (2002, 2003). Next, I look at another relatively old paper, Vikner (1988), before examining Thräinsson and Vikner (1995), who build (in part) on Vikner's (1988) proposal. In the remainder of the chapter, chronological order is respected with certain exceptions: Barbiers (1995, 2002) precedes Lodrup (1996a), Dyvik (1999), and Wurmbrand (1999, 2001). Butler (2003) and van Gelderen (2003, 2004) come next, and Picallo (1990) is last as it deals with Romance, not Germanic modals. It is included for comparison, to broaden our scope, and because it is a much quoted paper in the literature.

2.1. Roberts (1985) Roberts (1985) investigates the diachronic development of English modals in a Government and Binding version of P&P. He argues that the differences between present-day English modals and their Middle English counterparts can be traced back to the shifted value of one specific parameter: Now imagine a parameter Ρ with the potential values [+F] and [-F], For concreteness, take Ρ to be agreement systems and [+F] to be morphological agreement, with [-F] therefore syntactic agreement. (56)

104 A survey of recent

proposals

This shift w a s due to a number of (independent) changes. Roberts (1985: 46) argues that, perhaps most prominently, [t]he frequent occurrence of periphrastic constructions involving modals and do, combined with the impoverishment of agreement inflection led to a change in the agreement system in the sixteenth century. The change was from a morphological agreement system to a syntactic system. In other words, V no longer moved into INFL in tensed clauses in order to be morphologically governed by an agreement affix.... Instead, V [was] being syntactically governed in its base position by some element in INFL, an auxiliary or abstract agreement features (AGR). This shift is illustrated in Figure 1, adopted f r o m Roberts (1985: 46): Figure I a. Middle English: Af[a.n agreement affix] morphologically governs V [V moves into INFL].

b. Modern English: [Abstract] AGR/Aux syntactically governs V [V does not move into INFL].

NP

INFL

I

AGR Aux This shift is considered important to the characteristics of present-day English m o d a l s — a s compared to lexical verbs—because, Roberts argues, modals in M i d d l e English were like all other verbs in that they were inserted in V P with the subsequent m o v e m e n t to INFL. A f t e r the 16th century, h o w -

Earlier proposals

105

ever, modals were "reanalyzed as auxiliaries"" and came to be inserted directly into INFL. This shift had a range of consequences for English modals. One important consequence was that modals lost their ability to assign proper ('main') θ-roles because of a condition on θ - r o l e assignment (holding on S-structure) that Roberts (1985: 29) proposes: V assigns θ-roles iff V is governed Since INFL is an ungoverned position in present-day English, as a result of the loss of morphological government, it follows that only modals, and not main verbs, can appear in it. Main verbs assign θ-roles and thus have to be inserted into the VP where they are governed by an auxiliary or an abstract A G R present in INFL. Modals, on the other hand, lose the ability to assign (main) θ-roles because they are banned from the VP. This proposal is not as circular as it may appear from this summary since Roberts supports it with a range of empirical evidence: the apparent ability of (at least some) modals to assign θ-roles in earlier stages of English; the fact that Modern English modals, unlike their ancestors, lack nonfmite forms; and the observation that Modern English modals, unlike main verbs, precede negation, "assuming that negation and inversion are operations on INFL" (Roberts 1985: 47). Roberts introduces Zubizarreta's (1982) term adjunct θ-role to account for the "nature of the root/epistemic distinction in present-day English" (Roberts 1985: 50). Zubizarreta treats root modals essentially as modifiers, analogous to Jackendoff s (1972) agent-oriented adverbs. According to this account, both root modals and agent-oriented adverbs require an agent, i.e. they have a semantic argument. However, this argument is always the argument of some other predicate. So, given the θ-criterion, we are led to suppose that root modals and agentoriented adverbs do not assign θ-roles to their arguments. However, there is a modification relation between the root modal and the argument.... Zubi11 Actually, Roberts (1985: 21) argues that modals are ordinary verbs: "The motive for proposing that modals are members of a separate category of auxiliaries, or are verbs marked [+Aux] is precisely the exceptional properties of modals compared to main verbs." He argues that these properties derive from the condition on modals to occur only in INFL, which allows us to continue to regard modals as verbs. Nevertheless, Roberts states several times that modals were reanalyzed as auxiliaries. One should possibly take this formulation to be a metaphor alluding to the reanalysis of modals as base-generated in INFL.

106 A survey of recent proposals zarreta captures this by proposing a different class of thematic relations: adjunct θ-roles. Adjunct θ-roles differ from 'main' θ-roles...in that they are not subject to the θ-criterion. So adjunct θ-roles can be assigned to some argument already bearing a θ-role. Also adjunct θ-role assignment is optional.... So root modals appear in ungoverned positions in present-day English and assign adjunct θ-roles to the agent argument in the clause in which they appear. (Roberts 1985: 51) Although Roberts is somewhat vague regarding this point, he implies that epistemic modals do not assign such adjunct θ - r o l e s and this is what constitutes the root/epistemic distinction. Roberts also assumes that Middle English (ME) modals did assign 'main' θ-roles to their subjects at least in some cases, unlike their Modern English counterparts. With respect to the control versus raising analysis, Roberts suggests that modals were raising verbs in Middle English and argues that [fjurther plausibility is added to this idea by the fact that the equivalents of modals in a number of languages are raising verbs (e.g. most Germanic and Romance languages). (37) However, he also provides examples that may be problematic for such an analysis, notably sentences with what have become known as quirky subjects, "oblique Case-marked NPs associated with the subject of the complement clause" (38). On the assumption that oblique Case is inherent, and that raising is motivated by the Case filter, there would be no need for the oblique N P to raise. Thus, Roberts argues, oblique Case-marked NPs are probably not raised, but base-generated as the subject of the modal, "controlling] the P R O subject of the complement." 1 2 Hence, there is "the possibility that M E modals were raising verbs", but "crucial evidence is lacking" (39). 13

12

The exact same data utilized by Roberts to argue that some Middle English modals were control verbs (i.e. modals with quirky subjects) are used by Wurmbrand (1999) to argue that modals are raising verbs. This is a matter of theoretical development: the assumptions regarding the possible driving force of DP movement were quite different in Government and Binding Theory than in The Minimalist Program. (Cf. also fn. 10 in section 2, chapter 4.) 13 Roberts (1985: 34) relates θ-properties of modals to their increasing epistemic use: "The use of modals as functional substitutes for the moribund system of subjunctive inflections...meant that modals were interpreted as clausal operators specifying the mood of the clause, exactly like subjunctive inflections. Clausal operators do not assign θ-roles, and so modals could be construed as not assigning θ-roles."

Earlier proposals

1 07

What Roberts does not address, however, is why the oblique case marking of the subject co-varies with the case-requirements of the embedded predicate instead of the modal (which is the case at least in Modern Icelandic). It is possible, of course, to find a theoretical explanation for this. One might argue that the embedded subject, PRO, needs to be controlled by an argument bearing a case marking compatible with the case assigned by the embedded predicate. This might very well be the case in spite of the crucial assumption that PRO itself is not overtly assigned Case, an assumption which has been questioned more recently by Sigurösson (1991). However, Roberts (1985) does not address this question (the question is not addressed in Roberts 1993 either). In addition, there are certain theoretical problems with this account and some of its predictions are not borne out. One such issue is pointed out by Roberts (1985: 31) himself: Since [the stipulation that V assigns θ-roles iff V is governed] prevents auxiliaries from appearing in governed positions, we predict auxiliaries to be incompatible with agreement. This prediction is correct for modals, but incorrect for the aspectuals have and be.... For the purposes of this paper, we make the simplifying assumption that aspectuals show inherent agreement, and so are in fact not governed by AGR. This is not the only problem with this proposal; even if one makes the assumption above, aspectual auxiliaries constitute a problem. They may appear in INFL because they assign no θ-roles (Roberts' fn. 8); however, Roberts (1985: 47) also assumes that "INFL, like any other node, contains only one position." Like Norwegian, English has sentences with modals preceding a perfect auxiliary (an aspectual): John must have passed his exam (before going abroad). The obvious question is: what is the position of the aspectual in this scenario? To clarify, we will examine Roberts' proposed structure for Modern English once more: Figure 2 S

NP

INFL AGR Aux

VP \

108 A survey of recent proposals In the string John must have passed his exam, the modal must occupies INFL. Either the aspectual must be part of INFL, which is impossible since INFL contains only one position occupied by the modal, or the aspectual is part of the VP. In this case, it is not obvious that the aspectual would not be governed by the modal, and as such constitutes a counterexample to the generalization that only verbs assigning θ-roles may be governed; recall that V assigns θ-roles i f f V is governed. Another problem is the possible universality of this approach. Roberts (1985: 32) proposes that "languages with 'rich' agreement systems in fact lack A G R " and thus cannot employ "syntactic agreement"; this means that obligatory V-to-INFL movement of main verbs should apply to languages with 'rich' agreement systems only. However, it seems counterintuitive to describe the Mainland Scandinavian languages, such as Norwegian, as languages with rich agreement systems. As mentioned in Chapter 2, Norwegian lacks subject-verb agreement; in fact, it has even less agreement than English. And yet, Norwegian has V2, i.e. obligatory movement of the verb into INFL (V-to-INFL) in the scenario presented here. 14 Furthermore, Norwegian modals have none of the effects that Roberts (1985) attributes to the obligatory insertion of modals into INFL such as the loss of nonfinite forms. According to Roberts (1985), the insertion of the modal into INFL should take place obligatorily in languages with 'poor' agreement systems. However, Norwegian modals show no signs of being inserted directly into INFL, in spite of the 'poor' agreement system in Norwegian. Thus, Norwegian exhibits the properties Roberts (1985) ascribes to languages with 'rich' agreement systems although it seems counterintuitive at best to describe Norwegian as such a language.

14

In a more recent theoretical scenario, employing a more elaborate sentence structure, authors typically distinguish between V-to-INFL movement and V2 movement. For instance, Vikner (1995: 29) claims that "in Danish, movement to I0...is even more restricted...; no verbs actually occur in 1°, but all verbs on the other hand may move through 1° on their way to C°." Movement to C, not movement to I(nfl) is what constitutes V2 in this picture, cf. also Bobaljik and Thräinsson (1998).

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2.2. Roberts (1993) This proposal is similar to Roberts (1985) in important respects, but it also contains a comparison between N E (Modern English), M E (Middle English) and M S c (Mainland Scandinavian: Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) modals. Furthermore, the clausal architecture Roberts proposes here is much more complex than that in the earlier account, as figure 3 (Roberts 1993: 280) demonstrates: Figure 3 C

The V P is still the domain where (main) theta-roles are assigned, and there are some important differences between M S c / M E modals on one hand and N E modals on the other: MSc modals are lexically inserted in V rather than in T. This analysis captures the similarity between MSc and ME, and the differences between both of these systems and NE. (Robert 1993: 320) Underlying this difference, Roberts claims, is a Diachronic Reanalysis that took place in the early 16th century (Roberts' (96)): NP; [ T ° do/Mj Γ 1 ] tj [t, VP] => N P [T° did/M] VP 1 5 According to this reanalysis, English modals came to be inserted directly into T, while earlier they were inserted into V. The T"1 in the first square 15 I presume that did signals that do is inserted directly into T(ense), whereas earlier do was inserted into V and raised to T. Thus, the element inserted into Τ is necessarily tensed, whereas the element inserted in V could be construed as noninflected, subsequently picking up the inflection residing in T.

110

A survey of recent

proposals

brackets is a functional head parasitic on the T-head in ME and MSc, spelling out an affix and forcing the verb to move to T. The reason MSc has retained this head, while NE lost it in the course of diachronic development, is that MSc languages never lost their infinitival endings and English did: This reanalysis [in English] was triggered by the loss of the infinitival affix, making T° a possible site of lexical insertion of X° -elements. In MSc, we find that an infinitival affix has been preserved, as the ending -e/-a e.g. Da. kob-e Nor. kjop-e, Sw. köp-a ('buy'). That this is the infinitive ending can be seen by comparing the imperative forms, which are just the bare stems kob, kjop, köp with the infinitive forms. So we take [the infinitival affix] -e /-a to be a realization of T"1 in MSc. (Roberts 1993: 320)

The problem of deriving the behaviour of modals from loss of agreement, present in Roberts (1985), is handled in Roberts (1993: 320): Given that...MSc has undergone a development parallel to English in losing its agreement system and in losing V-to-Agr, this in turn means that the Dfiachronic] R[eanalysis]...must be independent of the loss of the agreement system and the loss of V-to-Agr. This conclusion is consistent with what we have said in this chapter, but inconsistent with the claims in Roberts (1985).... So we arrive at the following comparative picture of the development of English and of MSc: a. loss of agreement = loss of Agr-1. b. Development of modals/do = loss of T - l . (a) holds for both English and MSc. (b) holds only for English.

16

The other problem in Roberts (1985), the status of aspectuals, is also addressed in Roberts (1993: 312): "they are best treated as base-generated as heads of their own VPs." Since theta-assignment is no longer explained in terms of government, the more serious problems with aspectuals seem to disappear in this account. However, the status of aspectuals remains somewhat unclear. If aspectuals constitute the head of their own VP, they must constitute a peculiar type of Vs, since they are the only V-heads that may move to Agr, just like modals: "as is well known, the N E aspectual auxilia-

16

"There are thus no grounds in MSc for assigning modals to a special syntactic position, in the way that there are in N E " (Roberts 1993: 319).

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111

ries have and be raise to A g r " (312). Still, they constitute an exceptional class of V s since they do not assign theta-roles like ordinary verbs. Roberts (1993: 315) also addresses the possible syntactic differences bet w e e n root and epistemic modals in M E , by means of the control versus raising analysis ( M E modals are dubbed premodals, a term adopted f r o m Lightfoot 1974, 1979): Many cases of premodals are formally ambiguous between raising and control interpretations. It is plausible to identify root readings (ability, volition, obligation) with control and epistemic readings (necessity and possibility) with raising since in root readings the subject receives a theta-role (roughly experiencer) from the premodal, while in the epistemic reading it does not. T h e possible assignment of theta-roles still differentiates root f r o m epistemic modals in that root modals assign adjunct theta-roles, whereas epistemic modals do not: [EJpistemic17 modality can be syntactically expressed either through assigning a theta-role or not. Since epistemic modality is an operator, where the theta-assignment option is not taken, the modal will occupy an operator position in syntax, typically T°. The former choice gives rise to a raising verb; the latter to a modal auxiliary. (Roberts 1993: 325) Still, the reader is left with the impression that Roberts (1993) offers at best a rudimentary account of the possible differences between root and epistemic modals in M o d e r n English. H e does not go into the specific readings he would classify as root or epistemic and the descriptions of these categories remain vague and unsatisfactory.

2.3. Roberts and Roussou (2002, 2003) Roberts and R o u s s o u (2002, 2003 l 8 ); henceforth R & R , present an analysis of English modals that is a variation on the theme discussed above. It is cast in a f r a m e w o r k adopting C i n q u e ' s (1999) universal hierarchy of functional projections, utilizing the universal hierarchy to yield n e w insights into what

17

As it stands, this quote seems to me to be somewhat contradictory. I suspect that the first epistemic in this quote should be omitted; alternatively, the second sentence "Since epistemic modality..." should maybe continue "in English." 18 The 2002 paper constitutes a chapter of Roberts and Roussou's (2003) book on grammaticalization. I will refer to the 2002 paper in what follows.

112 A survey of recent proposals is in fact "well-trodden ground" (2002: 5).19 Pre-16th-century examples containing a modal and a bare infinitive complement "must have had a biclausal structure [given that] infinitival complements contain Τ and main clauses feature V-to-T movement" (R&R 2002: 8): [TP Sone [TP hit masi [VP t ^ [TP Τ [Vp ilimpen]]]]] soon it may happen Again, the infinitival endings {-en) play an important role in this analysis, now as "clear evidence for the lower T" (2002: 11). The loss of these endings makes language acquirers reanalyze the biclausal structure as monoclausal and the modals become grammaticalized as T-elements: [TP Sone [TP hit maei [VP ilimpen]]] soon it may happen R&R (2002: 12) then "take into account...the possibility of a richer functional structure," notably Cinque's universal hierarchy. The relevant substructure of this hierarchy is as follows: Modeplstemlc Τ (past) Τ (future) Moodirrea,,s ModNecesslty ModPossiblilty ModRoot 20 They take the basic difference between lexical verbs and verbal functional heads to be the presence of argument structure, i.e. "merger directly into the functional system correlates with the absence of argument structure" (2002: 13), an important assumption retained from Roberts (1985, 1993) and expressed in new terminology. However, the "adjunct theta-role" from Roberts (1985, 1993) might be expressed by "scopal properties of functional heads," according to R&R (2002: 13). In ME, modals were inserted in one of the Mood/Mod positions below T, with subsequent movement to the highest T. After the reanalysis, they were merged higher in the structure, which "economises on movement steps, and so is preferred by the learner" (14). This explains the absence of participle and infinitival forms with modals: Merging these modals directly rather "high" in the functional structure meant that certain properties that had to be licensed (or checked) by lower functional heads could not be licensed. In particular, below the lowest modal head are a series of aspectual heads.... It is plausible to suppose that participle morphology is licensed there.... We must also assume...that infiniti19 The page numbers refer to a pre-edited version of the paper, hence the discrepancies between these numbers and the page numbers of the article and the book. 20 But see section 2.4 of this chapter where it is described how Cinque also argues for three more Mod heads; Mod v o i i t i o n > Mod obligation > Mod ability/permissionR&R choose to conflate these as ModRooT·

Earlier proposals

11 3

val morphology is checked lower in the structure than the modal heads. (R&R2002: 14) According to Warner (1993), epistemic interpretations of pre-modals emerge in ME. R&R interpret this as a further reanalysis of (some) premodals as being merged in the MoodEpisiemic position: "if reanalysis is local ..., this might imply that a (pre)modal must have a root interpretation before it develops an epistemic interpretation (after which point the earlier root interpretation may be lost)." This high merger of modals implies that epistemic modals are "opaque to the usual past/non-past relation" (R&R 2002: 14), as they are directly merged higher than T(past). In ME, this direct merger of modals was an option or a tendency, but after the loss of relevant infinitival morphology, it became categorical. The full syntactic effects of the reanalysis of modals were not apparent until after the loss of Vmovement into the functional system, which made the modals stand out as a category distinct from lexical verbs. R&R (2002: 15) also mention MSc modals in their account: What we observe in many languages is evidence for grammaticalization [direct merger into a functional head F instead of movement from the lexical domain into the same head F] of individual modals, although the existence of a morpho-syntactically distinct class of the NE type is not attested elsewhere in Germanic or Romance. The reason for this...is that all the Germanic and Romance languages have infinitival morphology and so the reanalysis [from biclausal to monoclausal structure] was not possible. R&R also point out that according to Vikner (1988), epistemic modals cannot be non-finite in Danish and that van Kemenade (1985) claims the same to hold for their Dutch counterparts. R&R take this as instances of the grammaticalization of certain modals on certain interpretations. To maintain the assumption that epistemic modals are merged very late or high in the structure in MSc languages, R&R (2002: f n . l l ) need some kind of technical device, since MSc epistemic modals do not in fact overtly surface in this high position in embedded clauses: It may seem strange to propose that epistemic modals in Danish occupy a very high functional position like M o d p i when the evidence is that all verbs, including modals, occupy just two positions in this language: The V2 position (presumably C) and what appears to [be] the base V-Position (see Vikner 1995 and the references given there). The problem really concerns associating the epistemic interpretation with the low position. This problem is just an instance of the general problem that arises in Mainland Scandinavian languages...of associating functional information (at the very least E

Stemic

114

A survey of recent proposals

Tense) with the in-situ verb, and as such is not created by assuming the Cinque hierarchy. Whatever technical device we postulate to associate tense with the in-situ verb (affix-hopping, chain-formation, LF-movement, etc.) can be exploited to associate an epistemic modal with its functional position. In my opinion, this is a more serious problem for modals than for other functional heads. For a high T-head to be associated with a low V-head, there are maybe two relevant T-heads to consider (in the Cinque hierarchy), and the tense morphology and features associated with and checked by those two heads will be overtly different. This means that there will be no choice for the verb as to the relevant functional head for checking its tense features. N o t so for modals. In the Cinque hierarchy, what is formally one and the same modal may give rise to a wide range of readings, depending on which functional head checks its features. A modal like kunne could in principle denote permission, ability, alethic possibility, or epistemic possibility, for instance. If this modal surfaces in a ' l o w ' position, but must be associated with a high epistemic modal projection, what would prevent the modal from being associated with any of the other relevant intermediate Mod-positions? This would lead to ambiguity in each sentence where a modal occurs. With the modal in situ, possibly in VP, any one of the intermediate M o d heads could associate their features with the modal. One would have to stipulate for each sentence how the in situ modal checks its features in the correct M o d P only. Moreover, one would still need auxiliary hypotheses to explain why one never gets non-root readings from modals with directional complements, for example. In my view, the most attractive feature of this account—as compared to Roberts (1993)—is the attempt to show that grammaticalisation-type changes follow a 'path'..., structurally defined, broadly following the Cinque (1999) hierarchy of functional categories. (R&R 2002: 40) Such 'paths' have been assumed for decades to have some significance within the grammaticalisation literature; Bybee et al. (1994:10) claim that there are great similarities in grammaticalization paths across genetically and areally unrelated languages. An account along these lines also allows for a gradual 'leakage' of modals into the functional domain, where at certain stages some modals are associated with more 'functional' properties than others. In short, this account

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115

allows for an individual history of each modal, where it is not (necessarily) expected that all changes happen to all modals at once, a picture that seems to be in accordance with the observable facts (Plank 1984; Warner 1993). My main objection to R&R's (2002) article is that the treatment of modals comes across as sketchy and superficial, at some points straightforwardly confusing. For instance, I would have liked to see the history of one specific modal (say may) with a full description of the exact merger site(s) previous to any reanalysis or grammaticalization. Furthermore, I would like to see an outline of the possible diachronically intermediary positions proposed, and finally, the possible merger sites of this modal (e.g. in Mod epis . temic and others) after the grammaticalization path has been completed. Unfortunately, there is no discussion of the possible diachronic development of one specific modal, which would have clarified matters considerably. Also, the proposal is as vague concerning the terms epistemic and root as Roberts (1985, 1993) since what counts as an epistemic or a root reading of a modal is never explicitly addressed.

2.4. Cinque (1999) As previously mentioned, Cinque (1999: 52) argues that the partial orders found overtly in different languages are subsequences of a single universal sequence of functional heads, present in all languages. Not only is this universal sequence of functional heads present in all languages, it is also present in all clause types of all languages: Universal Grammar is often still assumed to allow a wide variation among languages in the number and type of functional projections that they admit and/or their relative order. Moreover, it is often assumed that in a single language, different clause types may instantiate different sets of functional projections. Here I try to construct a plausibility argument against these assumptions, suggesting that no such variation is allowed by UG and that the same number, type and order (hierarchy) of functional projections holds across languages and clause types, despite apparent counterevidence. (v) The functional projections assumed to be accessible to modals are of particular interest to us here. They constitute a subset of the projections headed by mood or modality heads. 21 Other relevant clausal heads are tense and 21

Cinque (1999: 78) does distinguish between mood and modality, although the

116 A survey of recent proposals certain aspectual projections, specifically perfect aspect (since the Norwegian perfect constructions presumably belong to this type). Considering the order of suffixes in Korean complex verbal forms and invoking Baker's (1985) Mirror Principle, Cinque proposes separate functional heads for evidential and epistemic modality. Moreover, taking Germanic double modal constructions as evidence, he proposes separate projections for epistemic and root modality: Although this traditional semantic difference [root vs. epistemic] is generally not related to a difference in structure, some evidence exists that the two modals do not occupy the same position and that epistemic modals are higher than root modals. In double modal varieties of English, like Scots English...and in various American varieties..., the first modal has an epistemic, and the second a root sense. (Cinque 1999: 54) After examining a range of typological studies dealing with tense, modality and aspect, Cinque proposes the following order, 22 still with "certain indeterminacies and arbitrary choices" (76). Note that ">" is employed by Cinque to encode precedence and scope: Τ (Past) > Τ (Future) means that Τ (Past) precedes and scopes over Τ (Future). Moodevidentiai > Modeplstem]C > Τ (Past) > Τ (Future) > Moodirrea|is > Aspperfect> Modroot > A s p c o m p i e t l v e But Cinque soon finds reason to refine this hierarchy. Firstly, because "root modals...comprise different semantic subclasses (volition, obligation, ability, permission)" (78), and secondly, because it might be possible to separate epistemic modality from alethic modality: In logic, epistemic modality is sometimes contrasted with alethic modality.... The former is concerned with the speaker's deductions or opinions, the latter with necessary truths (i.e. propositions that are true in all possible worlds) and with possible truths (i.e. propositions that are not necessarily false, being true in at least one possible world). (78) Cinque recognizes that although one can distinguish epistemic from alethic modality from a logic point of view, there is no reason to assume that these difference is in many cases virtually non-significant: "the same category may be expressed via mood in one language and with a modal in another, thus suggesting a close link between the two. 'Mood' is traditionally restricted to modal categories ...which are expressed in verbal morphology [Cinque's italics]. Modals instead are typically independent words (verbs, auxiliaries, or particles)." 22 1 consider only the relevant subsequence of Cinque's hierarchy here.

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two modalities should differ structurally; he quotes Palmer (1986: 1 1) who says that there is no formal grammatical distinction between the two in English "and perhaps, in no other language either." However, Cinque invokes some facts from English multiple modal varieties (discussed by Brown 1992: 75; Cinque 1999: 79), where will is taken to mark future and might denotes 'pure possibility,' i.e. 'alethic possibility'. Since epistemic modality is proposed to be higher in the clausal structure than future (as in the sequence above), 23 modality occupying a position lower than future could not be epistemic; thus, the theory forces us to conclude that alethic modality cannot be subsumed by epistemic modality. (3)

He ΊI might could do it for you (= 'he might be able in the future to do it for y o u ' )

Cinque also finds relevant support for this hypothesis in Danish (Cinque's (3 a)), where the alethic modal kunne, but not the epistemic/evidential modal skulle, can be found following the modal vil marking future: (4)

a.

Der vil let kunne gä noget gait. there will easily canINF go something wrong 'It will easily be possible that something goes wrong.'

b.

*Han vil skulle have lasst bogen, he will shall have read bookDEF ' H e will be said to (must) have read the book.'

Furthermore, Cinque (1999: 79) claims that in view of Italian data there is evidence for distinguishing a head of alethic possibility from a head of alethic necessity. The two can co-occur in the order "necessity" > "possibility" (though not the converse). Cinque then considers root modals, of which he claims that they are, contrast to epistemic and alethic modalities, strictly subject-oriented volition, obligation, ability and permission are properly attributed only a(n animate) subject. 24 Although English does not provide a clear answer 23

in as to to

Cinque (1999: 78): "Epistemic modals are located higher in clausal structure than root modals, in fact higher than T(Past)/T(Future) (and negation), apparently." 24 In fact, this is not universally the case, as discussed in Chapter 2 of the present

118 A survey of recent proposals the question of possible separate structural heads for each subclass of root modals, Italian data seem to suggest that these subclasses enter into a fixed relative scope with each other. Although it is difficult to decide in some cases, Cinque (1999: 81) opts for the following strict (scope) hierarchy of modalities: Modepistemic

>

Modnecesslty >

Modpossjbiiity

>

Modvoiition

>

Modob, igation

Modability/permission

Ability and permission are taken to be two different values of the same head even though "eventually this might prove simplistic" (81). Cinque also admits that the evidence provided may, by itself, be insufficient to motivate five distinct modal heads in addition to an epistemic one: However, the existence of different classes of AdvPs corresponding to the different modalities, and ordered in a similar fashion..., can be taken as additional evidence for the hierarchy of modal heads in (12). (81) One should also notice that there are at least one more modality head and one tense head relevant to Germanic modals in addition to the ones mentioned above. The author suggests that the head ModCVI(ll.llllai may be occupied by the Danish modal skulle and the German modal sollen and, by association, the Norwegian modal skulle, all denoting 'hear-say' or in Cinque's terms, "quotative evidentiality" (1999: 85). In addition, as seen above, Cinque assumes that the T(future) head is able to host the English modal will and the Danish modal vil. Thus, there are eight or possibly nine functional heads (if permission and ability do in fact belong to separate heads) that may be occupied by Germanic modals in Cinque's account. Cinque's universal hierarchy has been widely criticized. Here I will briefly mention one of the critics, Costa (1999). Costa argues against two of Cinque's most important claims: that adverbs are specifiers and that there is a universal hierarchy of Functional Projections that is always projected. Using evidence from European Portuguese, Costa shows that adverbs behave unlike specifiers and like adjuncts with respect to a range of constructions such as cleft constructions. Furthermore, the adjunction of adverbs

work. Although volition and ability are typically attributed to animate subjects (though there are robust exceptions), obligation and permission easily get proposition-scope readings with inanimate and even expletive subjects: Denne dora skal alltidvcere last 'This door must always stay closed'; Heisen kan ta opptil ti passasjerer 'The elevator may/is able to take up to ten passangers'; Det mä komme minst femtipersoner 'There must come at least fifty people'.

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seems to be highly dependent on the overt presence of a lexical head (cf. also Costa 1998): the more verbs and auxiliaries overtly occur in a given sentence, the higher the number of adverbs possible in this sentence. This is unexpected if there is an underlying universal hierarchy of Functional Projections which is always projected. Cinque (1999: 106) claims that the specifiers are available for insertion of an adverbial irrespective of the morphological realization of the functional head: [I]f each adverb class indeed corresponds to a different functional head, then, we have evidence that the entire array of functional heads (and projections) is available where there is no overt morphology corresponding to the heads, as the respective specifiers are available. Moreover, as Costa (1999) notes, if adverbs are inserted in specifier positions, the number of adverbs should not be dependent on the number of auxiliaries available. After all, subjects are inserted in specifier positions too, but a sentence cannot normally have multiple subjects simply because it has multiple auxiliaries. There can, however, be multiple adverbs if there are multiple auxiliaries. Thus, adverbs are subject to a restriction that does not hold for (other) specifiers such as subjects. Another problem for Cinque's hierarchy is that adverbs display a mirror-effect in extraposition, as shown by Äfarli (1997) and Bowers (1993). Figure 4 John (probably) will (quickly) learn French perfectly, (quickly), (probably).

AdvP

V John probably will

25

e quickly learn French perfectly

e

Bowers claims that Direct Objects are in , subjects in .

120 A survey of recent proposals This mirror-effect is expected in an account where adverbs are adjoined to an X'-level of syntactic projections since the scope relations are preserved even when the adverb is extraposed, as in figure 4 from Bowers (1993). However, in Cinque's account, this mirror-effect is unexpected and hard to explain. Moreover, if the universal hierarchy is always projected irrespective of clause type, it seems quite remarkable that small clauses, for example, cross-linguistically seem to lack any phonetic realization of (most) functional heads typically associated with full clauses; Starke (1995: 257) mentions as one difference between full clauses and small clauses [their] relative lack of morphology (functional heads are not realized in Small Clauses, except for C°) Furthermore, Cinque's universal hierarchy seems to have no way of accounting for the (dialectal) Norwegian data from Chapter 2, with epistemic readings of a modal following what arguably is an aspectual head: (5)

a.

Han har mätta arbeidd med det i heile natt. He has mustPERF workPERF on it all night ' H e must have worked on it all night.'

b.

Hu har kunna vorre her ogforre igjen. She has canPERF bePERF here and leavePERF again 'She might have been here and left again.'

If we want to claim that these are alethic readings and not epistemic readings—which seems counterintuitive, at least for (5a)—there is no aspectual head scoping over the projections of alethic modality. Even if we allow for the aspectual ha 'have' to occupy the T(past) head, there is a problem, since there are also similar data with the modal skulle, as in (6), which Cinque classifies as evidential. (6)

a.

Han har skulla vorre en sjarmor i sine yngre daga, He has shallPERF bePERF a charmeur in his younger days, ' H e is supposed to have been a prince charming har ce hort. have I heard in his youth, so I've heard.'

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According to Cinque himself, evidential modality, like epistemic modality, scopes over all tense (and aspectual) heads in the universal hierarchy. This seems to imply that even the vast number of designated projections suggested by Cinque (1999) is insufficient to account for data such as (5), and especially (6), and that either more projections or a restructuring operation of some sort would have to be invoked to provide explanations for such word orders.

2.5. Vikner (1988) V i k n e r ' s analysis of modals emerges from an attempt to explain some peculiar restrictions on the co-occurrence of root modals such as ville 'want to' with "event-verbs" such as fä 'get' and blive ' b e c o m e ' . (7)

a.

Hun vil ha/*fä tre biler i 1990. s h e w i l l h a v e / g e t t h r e e c a r s in 1 9 9 0 ' S h e wants to get three cars in 1990.'

b.

Hun vil vcere/*blive klog. she will be/become wise ' S h e wants to become wise.'

After quoting Platzack (1979) on the distinction between root and epistemic modals and listing some of the possible readings that should be considered root and epistemic respectively, Vikner proposes further distinctions among root modals. Most crucial to his analysis is the distinction between deontic obligation modals—ville, skulle, mätte (obligation), hur de—and all other modals: matte (permission), kunne (permission), kunne (ability), turde, gide. Since the event-verbs fä and blive may appear with the latter group, but not with the deontic obligation modals, Vikner proposes that obligation root modals assign an additional theta-role to their subjects. The term additional theta-role is reminiscent of Zubizarreta's (1982) term adjunct thetarole (mentioned in the discussion of Roberts). However, Vikner (1988: 12) emphasizes that there are differences between Zubizarreta's notion of adjunct theta-role and his additional theta-role: This additional theta-role may be assigned to an argument that already has a theta-role, cf. the idea in Zubizarreta (1982: 41, 123) that theta-roles exist

122 A survey of recent

proposals

that are invisible for the theta-criterion. However, as opposed to Zubizarreta, I want to suggest that one additional theta-role may be assigned to each argument, BUT NOT TWO. The intuition is that two additional theta roles would give the argument too much "theta-burden," much like an argument cannot receive more than one normal theta-role, which again suggests that additional theta roles are not completely invisible to the thetacriterion. Thus one half of the theta-criterion seems to hold completely for additional theta-roles as they must be assigned to one and only one argument. The other half of the theta-criterion only holds halfway, as an argument may not receive more than one additional theta-role (in addition to a normal theta-role), but it may receive less than one additional theta-role.

The restriction that only one, not two, additional theta-roles may be assigned to one and the same argument is crucial to Vikner's explanation of the co-occurrence restrictions on root modals and the event-verbs fä 'get' and blive 'become'. His entire analysis rests on the assumption that obligation root modals, just like event-verbs, each assign one additional thetarole. Thus, the co-occurrence of obligation root modals and event-verbs is banned since the subject would end up with two additional theta-roles, one too many. Following Zubizarreta's (1982) suggestion for French, Vikner (1988: 13) analyzes all modals as raising verbs, or rather claims they are like raising verbs, since It should be noted that raising verbs and modals are different in important ways, e.g. in that raising verbs allow expletive subjects, and modals do not.

The obligation root modals are, however, also somewhat like control verbs in assigning a theta-role to their subjects, albeit an 'additional theta-role'. Vikner also lists a range of differences between root modals (in general) and non-root ("epistemic") modals. Non-root modals do not occur in the perfect tense (examples where they do are analyzed by Vikner as "misplaced tense" that really belongs to the main verb) whereas root modals do; non-root modals cannot have PRO subjects whereas root modals can;26 non-

26

Vikner illustrates this claim by a range of sentences with infinitival markers and infinitive verbs, where the non-root reading of the modal leads to ungrammaticality. However, it is quite straightforward to have infinitival non-root modals, for instance embedded under intensional predicates in Norwegian: (i) De beskylder ham for ä skulle ha hatt befatning med saken. they accuse him for to shallINF have had dealings with caseDEF 'Thay accuse him for supposedly having had to do with the case.'

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root modals do not occur in pseudoclefts while root modals do; and nonroot modals cannot be embedded under root modals while the opposite is possible. Two non-root modals or two root modals are both possible, but only if the second modal is kunne 'can/may'. 2 7 Vikner (1988: 14) admits that his analysis "is not based on strong independent evidence." I agree that this is a problem. Furthermore, his analysis employing additional theta-roles does not explain even his core problem (the co-occurrence facts) very well, since Vikner needs a number of auxiliary assumptions and ad hoc hypotheses to make this work. For instance, spassives embedded under a modal do not follow the distinctions that Vikner makes, as pointed out by Vikner himself. My major objection to this analysis is that the distinction between obligation root and all other modals seems arbitrary and somewhat unfounded although other authors make formal and syntactic distinctions between obligation and permission modals as well (Butler 2003, Cinque 1999). However, Vikner's classification of a certain modal as root obligation or

(ii)

Man mistenker Jon for ä matte ha visst om rapporten. one suspects Jon for to mustINF have known about reportDEF O n e suspects that Jon necessarily knew about the report.' (iii) Vi ansa rapporten for ä kunne bli et problem. we considered reportDEF for to canINF become a problem 'We considered that the report might potentially become a problem.' Vikner claims that non-root ("epistemic") modals accept neither arbitrary nor nonarbitrary PRO. Although epistemic modals in Norwegian may accept non-arbitrary PRO (cf. i-iii), they do not usually accept arbitrary PRO. (iv) Det er tragisk ä ville fä slike folger (root reading only). 'It is tragic to will/want to get such consequences.' Evidential skulle, on the other hand, could marginally have an arbitrary PRO, I believe (cf. v): (v) Det er belastende ä gä omkring og skulle vcEre sin fars morder. 'It is straining to walk around and supposedly be one's father's murder.' 27 Kunne is not among those root modals that assigns an additional theta-role, according to Vikner's analysis, so the combination [obligation root modal+ kunne] is expected to be allowed. However, this does not explain why kunne could not be the first of two root modals or why turde/gide (the other two non-obligation root modals) should be banned as the second modal in these constructions. Furthermore, Vikner mentions that Jane Grimshaw has pointed out to him that his analysis does not explain the co-occurrence restrictions on epistemic (i.e. non-root) modals, which according to Vikner seem to be the subject to exactly the same restrictions as root modals with respect to combination possibilities.

124 A survey of recent proposals 'other' does not correspond to a semantic notion "obligation root modal." For instance, it is not obvious why ville 'want to' belongs with the obligation root modals, since it denotes volition and not obligation even in Danish. Furthermore, to ascribe a theta-assigning property (albeit an additional theta-role) to matte 'must' and not to ability kunne 'can' seems arbitrary, if not straightforwardly counterintuitive, especially considering that ability kunne is one of the (two) modals that have the most lexical-verb-like behavior cross-linguistically, at least within Germanic languages. In fact, this distinction is introduced specifically to explain the co-occurrence facts of event verbs fä/blive with some root modals. Thus, one might quite rightfully claim that Vikner's analysis amounts to restating these facts in new terminology, the term additional theta-role being a paraphrase for *cooccurrence. The term theta-role usually captures what is rooted in the semantic relationships between theta-assigners and arguments even when it is syntactically encoded. An additional theta-role, the way it is employed here, does not seem to have any such connotation.

2.6. Thräinsson and Vikner (1995) Thräinsson and Vikner (1995), according to the authors themselves, is based in part on Thräinsson (1986) and Vikner (1988). The work starts out by listing the properties of modals in English and Scandinavian and concludes that most of these properties are language-specific, with the exception of the fact that modals in both English and Scandinavian are characterized by the semantic property of having "modal meanings" of two kinds, notably (at least) one root and one "epistemic", i.e. non-root sense. The authors go on to list what they consider modals in Danish (Da) and Icelandic (Ic), not claiming that the list is exhaustive (Thräinsson and Vikner's (Π)): Danish modal verbs: ville 'will', skulle 'shall', matte 'must', kunne 'can', burde 'ought (to)', turde 'dare', beh0ve 'need' Icelandic modal verbs: munu 'will', skulu 'shall', mega 'may', vilja 'will', eiga 'ought (to)', hljota 'must', kunna 'can', veröa 'must', t>urfa 'need', astla 'intend', geta 'can'

After providing examples of various root and non-root readings, Thräinsson and Vikner (T&V) consider some syntactic differences between non-root and root modals. These syntactic differences can be traced back to the as-

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sumption (attributed to Kiparsky 1970; Perlmutter 1970; Ross 1969) that root modals assign a theta-role to their subject, whereas non-root modals do not, i.e. that non-root modals pattern with raising verbs, while root modals pattern with control verbs. The syntactic consequences of this difference may be summed up as in Table 1 (T&V's claims; my table): Table I

Take expletive subjects Take weather-det/Ραδ 'it' Take idiom-chunk subjects Allow quirky subjects (Ic. only) Allow pseudo-clefted complement

Non-root modals Yes Yes Yes Yes No

Root modals No No No No Yes

The first three properties in this table are expected on the hypothesis that root modals assign a theta-role to their subject and non-root modals do not. Since expletives, weather it, and idiom-chunk subjects are considered nonarguments, they would be expected with non-root modals and raising verbs, but not with root modals and control verbs. Quirky subjects (non-nominative case-marked subjects) have their case determined by the downstairs or embedded verb, which also assigns a thematic role. The raising verb thus has no influence on the case marking of a quirky subject appearing in its subject position. This suggests that non-root modals are raising verbs in Icelandic since they accept quirky subjects; in (8a), for example, the embedded verb vanta 'lack' takes an accusative subject. This quirky case is retained when the subject is raised. On the other hand, whenever verbs that take quirky subjects are embedded under a control verb, the case of the subject is nominative, as determined by the control verb. In (8b), the matrix verb is a control verb vonast 'hope', and the embedded verb vanta 'lack' takes an accusative subject. In this structure, the quirky case cannot be retained (T&V's data): (8)

a.

Harald vill oft vantapeninga. Harold (Acc) will frequently lack money 'Harold frequently tends to lack money.' (epistemic only)

b.

Haraldur/*Harald vonast til ad vanta ekki peninga. Harold (Norn/* Acc) hopes for to not lack money 'Harold hopes not to lack money.'

126 A survey of recent

proposals

According to T & V , it does not seem possible to get the root sense at all w h e n a verb that takes a quirky subject is embedded under a modal, but non-root modals are fine with quirky subjects, as in (8a). 28 To explain the ability of modals to take pseudoclefted complements, T & V utilize B u r z i o ' s generalization (Burzio 1986: 178-179), w h i c h says that verbs that do not assign a thematic role to their subjects are unable to assign structural accusative Case. T & V propose the structure in (9a) for pseudo-cleft sentences like the ones in (9b) (Da) and (9c) (Ic): (9)

a.

Xi[Cp(OP,)

(that) . . . t , . . . ] was Y

b.

Det enestej [cp (som) Marie kebte tt ] var klipfisk the only (that) M a r y bought was dried-fish ' T h e only thing M a r y bought was dried fish.'

c.

Padj [cp sem Maria keypti t, J var hardfiskur. it that M a r y bought was dried-fish ' W h a t M a r y bought was dried fish.'

U n d e r the assumption that the trace t, is a wh-trace that needs Case, T & V can explain w h y root modals, but not non-root ones, occur in pseudocleft constructions. Since root modals assign a theta-role to their subject, they also assign structural accusative Case (according to B u r z i o ' s generalization) to their complement, here the wh-trace t,. Non-root modals do not assign a theta-role to their subject and hence do not assign structural Case, which is w h y they are banned f r o m pseudocleft constructions. O n e might be led to think that the evidence presented so far w o u l d prompt the authors to analyze all Scandinavian modals in a control versus raising model, since root modals seem to pattern with control verbs and non-root modals with raising verbs. This is indeed the case in Icelandic. However, V i k n e r ' s (1988) analysis of all Danish modals as raising verbs is maintained in this account for the same reason it w a s presented in Vikner ( 1 9 8 8 ) — t o explain the co-occurrence restrictions on some root modals in Danish with the event-verbs fä/blive. T h e authors maintain that at least some root modals assign a thematic role to their subject, notably an addi-

28

According to a reviewer for Mouton deGruyter, for some Icelandic informants the modal vilja has no reading besides the volition reading. See also Chapter 2, section 7.2 for a discussion of whether this is in fact a root or an non-root reading.

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tional theta-role as in Vikner (1988). The crucial properties of additional thematic roles are as follows (T&V's (45)): (10)

a. No argument may have more than one additional theta-role. b. Each additional theta-role must be assigned to one and only one argument. c. An additional theta-role may be assigned to an argument that already has a Theta-role.

The first property supports the explanation of the Danish co-occurrence data (modals/event verbs), while the third property ensures that Danish root modals cannot occur with non-thematic subjects (expletives, idiom-chunk subjects, weather it). The different analyses of Icelandic and Danish modals support the explanation for the co-occurrence of certain root modals and fä/blive in Danish, an issue not relevant in Icelandic. What is lost, however, is the possible generalization that all Scandinavian root modals seem to be control verbs, whereas all Scandinavian non-root modals seem to be raising verbs. T&V discuss the option of base-generating non-root modals in Danish in I(nfl), as is "frequently assumed for English modal verbs" (1995: 73). The problem with such an anlysis is that modal verbs are just like other finite verbs in Danish in that they follow adverbials like the negation in embedded clauses, as illustrated in (77): (77)

... at de ikke skal ville bygge et hus. that they not shall want to build a house '... that they shall not want to build a house.'

Under the assumption that negation is adjoined to VP in Danish and that Danish has no V-to-I movement in embedded clauses, data such as T&V's (77) indicate that non-root modals are base-generated under V like other verbs. T&V choose not to go into the syntactic details of the insertion site of Icelandic modals. In the last part of the paper, T&V consider the restrictions on iterating modals in Danish and Icelandic. They note that "double modal constructions in Scandinavian are of a very different nature than those that can be found dialectally in English" (1995: 72), as illustrated by the inversion data in (11a) from Battistella (1992 [1995]) and T&V's own data in ( l i b ) and (11c):

128 A survey of recent proposals (11)

a.

You might could buy that at Bruno's. * Might you could buy that at Bruno's? Could you might buy that at Bruno's? Might could you buy that at Bruno 's?

b.

De skal ville bygge et hus. Danish 'They are said to want to build a house.' Skal de ville bygge et hus? 'Are they said to want to build a house?' * Ville de skal bygge et hus? * Skal ville de bygge et hus?

c.

Hann verdur ad kunna ad synda. Icelandic he must to can to swim 'He has to be able to swim.' Verdur hann ad kunna ad synda? must he to can to swim 'Does he have to be able to swim?' * Kunna hann verdur ad (ad) synda? * Verdur ad kunna hann ad synda?

As the data in (11) illustrate, in Scandinavian only the first modal (and always the finite one) may precede the subject in yes/no questions. Battistella's data seem to indicate that the second modal, or both, but not only the first, precedes the subject in yes/no questions in this English dialect. 29 Root modals embedded under root modals should be impossible in Danish on account of the restriction on additional theta-roles: no more than one additional theta-role for each argument. According to T&V, this is by and large the case, with the exception of the root modal kunne 'can', which seems to be able to appear embedded under other root modals. 30 The authors propose two possible explanations for this exception, neither of which they consider satisfactory. One explanation is that the root modal kunne 29

According to Roberts (1993: 333), Battistella discusses double-modal constructions in some detail. The discussion in Roberts refers to "some dialects of American English in the Southern States of the USA." 30 This does not hold for Norwegian. Cf. e.g. the following (authentic) example: (i) Det er absurd at vi skal mätte gä til domstolene med dette. it is absurd that we shall must go to courtsDEF with this 'It is absurd that we are supposed to have to go to the court with this.'

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does not assign an additional theta-role, just like non-root modals, a solution proposed in Vikner (1988). This is problematic, since kunne patterns with the other root modals with regard to pseudoclefts. Alternatively, kunne could be analyzed as a control verb (like Icelandic root modals). This solution is problematic as well, since T&V present evidence in fn. 27 that (at least) kunne is a raising verb. In Icelandic, root modals combine much more freely although not all combinations are allowed. This is not unexpected, since there are restrictions on 'regular' control verbs as well. There is no syntactic reason to expect restrictions on the combination of non-root modals with other non-root modals in Scandinavian in the account developed here. However, such restrictions do exist. In Danish, non-root + non-root combinations are good only if the second modal is kunne 'may'. This is unexplained by this analysis, as the authors themselves admit. In Icelandic there are fewer restrictions, but the modals munu 'will' and skulu 'shall' (in the non-root reading) can never follow any auxiliary, including other modals. 31 The authors have no syntactic explanation for this either. The combination non-root + root does not seem to be subject to particular restrictions in either Icelandic or Danish and the combination root + non-root is always unacceptable (or so it seems). The latter is given a semantic explanation: Since epistemic [i.e. non-root] modals predicate of a whole proposition whereas root modals predicate of one of the arguments (typically the subject) of a proposition, we would not expect root modals to be able to take scope over [non-root] modals. (T&V 1995: 78) Some of my objections to T & V ' s account are similar to my objections to Vikner (1988); the problems with T & V ' s account, however, seem even more serious. In my opinion, the benefits of analyzing Danish root modals as raising verbs that assign additional theta-roles are not strong enough to motivate the different analyses for Danish and Icelandic. Moreover, the ban on the co-occurrence of certain root modals with event-verbs in Danish is not explained in a satisfactory way in this account (cf. my objections to Vikner in the previous section); thus, a different explanation should be 31

T&V (1995: 79) mention the possibility that the verbs munu and skulu developed epistemic sense earlier than other modals, on the basis of examples of double modals in the Old Norse Sagas. Most of the examples of double modals in these texts seem to be a root modal embedded under the epistemic modals munu and skulu.

130 A survey of recent proposals sought for the co-occurrence facts. This would allow the authors to maintain the generalization that in Scandinavian languages root modals are (similar to) control verbs and non-root modals (to) raising verbs. In principle, there is nothing wrong with assuming two different structural types for Danish and Icelandic root modals, if the data support such a hypothesis; in my opinion, however, the data presented here are not convincing enough to force the different analyses. An even more serious objection to this analysis is that it makes a range of predictions not borne out by the observable empirical facts, at least not for Norwegian, and according to Vikner (p.c.), not for Danish either. This concerns in particular the alleged theta-properties of the subject of root modals. The analysis proposes that root modals, being (similar to) control verbs, assign a(n additional) theta-role to their subject, unlike non-root modals. This implies that only non-root modals, and not root modals, should be able to take non-argument subjects such as expletives, weather-arguments, and idiom-chunk subjects. As shown in (12), this is not the case. Although dynamic root modals typically take theta-subjects (but see (12i)), deontic root modals occur with all types of 'non-argument' subjects, contrary to T&V's claims (cf. also Brennan 1993; Brennan 2004 for data illustrating the same for English). Examples (12a) through (12d) show root modals with expletive subjects, (12e) through (12g) are root modals with weather it, and (12h) through (12i) are root modals with idiom-chunk subjects. Some of these sentences are ambiguous between a root and a non-root reading. However, the important thing is that all these sentences are grammatical on a root reading as well. (12)

a.

Det skal bestandig vcere minst to voksne til stede. there shall always be at-least two adults at place 'There should always be at least two adults present.'

b.

Det mä komme minstfemti personer. there must come at least fifty people 'At least fifty people must show up.'

c.

Det bor bli forandringer pä denne praksisen. there should occur changes in this (code of) practiceDEF 'This code of practice ought to change.'

Earlier proposals

1 31

d.

Det kan vcere opptil fire patroner i hylsa pr. ladning. there can be up-to four cartridges in caseDEF pr. load 'There can be up to four cartridges in the case in one load.'

e.

Nä b0r det snart regne; gresset er sä tort. now should it soon rain; grassDEF is so dry 'It ought to rain soon; the grass is so dry.'

f.

Det kan ikke sno nä som vi er pä landtur! it can not snow now that we are on picnic 'It cannot snow now that we are on a picnic!' (negated permission)

g.

Det mä blase sterkere for at draken skal lette. it must blow harder for that kiteDEF shall raise 'It must be windier for the kite to fly.'

h.

M.h.t. Jon, sä kan fanden ta ham (idiom: Fanden ta Jon!) as for Jon, so can devilDEF take him ' A s for John, the devil may take him.' (permission)

i.

N0d kan leere naken kvinne ä spinne. (idiom: Nod leerer naken kvinne ä spinne) need can teach naked w o m a n to spin 'Need can teach naked woman to spin.' (ability)

If we want to maintain that control verbs obligatorily assign a theta-role, it follows that root modals cannot possibly be control verbs. The question remains whether we want to make this claim. In either case, one cannot maintain the analysis of T & V in face of the data presented in (12), showing that root modals do in fact take non-argument subjects. An observation that does seem to hold, however, is that some root modals occur with pseudo-clefted complements whereas non-root modals do not. This seems to be a sound observation and a fact that requires an explanation. This phenomenon is thoroughly investigated in sections 3 and 4 of Chapter 4.

132 A survey of recent proposals 2.7. Barbiers (1995, 2002) Barbiers (2002) is a shorter version of the analysis of modals presented in Barbiers (1995). I will discuss these two works as a single analysis and, in the course of this presentation, comment on the discrepancies between them. Barbiers' (1995: 142) point of departure are the four interpretations possible with Dutch modals: (13)

Jan moet scaatsen. 'John must skate.' I. II. III. IV.

'John definitely wants to skate.' dispositional 'John has the obligation to skate.' directed deontic 'It is required that John skate.' non-directed deontic 'It must be the case that John is skating' probability

The dispositional interpretation denotes some force, tendency or capacity internal to a subject; the directed deontic interpretation denotes an obligation or permission with an external source directed towards a subject (resulting in the subject's having this obligation or permission); the nondirected deontic interpretation also denotes permission, obligation or requirement, but one that is not directed to the subject of the sentence (i.e. the situation is required or permitted, but independent of the subject's actions or attitudes), 32 and the probability interpretation involves a qualification of the truth value of the proposition or "an estimation of the degree of probability of a proposition" (Barbiers 1995: 145). After arguing that these four interpretations are the result of real ambiguity and not merely vagueness, Barbiers (2002: 62) describes the interpretations as being the result of "two parameters for modal interpretations," [± subject-oriented] and [± (potential) 33 polarity transition], where the latter refers to a negative and a positive stage of the event embedded under the modal; the negative stage holds at the speech time and is required, possible, desirable or permitted at some point in the future. According to Barbiers (1995: 149), these two parameters yield the possibilities presented in Table 2. 32 33

Note that the modal willen 'want' has no non-directed deontic interpretation. Both terms 'polarity transition' are modified by potential in the (2002) article.

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133

Table 2 Classification of modal interpretations

[+ subject-oriented]

Γ+polarity transition!

Dispositional/directed deontic Non-directed deontic

[—ι polarity transition]

Sympathy/Antipathy 34

[—ι subject-oriented]

Probability [non-root]

If these parameters are applied to the interpretations of (13) above, it is clear that I and II involve subject-orientation, whereas III and IV do not, and I, II and III involve a polarity transition, while IV does not. This is to say that in interpretations I, II and III the embedded proposition John skate is false at the time of utterance and required to be true at some time in the future, whereas no such polarity transition is involved in the probability interpretation: the speaker here expresses his belief that the embedded proposition is in fact true at the time of utterance. Barbiers (1995: 148) points out that If the polarity interpretations involve a switch of truth value, we expect individual-level predicates to disambiguate modal sentences. Since an individual-level predicate expresses a permanent property of an entity, it disallows a switch of truth value: there are no stages in which the entity does not have the property. The expectation is correct: the sentence in (10) only has a probability interpretation. (10)

Jan moet eert native speaker van het Vlaams zijn. 'John must be a native speaker of Flemish.'

Whether or not a modal sentence is interpreted as involving a polarity transition is semantically and syntactically determined by the complement of the modal. To illustrate this claim, Barbiers uses a property of Dutch modals, the property of taking non-verbal complements. The range of possible non-verbal complements for Dutch modals seems much wider than that for Norwegian and German modals. 35 A traditional

34

These terms (from the 2002 article) replace the terms like-dislike relation in the (1995) analysis and refer to the 'like-dislike' denotation of certain Dutch modals, e.g. moeten, mögen, e.g Marie moet die jongen niet 'Mary does not like that boy'. 35 Barbiers (2002: fii.l) mentions that German and Afrikaans have more restrictions on the complement of the modal than corresponding Dutch constructions since these languages allow only a subset of the complements that can occur with a

134 A survey of recent proposals way of accounting for these non-verbal complements of modals is to assume that a 'silent infinitive' is present in all such cases. Barbiers (2002: 53-6) presents several arguments against this assumption: PF-deletion of the infinitive should not reduce the ambiguity of the modal, since a PFdeletion should not have any influence on the interpretation. However, a modal with a non-verbal complement can never yield a non-root reading, unlike a corresponding sentence where the infinitive is present: (14)

a.

b.

J an mag weggaan. 'John may go away.'

root/epistemic both possible

Jan mag weg. 'John may (go) away.' root reading only

Furthermore, agreement facts seem to indicate that there is no PF-deletion of the infinitive: (15)

a.

Stiletto's mogen/*mag tegenwoordig niet meer 'Switchblades are/*is not allowed anymore nowadays.'

b.

[Stiletto's hebben] mag/*mogen tegenwordig niet meer 'Having switchblades is/*are not allowed anymore nowadays.'

The strongest argument, in Barbiers' view, is that only constituents that denote a value on a scale from 0 to 1 can be the non-verbal complement of a modal. For example, an adjective like vol 'full' may be the non-verbal complement of a modal because it denotes a property which either does or does not apply to an entity; there is no notion somewhat full. On the other hand, there are properties that do not denote such values on a scale from 0 to 1; instead, they denote much more gradual values. For instance, it makes less sense to say that a person is either intelligent or not intelligent; instead, modal in Dutch. Barbiers goes on to claim that Norwegian has the same restrictions on the complement as Dutch, which is not true; Norwegian patterns with German, not Dutch (cf. also Chapter 2 of the present work for the details). Barbiers does not go into the restrictions he claims to be different in German and Afrikaans, but I believe that one such restriction is the possible category of the complement. Norwegian and German (at least to my knowledge) seem to disallow adjectival small clauses as complements, while permitting PP/AdvP directional small clauses.

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we can characterize a person as somewhat intelligent. Thus, according to Barbiers, an adjective such as intelligent would not fit as a complement of a modal since it does not denote a value on a bounded scale from 0 to 1. If modals have semantic requirements regarding their non-verbal complements, and if there is a silent infinitive between the modal and the nonverbal complement, one would have to say that the modal imposes selectional requirements on the complement (the non-verbal constituent) of its complement (the silent infinitive). Concluding that there is no silent infinitive in these constructions and that these complements are indeed non-verbal, Barbiers uses them as an argument against the control versus raising analysis. Using the uncontroversial diagnostic that small clause complements cannot be extraposed (Hoekstra 1984), Barbiers shows the non-verbal predicative complements of modals to be proper small clauses (not adjunct PPs), as in (16) (Barbiers 2002: 13): (16)

a.

dat Jan morgen 'that John tomorrow to Amsterdam moet < *naar Amsterdam> must to Amsterdam.'

b.

dat de brief morgen 'that the letter tomorrow into the trash can mag < *in de prullenbak> may into the trash can.'

If the bracketed constituents are small clause complements, the DPs Jan and de brief must be their subjects. Their subjects cannot be PRO, since a small clause complement cannot have PRO as its subject, as shown in (17a) and Barbiers (2002: 14a), so the subject must have raised from a position inside the small clause, as in (17b): (17)

a.

Jan drinkt [sc zieh/*PRO ziek], 'John drinks SE sick.'

b.

Jant moet [PP t, naar Amsterdam], 'John must to Amsterdam.'

136 A survey of recent proposals In the garden variety control versus raising analysis of modals, the raising structure is the one yielding an non-root interpretation. However, modals with small clause complements, in spite of their raising structure properties, only have root interpretations, never non-root ones. Thus, the control versus raising analysis cannot be correct. As mentioned above, Barbiers claims that the non-verbal complement of a modal must denote a value on a scale from 0 to 1. If it does not, it is ungrammatical. (18)

a.

Dezefles moet vol this bottle must full 'This bottle must be full.'

The value that the bottle has on the scale of empty to full is not 1 when the sentence is uttered and should become 1 at some point in the future. These are the two essential properties of all root interpretations. Barbiers (2002: 59) claims that (i) the complement of the modal must denote a value on a bounded scale, and (ii) this value is not the actual value at the moment Τ denoted by the modal. This is why individual-level predicates are unacceptable as complements of root modals (cf. the claim referred to above), since they denote a fixed property of the subject. Furthermore, the subject must also have a constant reference in order for the complement to count as an individual-level predicate. 36 All non-verbal and verbal complements of Dutch root modals must denote a variable property and a value on a bounded scale. The latter means that many stage-level predicates cannot constitute the complement of a modal either if they do not denote such a value on a bounded scale; ziek 'sick' is ruled out as the complement of a modal for this reason. In the case of infinitival complements, the bounded scale is provided by the infinitive itself in its denotation as an event: the scale is simply a numerical scale from 0 to 1, counting the number of events. As a result, any

36

This is why a sentence like (ii) does not constitute counterevidence to the generalization illustrated in (i) that an individual-level predicate gives rise to a non-root reading: (i) John must be a native speaker of German. (ii) The applicant must be a native speaker of German.

Earlier proposals

137

verb can be the complement of a modal, since the infinitive always introduces a bounded scale. Barbiers (2002: 63) lists the following differences between non-root and root interpretations: Table 3 Differences between non-root and root interpretations Non-root Potential polarity transition No

Root Yes 0-1 (number of events)

Category of complement

negative-affirmative (or: no - yes) verbal only

Definite complement

Yes

No

Scale of complement

all categories

Root modals involve a polarity transition such that the event embedded under the modal is false (0) at the moment of utterance and required/permitted/possible/desired (1) at some point in the future. Non-root modals involve no such polarity transition. Moreover, recall that Barbiers claims that any complement of any modal must denote a value on a bounded scale or it is ungrammatical. The 'scale' of the complement in the case of non-root modals ranges from negative to affirmative. The (verbal) complement of a root modal introduces a numerical scale from 0 to 1, counting the number of events (i.e. O N E event). Barbiers claims that non-root modals take verbal complements only, whereas root modals take complements of all categories. W e have seen examples where root modals take non-verbal small clause complements (APs and PPs). However, Barbiers' goal is to account for all types of complement of all modals in his analysis; hence, he claims that modals taking D P arguments as complements should be accounted for by the same means. Thus, he lists examples where modals take D P arguments as complements (2002: 65-6). (19)

a.

Jan moet een /*het vriendinnetje. Jan must a /the girl friend 'Jan wants (to find) a girlfriend.'

138 A survey of recent proposals b.

Jan moet het vriendinnetje niet/wel. Jan must the girl friend not/well 'Jan does not like the girlfriend/ Jan likes the girlfriend very much.'

Note that while (19a) gives rise to a polarity-transition reading, i.e. it is an ordinary root modal construction—Jan does not have a girlfriend at present (0) but he wants to have one in the future (1)—(19b) exemplifies what Barbiers dubs the Sympathy/Antipathy interpretation presented in Table 2 and repeated here for convenience. Table 4 Classification of modal interpretations

[+ subject-oriented]

[+polarity transition]

Dispositional/directed deontic Non-directed deontic

[—ι polarity transition]

Sympathy/Antipathy

[—τ subject-oriented]

Probability [non-root]

There is no polarity transition in (19b) involving a transition from a present situation to a future situation. Barbiers envisions that the common property of the non-root interpretation and the sympathy/antipathy interpretation—that neither gives rise to a polarity transition—should be accounted for by the same means. Crucially, he points out the fact that whereas a definite noun phrase is unacceptable as the complement of a root modal, it is acceptable in the sympathy/antipathy construction. Thus, he proposes that the definiteness of the complement is what rules out the polarity-transition interpretation in (19b). The next step is to propose that the complements of non-root modals are in some sense definite as well, since the definiteness of the complement evidently is what rules out a polarity transition reading in the case of modals with nominal complements. Barbiers (2002: 66) argues "that the impossibility of a transition is related to the fact that definite constituents have a fixed reference [my italics], while the possibility of a transition derives from...the variable reference of indefinite constructions." He proposes that definiteness and indefiniteness are properties that can be ascribed to verbal as well as nominal constituents, encoded by functional projections that we normally think of as belonging to the functional layer of nominal constituents.

Ear Iier proposals

139

That is, root modals take indefinite verbal (as well as non-verbal) complements, IndPs, whereas non-root modals take definite verbal complement DPs. Hence, the IndP ('Individuator Phrase') with the abstract head ONE is the verbal counterpart of an indefinite noun phrase, whereas the DP complement of an non-root modal is the verbal counterpart of a definite noun phrase headed by an abstract head D. This abstract head D makes the verbal complement definite. Only a nonroot modal may have a definite verbal complement (although modals encoding sympathy/antipathy may take definite nominal complements), hence the presence of D in the modal's verbal complement inevitably gives the modal an non-root interpretation. The reason for this, Barbiers claims, is that when the complement is definite, a polarity transition is impossible. Another important property of D is that this head is what establishes the semantic relationship between subject and event, identifying the subject as the source, starting point, agent, or possessor of the event. This head can encode subject-orientedness of a modal as well in that the modal's base position relative to this D head determines whether a semantic relation of subject-orientedness will be established between the subject and modal; cf. figure 5 adapted from Barbiers (2002: 66). Given that D establishes the relation between the subject and the modal, it follows from the proposed structure that non-root modals are never subject-oriented. Since non-root modals are generated above the subject, and the D head is generated even lower than the subject, the abstract head D is prevented from establishing a relation between the non-root modal and the subject. Figure 5 a.

root DP

b.

non-root ModP

Subji

Directed deontic interpretations and dispositional interpretations, on the other hand, are subject-oriented, a relation established by the D head since

140 A survey of recent proposals the subject in this case is generated above D and the modal is generated below D. What about non-directed deontic interpretations? According to Barbiers (2002: 67), these may arise in two ways: (i) D P is entirely absent in these interpretations, or (ii) DP is present, but the subject reconstructs at LF into a position within the scope of the modal (e.g. [Spec,VP]). The ambiguity between a dispositional interpretation and a directed deontic interpretation is ascribed to the ambiguity (or rather the abstractness) of D as D may encode 'source' as well as 'possessor'. 3 7 When the subject is taken to be the source of modality, w e get the dispositional reading; when the subject is taken to be the possessor of modality, we get the directed deontic reading. The assumption that the complement of root modals is indefinite, whereas the complement of non-root modals is definite, is supported by a other arguments in Barbiers (1995: 189). He argues, for instance, that the complement of root modals behaves like indefinite NPs with respect to focus movement and constructions with the quantifier wat 'what an X!', whereas complements of non-root modals and definite noun phrases are ungrammatical in these constructions (cf. (20); Barbiers 1995: 81): (20)

a.

Een huis/*het

huis dat Jan

heeft!

a house/the house that John has 'John has an extraordinary house!' b.

Werken dat Jan kan! work that John can 'John is able to/allowed to work very hard.' # 'It is permitted that John is working very hard.' # 'It is possible that John is working very hard.'

37

Barbiers (1995: 186): "The relations established by D are the other building blocks: the possibility of the...event is determined and the subject is the determiner. Since the notion of determiner is taken to subsume notions such as source, possessor, origin and so on, the subject...can be interpreted as the source of the possibility, which yields the ability interpretation, or as the possessor of the possibility, which yields the permission reading. The ambiguity between a dispositional and a directed deontic interpretation is thus ascribed to the ambiguity of, or rather the abstractness of D, just as in the case of John's portrait, where the semantic relations between John and portrait established by D can be interpreted as possessor, artist, source and so on."

Earlier proposals 141 c.

Wat heeft Jan een boeken/* de boeken! what has John a books the books 'John has a whole lot of books.'

d.

Wat kan Jan schaatsen! what can John skate 'John is a very good skater.' # 'It is possible that John is skating.'

Another piece of evidence for the structure in figure 5 is the nature of auxiliary selection in modal environments, according to Barbiers (1995: 197). Following Kayne (1993), Barbiers considers selection of HAVE to involve incorporation of D into BE (i.e. BE is the primitive auxiliary and HAVE is a derivative). Assuming that BE and D must be adjacent, i.e. DP must be the complement of BE for incorporation to be possible, the modal can be in two positions (irrelevant material omitted): Figure 6 a. b.

BE D Mod Ind -> HAVE Mod Ind-> Root Mod BE D Ind -> Mod HAVE Ind -> Non-root

This indicates, according to Barbiers, that the modal is generated below D in the case of root modals, but above D in the case of non-root modals, just as he proposes (cf. figure 5.) However, Barbiers (1995: fn 41) comments that the correspondence of the position of the modal relative to HAVE and the reading of the modal as root or non-root is not perfect, since the order Mod AUX can also have the polarity interpretation, not only the non-root interpretation.38 Barbiers (1995, 2002) thus assumes the same raising structure for all modals and essentially the same argument structure. The various readings are a result of the nature of the complement (denoting a value on a bounded scale, a possible polarity transition or not, i.e. indefinite or definite), and the base position of the modal, in particular relative to the abstract head D. One obvious objection to a syntactico-centric approach such as this one is that the underlying structures proposed for the different readings all potentially give rise to exactly the same visible string or sentence. Thus, the

38

I my dialect of Norwegian (cf. examples in (5) and (6), section 2.4), it is even possible to get non-root readings of a modal following a perfect auxiliary.

142 A survey of recent proposals presence or absence of subject-orientation cannot be predicted on the basis of word order facts or visible agreement; the subject obviously raises to what seems to be the specifier position of an non-root modal, without ever giving rise to any kind of subject-orientation (Barbiers would explain this as the effect of the relative positions of the invisible D-head, the trace of the subject and the base generated position of the modal). This raising obviously takes place for some other reason and the EPP is always a good candidate. Of course, this is essentially the problem we encounter when accounting for the difference between raising verbs and control verbs in general. However, the analytical apparatus requires a range of abstract heads that never seem to have any morphological realization, and the author invokes a (somewhat cryptic) notion of a bounded scale, LFreconstructions and other covert movements to account for the interpretational facts (Barbiers 1995). Barbiers' attempt to account for modals with all kinds of complements, including DP/noun phrase complements, leads to the assumption that verbal constituents project functional heads that we normally associate only with nominal categories. As pointed out by Harley (1998: 6) the latter speculations are "perhaps less successful." For one thing, it remains unexplained why the verb moeten 'must' denotes like/dislike with definite DPs rather than 'want/need', as it seems to do with indefinites and verbal complements. One natural assumption is that we are dealing with two different but homonymous modals in these cases. For further counterarguments along these lines, see Harley (1998). Another problem are Barbiers' two essential claims about root interpretations, repeated here for convenience: (i) the complement of the modal must denote a value on a bounded scale, and (ii) this value is not the actual value at the moment Τ denoted by the modal. Although the latter seems to be accurate for non-verbal complements of root modals (even for their Norwegian counterparts), it is obviously not correct for verbal complements, as shown in (21). (21)

a.

Jon mä vcere pä kontoret. Jon must be in office-DEF 'Jon must reside in his office.'

Barbiers claims that the embedded proposition Jon vcere pä kontoret 'Jon reside in his office' should be false at the time of utterance and required to

Earlier proposals

143

be true at some point in the future. It seems obvious, however, that (21) may be uttered in a situation where Jon is already in his office, i.e. where the value 1 already pertains to the event. So there has to be some temporal or other semantic differences between verbal and non-verbal complements (cf. Chapter 4 of the present work for an account). Whatever one's objections, Barbiers' approach offers an innovative perspective on modals and their various interpretations although substantial parts of this analysis remain highly speculative and important issues are left for future research.

2.8. L0drup (1996a) L0drup (1996a) discusses almost solely Norwegian data, whereof modals constitute a significant part. This work aims to shed some light on the debate surrounding the categorical status of modals, i.e. whether they should be considered auxiliaries or not. Lodrup's point of departure are two sets of syntactic criteria typically used to define auxiliaries—language-specific and language-independent criteria. Language-specific criteria include word-order facts as well as possible governors and governees of the auxiliary. Language-independent criteria include the requirement that an auxiliary occur with a main verb and the requirement that an auxiliary not impose any semantic restrictions on its subject; the latter is a consequence of the fact that auxiliaries have no independent subject position. This amounts to saying that all auxiliaries are raising verbs (but not vice versa). The issue Lodrup focuses on is the fact that in many languages, such as Norwegian, the two sets of criteria, language-specific and language-independent, select different groups of verbs. Modals are of particular interest here, L0drup says, since root modals are selected by language-specific criteria, but fail to meet languageindependent criteria, while non-root modals meet both sets of criteria. Thus, non-root modals are indeed raising verbs, but root modals are control verbs, according to this analysis, in the Ross (1969) tradition. As evidence for the appropriateness of this analysis for Norwegian modals, Lodrup presents data illustrating the difference in behaviour between root and non-root modals in passive and impersonal constructions. Root modals have an independent subject position, Lodrup says, so the 'wellknown fact' that non-root modals and root modals pattern differently with

144 A sumey of recent proposals respect to passive and impersonal constructions is expected. The following data are presented to support this claim (L0drup's (5) and (6)): (22)

a.

Maten vil bli servert snart. food-DEF will become served soon 'The food will be served soon.'

b.

Det vil komme noen. there will come someone 'Someone will come.'

The only natural reading of the modal in these two sentences is the nonroot reading (future/prediction); the root reading (volition) is not available (unless we ascribe a human-like quality to the food). This, says Ledrup, is indicative of a pattern where the root modal, being a control verb, has an independent subject position and therefore imposes specific selection requirements onto the subject, e.g. that a potential subject must denote a human or at least animate being. The non-root modal, lacking an independent subject position, is unable to impose such selection requirements onto its subject, as expected from a true raising verb. Lodrup's data demonstrate another interesting difference between root and non-root modals. Root modals, unlike non-root modals, are able to take "ordinary NP objects," i.e. definite pro-forms substituting for the VP complement. 39 The modals in (23a) all have root readings only. Moreover, root modals, unlike epistemic modals, take adverbial complements; in (23b), the modals yield only root readings. (23)

39

a.

Dette kan/vil/skal/mä/bßr jeg ikke. this can/will/shall/must/ought I not Ί can't/won't/shouldn't/mustn't/ought not to do this.'

b.

Jeg vil/skal ut. I will/shall out Ί want to go out/I am going out.'

Lentrup himself claims that these are not elliptical constructions, but modals lacking any VP complement.

Earlier proposals

145

L0drup mentions the fact that root modals, with the marginal exception of kunne and ville, do not passivize as a problem for his analysis of root modals as control verbs: (24)

a.

Leksen mä kunnes i morgen. The lesson must can-PASS tomorrow 'You should know your lesson by tomorrow.'

b.

Dette mä ikke bare 0nskes, det mä villes. This must not only wish-PASSIVE, it must will-PASS 'You must not only wish this, you must want it.'

In an effort to explain the general ban against passivized root modals, L0drup claims that most root modals take benefactive subjects and that other Norwegian verbs with benefactive subjects seem marginal as passives too (for example, ha 'have' and fa 'get'). Ledrup explores the differences between auxiliaries and other raising verbs (as not all raising verbs are auxiliaries) and lists two such differences. Auxiliaries (thus non-root modals) allow for their VP complement to undergo topicalization and pronominalization, as in (25ac), while nonauxiliary raising verbs (illustrated by the raising verb forekomme 'seem') do not, as illustrated in (25bd) (L0drup's (13), (15), (17) and (19)). (25)

a.

Regne kan det ikke. rain can it not 'It couldn't be raining.'

b.

*Ä spille golf forekommer han meg. to play golf seems he to me 'He seems to me to play golf.'

c.

(Kan det regne?) Det kan det. (can it rain?) It can that 'Might it be raining? So it might.'

d.

(Kan Per sies a vcere lur?) *Han forekommer meg det. (can per sayPASS to be smart?) he seems to me that '(Could one say that Per is smart?) He seems so to me.'

146 A survey of recent proposals If the possibility for VP-topicalization and VP-pronominalization is considered a criterion for auxiliaries, Lodrup says, we get some new auxiliaries such as pleie 'use to', beheve 'need', trenge 'need'. These differ from the traditional auxiliaries in allowing the infinitival marker 40 and allowing the pro-form g]0re in tags. Finally, Lodrup derives the auxiliary-like properties of root modals (the ability to take bare infinitivals, for instance) from the fact that they have non-root counterparts. This is because 'aux-properties' of root modals are parasitic on non-root modals. Lodrup supports his claim with facts about the Danish modal turde 'dare', where the non-root reading has become archaic, and as a result, the root version now accepts infinitivals with the infinitival marker. As Lodrup (1996a: 11) says, "The parasite has lost its host." Likewise, in English, the main verb have seems to have certain auxiliary properties that must be 'parasitic', according to McCawley (1988: 246). This work offers some interesting observations. In particular, I find it interesting that behßve/trenge 'need' seem to pattern with non-root modals with respect to topicalization and pronominalization of their VP complements, and that root modals may take definite VP pro-forms (dette, 'this'), unlike non-root modals. However, this account also has serious shortcomings. The analysis is especially flawed in that many crucial (alleged) properties of root modals are illustrated by kunne 'can' and ville 'want-to' only. As discussed in Chapter 2, these two root modals have a range of properties that make them non-typical root modals. For instance, to illustrate his crucial claim that root modals are control verbs in Norwegian, Lodrup provides data with the root modal vil 'want to' in passive and impersonal constructions, as in (22) above, repeated here: (26)

40

a.

Maten vil bli servert snart. f o o d - D E F will b e c o m e served soon 'The food will be served soon.'

b.

Dei vil komme noen. there will come someone 'Someone will come.'

Trenge/behove both allow for the infinitival marker ä to be omitted only in their negated forms, cf. Chapter 2; cf. also Johannessen (1998, 2003) for similar verbs.

Earlier proposals 147 Lodrup correctly claims that root readings are unavailable or unnatural in these sentences. What he fails to notice, however, is that root readings are fine with all other modals in these constructions; volitional ville is in fact the only modal that behaves in this way, as (27) shows: (27)

a.

Maten mä/ skal/ kan/ bor bli servert snart. Maten ma/skal/kan/b0r serveres snart 'The food must/ will/ may/ should be served soon.' (non-root and root both OK)

b.

Det mä/skal/ kan/ bor komme noen. there must/ will/ may/ should come someone 'Someone must/ will/ may/ should come.' (non-root and root both OK)

Note that these sentences are ambiguous between a non-root reading, which signals the degree of likelihood of the embedded proposition, and a root reading, which signals the necessity/intention/permission of the occurrence of the event described by the embedded proposition. Crucially, a root reading is indeed possible with inanimate and expletive subjects. Thus, a substantial part of L0drup's argument for Norwegian root modals as control verbs with independent subject positions is based on a single, and very atypical, root modal, ville. As seen in (27) above, his very own tests applied to all other root modals indicate that root modals must be raising verbs, too. However, this does not diminish the importance of some of Lodrup's other observations—that behßve/trenge 'need' seem to pattern with nonroot modals with respect to topicalization and pronominalization of their VP complements, and that root modals may take definite VP pro-forms (dette 'this'), unlike non-root modals.

2.9. Dyvik (1999) According to the author himself (p.c.), Dyvik (1999) is first and foremost an argument against the analysis of auxiliaries presented in Butt, Nino and Segond (1996) which suggests that AUX categories should be analyzed as functional categories contributing only tense and aspect features to the sentence. Traditional analyses within HPSG and LFG, on the other hand, treat

148 A survey of recent proposals auxiliaries as elements similar to main verbs. Dyvik (1999) argues that the traditional analysis is more effective at capturing the linguistic facts about Norwegian modals and perfect auxiliaries since Norwegian auxiliaries indeed seem to have the properties of complement-taking verbs, as suggested by traditional LFG/HPSG analyses. He supports his claim with a range of data, observations, and generalizations concerning Norwegian modals and (other) auxiliaries. Dyvik (1999: 4) points out that although the semantic range of Norwegian modals is similar to those in English, French, and German, there is a notable systematicity of alternatives in Norwegian: Every modal can be interpreted either as a one-place epistemic [i.e. nonroot] modal or as a two-place root modal. Under the [non-root] interpretations the subject referent is not an argument of the modal, which only takes the entire proposition as an argument.... Under the root interpretation the subject referent is an argument of the modal. Under the non-root interpretation, modals meet the universal criterion for auxiliaries in that they impose no semantic restrictions on the subject; thus, if modals occur with formal (or expletive) subjects, only the non-root reading is possible, Dyvik claims. He also points out that when a modal takes the perfect auxiliary as a complement, the reading of the modal is always non-root (Dyvik's (10)). (28)

a.

Han vil/kan/mä/skal ha dreiet händtaket. he will may must shall have turned leverDEF 'He will/may/must/is said to have turned the lever.'

Norwegian modals can also be complements of the perfect auxiliary, but not in the non-root sense, he claims. (29)

a.

Han har villet/kunnet/mättet/skullet dreie händtaket. he has [want-to/can/must/shall]PERF turn the-lever 'He has wanted/been able/ been obliged/had a duty to turn the lever.'

It seems possible to construct examples where non-root modals are complements of other non-root modals, mostly before the perfect auxiliary ha:

Earlier proposals (30)

149

Han vil kunne ha reist i morgen. he will mayINF have travelled tomorrow 'Tomorrow it will be the case that he may have gone away.'

Based on these syntactic facts, Dyvik concludes that non-root modals can only occur in finite forms (present and past tense) and the infinitive, while the past participle is reserved for root modals. Dyvik refers to some points from L0drup (1996a). Since Ledrup argues that non-root modals should be considered raising verbs and root modals control verbs, it seems natural to assume that L0drup also considers the non-root and root varieties of Norwegian modals distinct lexemes (although, as Dyvik points out, L0drup (1996a) is not explicit about this). This is an assumption that Dyvik (1999: 6) is unwilling to adopt: the analysis of [non-root] and root modals as distinct lexemes would give rise to a puzzlingly systematic homonymy linking pairs of [non-root] and root modals in Norwegian, a systematicity which would then be unaccounted for. The formal identity of all morphosyntactic forms which they both have, along with their obvious semantic relatedness, would appear accidental. Dyvik suggests bringing the non-root and root meanings together by deriving the non-root varieties from the root varieties by lexical rules operating on semantic forms and X C O M P (complement-taking) constraints. For instance, one needs to state that the complements of root modals and the perfect auxiliary ha can only be root modals or main verbs and not non-root modals or the auxiliary ha itself, while non-root modals can take all kinds of complements. Each modal verb would have pairs of entries where the non-root entry is derived, or at least derivable, from the corresponding root entry. Since D y v i k ' s solution has X C O M P constraints as a crucial ingredient, it follows that Dyvik is less eager to do away with XCOMP-properties as possible constraints on modals and other auxiliaries, as proposed by Butt et al. (1996). Although, Dyvik says, it would no doubt be technically possible to provide an alternative analysis of the Norwegian constructions along the lines suggested by Butt et al. D y v i k ' s article contains observations and generalizations rarely found in works on modals, and his arguments against a 'two distinct lexemes' hypothesis seem appealing. Several of the generalizations in this work, however, simply do not hold up under close scrutiny. A m o n g these generaliza-

150 A survey of recent proposals tions is the claim that root modals are always two-place predicates (cf. quote above), a widespread assumption that we have already addressed and rejected in section 3.9 of Chapter 2. The claim that only non-root modals take expletive subjects is not a sound generalization either; cf. section 2.6 for evidence to the contrary. An interesting observation is that the reading of the modal is non-root when preceding a perfect auxiliary and root when following it (a similar generalization is sometimes found throughout the European modal literature). While the latter observation usually holds for the standard dialects of Norwegian, Bokmäl and Nynorsk,4i (although not for non-standard dialects), the former does not. It is true that the default reading of a modal preceding a perfect auxiliary is non-root, all things being equal. However, it is rather easy to force a root reading on any modal in such surroundings, if we provide the sentence with a purpose-clause or a temporal-adverbial clause denoting a point in the future, as in (31). (31)

a.

Pasienten skal ha blitt beviselig feilbehandlet patientDEF shall have become provably wrong-treated for ä ha krav pä er staining. for to have claim on compensation 'The patient must provably have been subject to malpractice in order to be entitled to a compensation.'

b.

Du b0r ha gjort ferdig leksene dine fßr du gär pä kino. you should have done finished homeworkDEF yours before you go to cinema 'You ought to have finished your homework before going to the movies.'

c.

En student mä ha ridd mye for ä bli opptatt i rideklubben. a student must have ridden much for to become up-taken in rideclubDEF Ά student must have ridden a lot in order to be admitted to the jockey club.'

41

But cf. the bokmäl counterfactual-constructions in (9) of section 2, Chapter 2.

Earlier proposals d.

151

Jeg mä ha bestätt denne pr0venf0r neste semester. I must have passed this test-DEF before next term Ί must have passed this test by next term.'

The observation that Norwegian modals preceding a perfect auxiliary have a default non-root reading—although this is not the only reading possible in these surroundings—is nevertheless interesting and should be investigated further. I will discuss this question thoroughly in Chapter 5. To sum up, although Dyvik (1999) presents a range of generalizations rarely made for Norwegian, several of his generalizations turn out to be false. Thus, although his analysis may offer a better account of modals and other auxiliaries than Butt, Nino and Segond (1996), it is based on several dubious premises.

2.10. Wurmbrand (1999, 2001) Wurmbrand (1999) is a subsection of a chapter in Wurmbrand's (2001) book on infinitival constructions in German (and other Germanic languages). I will primarily quote from the former, with certain illustrations and quotes from the latter. The analysis and the arguments are by and large the same in both works. Wurmbrand's main objective is to challenge the wide-spread control versus raising analysis of Germanic modals, as developed in several of the works discussed above. She concentrates primarily on arguments provided by three empirical domains: a) evidence suggesting that the subject is selected solely by the lower (infinitival verb) predicate; b) scopal relations between the subject and the modal; and c) evidence suggesting that root modals do not assign theta-roles. Wurmbrand's first piece of evidence comes from there-insertion contexts allowing for root readings of the modal (Wurmbrand's (3a) and (3c)): (32)

a. b. c.

There may be singing but no dancing on my premises. There can be a party as long as it's not too loud. There must be a solution to this problem on my desk, tomorrow morning!

These examples strongly favor a raising analysis over a control one for root modals (as well as for non-root ones) since only raising verbs take expletive subjects. Wurmbrand goes on to provide examples from quirky case-

152 A survey of recent proposals marked subjects in Icelandic. Her analysis at this point goes against the generalizations made in Thräinsson and Vikner (1995) (cf. section 2.6 above) that only non-root modals, and not root modals, allow for quirky subjects. Wurmbrand provides examples of root modals with quirky subjects (Wurmbrand's (7)): (33)

a.

Haraldi/*Haraldur verdur ad lika hamborgarar Harold-DAT /Harold-NOM must to like hamburgers 'Harold must like hamburgers.' (in order to be accepted by his new American in-laws)

b.

Umscekjandann verdur ad vanta peninga. The-applicant-ACC must to lack money 'The applicant must lack money.' (in order to apply for this grant)

The verb lika assigns dative case to its subject, whereas the verb vanta assigns accusative case to its subject; this quirky case marking on the subject is retained when these verbs are embedded under root modals, as shown in (33). As argued by Thräinsson and Vikner (1995), only raising verbs allow for quirky case subjects in Icelandic; 42 therefore, Wurmbrand argues, constructions such as these provide another piece of evidence that root modals are raising verbs. Her arguments thus follow Thräinsson and Vikner's (1995) arguments, but her conclusion is the exact opposite of theirs. This disagreement stems from the different views on the potential availability of root readings in constructions such as (33). Thräinsson and Vikner (1995: 59-60) reject the possibility of root readings in these constructions, whereas Wurmbrand's Icelandic informants assure her that root readings are possible and that quirky case is essential for these constructions to be grammatical. Wurmbrand then turns to passive in modal constructions. First, she notes that the generalization about passive in German is that passive is possible only if the predicate has an underlying external argument (since unaccusative predicates cannot be passivized). This generalization extends to

42

To be exact, Thräinsson and Vikner (1995: 60) claim that verbs that take quirky subjects cannot very easily be embedded under control verbs at all, but whenever that is possible, the case of the subject of the control verb must be nominative, as determined by the control verb itself, and not quirky.

Earlier proposals

1 53

verbs that combine with infinitival complements; passive is possible in control verbs (versuchen 'try', beschliessen 'decide'), but ungrammatical in raising verbs. If one assumes that all modals are raising verbs, the ban on the passivization of modals follows straightforwardly. The second lesson to be learned from modals in passive constructions comes from modals with passive complements. Control contexts in general block passivization of the embedded infinitive, while raising verbs and essentially non-root and root modals allow an embedded passive, as the data in (34) show (Wurmbrand's (Π))· (34)

a. b. c.

The biscuits seem to have been finished by Paul *The bisquits tried/decided to be finished by Paul The biscuits may be finished by Paul.

The explanation for the ungrammaticality of (34b) is that control verbs such as try and decide require an agentive external argument with which they establish a thematic relation and the inanimate subject fails to meet this requirement. No such effect arises with raising verbs or, crucially, with non-root or root modals. The similarity between root modals and (other) raising verbs in this respect suggests that root modals, like non-root modals, are raising, not control verbs. Invoking May (1977, 1985), Wurmbrand states that control and raising verbs differ with respect to scope properties vis-ä-vis their syntactic subjects: raising constructions but not control constructions allow an interpretation in which the subject takes narrow scope with respect to the matrix verb; note the possible readings of the raising predicate construction in (35a) vs. the single reading of the control predicate construction in (35b) (Wurmbrand's (14)): (35)

a.

Someone from New York is likely to win in the lottery i) There is somebody from N.Y. and he is likely to win in the lottery ii) It is likely that somebody from N.Y. will win in the lottery

b.

Someone from NY tried/promised to win in the lottery 'There is somebody from N.Y. and he tried/promised to win in the lottery.'

154 A survey of recent proposals If modals (in particular root modals) are raising predicates, one would expect modal constructions to display the same scopal ambiguity as other raising predicates, where the subject may have wide scope or narrow scope with respect to the modal. Wurmbrand provides data suggesting that this is the case: (36)

a.

Somebody from New York must have won in the lottery (non-root) i) There is somebody from N.Y. and he must have won in the lottery ii) It must be the case that somebody from N.Y. have won in the lottery

b.

An Austrian must win the next race (in order for Austria to have the most gold medals; root reading) i) There is an Austrian for whom it is necessary to win the next race ii) It is necessary that an Austrian (whoever it is) win the next race

Many authors (cf. references in Wurmbrand 1999) have argued that this scopal ambiguity in raising constructions is due to the availability of two subject positions in these constructions: the lower subject position of the embedded predicate (corresponding to the narrow-scope reading) and the upper subject position of the matrix predicate (corresponding to the widescope reading). In raising constructions, the subject may be interpreted as occupying either of these positions, unlike in control constructions, where only one subject position is available. Whatever the theoretical assumptions, the similarity between modals-root as well as non-root -and (other) raising predicates with respect to scopal ambiguity suggests that modals are raising verbs. Finally, Wurmbrand challenges the assumption that root modals are able to assign theta-roles in any construction and suggests instead that the apparent thematic relation between a root modal and the subject in certain contexts is purely contextual. To support this claim, she provides a range of data (some from works by other authors) that clearly do not involve a thematic relation between the subject and the root modal, as in (37):

Earlier proposals (37)

a. b. c. d. e. f.

There can be a party as long as it is not The biscuits may be finished by Paul An opening hand must contain 13 points Icicles may hang from the eavestroughs The traitor must die The old man must fall down the stairs and it must look like an accident

155

too loud (Warner 1993) (Newmeyer 1975) (McGinnis 1993)

Wurmbrand (1999: 13) concludes by stating that All these properties are expected and straightforwardly accounted for if a subject in a modal construction starts out as an argument of the lower predicate - i.e. if a modal construction involves a raising structure rather than a control structure. I object to little in Wurmbrand's article as I find it thorough and convincing. However, not all of her arguments extend to all Norwegian, other Mainland Scandinavian, or German modals, since there are modals that behave in atypical ways, like the Norwegian main verbs and the dyadic dynamic modals kunne 'can' and ville 'want to'. Wurmbrand's arguments also do not apply to the German modals wollen 'want to' and mögen 'would like' (cf. Öhlschläger 1989: 129 ff., who analyzes these two root modals as control verbs but all other modals as raising verbs). Figure 6 AuxP Aux'

-,θ

epistemic ,θ

Mod' Mod0 root/deontic

vP/aspP v'/Asp1

θ VP

v°/Asp° dynamic

156 A survey of recent proposals Wurmbrand (2001: 204) maintains that root modals are raising verbs that do not assign a subject role, but discusses an exception in dynamic modals, which probably should be analyzed as control verbs, as in figure 6 (from Wurmbrand 2001: 183). Note that most modals can appear in any of the three positions, according to Wurmbrand, and the different positions correspond to different syntactic properties and different interpretations. One problem for Wurmbrand's analysis—even the 2001 version—is the German modal wollen 'will' in its non-root (evidential) reading. If this modal is anything like other non-root (or epistemic) modals, it ought to be a raising verb, displaying no specific semantic requirements towards the DP in its subject position. However, it does in fact require a subject denoting a human being (cf. section 7.2. of Chapter 2) and therefore has at least one crucial property in common with control verbs. Non-root readings of modals following a perfective auxiliary are predicted to be ungrammatical by Wurmbrand's analysis. Thus, the possibility of such readings in these surroundings would pose a potential problem. I argue in Chapter 5 that such readings actually do exist for a number of languages. Wurmbrand's (2001) book as well as the (1999) article are clear and well-written, her points are mostly well argued, her knowledge of the relevant literature is impressive, and her generalizations come across as empirically sound. For anyone who works with modals and infinitival constructions in Germanic languages, reading this book is time well spent.

2.11.Butler (2003) According to the author himself, Butler (2003) is a blend of Kratzer's classic analysis of modals as propositional operators and current minimalist ideas about the propositional nature of phases (Chomsky 1999). This gives rise to two scope positions for modals: one associated with the vP phase and one associated with the CP phase. The former scope position leads to root readings of modals and the latter to epistemic readings. 43 43

Butler discusses only root and epistemic readings of modals. As mentioned previously, no English proper modal displays an evidential reading (although the compound be supposed to does), and Butler specifically directs his analysis towards the root-epistemic distinction. Thus, in this subsection (and the next, which also analysis English modals) I refer to the root- epistemic distinction instead of the the root-non-root distinction.

Earlier proposals

157

Butler requires a sound theory of modality to account for a) how the epistemic/root distinction is derived; b) why cross-linguistically modals have the same phonetic form for epistemic and root readings; and c) how the scope properties of modals come about and how they interact with other scope-bearing elements in the clause. Butler sets out to answer these questions. With regard to a), he concludes that the epistemic/root distinction arises from the mapping from syntax to semantics: epistemic and root modals have a unitary lexical semantics as propositional operators, which allows them to be merged in either of two syntactic positions, one associated with the vP phase (the smallest propositional subtree of the clause, where the verb is merged with all its arguments) and the other with the CP phase (the biggest propositional phase). The answer to b) is therefore that modals have the same form cross-linguistically for epistemic and root readings because they are essentially the same lexical item simply interpreted in different places. The answer to c) is that the scope properties of modals arise from their quantificational nature (as universal or existential operators) coupled with their syntactic position at LF. Their LF position could be something like in figure 7 for root and epistemic modals respectively (Butler's (28) and (30)). (38)

a.

Everybody must get stoned. (the host requires it; root reading) (judging from the results from these meetings; epistemic)

Figure 7 a.

root XP

b.

epistemic YP

t, get stoned

158 A survey of recent proposals There are a lot of potential but presently less relevant questions to ask about these two tree structures; I will, however, urge the reader to focus on the crucial assumption—that root modals merge with vP and keep this scope position at LF whereas epistemic modals merge higher (T) and take scope over everything else at LF. Butler offers support for his analysis from a number of domains, in particular the scope interaction between modals and other quantificational elements in the clause. I will focus on three of these empirical domains: modals and symmetric predicates, modals and quantified subjects, and modals and negation. Symmetric predicates are relations for which the following inference pattern is valid: R(x,y) -> R(y,x). For instance, if χ shakes hands with y, then y shakes hands with x. And if χ resembles y, then y resembles x. Brennan (1997) 44 shows that if clauses with symmetric predicates also contain modals, the inference R(x,y) -> R(y,x) only remains valid under epistemic readings for those modals, as in (39b), not under root readings, as in (39c). (39)

a. b. c.

Arthur looks like Susan -> Susan looks like Arthur Arthur might look like Susan --> S. might look like Arthur Arthur can look like Susan -|-> Susan can look like Arthur

If it is a possible assumption that Arthur looks like Susan, then it must also be a possible assumption that Susan looks like Arthur. However, in (39c), Arthur may have great impersonation skills that allow him to look like Susan, whereas Susan may lack any such skills, preventing her from looking anything like Arthur. Butler (2003) takes this pattern as support for his analysis since epistemic modals combine with an already formed proposition (CP including the subject) and are unable to affect the way an argument and the predicate combine, whereas root modals combine with the vP, a subtree containing the subject trace, but not the subject itself. Thus, the modal can mediate the subject-predicate relation directly by its LF position (Butler 2003: 977).

44

Brennan also investigates this pattern in her (1993) dissertation and elaborates on this in her book manuscript from 2004 (the 1997 reference is an earlier draft of the 2004 manuscript.) Diewald (1999: 62) points out the same type of restriction for the German dürfen.

Earlier proposals

1 59

This gives rise to a nice dichotomy, where root modals are predicatelike in combining with subjects, whereas epistemic modals combine with saturated propositions. Unfortunately, Brennan (1997) is somewhat misrepresented in Butler's article, since Brennan explicitly argues against the type of dichotomy Butler wants to advocate. Brennan recognizes that epistemic modals always have proposition-scope readings, but root modals, e.g. deontic modals, may have narrow-scope (predicate-like) or wide-scope (proposition-scope) readings. The fact that only (what we have referred to as) subject-oriented readings of root modals fit into the proposed dichotomy is left out of Butler's representation of Brennan (1997). Thus, in (40), if we grant the modal a proposition-scope root reading, the root modal behaves just like an epistemic modal with regard to the symmetric predicate. (40)

a.

Arthur must/may look like Susan. it is required/allowed that Arthur looks like Susan -> it is required/allowed that Susan looks like Arthur.

According to Butler himself (2003: 980), it is an explicit prediction of his proposal that epistemic modals invariably will take "scope over... 'canonical-scope subjects', (i.e. subjects scoping in [Spec, TP]), and root modals will take scope below [these subjects]". There are certain types of subjects, however, that scope lower than [Spec,TP]; existential subjects are associated instead with their Theta-position in [Spec, vP]. Thus, root modals ought to scope lower than canonical subjects in [Spec, TP], but over existential subjects in [Spec, vP], since "the scope position associated with root [modal]s is between the two scope positions associated with the subject" (981). Butler claims that this prediction is borne out, cf. (41): (41)

a. i.

Some philosophers must go to those seminars. Epistemic: must > some philosophers

ii.

Root: some philosophers > must (Socrates and Carnap are required to go)

iii.

Root: must > some philosophers (it is required that some philosophers go, never mind who)

Once again, this seems convincing at first glance. However, we already know that a root modal can yield a proposition-scope (wide-scope) reading

160 A survey of recent proposals even when the subject is not an existential-type subject. For instance, a root modal can just as easily scope over as under a proper name (independently referential) subject, as pointed out by numerous authors as early as the 1960s. A very appropriate question is: what is the position of the (strong) subject on this reading? (42)

a. i. ii.

John must disappear. John has an obligation to disappear (John > must). It is required that John disappears (must > John).

Now, we move on to modals and negation. The relative scope possibilities between modals and negation lead Butler to the conclusion that the LF hierarchy for modals and negation is the following. Figure 8 epistemic necessity > (negation) > epistemic possibility > root necessity > (negation) > root possibility Butler invokes the long debate on the proper characterization of negation— whether sentential negation is a prepositional or a predicate operator—and suggests that there are two negation positions in the sentence: one high position scoping over epistemic possibility but under epistemic necessity and one low position scoping over root possibility but under root necessity. (43)

a. b. c. d.

The resgistrar mustn't have got my letter. epistemic necessity > negation The registrar can't have got my letter. negation > epistemic possibility The children mustn't do that in here. root necessity > negation The children can't do that in here. negation > root possibility

Butler uses these data to support a more controversial and therefore more interesting hypothesis—that there does in fact exist a functional layer immediately dominating vP that is structurally very similar to the functional layer of (Rizzi-style) CP; the "internal periphery," in Belletti's (2001) terminology (cf. Figure 9 for the structure; Butler's (66)). Although this is an interesting idea that I will discuss in Chapter 5 , 1 consider it a problem for

Earlier proposals

1 61

Butler's hypothesis that there exist data where negation scopes over epistemic modality (as Butler does in fact mention on page 985, although he claims that this regards a very small fraction of speakers). However, the more serious problem with Butler's proposal is the attempt to force modals into a dichotomy reminiscent of the control versus raising dichotomy, where root entails a semantic relation between the subject and the modal (except for existential subjects), and epistemic entails the lack of such a relation. Although this, on a certain level of abstraction, is a garden-variety way of analyzing modals, it still does not do justice to the proposition-scope readings of root modals with 'strong' (presupposed and independently referential) subjects. Under Butler's analysis, these readings of root modals are simply not expected to exist. Figure 9 UisrvV ;ι·Ί

1 ί>ι Ρ μ..·.

i ,ιιί' α stil»?

Τ' ·,. -Ι· !'. .it ί II !

2.12.van Gelderen (2003, 2004) Van Gelderen (2003) constitutes the major part of one chapter in her 2004 book. Her analysis of root and epistemic modals in English presented in these two works can be summed up in the two tree structures in figures 10

162 A survey of recent

proposals

and 11, showing the merger position of root modals and epistemic modals, respectively. Figure 10

Figure 11

According to this proposal, deontic modals in English originate in ASP, whereas epistemic modals are in M(od) and select ASP phrases as their complements. Van Gelderen uses various arguments to support this analysis; I will discuss three of her arguments. Firstly, van Gelderen claims that present tense deontic modals derive historically from perfective verb forms, which "suggests an 'affinity' with aspect" (2003: 27). Secondly, she uses as

Earlier proposals

163

her "most compelling argument" (2003: 32) for deontic modals as ASPheads the fact that deontic predicates cannot take auxiliaries as their complements, unlike epistemic predicates. This is accounted for if epistemics select an ASPP(hrase), whereas deontics are in complementary distribution with other aspectuals, competing for the same head position. Third, double modal varieties of English typically have at most two modals with the epistemic preceding the deontic. This fits if one modal is in ASP and the other higher in the structure. Van Gelderen's first argument is that deontic modals derive from perfective verb forms and therefore in some sense still belong to the category ASP. The obvious objection to this claim is that epistemic modals arguably make use of the same forms as deontic modals. How come the aspectual properties, giving rise to the 'affinity to aspect' of deontic modals, are not retained in the epistemic verb forms? One possible answer would be to claim that whereas deontic modals derive from perfective verbs, epistemic modals derive from deontic ones; thus, they are in some sense historically, and perhaps also in terms of feature composition, more distant from their aspectual origin. However, this objection needs to be considered. 45 According to van Gelderen herself, the most compelling argument for her analysis is the fact that deontic modals do not take perfect or progressive auxiliaries as complements. 46 However, this is not quite correct. The following data, taken from Brennan (2004: 45), show that at least deontic must is quite comfortable with perfect and progressive complements, as long as a temporal adverbial of the right type occurs in the sentence or context.

45

Van Gelderen does say that elements climb higher up in the tree as they grammaticalize, as they change from lexical to grammatical elements (this mechanism, "late merge" is in fact one of the two major mechanisms of grammaticalization defended throughout the book (the other is "Head over Spec"). See also Roberts and Roussou (2002, 2003) for a similar idea. 46 She also suggests that deontic modals take as complements eventive verbs, whereas stative complements are ungrammatical if the modal is deontic (2003: 34): (i) * An orange must/may be healthy. However, this question was addressed already by Newmeyer (1969) (see also Horn 1972 and Brennan 2004), where it is shown that deontic modals certainly do take stative complements. (i) Post office employees can't smoke pot on the job, but they may have long hair. (ii) An opening hand must contain thirteen points.

164 A survey of recent proposals (44)

a.

Students must have taken calculus by the start of their senior year.

b.

The water must be boiling when you pour it over the tomatoes.

It is not obvious how these data can be accounted for in van Gelderen's analysis, represented in the tree structure in figure 11, since this structure is designed to force a complementary distribution of deontic modals and aspectuals. Van Gelderen's third argument is that epistemic modals scope over and precede deontic modals in English variants where double modals occur. This generalization holds even for Norwegian and, to my knowledge, all other languages where double modals are possible. However, even if this fact suggests that epistemic modals are merged higher in the sentence structure than deontic modals, it does by no means force an analysis of deontic modals as aspectual heads. In my opinion, the latter part of van Gelderen's analysis is therefore not sufficiently corroborated even by data from standard modern English.

2.13.Picallo (1990) As all the works mentioned in this survey have focused (most of them exclusively) on Germanic modals, I will include a work concentrating on Romance modals as the final work in this survey. Picallo's (1990) main purpose is to argue against the traditional analysis of modals as restructuring verbs (e.g. Rizzi 1978), where the structure Modal + V I N F is seen as a monosentential structure derived from an initial multiclausal structure (e.g. Burzio 1986). Picallo instead argues for an analysis of modals where the construction Modal + ViNF is monosentential on every level of representation. In Picallo's analysis, epistemic modals are constituents of INFL, whereas root modals are VP adjuncts. She specifically argues against an analysis of epistemic modals as raising verbs and root modals as control verbs, at least for Catalan. Picallo's point of departure is the ambiguity of a sentence such as (45):

Earlier proposals (45)

a.

165

El lladre pogue entrar per la finestra. the thief could come in by the window i. 'It is possible that the thief came in through the window.' ii. 'The thief was able to come in through the window.'

The ambiguity, Picallo says, follows from the fact that this sentence may be assigned two distinct D-structure configurations. The modal may be generated in INFL and receive an epistemic reading, (45ai), in which it has scope over the entire clause, or it may be generated as an adjunct to VP and receive a root reading, (45aii), in which it is interpreted as a subject-oriented secondary predicate. The two different structures are represented by Figure 12 a and b respectively. Figure 12 a: Epistemic reading IP

b: Root reading IP

Ν

Picallo goes on to present evidence from various constructions to support her claims. First, she invokes the assumption that derived subjects in Romance cannot bind anaphoric clitics (Kayne 1975; Rizzi 1986). This amounts to saying that raising predicates disallow clitic climbing of anaphoric clitics. But sentences with epistemic modals and anaphoric clitics that have undergone climbing are always fully grammatical in Catalan and in Romance languages in general, which makes Picallo conclude that epistemic modals cannot be raising predicates. Instead, these facts provide evidence for Picallo's own structure for epistemic modals (depicted in Figure 12a above), where the subject is base generated in [Spec,IP] as the external argument of the infinitive predicate. Thus, the subject of a sentence containing an epistemic modal is a non-derived subject and therefore able to bind an anaphoric clitic.

166 A survey of recent proposals Picallo finds further evidence for this structure in the fact that epistemic modals cannot be preceded by auxiliaries. On the assumption that auxiliaries are VP constituents, this fact follows if epistemic modals are generated in INFL. On the other hand, root modals are VP constituents themselves (Figure 12b above) and nothing prevents them from being preceded by an auxiliary. Thus, in (46a) the modal has only the epistemic reading, whereas in (46b), the modal has only the root reading (Picallo's (23)): (46)

a.

En Joan pot haver anat a Banyoles. Joan can have gone to Banyoles 'Joan may have gone to Banyoles.'

b.

En Joan ha pogut anar a Banyoles. has could go 'Joan has been allowed to go to Banyoles.'

Furthermore, whenever two modals occur in the same sentence, the first modal, but not both, may be interpreted as epistemic. This follows if epistemic modals are constituents of INFL (presumably because INFL has only one position, as in Roberts (1985) above). Thus, the second modal in a twomodal sequence has a root interpretation. Picallo also derives some temporal properties of epistemic modals from their base position in INFL. Epistemic modals are always finite because the modal in the head of an untensed INFL is in a position to govern PRO, which must be ungoverned. Although Picallo rejects the control versus raising analysis for Catalan modals, she does assume that root modals assign theta-roles. So the thetadifference between root and epistemic modals amounts to the property of epistemic modals to project a subject position to which they do not assign a theta-role, a property that make them unique among predicates (verbal or adjectival), she says. In contrast, root modals (and semi-modals) impose selectional requirements on the subject of the complex in which they appear; thus, they are theta-role assigners. This would be compatible with the hypothesis that root modals are obligatory-control predicates, but this is not the option chosen by Picallo. Obligatory control predicates constitute the main predicate of their own sentence, with the infinitive as the main predicate of an embedded sentence. But e«/»e-cliticization, which reveals the thematic property of a predicate as ergative or non-ergative— since the partitive clitic en is impossible with non-ergative verbs—depends on the properties of the infinitive verb and is not influenced by the modal at all.

Earlier proposals

1 67

Thus, Picallo analyses MV+Infmitive complexes as complex VPs. Thetaroles assigned by root modals are secondary theta-roles, only manifested by selectional restrictions. The infinitive is the primary predicate and determines the possibility of e«/«e-cliticization and the availability of an arbitrary interpretation of pro (Picallo 1990: 302) and these phenomena are unaffected by the modal. However, Picallo also finds evidence that the (semi-)modal voler 'wantto'—"and a few other verbs"—may function as a control main predicate in some instances: they double as primary predicates (in a structure of obligatory control) and as secondary predicates (as root modals). Again, clitic climbing is used as an important diagnostic. Picallo's article is interesting in that it attacks the control versus raising analysis from a different angle compared to the works we have examined so far. Likewise, it is intriguing that she reaches the exact opposite conclusion of Wurmbrand (1999), for instance: whereas Wurmbrand concludes from her examination that all (Germanic) modals are raising verbs, Picallo concludes from her investigation that all (Romance) modals are non-raising verbs. These generalizations would be exciting if they held up against observable facts, since modals seem to perform the same semantic tasks in Germanic and Romance (e.g. in their non-root vs. root readings), and the inventory of modals is surprisingly similar as well (e.g. poder 'may/can', deure 'must', haver de 'have to', voler 'want to', gosar 'dare'). So why should the syntactic facts be so radically different? Picallo states, for instance, that root modals obligatorily assign a thetarole and thus cannot take non-argument NPs as subjects. As we saw in Chapter 2, this is not true for Germanic modals. This has been frequently claimed for Germanic root modals, however (Dyvik 1999; Lodrup 1996a; Thräinsson and Vikner 1995). So perhaps one should undertake a broader investigation of Romance modals before celebrating the exciting differences.

3.

Modals and theta-roles

In the last few decades, a significant part of the discussion about the syntactic description of modals has revolved around the question of whether modals are theta-role assigners or not. This is not surprising as this question sheds light on the structural properties of a modal-do modals pattern with

168 A survey of recent proposals raising or control verbs? Furthermore, if the complement of a modal could be considered a clausal argument, one might argue for a biclausal structure w h e n modals are involved, whereas otherwise one might be inclined to treat modals as some kind of auxiliary or functional operator. The question of the complement's possible status as an argument seems to be explicitly addressed much more rarely than the question of a m o d a l ' s potential external theta-role, but it may be implicitly present in a number of control versus raising analyses, in part because of the " P R O theorem" (Chomsky 1981: 191). The P R O theorem states that P R O must be ungoverned, unlike a trace t, which, on the other hand, must be governed. This means that a complement of a control verb, which does contain a P R O subject, must contain a barrier to government by the verb selecting this complement. A raising verb, on the other hand, must crucially not contain such a barrier to allow the trace of the moved subject to be governed by the verb. One common way of encoding this difference within the GB version of P & P is to assume that control verbs take CP complements whereas raising verbs take VP or IP complements. If an author takes the modal to be an auxiliary, she or he will typically represent the modal as a functional head taking a VP/vP complement (cf. e.g. Roberts 1985, 1993). 47 These differences normally correlate with the author's assumptions about the theta-assigning properties of the modal. The modal-as-controlverb will be a main predicate, assigning an external theta-role to its subject and an internal theta role to its CP complement; a modal-as-raising verb will assign no external theta-role but may assign an internal theta-role to its complement; the modal-as-auxiliary is considered a clausal operator with no theta-properties (cf. e.g. Picallo 1990; Roberts 1993). Regarding the possible external theta-role of a modal, there is consensus that epistemic and other non-root modals never assign such theta-roles. As for root modals, the views expressed may be grouped into three different camps. Firstly, there are authors who advocate the straightforward version of the control versus raising analysis of modals, who implicitly or explicitly express the assumption that root modals assign an external theta-role to 47

Raising verbs are apparently able to take a range of complements. In ECM constructions they are in general assumed to take IP complements. In Norwegian, there seem to also exist raising verbs (i.e. passive and unaccusative verbs) that take small clauses as complements, e.g. (i) Jon framsto [tJon som idiot], (ii) Jon ble betraktet [tJon som idiot], Jon appeared as idiot Jon was considered as idiot 'Jon appeared to be an idiot.' 'Jon was considered an idiot.'

Modals and theta-roles

169

their subjects (e.g. Dyvik 1999; L0drup 1996a; Thräinsson and Vikner 1995 for Icelandic). Secondly, there are authors who, more or less independently of an analysis of root modals as control or raising verbs, assume root modals to assign a particular type of theta-role, one that is irrelevant or invisible to the theta-criterion. This role is dubbed an adjunct theta-role (Pollock 1989; Roberts 1985, 1993; Zubizarreta 1982), an additional thetarole (Thräinsson and Vikner 1995 for Danish; Vikner 1988) or a secondary theta-role (Picallo 1990). This adjunct/ additional/ secondary theta-role is often claimed to manifest itself in that the root modal imposes selectional requirements on its subject, unlike (other) raising verbs. 48 The third group of authors reject the control versus raising analysis and argue that modals, even root modals, are raising verbs that assign no theta-roles (Pullum and Wilson 1977; Wurmbrand 1999, 2001). These authors ascribe the aforementioned "selectional requirements" on the modal's subject not to the semantic or syntactic specification of the root modal, but to pragmatics, i.e. these effects are purely contextually determined (e.g. Wurmbrand 1999, 2001 ).49 I will examine the argument structure of Norwegian modals in Chapter 4. I argue that all three of the views mentioned above are insufficient to account for the various argument structures of Norwegian modals. The behaviour of modals in various constructions reveal that modals must posess quite differing theta-properties, depending on the construction in which they appear. Hence, it will be argued that the inventory of Norwegian modals includes main verbs, which are ordinary transitive verbs, raising-type verbs (non-root modals) and, finally, raising verbs that are optional theta-assigners (root modals). When the latter assign a subject role, they behave as control verbs in certain respects, for instance in pseudocleft constructions.

48

But note that the German evidential wollen, which is a raising verb in most analyses, seems to manifest selectional requirements as well, as was mentioned in section 2.10 above. 49 Barbiers (1995, 2002) does not fit into any of these three frames since, although Barbiers considers all modals to be raising verbs, his parameter [± Subject orientation] is in part syntactically encoded by the abstract head D.

170 A survey of recent proposals 4.

Insertion or merger point of root and non-root modals

As shown in the survey above, various authors have argued that root and epistemic modals are inserted or merged in different positions. This is particularly elaborated on in Roberts and Roussou (2002) and Cinque (1999), the former building on the latter. Recall that Cinque's hierarchy includes as many as eight or possibly nine different positions that a modal may occupy (the exact number of possible insertion positions is left undetermined in Cinque's proposal). It is the nature of the merger slot of the modal (e.g. as Modepistemic or Modvoiitionai) that determines the reading of the modal. Barbiers (1995), Butler (2003), Picallo (1990), and van Gelderen (2003, 2004) also address the possible insertion slots for root and non-root modals. Picallo argues that non-root modals are inserted in INFL while root modals are adjoined to VP. Barbiers, on the other hand, argues that non-root modals are inserted above and root modals below an abstract head D taken to encode subject-orientedness. Both authors support their findings with the observation that a modal (typically) gets an non-root reading when preceding a perfect auxiliary and a root reading when following a perfect auxiliary. This observation is also made in Dyvik (1999) for Norwegian. Butler (2003) proposes instead that root modals are merged with vP (the smallest phase containing the verb and all its arguments), whereas epistemic (i.e. non-root) modals are merged in Τ and raised at LF to scope over the CP. Van Gelderen (2003, 2004) argues that epistemic modals are merged in a M(od)-head position, whereas aspectuals and root modals are in complementary distribution because they compete for the same aspectual head position. The possible insertion slots or merger positions of Norwegian modals are addressed in Chapter 5, where I also investigate the interaction of root and non-root modals with aktionsart, aspectuals and tense. My findings suggest that although it is true that non-root modals always scope over root modals, many of the other generalizations discussed in this survey in fact do not hold up under close scrutiny.

Chapter 4 Norwegian Modals: Argument Structure

1.

Introduction

In this chapter, I examine the argument structure of Norwegian modals. First, in section 2, I review the arguments for the control versus raising analysis—the family of analyses where root modals are analyzed as control verbs and non-root modals as raising verbs—and show why these arguments do not hold up under scrutiny. I argue that both non-root and root modals—with the exception of the dyadic dynamic root modals kunne 'be able to' and ville 'want to'—pattern with raising verbs in nearly all relevant respects.1 On the other hand, root modals which indeed do pattern with raising verbs with respect to selectional and scopal properties, display control verb behavior under certain circumstances; for instance, modals with symmetric predicate complements (Brennan 1993) behave like control verbs in some respects as do root modals with definite pro-form complements (Jeg mä dette Ί must this'). Moreover, the possible interpretations of modals in pseudocleft constructions strongly suggest that even these root modal raising verbs are construed as control verbs in certain environments. Thus, the behavior of modals with a pseudoclefted complement constitutes an important part of the discussion (cf. section 3, for the empirical data and section 4 for the different approaches to the data). The main problem in describing the argument structure of Norwegian modals is that their Theta-properties seem to vary according to the type of construction; in other words, they exhibit an intriguing thematic plasticity. Modals are not the only verbs that behave in this manner; reanalysis verbs such as promise and threaten (Arad 1998; Johnson 1985) seem to behave similarly (section 3.6). Like modals, they have proposition-scope and subject-oriented readings; they also behave like raising verbs on certain readings and like control verbs in pseudoclefts.

1

See also Wurmbrand's (1999, 2001) analysis for German.

172 Norwegian modals: Argument structure In section 4, I examine the different approaches attempting to explain the ability of modals (and reanalysis verbs) to simultaneously exhibit features of raising and control verbs. Given our data, the two most promising approaches are the double entries approach and the optional Thetaassignment approach, the latter based on Hornstein (1998, 1999, 2000), who aims to reduce raising and control phenomena to the phenomenon of raising (cf. section 4.4.1). Thus, modals (and reanalysis verbs) are construed as optional θ-assigners, predicates that optionally assign an external θ-role (section 4.4.2) in the relevant specifier-head configuration. 2 In section 5, I suggest that we need a two-level semantics (in the spirit of Bierwisch and Lang 1989) to account for important uses and readings of modals. Though on one semantic level (Semantic Form) modals may be construed as one-place predicates, taking the embedded proposition as their argument, they are always two-place predicates on another semantic level (Conceptual Structure). On this level, the source of modality (what has sometimes been called the rule-giver) constitutes the first argument and the embedded proposition the second. In section 6, I sum up the most important findings. Norwegian modals always take at least one argument—an internal propositional complement. In addition, they may assign an external θ-role to their subject which is always raised from the embedded clause since modals do not assign Case to an embedded subject (cf. also Nordgärd and Äfarli 1990: 101).

2.

The control versus raising analysis

In this section, I consider the main arguments for the control versus raising (CvR) analysis, a family of analyses dating back to Ross (1969) and still advocated by many (cf. Chapter 3). The number of authors who have advocated some form of this analysis over the years is the main reason for devoting an entire section to it; even in the most recent minimalist literature on the subject, one finds this analysis in new disguises (Butler 2003). In a C v R analysis, epistemic (or more generally, non-root) modals are analyzed

2

Hornstein assumes that Theta-assignment takes place when the DP is merged with the theta-assigning predicate. Thus, Theta-roles may be assigned in headcomplement configurations as well, but the most important thematic role in the following discussion is the external Theta-role, which is assigned in a spec-head configuration.

The control versus raising analysis

173

as raising verbs and root modals as control verbs. In the survey of earlier proposals in Chapter 3, I argued against some of the arguments supporting this analysis. Here I will examine a wider range of arguments typically supporting CvR analyses and show that they do not hold up when empirical facts are examined. The crucial assumption of the CvR analysis is that root modals are transitive or two-place predicates and non-root modals are intransitive 3 or oneplace predicates. In this analysis, non-root and root modals give rise to two different syntactic structures. In a GB-style framework, the two structures can be depicted as in Figure 1.4 Figure 1 a.

3

non-root:

b. root:

In Ross (1969), the term intransitive did in fact mean that the modal took no object. Instead, the proposition (which is treated as an embedded proposition IP here) was taken to be the subject of the modal. 4 There are a number of open questions here such as why PRO and the subjecttrace occur in the same structural position. For the moment, I will gloss over these obvious questions although I will mention that Stowell (1982) proposes that the nature of the two I(NFL) heads is different. Tensed I(NFL) assigns null case, unlike untensed I(NFL); hence, only tensed I(NFL) accepts a PRO subject. Furthermore, assume that I(INFL)[+ Tense] is a barrier to government, whereas I(NFL) [-Tense] is no barrier. Obviously, this is simply restating the facts; nevertheless, this is one possible analysis that allows us to keep things simple for now.

174 Norwegian modals: Argument structure As shown by this figure, a non-root (epistemic) modal does not establish a semantic relation with its syntactic subject, unlike a root modal, which is assumed to assign a Theta-role to its syntactic subject. Hence, the syntactic subject of a root modal is also its semantic subject, and the root modal always denotes a two-place (dyadic) predicate relation. Section 3.5 of Chapter 2 presented the possible readings of Norwegian modals. I repeat the table here for convenience; please consult the relevant section for the full range of data to illustrate it. 5 Table 1 Readings available for Norwegian modals (elaborated): Dyadic: ville·. volition; kunne: ability Root:

Dynamic: Monadic: tendency (ville: strong; kunne: weaker) Dyadic: directed obligation/permission Deontic: Monadic: non-directed obligation/permission

Non-root:

Monadic: epistemic; metaphysical; evidential

Root modals are capable of proposition-scope (monadic) and subjectoriented (dyadic) readings. The dyadic readings of dynamic modals are volitional ville and the ability reading of kunne; their monadic readings are the tendency readings, strong tendency in the case of ville and weaker tendency for kunne. Deontic modals also have dyadic readings: directed (the subject has an obligation or permission) and non-directed (the obligation or permission is not directed at the subject referent). Non-root modals have only monadic readings. To analyze root modals as strictly two-place predicates requires ignoring their monadic readings, unless an auxiliary device allowing monadic readings of dyadic predicates is proposed. While ignoring the monadic readings could be justified in the case of dynamic modals—since proposition-scope readings of these modals are less frequent and more recalcitrant—proposition-scope readings of deontic modals are both frequent and 5

To facilitate the discussion in this section, I have augmented the table with the prototypical readings of the various modals.

The control versus raising analysis

175

robust and should not be dismissed (as has been argued by numerous authors since the 1960s). This, however, is required to maintain the classic control versus raising analysis. The main tenet of this analysis is the assumption that non-root modals are raising verbs, hence monadic predicates, whereas root modals are control verbs or dyadic predicates. Assuming this difference between root and non-root modals leads to a range of predictions, in particular regarding the selectional requirements imposed by the root modal onto a potential subject as well as relative scope (ambiguity) between the subject and the modal. Some important predictions are presented in Table 2 (a shorter version of this table was presented in section 2.6. of Chapter 3). Table 2

a. Take expletive subjects b. Take weather-i/e?//>ad 'it' c. Take idiom-chunk subjects d. Allow quirky subjects e. Allow passive complement with an inanimate subject f. Subject-modal scope ambiguity g. Passivize h. Pseudoclefted complement

Non-root modals yes yes yes yes yes

Root modals no no no no no

yes no no

no yes yes

Most of the predictions in Table 2 follow straightforwardly from the assumption that root modals are control verbs that assign an external θ-role and non-root modals are raising verbs that assign no external θ-role. Admittedly, some of these predictions are based on auxiliary assumptions, but these assumptions are in accordance with widely accepted hypotheses within the P & P theory such as Burzio's Generalization (Burzio 1986) and the assumption that raising structures, unlike control structures, give rise to scopal ambiguities (May 1977, 1985). In what follows, I discuss each of these predictions, consider what motivates them, mention some of their advocates, and examine how they hold up against empirical facts. Prediction a is expected on the assumption that expletive subjects are semantically empty and therefore banned from θ-positions. Since the subject position of a root modal is considered a θ-position in the C v R analysis, as the root modal obligatorily assigns an external θ-role like other control verbs, it follows that expletive subjects ought not to occur with root modals

176 Norwegian modals: Argument structure (Dyvik 1999; Thräinsson and Vikner 1995; 6 Vikner 1988 7 ). However, this prediction is not borne out, as demonstrated by the data in (1). All five cases are root readings of modals with expletive subjects. (1)

a.

Det skal bestandig vcere minst to voksne til stede. there shall always be at-least two adults present 'There should always be at least two adults present.'

b.

Det mä komme minst femtipersoner. there must come at least fifty persons 'At least fifty people must show up.'

c.

Det bor bli forandringer m.h.t. dennepraksisen. there should occur changes in this (code of) practice 'This code of practice ought to change.'

d.

Det kan vcere opptil fire patroner i hylsa pr. ladning. there can be up-to four cartridges in caseDEF pr load 'There can be up to four cartridges in the case in one load.'

e.

Det behover/trenger ikke vcere noen voksne til stede. there need not be any adults at-placeDAT 'There need not be any adults present.'

The dyadic (volitional) version of the modal ville 'want to' behaves as predicted by the CvR analysis, typically rejecting expletive subjects, as in (2a). Likewise, the modal kunne 'can' on its dyadic, or ability, reading behaves like a control verb, as in (2b), even though the deontic (permissive) reading of kunne 'may' patterns with all other modals in readily accepting expletive subjects, as (Id) shows. As discussed above, there are also monadic root readings of dynamic modals (the tendency or quantificational readings, of

6

As shown in section 2.6 of Chapter 3, Vikner (1988) and Thräinsson and Vikner (1995) assume that Danish modals are raising verbs. However, since (some) root modals are assumed to assign an 'additional theta-role' and this additional thetarole assignment is taken to be subject to certain restrictions (Thräinsson and Vikner 1995: 64), this analysis results in the same predictions as the mainstream control versus raising analysis. 7 Vikner (1988: fn 6) actually claims that no modal takes an expletive subject.

The control versus raising analysis 177 Carlson 1977 and Brennan 1993, 1996 s ), and dynamic kunne and ville do accept expletive subjects on this specific reading, as in (2c) and (2d); this is also one possible reading of (Id). (2)

a.

#Det vil komme en mann hit i morgen. there will come a man here in morning 'There wants to come a man here tomorrow.' (^volitional)

b.

#Det kan komme ti gjester i fßdselsdagen din. there can come ten guests to your birthday party 'There are able to come ten guests.' (*ability)

c.

Det kan vcere ganske mange her pä fredager. there can be quite many here on Fridays 'There tend to be a lot of people here on Fridays.'

d.

Det vil stadig oppstä krangier mellom dem. there will constantly arise arguments between them 'There tend to occur arguments between them.'

As already mentioned, expletives are non-arguments and thus expected not to occur in θ-positions. The same applies to other non-arguments such as weather it and idiom-chunk subjects, according to Thräinsson and Vikner (1995). Again, the expectation is borne out for ville 'want to' on its dyadic volitional reading, as in (3 a), but not on the monadic tendency reading, as in (3b) and (3c). (3)

a.

Det vil sn0 snart. it will/wants to snow soon 'It will/*wants to snow soon.' (metaphysical, *volitional)

b.

Det vil gjerne sn0 en hel del her om vinteren. it will typically snow a great deal here in winterDEF 'It tends to snow a great deal here in the winter.'

8 This reading of modals is often found with generic statements, e.g. a basketball player can be short, paraphrased as 'there exist short basketball players' (Brennan 1993: 96). Brennan also lists related readings as "quantificational", e.g. Joan can be silly, paraphrased as 'Joan has a tendency to behave in a silly manner'.

178 Norwegian modals: Argument structure c.

Nod vil loere naken kvinne ä spinne (idiom: Nod leerer naken kvinne ä spinne). *'Need wants to teach naked woman to spin.' (volitional) 'Need tends to teach naked woman to spin.' (tendency) 'Need will teach naked woman to spin.' (metaphysical)

The dynamic modal kunne 'can' accepts idiom-chunk (but not weather it) subjects even on a dyadic ability reading, as in (4a) and (4b), and it readily accepts both idiom-chunk and weather it subjects on the monadic tendency reading which can be paraphrased as 'it (sometimes) happens that p'. (4)

a.

Nod kan leere naken kvinne ä spinne. (idiom: Nod leerer naken kvinne ä spinne) 'Need is able to teach a naked woman to spin.' (ability) 9 'Need can teach a naked woman to spin.' (quantificational) 'Need can teach naked woman to spin.' (epistemic)

b.

Det kan sno mye mer enn dette. *'Tt is able to snow much more than this.' (ability) 'It can snow much more than this.' (quantificational) 'It can snow much more than this.' (epistemic)

Deontic modals also readily accept weather it and idiom-chunk subjects, contrary to predictions b and c in Table 2. Thus, no root modal in Norwegian completely rejects a non-argument subject, defying the predictions of the CvR analysis. (5)

9

a.

Nä bor det snart regne; gresset er sä tort. now should it soon rain; grassDEF is so dry 'It ought to rain soon; the grass is so dry.'

b.

Det kan ikke sno nä som vi er pä landtur! it can not snow that we are on picnic 'It cannot snow now that we are on a picnic!' (deontic)

Non-animate subjects, e.g. instruments, are generally possible on this reading: Denne mkkelen kan äpne alle derer 'This key can (is able to) open any door'.

The control versus raising analysis c.

Det mä blase sterkere for at draken skal lette. it must blow stronger for kiteDEF to fly 'It must be windier for the kite to fly.'

d.

M.h.t. Jon, sä kan fanden ta ham. (idiom: Fanden ta Jon\) as regards Jon then devilDEF can take him ' A s for John, the devil may take him.' (deontic)

179

Prediction d in Table 2 states that only non-root modals allow for quirky (non-nominative) subjects (Thräinsson 1986; Thräinsson and Vikner 1995). T h e argument goes as follows: root modals do not select for quirky subjects. Like other control predicates, they select for nominative subjects. N o n - r o o t modals, on the other hand, are raising predicates and impose no selectional requirements on their subjects. Thus, if a predicate that requires a quirky subject is embedded under a non-root modal, the quirky subject may be raised to the subject position of the non-root modal, retaining its quirky case. N o such raising can take place with root modals, since root modals are control structures, which implies that their subject position is obligatorily occupied by a nominative subject. 1 0

10

It is somewhat curious and a matter of theoretical development that Roberts (1985: 38, 1993: 314) takes exactly the existence of quirky subject + modal data as evidence (or at least an indication) that modals were control structures in Middle English. Thus, the same data that Wurmbrand (1999) uses to argue that modals are raising verbs in modern Icelandic Roberts uses to argue that they are control verbs in Middle English. Roberts' (1985) argument goes as follows: quirky subjects possess inherent Case. Thus, there is no need, and in fact no way, for the subject to raise; there is nothing to drive this movement. As the subject precedes the modal, the explanation must be that the subject is base-generated as the subject of a modal, i.e. the modal must be a control verb. At that time, it was a widespread assumption within the P&P Theory that the subject's need (and Greed·, Chomsky 1993) for Case was the only driving force behind NP/DP movement. Later this assumption was modified, when the Extended Projection Principle (the EPP) was introduced as another possible driving force for DP movement (cf. Chomsky 1993, Lasnik 1995). Roberts' (1993) argument for considering these data as evidence for control structures is that they "could not be treated in terms of raising, since raising cannot place an NP in indirect object position (on the assumption that no operation of 'quirky raising' creating dative subjects exists; we assume that it does not since this would allow dative expletives, something we do not find)."

180 Norwegian modals: Argument structure However, Wurmbrand (1999) provides some data where root readings are possible although the subject is clearly quirky. (6)

a.

Haraldi / *Haraldur verdur ad lika hamborgarar. Harold-DAT /Harold-NOM must to like hamburgers 'Harold must like hamburgers (in order to be accepted by his new American in-laws).'

b.

Umscekjandann verdur ad vantapeninga. The-applicant-ACC must to lack money 'The applicant must lack money (in order to apply for this grant).'

Since root readings are acceptable in these sentences, as claimed by Wurmbrand's Icelandic informants (and confirmed by mine), we have counterevidence for the prediction that quirky subjects are incompatible with root readings of modals. Thus, if quirky subjects are indeed ungrammatical in control structures, as claimed by Thräinsson and Vikner (1995)," this is yet another indication that at least some root modals are not control verbs in Icelandic and that some root modals pattern with raising verbs. Interestingly, the Icelandic counterparts to the Norwegian dyadic dynamic root modals kunne 'can' and ville 'want to', kunna and vilja, reject a root reading when the subject is quirky. Thus, these two modals apparently pattern with control, not raising, verbs (the embedded predicates in (7) make a root reading rather dubious; thus only the quirky subjects are grammatical). 12 (7)

a.

Haraldi /*Haraldur vill leidast. HaraldDAT/HaraldNOM will borePASS 'Harold has a tendency to be bored.'

b.

Haraldi /*Haraldur kann ad leidast. HaraldDAT/HaraldNOM may to borePASS 'Harold may be bored.' (epistemic)

11 Norbert Hornstein (p.c.): "Boskovic (1994) provides examples from Spanish where quirky subjects are possible in control (-like) structures. This may be due to a parametric difference between Spanish and Icelandic, as Spanish evidently allows for quirky subjects in control structures whereas Icelandic does not." 12 Thanks to Johannes Gisli Jonsson and Johanna Barödal for data and judgments.

The control versus raising analysis

181

These two Icelandic root modals take nominative subjects, as (8) shows. A predicate requiring a quirky subject cannot be directly embedded under them; the causative lata ser needs to be added to the construction: (8)

a.

Haraldur vill ekki lata ser leidast. HaraldNOM wants not let self bore-PASS 'Harold won't let himself be bored.'

b.

Haraldur kann ekki ad lata ser leidast. HaraldNOM can not to let self bore-PASS 'Harold does not know how to be bored.'

Thus, although at least some deontic root modals pattern with raising verbs with respect to quirky subjects in Icelandic, the Icelandic counterparts to the Norwegian dyadic dynamic root modals (volitional ville and ability kunne) pattern with control verbs in not accepting quirky subjects. Prediction e in Table 2 states that only non-root modals are compatible with passive complements with inanimate subjects (Lodrup 1996a). Again, this claim is based on the alleged selectional requirements imposed onto the subjects of root modals: if root modals are control structures, they are expected to select for human or at least intentional subjects. This intentional subject controls the reference of the PRO subject of the embedded passive. Thus, if this embedded subject (PRO) is inanimate, there is a semantic mismatch between the controller and the controllee. 13 If we resolve the mismatch by providing the root modal with an inanimate subject, there ought to be a mismatch between this subject and the root modal as control verb selecting for intentional subjects. This mismatch is indeed manifested in control structures such as (9a). No such anomaly arises with raising structures, as (9b) shows. Crucially, no such anomaly or mismatch arises with modals either, as in (9c), which allows for a root as well as a non-root reading (data quoted from Wurmbrand 1999; originally from Warner 1993). The important thing to note here is that not even a root reading gives rise to a mismatch effect although such an effect would indeed be expected if root modals were control verbs.

13 An appropriate question would be how such a sentence could be expressed at all since a PRO subject of a predicate embedded under a control predicate obligatorily gets its reference from the matrix subject in the case of subject control or from the matrix object in the case of object control.

182 Norwegian modals: Argument structure (9)

a. b. c.

*The biscuits tried/decided to be finished by Paul. The biscuits seem to have been finished by Paul. The biscuits may be finished by Paul.

Most Norwegian root modals behave like English may in this respect. They behave like raising structures, with no selectional requirements ruling out an inanimate subject. (10)

a.

Maten mä/ skal/kan/ bßr/behever ikke/trenger ikke foodDEF must/shall/should/need not/need not bli servert snart. be served soon

b.

Maten mä/skal/kan/b0r/behover ikke/trenger ikke foodDEF must/shall/should/need not/need not serveres snart. servePASS soon 'The food must/will/may/should/need not be served soon.' (root/non-root)

However, the dynamic modals ville 'want to' and kunne 'can' are more recalcitrant in this construction. Again, volitional ville patterns with control structures in displaying a mismatch between an inanimate subject and the root modal; 14 likewise, kunne in its ability reading is marginal in this construction, as (11) shows. (11)

14

a.

Maten vil bli servert snart. foodDEF will be served soon 'The food will/*wants to be served soon.'

It is always possible to get a non-anomalous reading of such sentences if we allow for animation of inanimate referents (metaphorical uses). If we ascribe the human property of wanting to something inanimate such as 'the food', we can get a volitional reading of ville here. Such uses are normally discarded in discussions on selectional requirements of semantic properties such as [± human] or [± animate] .

The control versus raising analysis b.

183

Maten kan bli servert snart. foodDEF can be served soon ??'The food is able to be served soon.'

However, on the monadic dynamic (tendency) reading, ville and kunne both accept passive complements with inanimate subjects, as in (12): (12)

a.

Maten vil gjerne server es senere pä fredager. foodDEF will typically servePASS later on Fridays 'The food tends to be served later on Fridays.'

b.

Maten kan iblant serveres senere pä fredager. foodDEF can sometimes servePASS later on Fridays 'The food is occasionally served later on Fridays.'

Prediction f of Table 2 states that on the CvR analysis subject-modal scope ambiguity is to be expected with non-root but not with root modals (cf. also Wurmbrand 1999). This prediction stems from the observation (May 1977, 1985) that control and raising structures differ with respect to the scope properties of their syntactic subjects. Raising constructions allow for an interpretation in which the subject takes narrow scope with respect to the raising verb ("subject lowering"); in contrast, control verbs never scope over their subjects, which forces a wide-scope reading of the subject: the two readings of the raising structure in (13a) versus the single reading of the control structure in (13b); data from Wurmbrand (1999). (13)

a.

Someone from New York is likely to win in the lottery. i) There is somebody from N.Y. and he is likely to win in the lottery. ii) It is likely that somebody from N.Y. will win in the lottery.

b.

Someone from NY tried/promised to win in the lottery. There is somebody from N.Y. and he tried/promised to win in the lottery.

An investigation of this scopal ambiguity in Norwegian modals reveals that most root modals pattern with raising structures in allowing for narrowscope and wide-scope readings of the modal, as in (14).

1 84 Norwegian modals: Argument structure (14)

a.

Noen sekere bar/kan/mä/skal sake igjen. ' S o m e applicants should/may/must/will apply again.' i) There exist some applicants and they should/may/must/will apply again. ii) It is preferred/allowed/necessary/intended that some applicants (whoever they are) apply again.

b.

Noen S0kere behever ikke/trenger ikke S0ke igjen. ' S o m e applicants need not apply again.' i) There exist some applicants and they need not apply again. ii) There is no need for some applicants (whoever they might be) to apply again. 15

Again, the volitional reading of ville and the ability reading of kunne behave more like control structures; they are incompatible with a narrowscope reading of the subject, as in (15a) and (15b). However, on the tendency reading, the dynamic modals display the subject-modal ambiguity expected from a raising verb, as in (15c) and (15d). (15)

15

a.

Noen sßkere vil soke igjen. some applicants will apply again ' S o m e applicants want to apply again.'

b.

Noen sokere kan ogsä soke til neste or. some applicants can also apply for next year ' S o m e applicants are also able to apply next year.'

c.

Noen S0kere vil gjerne soke hvert or. some applicants will typically apply every year ' S o m e applicants tend to apply every year.' i) There exist some applicants and they tend to apply every year. ii) There is a tendency that some applicants apply every year.

A more natural way to express this meaning would be Ingen sokere behever ä soke igjen 'no applicants need apply again', but (14bii) is still possible.

The control versus raising analysis d.

1 85

Noen sokere kan S0ke ti är pä rad some applicants can apply ten years in a row ' S o m e applicants could apply ten years in a row.' i) There exist some applicants and they are inclined to apply ten years in a row. ii) There is a tendency that some applicants apply ten years in a row.

As noted by L0drup (1996a), if root modals are control structures, one might expect them to passivize, given that this is typically true of control verbs. However, Norwegian root modals do not passivize. The apparent exceptions are the main verb version of the modal ville 'want to', which marginally passivizes when it takes a CP complement, and the main verb version of kunne ' c a n ' , which marginally passivizes when it takes a D P complement 1 6 (cf. also Öhlschläger 1989: 59-60 and fn. 12 for German 1 7 ). In addition, the main verb versions of the two new members of the class of modals, trenger ikke/behover ikke 'need not', passivize. The passives in (16) are not passives of the modal auxiliaries kunne, ville and tr enger ikke/behover ikke firstly, because there is no verbal or directional complement to which they could function as auxiliaries, 18 and secondly, because 16 Recall from Chapter 2 that neither ville nor kunne passivize when they take a verbal complement. (i) *(??Ä) lese leksen mä kunnes i morgen. to read the homework must can-PASSIVE tomorrow O n e must be able to read one's homework tomorrow.' (ii) *(??Ä) laere seg matematikk mä ikke bare 0nskes, det mä villes. to learn REFL mathematics must not only wishPASS, it must wantPASS O n e must not only wish to learn mathematics, one must want it.' Even ordinary control structures are in some cases more comfortable with a nonverbal complement in their passive versions. Alternatively, the so-called complex passive substitutes for the construction [control verbPASS + embedded infinitive]. (iii) Det ble forsokt ä äpne doren/ Deren ble forsokt äpnet it was tried to open doorDEF/ doorDEF was tried openPERF (iv) *Det häpes ä gjenoppta forhandlingene/Forhandlingene häpes gjenopptatt. it hopePASS to recommence negotiationsDEF/negotiations hopePASS recommencedPERF 17 The German cognates of kunne and ville, können and wollen marginally passivize, but only when their complements are non-infinitives, Öhlschläger notes. 18 A modal with a directional complement is an auxiliary, as shown by the different tests in section 4.2 of Chapter 2.

1 86 Norwegian modals: Argument structure all four verbs accept do-replacement in their active version. The latter property applies to lexical, non-auxiliary verbs only (cf. Chapter 2 for the full range of supporting data). Thus, the active versions of these passives are the main verb versions of kunne, ville and trenger/beh0ver ikke ((16a) and (16b) are from Lodrup 1996a). (16)

a.

Leksen mä kunnes i morgen. lessonDEF must canPASS tomorrow ' Y o u should know your lesson by tomorrow.'

b.

Dette mä ikke bare onskes, det mä villes. This must not only wishPASS, it must willPASS ' Y o u must not only wish this, you must want it.'

c.

Medisinen trengs/behoves ikke lenger. medicineDEF needPASS no longer 'The medicine is no longer needed.'

The modal auxiliaries do not passivize. Barbiers (1995: 157) claims that modals are statives and statives in general do not passivize. [M]odal verbs behave identically to other stative transitive verbs with respect to standard transitivity tests.... As has long been known, ...transitivity is not a sufficient condition for felicitous passivization of a verb. The verb must have a dynamic aspect.... Since modals and transitives select the auxiliary HAVE in the perfect, ...there does not appear to be any reason to assign the modals...a syntactic status different from stative transitive verbs. On the other hand, the fact that modals require have as their governor in the perfect does not automatically grant them membership in the class of transitive verbs. There are predicates in Norwegian, considered raising or unaccusative verbs by most linguists, that require ha ' h a v e ' as their governing auxiliary in the perfect: se ut til ä 'seem to \framsta som 'appear as i f , vise seg 'turn o u t \ forekomme meg 'appear to me'. 1 9 Even the passive perfect,

As for forekomme meg Vikner (1995: 260) states that it selects vcere 'be' rather then ha 'have' as an auxiliary in Danish. This seems to be one reason why Vikner assumes that this verb is "ergative with two internal objects," whereas he believes vise sig 'turn out' to be transitive, with the "embedded CP" as one argument and sig as the other. In Norwegian, forekomme meg 'appear to me' with vcere 'be' as an auxiliary sounds very archaic or straightforwardly ungrammatical. 19

The control versus raising analysis

187

requiring the auxiliary vcere ' b e ' in earlier stages of Norwegian, allows— and perhaps prefers—ha 'have' in modern Norwegian. 2 0 This is hence not a valid test for separating transitives from intransitives, at least not in Norwegian. The raising constructions mentioned above do not passivize, a feature they share with modal auxiliaries. On the other hand, it is certainly not the case that all control modals passivize either, especially stative ones. (17)

a.

*Det häpes/blir häpet ä kunne äpne der a. there hopePASS to canINF open the door (Intended: ' O n e hopes to be able to open the door.')

b.

*Det vites/ blir visst ä komme seg fram. there knowPASS to come SELF forward (Intended: ' O n e knows how to advance oneself.')

Let us now summarize what we have uncovered about the eight predictions of the CvR analysis in Table 2, repeated here for convenience as Table 3. Table 3

a. Take expletive subjects b. Take weather-det/Pad 'it' c. Take idiom-chunk subjects d. Allow quirky subjects e. Allow passive complement with an inanimate subject f. Subject-modal scope ambiguity g. Passivize h. Pseudoclefted complement

Non-root modals yes yes yes yes yes

Root modals no no no no no

yes no no

no yes yes

The last prediction, concerning pseudocleft constructions, will be discussed in the next subsection. Before looking at pseudoclefts, however, I sum up the results so far. Predictions a, b, and c all concern the ability to take non-argument subjects. The CvR analysis predicts that non-root modals do and root modals do not take non-argument subjects. W e have seen that this is prediction is not borne out. Norwegian modals, root and non-root, take non-argument 20

Also, the English passive construction requires have to govern it in the perfect.

1 88 Nonvegian modals: Argument structure subjects. Exceptions are the volitional reading of the dynamic root modal ville 'want to' and the ability reading of kunne 'can'; however, their impersonal (monadic) root readings take non-argument subjects. Wurmbrand (1999) presents counterevidence to prediction d; she offers Icelandic data, in (6) above, to show that root modals occur with quirky subjects. Again, dyadic dynamic modals are an exception. The Icelandic counterparts of the Norwegian dyadic dynamic modals behave like control verbs, not allowing for quirky subjects, as the data in (7) show; the reading of these two modals is never dyadic when the subject is quirky. 21 Prediction e is not fulfilled either; only the volitional reading of the dynamic root modal ville 'want to' and to a certain extent kunne 'can' on the ability reading behave as predicted by the CvR analysis; all other root modals accept passive complements with inanimate subjects. Furthermore, all root modals except volitional ville 'want to' and the ability reading of kunne 'be able to' display the subject-modal ambiguity we find with non-root modals and other raising predicates. Finally, no root modal auxiliaries passivize, unlike control verbs. We find passives of verbs that look like modal auxiliaries, but it is always the transitive, main verb version of the modal that undergoes passivization, with a DP or a CP complement as direct object. Moreover, only ville 'want to', kunne 'can' and trenger/behever ikke 'need not' have main verb versions. That is, we have so far found compelling counterevidence for seven out of the eight predictions listed in Tables 2 and 3. The evidence suggests instead an analysis of both non-root and root modals as raising predicates, with the exception of volitional ville and ability kunne. The dynamic root modals ville 'want to' and kunne 'be able to' are a problem for an analysis of all modals as raising verbs. These two modals, on their subject-oriented, dyadic reading, behave more like control verbs with respect to the features examined so far. This seems like a good reason to adopt a control analysis for the subject-oriented dynamic versions of the root modals kunne and ville. There are issues with this, however, that I will discuss soon. Also, note that their non-root and monadic root (tendency) versions appear to be raising verbs. The emerging picture is that the dynamic modals kunne and ville on their ability and volitional reading, respectively, seem to fit nicely into the

21

Note that the reading often described as "epistemic" (non-root) for the Icelandic vilja seems to be the same as the tendency reading found with Norwegian ville·, in the present investigation, this reading is described as an impersonal dynamic reading, hence a root reading (though still a monadic/proposition-scope reading).

The control versus raising analysis

189

pattern predicted by the control versus raising analysis. The CvR analysis, however, cannot account for the empirical facts observed with other root modals. Deontic root modals and impersonal dynamic modals, like their non-root counterparts, pattern with raising structures with respect to the properties listed in Tables 2 and 3. The obvious conclusion is that non-root modals, deontic root modals, and monadic dynamic root modals are in fact all raising verbs; thus, the control versus raising opposition does not follow the division between root and non-root modals. Instead, there is a split within the group of root modals, with dyadic kunne and ville in one subcategory and all other root modals in another. I repeat the list of properties from Table 2 in Table 4 below, this time as a list of actual findings, not predictions. For now, I leave out the prediction concerning pseudoclefted complements as this issue will be investigated thoroughly in the next section. I also include other raising verbs and control verbs in the table to complete the picture. Table 4

a. Take expletive subjects b. Take wtsihtr-det/frad 'it' c. Take idiom-chunk subjects d. Allow quirky subjects e. Allow passive complement with an inanimate subject f. Subject-modal scope ambiguity g. Passivize

Raising verbs Non-root modals Root modals: Deontic & Monadic dynamic yes yes yes yes yes

Control verbs Volition- ville KbiMty-kunne no no no no no

yes no

no yes/no

Table 4 shows that deontic root modals and monadic dynamic root modals pattern with non-root modals and other raising verbs with respect to the properties under discussion; dyadic (subject-oriented) dynamic root modals, on the other hand, pattern with control verbs, except for the fact that they do not passivize. This means that the control versus raising analysis makes the correct predictions for volitional ville and ability kunne, but not for the other root modals. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the advocates of this analysis typically support their arguments with examples of kunne and ville, implicitly or explicitly assuming that the analysis carries

190 Norwegian modals: Argument structure over to all other root modals. What we have found, however, is that the control versus raising analysis does not apply to the other root modals in Norwegian or their counterparts in English (Wurmbrand 1999), German (Öhlschläger 1989) or Icelandic (Wurmbrand 1999). Root modals in Norwegian show signs of being raising verbs, just like their non-root counterparts. Volitional ville and ability kunne, which seemingly behave as control verbs, are the only exceptions. However, as mentioned above, there are some issues with this. Barbiers (1995, 2002) provides evidence that modals with a directional complement are raising structures at least in Dutch (cf. section 2.7, Chapter 3). Using the "uncontroversial diagnostic" that small clause complements cannot be extraposed, Barbiers (2002) shows that the directional complements of modals are indeed small clauses, as in (18a) and (18b) (Barbiers' (13)). (18)

a.

dat Jan morgen moet < *naar Amsterdam> 'That John tomorrow to Amsterdam must to Amsterdam.'

b.

dat de brief morgen mag < *in de prullenbak> 'That the letter tomorrow into the trashcan may into the trashcan.'

c.

Jan drinkt [sc zieh /*PRO ziek]. John drinks SELF sick 'John drinks himself sick.'

d.

Jant moet [pp ti naar Amsterdam]. John must to Amsterdam 'John must go to Amsterdam.'

If the bracketed constituents are small clause complements, the DPs Jan and de brief must be their subjects. Their subjects cannot be PRO; a small clause complement of a selecting verb cannot have PRO as its subject, as (18c) taken from Barbiers (2002) shows; therefore, the subject must have raised from a position inside the small clause, as in (18d) (op.cit. (14b)). 22

22

Small clauses with PRO subjects appear in adjunct positions, headed by som (Norwegian), as (English) and als (German). Cf. e.g. Eide (1997, 2000a, 2000b),

The control versus raising analysis

191

There is evidence that the corresponding structures are raising structures even in Norwegian. For instance, in (19a), both a narrow- and a wide-scope reading of the subject en mann 'a man' are possible, a property typically associated with raising structures. We have seen that volitional ville has the semantic and syntactic characteristics of a control verb, but it is still grammatical and felicitous in the raising construction in (19b). Ability kunne, despite having control verb properties, is likewise possible in this construction, perhaps not in standard Norwegian, but in many dialects (19c), and also in German (19d). (19)

a.

En mann mä ut αν styret. a man must out of boardDEF Ά man must leave the board.'

b.

Ola ville hjem. Ola wanted home O l a wanted to go home.'

c.

Marit var syk og kunne ikke pä skolen. Marit was ill and could not on schoolDEF 'Marit was sick and couldn't go to school.'

d.

Können Sie selber ins Auto? German 23 can you self in-the car 'Are you able to get into the car by yourself?'

This is an issue for the otherwise convincing analysis of volitional ville and ability kunne as control predicates. If these modals are control verbs, they ought not to occur in raising structures. Preferably, our analysis should provide an explanation for this piece of empirical evidence. All other root modals behave as raising verbs, according to Table 4. However, things get more complicated in pseudocleft constructions.

Eide and Flaate (1999), Flaate (1998), Flaate (2005) and Flaate and Eide (1998). 23 Thanks to Professor Herbert Pütz for providing this example.

192 Norwegian modals: Argument structure 3.

Modals in pseudoclefts

The subject of this section is the last prediction in Table 2—that only root modals (20b), not non-root modals (20a), accept a pseudoclefted complement (data from Thräinsson and Vikner 1995: 61). (20)

a.

*Det hun kan er at have sovet over sig. (Danish) it she can is to have slept over self (Intended: 'What is possible is that she has overslept.')

b.

En av de ting han ikke kan er at sv0mme. (Danish) one of the things he not can is to swim 'One of the things he cannot (do) is to swim.'

Thräinsson and Vikner (1995) suggest that this difference is expected on the CvR analysis if we assume that the trace of a moved constituent within the relative clause needs Case. According to the authors, this is a wh-trace, and by "standard assumption" (62), wh-traces need Case. The structure proposed for the relative clause is shown in Figure 2 (op. cit. 62), translated into a tree structure in Figure 3. Figure 2 X, [CP (opO (that)... t;...] Figure 3

DP, Det

CP spec

it 'What

C'

(that)

she she

kan may may

(do/have done)...'

Modais in pseudoclefts

193

According to this proposal, it is the trace tj within the relative clause CP that needs to be assigned Case by a governing verb. The authors account for the generalization that only root modals accept a pseudoclcftcd complement by means of Burzio's Generalization: "only verbs that assign an external θ-role to a subject assign Case to their complements" (Burzio 1986). Root modals, according to this proposal, assign an external θ-role to a subject and thus assign case to their complement, in this case the (wh-) trace of the moved constituent, the operator "op." In contrast, non-root modals are raising verbs and pattern with unaccusatives. They assign neither an external θ-role to a subject nor case to a complement; the {wh-) trace in the complement position of a non-root modal in the relative clause could not be licensed and the structure is ill-formed. Thräinsson and Vikner's (1995) account of modals in pseudoclefts thus rests on four basic assumptions: 1) Burzio's Generalization, that the Case-assigning properties of the modal are dependent on its θ-assigning properties; 2) that only a root modal, not a non-root modal, assigns an external θ-role and therefore Case to its complement; 3) that the movement inside the relative clause is a subtype of w/z-movement; and 4) that wh-traces need case. We will focus for a moment on the last assumption. It is indeed a standard assumption within Government and Binding Theory that wA-traces need Case (Chomsky 1981: 175; Jaeggli 1980) though this restriction does not apply to all types of wh-traces. l-F/z-traces in Case, or argument, positions need Case, but wft-traces in non-argument positions—adjunct or Abar positions—do not. When the questioned constituent is a non-argument, the Case requirement does not apply to the wh-trace, since this requirement applies to argument-type wh-traces only. The question is whether the trace within the relative clause must be construed as an argument-type wh-trace. When the operator "op" pertains to the complement of a control verb, this seems reasonable. Control verbs assign (at least) two θ-roles, one external and one internal, the latter to a clausal category such as CP. The argument assigned the internal θ-role may undergo vWi-movcmcnt and the resulting wh-trace is presumably assigned Case (21a). Root modals seemingly behave like control verbs in whconstructions; their complement may undergo w/?-movement. as in (21b). (21)

a.

Hva,pr0vdej Jon tj tj? what tried Jon 'What did John try?'

194 Norwegian modals: Argument structure b.

Hvctj mätte/skulle/villej Jon tt tt ? what [must/should/want]+past Jon 'What did John have to/intend to/want to (do)?'

A non-root reading of the modals in (21b) is unavailable, a fact lending support to Thräinsson and Vikner's proposal. However, if a wh-trace complement of a raising verb requires Case, we also expect the complement of perfect auxiliaries and other raising verbs to be banned from wA-movement. Perfect auxiliaries are like raising verbs in that they do not assign an external θ-role to their subjects or Case to their complement. However, the complements of perfect auxiliaries and certain raising verbs are not excluded from undergoing w/z-movement. This type of movement is marginal, but not ungrammatical, as (22) shows. (22)

a.

A: Jon harfaktisk solgt bilen uten hennes samtykke. Jon has actually sold carDEF without her consent 'John has actually sold the car without her consent.' Β : HVA har han?!24 what has he 'What has he (done)?'

b.

A: Bilen ser ut til ä vcere en eneste rusthaug. carDEF seems to be one single pile-of-rust 'The car seems to be one big pile of rust.' B: HVA ser den ut til?! what seems it out to 'What does it seem (to be)?'

Since the wh-trace is licensed in these constructions, 25 it seems that the questioned constituent in (22) does not need Case. If this wA-movement is

24

The vcA-moved element could be represented as in (i) or in (ii), but I will argue below for a structure even simpler than (i). (i) Hva\ harκ hanj ίκ [ t j [ ti ]] (leaving the subject trace behind) (ii) Hvai hary^ hanj tK [ ti ] (subject trace part of w/z-constituent). 25 Though it is possible for the complement of the perfect auxiliary to undergo whmovement, it cannot undergo a pseudocleft, as will be discussed below.

Modais in pseudoclefts

195

possible with aspectuals and certain raising verbs in matrix clauses, why should this wA-trace have different Case properties in relative clauses? It seems that it cannot be the Case requirement of the wh-trace that determines the behavior of modals in pseudoclefts. A related line of investigation considers the definite reference requirement of the operator "op" in relative clauses in Norwegian. 26 For instance, "op" is illicit in a structure where it gets its reference from an existential postverbal subject, e.g. in unaccusative or passive structures such as (23a) and (23b). The corresponding non-relative structures, (23c) and (23d), are grammatical, however. One evidently cannot relativize the postverbal DPposition in existential or passive constructions; instead, a structure without the expletive must be used, as in (23e) and (23f). (23)

26

a.

*Jeg traff en mann som det kom forbi. I met a man that there came by (Intended: Ί met a man who was passing by.')

b.

*Jegfant en hatt som det hadde blitt kasta. I found a hat that there had been thrown (Intended: Ί found a hat that someone had thrown away.')

c.

Det kom en mann forbi. there came a man by Ά man came by.'

d.

Det hadde blitt kasta ei bok. there had been thrown a book Ά book had been thrown away.'

e.

Jeg traff en mann som kom forbi. I met a man that came by Ί met a man who was passing by.'

f.

Jeg fant ei bok som hadde blitt kasta. I found a book that had been thrown Ί found a book that someone had thrown away.'

This was mentioned in Eide (2002a). To my knowledge, this was then a novel observation though this effect has been referred to in later works, e.g. Aa (2004).

196 Norwegian modals: Argument structure As pointed out by A a (2004), it is not very surprising that the phonetically empty operator " o p " would impose a requirement along these lines since this operator performs the same function as relative pronouns in English (who) and German (der) and these pronouns are always definite. 2 7 Lodrup (1996a), as discussed in section 2.8 of Chapter 3, observes that Norwegian modals sometimes take the definite pronoun dette 'this' as their complement, where dette refers to the V P complement of the modal. Crucially, the modal always gets a root interpretation in these cases. (24)

a.

Dette kan/vil/skal/mä/b0r jeg ikke. this can/will/shall/must/ought I not Ί can't/won't/shouldn't/mustn't/ought not to do this.'

It seems promising to relate these two observations: that the operator "op" is definite, like a definite pronoun, and that root modals, but not non-root modals, take definite pronoun complements. 2 8 Only root modals take the type of complement that fulfills the requirements of "op"; therefore, only the complement of root modals can be pseudoclefted. The generalization in Thräinsson and Vikner (1995), that root modals do and non-root modals do not accept a pseudoclefted complement, could thus be explained along these lines. Given the data in (22), this explanation may account more effectively for the observed facts than the Case-solution presented by Thräinsson and Vikner. However, our discussion has not as yet exhausted the patterns of modals in pseudocleft constructions. These patterns are more complex than the dichotomy presented in Thräinsson and Vikner (1995). To fully explain the behavior of modals in pseudoclefts, w e need to investigate these patterns in more detail.

27

This effect exists even in other types of ivA-movement, e.g. Hva skjedde (*det)? but (ii) Det skjedde en ulykke. 'What happened (-there)?' 'There happened an accident'. 28 As noted by Lodrup, both types of modal (root and non-root) take pronoun-like det as complements; thus the difference does not reside here. Aspectuals also take this pro-form det as a complement, but not the definite dette 'this'. (i) A: Maritharflytta. B: Har'a DET/*DETTE? Marit has moved Has she ΤΗAT/THIS ? 'Marit has moved.' 'Has she?' (i)

Modais in pseudoclefts

1 97

3.1. The relevant generalization: ± proposition scope Although Thrainsson and Vikner do not present data illustrating the behavior of other raising or control structures in pseudoclefts, raising verbs seem to be ungrammatical in these constructions, as in (25a) and (25b), whereas control verbs accept a pseudoclefted complement, as in (25c) and (25d). (25)

a.

*Det Jon viste seg, var ä vcere inkompetent. it Jon showed self, was to be incompetent (Intended: 'What John turned out to be, was incompetent.')

b.

*Det Marit antas, er ä vcere ucerlig. it Marit supposePASS, is to be dishonest (Intended: 'What Marit is supposed to be, is dishonest.')

c.

Det Jon provde, var ä vcere cerlig. it Jon tried, was to be honest 'What John tried, was to be honest.'

d.

Det Marit häpet, var a fä snakke med ham. it Marit hoped, was to get talk to him 'What Marit hoped (for), was to get to talk to him.'

For now, we will assume that this generalization holds: raising verbs are illicit and control verbs are licit in pseudoclefts. 29 Since Thrainsson and Vikner analyze root modals as control and non-root modals as raising verbs, the prediction would indeed be that root modals accept and non-root modals reject a pseudoclefted complement (whatever the reason). Under the approach espoused here, the predictions are somewhat different. I agree that non-root modals are best analyzed as raising verbs and, if raising verbs are always illicit in these constructions, non-root modals ought to reject a pseudoclefted complement (which they do). However, in contrast to Thrainsson and Vikner (1995), the findings in the present work

29

This is inaccurate. When the relativized position pertains to the entire embedded proposition, the raising verb accepts a pseudoclefted complement. (i) Det som viste seg, var folgende. (ii) Det som antas, er dette. it that showed self, was following it that supposePASS is this 'What turned out, was the following.' 'What is supposed, is this.'

198 Norwegian modals: Argument structure point to a division within the category of root modals, with dyadic dynamic modals in one subcategory and all other root modals in another. Thus, so far, in the present investigation, the prediction is that only dyadic dynamic root modals (volitional ville and ability kunne) accept a pseudoclefted complement since only these two root modals pattern with control verbs (in relevant respects). The data in (20), from Thräinsson and Vikner (1995), where the ability reading of kunne 'be able to' is licit but the non-root reading is not, are to be expected even under the present approach. We would also expect the other dyadic dynamic modal, volitional ville 'want to', to accept a pseudoclefted complement, and it does, as (26) shows. Det Jon vil, er ä kj0pe bilen. it Jon wants, is to buy car-DEF 'What John wants, is to buy the car.'

(26)

A non-root reading is unavailable for (26); such a reading is always unavailable for a modal with a pseudoclefted complement. Non-root modals pattern with raising verbs, and if raising verbs are illicit in these constructions, this is just what we would expect. Dyadic dynamic modals pattern with control verbs and ought to accept a pseudoclefted complement. However, the predictions concerning all other root modals are quite another matter. According to Table 4, all root modals, except the dyadic dynamic modals (volitional ville and ability kunne), pattern with raising verbs in all relevant respects. We would thus expect that all the other root modals are as unlikely to accept a pseudoclefted complement as non-root modals. Deontic root modals, for instance, ought to reject a pseudoclefted complement. But this prediction is not borne out, as (27) shows. (27)

a.

Det Marit mä, er ä snakke med ham. it Marit must is to talk to him 'What Marit must (do), is talk to him.'

b.

Det du skal, er äpusse tennene. it you shall is to brush teeth-DEF 'What you will (do), is brush your teeth.'

c.

Det vi alle b0r, er ä tenke gode tanker. it we all should, is to think good thoughts 'What we all should (do), is think good thoughts.'

Modais in pseudoclefts d.

199

Det vi ikke trenger, er ä kjepe flere bßker. it we not need, is to buy more books 'What we don't need, is to buy more books.'

The modals in (27) are all deontic modals. Thus, although deontic modals pattern with raising verbs with respect to the properties in Table 4, they differ from raising verbs in accepting a pseudoclefted complement, like control verbs. The intriguing question is why this should be so. In our quest for an answer, we need to address one very interesting restriction on the deontic modals in these pseudocleft constructions. As mentioned in section 2.6 of Chapter 3, Thräinsson and Vikner (1995) fail to notice the existence of root modals with proposition-scope (monadic) readings. In these constructions, the root modal obligatorily takes scope over the subject and there is no θ-relation between the root modal and the subject. As the existence of such readings is not acknowledged by Thräinsson and Vikner, they ignore the fact that proposition-scope root modals are also illicit in these pseudocleft constructions. The data in (28) illustrate, however, that proposition-scope root modals reject a pseudoclefted complement, like non-root modals and other raising verbs. (28)

a.

*Det en kvinne bßr, er ä bli vär neste statsminister. it a woman should, is to be our next prime minister. (Intended: 'What should happen is that a woman becomes our next prime minister.')

b.

*Det apene ikke mä, er ä mates αν besßkende. it monkeysDEF not must, is to feedPASS by visitors (Intended: 'What must not take place is that the monkeys are fed by visitors.')

c.

*Det maten gjerne vil, er ä serveres senere pä fredager. it foodDEF typically will, is to servePASS later on Fridays (Intended: 'What tends to happen is that the food is served later on Fridays')

d.

*Det maten kan, er a bli servert senere pä fredager. it foodDEF can, is to be served later on Fridays (Intended: 'What can happen sometimes is that the food is served later on Fridays.')

200 Norwegian modals: Argument structure When we include the proposition-scope readings of root modals in our investigation, we discover that the line between modals that do and those that do not accept a pseudoclefted complement does not follow the root-nonroot distinction, as claimed by Thrdinsson and Vikner (1995). Neither does it follow the distinction between dynamic and deontic, the two groups of root modals recognized here. Instead, we find that root modals are grammatical in these pseudocleft constructions provided the modal has a subject-oriented (dyadic) reading, as in (27). In sentences where the modal requires a proposition-scope reading, root modals reject a pseudoclefted complement. In the ungrammatical sentences in (28), as well as their grammatical unclefted counterparts, our intuition is that there is no semantic (Θ-) relation between the modal and the subject; neither en k\>inne ' a w o m a n ' nor apene 'the monkeys' are perceived as having any kind of obligation; nor do w e perceive a semantic relation between maten 'the food' and the modals vil and kan in (28c) and (28d). Thus, what truly separates the ungrammatical structures in (28) from their grammatical counterparts in (27) is the lack of subject-orientedness. We consult the table of readings, Table 5, once again. At this point, we can clearly see the relevant generalization. Proposition scope (monadic) modals, root and well as non-root, reject a pseudoclefted complement; subject-oriented (dyadic) modals accept such a complement. Subject-orientedness is the prerequisite for modals to accept a pseudoclefted complement. W e still need an explanation for this generalization, however, and w e will attempt to provide one in what follows.

Table 5 Readings available for Norwegian modals: Dyadic: ville: volition; kunne: ability Root:

π

Dynamic: Monadic: tendency (ville: strong; kunne: weaker) * Dyadic: directed obligation/permission

π

Monadic: non-directed obligation/permission

*

Monadic: epistemic; metaphysical; evidential

*

Deontic:

Non-root:

Q: Accept a pseudoclefted complement; *: reject a pseudoclefted complement.

Modais inpseudoclefts

201

3.2. T h e pseudocleft construction First, I will examine the general properties of pseudoclefts and establish a terminology for the pseudocleft construction. 3 0 H e y cock and K r o c h ' s (1999) proposal on pseudoclefts treats these constructions as equative structures. Furthermore, as noted by Prince (1978), pseudoclefts have a fixed information structure in which the relative clause denotes the ground (known information/topic) and the second argument of the copula denotes the focus (new information/comment) of the sentence. T h e restrictions imposed by the semantics of equation dictate that only expressions w h o s e semantic type matches the relative with which they are equated can appear 30

A much debated fact about pseudoclefts is that they display so-called connectedness or connectivity effects; they exhibit the same patterns with respect to certain syntactic constraints as the simple sentences that paraphrase them. This is the case for Condition A, B, and C (data from Heycock and Kroch 1999). (i) a. What Mary, was was proud of herself;η. b. Mary, was was proud of herself.*/. c. What Maryt was was proud of herth]. d. Maryj was was proud of hertj,/. e. What shej was was proud of Mary»f every; # every > some

district.

Hornstein (1998) accepts these judgments and assumptions although his data are slightly different. According to my informants, however, these conjectures are not quite correct since both scope possibilities are available in the following control structures. 47 (46)

a.

Someone tried to read every book. Some > every; every > some (for every book, someone tried to read it)

b.

Someone decided to read every report. Some > every; every > some (for every report, someone decided to read it)

The latter reading of (46b) might be harder to get out of context: I am a lecturer and encourage my students to read each other's reports, promising to read those reports that will otherwise not be read by anyone. In this case, I might utter: Luckily, someone decided to read every report, where every scopes over someone. If the judgments of my informants are representative, the relative scope of quantifiers in raising and control structures is not as different as we are led to believe.

47

According to a reviewer for Mouton de Gruyter, the wide scope reading for every is hard to get; it is a well-known fact that scope interactions across clause boundaries are possible, but lead to very weak scope readings. My informants, however, seemingly had no difficulty getting both readings.

220 Norwegian modals: Argument structure 3.4.3. The argument from the ambiguity of indefinites A third set of data often invoked to illustrate scopal differences between control and raising predicates consists of the possible readings of indefinites. In certain contexts, indefinites may be ambiguous between a specific and a non-specific reading, as in (47). (47)

a.

John is seeking a unicorn.

On the specific reading of the indefinite, there is a particular unicorn of which it is true that John is seeking it. On the non-specific reading, John is not seeking a particular individual; he is simply looking for anything that would fit the description of a unicorn. In the latter case, there may not be a single individual in the real world fitting this description, but the sentence may nevertheless be true in the real world: John might not know or believe that unicorns do not exist. Frege (1892) noted that modal operators (e.g. necessarily, possibly) are elements giving rise to contexts where we find this type of ambiguity—referentially opaque or intensional contexts.48 Other elements that create such contexts are verbs denoting utterance events (tell, report), propositional attitudes (believe,49 think), or intentions (want, seek). We refer to all those elements that create the aforementioned ambiguity-promoting contexts as intensional predicates. A popular way of representing the different readings of indefinites in formal semantics is to give the indefinite wide scope over the intensional predicate on the specific reading and narrow scope on the non-specific one. (48)

a. b.

Ξχ (χ: a unicorn) & John seeks χ (= specific reading) John seeks 3x (x: a unicorn) (= non-specific reading).

Thus, the terms wide-scope subject and narrow-scope subject refer to the way these two readings are represented in formal semantics. Of course, it would be nice if these semantic representations corresponded to syntactic 48

In fact, this is part of a bigger complex of interpretation, including definite descriptions (e.g. The Morning Star) in addition to indefinites. This ambiguity with definite descriptions is often referred to as the de dicto vs. the de re, the descrip-

tion vs. the individual fitting the description. The phenomenon in both definite and indefinite cases concerns the intension versus the extension of a DP. A prerequisite for an intensional reading of believe is that its complement denote a proposition, so John believes me does not qualify as an intensional context.

49

Modais in psendoclefts 221 representations in a homomorphic fashion; May (1977, 1985) set out to show that wide- and narrow-scope readings of subjects are in fact syntactically encoded. I will examine the main points of his analysis and the most fundamental arguments. Firstly, May observes a difference between raising and control structures with respect to their ability to give rise to the specificnonspecific/existing-nonexisting ambiguity for indefinites, as in (49). (49)

a. b.

A hippogryph is likely to be apprehended. A hippogryph is anxious to be apprehended.

According to May, (49a) does not necessarily entail that hippogryphs exist, unlike (49b), which can only be truthfully uttered if hippogryphs exist. May links this difference between raising and control structures to the thematic properties of the matrix verb. Raising predicates have non-thematic subject positions. The ability to take expletive subjects is used as a diagnostics for this non-thematic property of the matrix subject position, as in (50). (50)

a. b.

It is likely that a hippogryph will be apprehended. *It is anxious that a hippogryph will be apprehended.

The non-thematic property of the matrix subject position in a raising structure has two major consequences. First, it entails that raising predicates allow movement from the subject position of the complement into the matrix subject position. Second, it allows the matrix subject position of a raising predicate to host an empty expletive. Empty expletives are ruled out in the subject position of a control predicate since this is a thematic position. Moreover, (50b) is a finite clause, hence the subject position of the control predicate cannot host PRO either: the subject position of a finite clause is always governed and PRO must be ungoveraed. Thus, there is no empty category that would be allowed to fill the subject position of a control predicate in finite clauses and this type of structure is ruled out as illformed at LF. However, for the non-specific, narrow-scope reading of an indefinite subject to arise, it is crucial that an empty expletive fill the upper subject position at LF. It follows that control predicates do not allow for a narrow-scope construal of the subject: having a thematic subject position ensures that their subjects never get a narrow-scope reading. However, this analysis faces some serious problems. May in fact equates the specific-nonspecific distinction with ±presupposition of exis-

222 Norwegian modals: Argument structure tence, a common tendency in discussing these phenomena within a syntactic framework, perhaps stemming from the formal semantics way of representing this distinction. Nevertheless, these two interpretational features should and must be kept separate, as we will see shortly. The presupposition of existence effect is not unrelated to the modal nature of the matrix predicate, nor is it (solely) determined by the syntactic position or function of the indefinite; it is also not uniquely related to (non-)thematic properties of subject positions, as illustrated in (51a) and (51b). (51)

a. b.

It is likely that a unicorn ate all your flowers. It is regrettable that a unicorn ate all your flowers.

According to May (1985: 97), a sentence such as (51a) "can be truthfully uttered without any supposition regarding the existence of [unicorns]." This does not seem to be true for (51b): uttering (51b) entails that the speaker believes in the existence of unicorns. Crucially, it still allows for a specific/non-specific distinction; I may regret that a particular unicorn (e.g. Petunia) ate your flowers, or I might not know which unicorn did it, but still I may regret the fact that some unicorn ate all your flowers. 50 This sentence shows that the specific-nonspecific distinction is independent of the presupposition of existence effect since the latter in fact runs across the specific-nonspecific distinction. The sentence also shows that the nonthematic properties of the matrix subject position are not enough to entail no presupposition of existence. My claim that presupposition of existence may be partly unrelated to the syntactic position of the indefinite is supported by data such as (52). (52)

a.

A Martian is supposed to have taken a unicorn in a UFO.

captive

Uttering this sentence truthfully does not entail the speaker's commitment to believing in Martians (subject position), unicorns (direct object position) or UFOs (complement of preposition). Furthermore, although the raising predicate is supposed creates the "no presupposition of existence" effect in this particular sentence, any element expressing someone's propositional

50

Potential objection: the adjective regrettable is derived from a factive verb regret. Factive verbs (or bridge verbs) have distinct syntactic behavior in many languages, as opposed to other verbs taking propositions as a complement.

Modais in pseudoclefts

223

attitude towards the proposition will do, as in (53), where the element creating the effect is an adverbial. (53)

a.

Allegedly, a Martian has taken a unicorn in a UFO.

captive

When the adverbial allegedly is left out, the speaker is committed to believing in Martians, unicorns and UFOs. That is, the "no presupposition of the existence of an x " on behalf of the speaker is a result of employing an intensional predicate, whatever that might be. I argue that the ability of raising verbs to give rise to this effect is the semantic property of modality, shared by all intensional predicates. An intensional predicate relieves the speaker of committing to the proposition embedded under this predicate as a state of affairs belonging to the speaker's model of the world. Instead, the intensional predicate signals that the embedded proposition describes a state of affairs in someone else's model of the world, which may of course differ from that of the speaker. A possible objection to the discussion of the data in (51) is that the structure (51b) is not a raising type adjective. Compare (54a) and (54b). (54)

a. b.

A unicorn is likely to have eaten all your flowers. *A unicorn is regrettable to have eaten all your flowers.

One might assume that the "no presupposition of existence" effect is in some way related to the predicate's ability to host the embedded subject in its subject position. This line of thought does not take us very far either. There are a number of predicate types, such as unaccusatives, assumed to have non-thematic subject positions, as suggested by the fact that this position may host expletives. This subject position may also host the raised postverbal DP and this DP could be argued to be a subject raised from an embedded small clause (cf. Stowell 1981, 1983). (55)

a. b.

There appeared a policeman on the scene. A policemanappeared t; on the scene.

However, these structures do not give rise to the "no presupposition of existence" effect, irrespective of their non-thematic subject positions and their ability to host a raised subject or an expletive in this subject position. The

224 Norwegian modals: Argument structure reason, I argue, is that they are not intensional predicates. 51 They do, however, give rise to the specific-nonspecific ambiguity, which, evidently, is an inherent property of indefinites partly unrelated to the syntactic position they occupy (En? 1991 s2 ). Notably, a policeman above may be a particular individual who we know is a policeman (e.g. John) or someone who happens to fit the description of a policeman (someone wearing a policeman's uniform). I conclude that it is the semantic properties of raising verbs that give rise to the described ambiguity, not their argument structure. Yet, in one sense May is right in claiming that the presupposition effect evidenced with indefinite subjects of raising structures relates to the non-thematic property of this position. Raising constructions allow for the raising of the subject of an embedded proposition into the matrix subject position. This embedded proposition is semantically (and via the subject's trace, syntactically) within the scope of the intensional predicate, e.g. is believed, and all elements semantically belonging to this proposition are under the modal influence of the intensional predicate. This is why May's argument against a semantic explanation fails; cf. May (1985: 105). [A semantic analysis fails] to distinguish active and passive occurrences of believe·, even if there were some generalization linking believe with predicates like appear and likely, we would have to ask why we find an ambiguity in No agent is believed by Philby to be a spy for the other side but none in No agent believed Philby to be a spy for the other side. Presumably both occurrences of believe mean the same thing.... Further, why wouldn't other matrix constituents interact scopally with the predicate? As pointed out, we only find ambiguities with respect to the subject NP; witness the nonambiguity of Philby is believed by no agent to be a spy for the other side. To stay with readings of indefinites, we replace M a y ' s examples with sentences containing indefinites; however, the point remains the same. 51

Appear has many of the properties attributed to seem above. These verbs may be intentional predicates, provided they have a verbal complement. Note the difference between (i) and (ii) and (iii) and (iv), respectively: (i) A unicorn appeared in the garden, (ii) A unicorn appeared to be in the garden. (iii) A unicorn seems very annoyed. (iv) A unicorn seems to be very annoyed. 52 A reviewer for Mouton de Gruyter notes that to Εης non-specificity is a necessary and sufficient condition on /fere-insertion (in existential constructions), so non-specificity cannot be unrelated to syntactic positions. On the other hand, this could be a semantic property of the existential construction and not a property of the syntactic position of the indefinite as such; cf. next section for discussion.

Modais in pseudoclefts

(56)

a. b. c.

225

A unicorn is believed by Philby to be a hippogryph. A unicorn believed Philby to be a hippogryph. Philby is believed by a unicorn to be a hippogryph.

In (56a), a unicorn belongs to the proposition believed by Philby to describe an actual state of affairs, [A unicorn is a hippogryph]. Hence, a unicorn is under the modal influence of the intensional predicate is believed, which means that the speaker is entitled to being agnostic about the existence of unicorns, but Philby is not (given that Philby is a rational person). The same goes for the supposed existence of hippogryphs: the speaker is not committed to believing that hippogryphs exist, but Philby must believe in them. This is because the speaker reports both unicorns and hippogryphs as something belonging to Philby's system of beliefs, while remaining silent about whether or not these creatures belong to his or her own belief system. Furthermore, given that Philby is convinced that unicorns and hippogryphs exist, there is still the specific-nonspecific ambiguity. Philby may have suspicions concerning one specific unicorn (e.g. Petunia) to be a disguised hippogryph, or he may not know which of the unicorns is a disguised hippogryph. Furthermore, he may suspect that one particular hippogryph (e.g. Baltus) has disguised himself as a unicorn, or he may not know which of the hippogryphs to suspect. In (56b) and (56c), a unicorn does not belong to the proposition about what is believed; in both sentences the unicorn is the entity holding the belief reported. Instead, a unicorn belongs to the matrix proposition denoted by the sentence uttered by the speaker. Hence, the speaker is committed to the assumption that unicorns exist. However, the specific-nonspecific ambiguity is still present since the speaker may or may not know which unicorn holds the reported belief. Furthermore, as far as the speaker is concerned, hippogryphs may or may not exist-since a hippogryph is contained in the proposition reported as belonging to the belief system of α unicorn. The discussion so far has been an informal and intuitive description of the "no presupposition of existence" effect in propositions embedded under intensional predicates. There are far more formalized ways of expressing these intuitions. A recent formal semantic approach to intensional predicates is found in Quer (1998), who sets out to explain the distribution and semantics of the subjunctive mood, particularly in Catalan and other Romance languages. Quer builds on the recent work of Giannakidou (1994, 1995), where one fundamental assumption is that the subjunctive has to be (syntactically) licensed by occurring within the scope of a "non-veridical"

226 Norwegian modals: Argument structure operator. In Giannaikidou (1994, 1995) the property of (non-)veridicality is defined as follows (quoted from Quer 1998: 18): An operator Op is non-veridical iff Op ρ does not imply p; Op is veridical iff Op ρ implies ρ (where ρ is an arbitrary proposition). Schematically: a. Op ρ -/-> ρ b. Op ρ -> ρ

Non-veridicality Veridicality

The categories that obey non-veridicality are "desideratives, directives, modals and predicates of fear," sometimes referred to simply as intensional predicates (Quer 1998: 18-19). The next building block of Quer's analysis is the idea proposed by Farkas (1992) that in the interpretation of argument clauses, truth has to be relativized to worlds and individuals. An epistemic predicate such as believe, for instance, introduces those worlds that accord with what is believed by the referent denoted by its subject. Thus, propositions denoted by complement clauses must be "individually anchored," true as far as the individual referred to by the matrix subject is concerned, as in (57). (57)

[p2 Philby believes \v\that a unicorn is sleeping in the

garden\\.

In (57), one proposition is denoted by the embedded sentence and another by the whole sentence, the latter incorporating the embedded proposition as a subpart. To interpret the embedded proposition, we must relativize its truth to the individual denoted by the main subject in the following fashion: (58)

PI = Τ in w R (Philby); i.e. PI is true in a world w that models reality R according to Philby.

As regards the unembedded proposition, the individual anchor in the default case is the speaker unless another anchor is implied by the context, for instance, when the unembedded proposition occurs in a sentence that is part of a larger discourse, a speech, a report or a text where the individual anchor remains constant throughout the discourse (and is indicated to be someone else than the speaker). In the default case, however, the truth of the unembedded proposition in (57) is evaluated with respect to the world according to the speaker S as follows:

Modais in pseudoclefts (59)

227

P2 = Τ in w R (S); i.e. P2 is true in a world w that models reality R according to the Speaker.

The "no presupposition of existence" effect could easily be modeled in this system by means of individual anchoring. Intensional predicates allow the speaker to be agnostic about the factual existence of entities described in the proposition embedded under these predicates. This is so because intensional predicates allow for a second individual anchor in addition to the speaker—the individual holding the reported belief or assumption described by the embedded sentence. Thus, the embedded proposition may refer to entities that exist merely in the subject's (e.g. Philby's) model of the world; these entities need not exist in the speaker's model of the world. The "no presupposition of existence" effect boils down to the two (possibly different) models allowed in intensional contexts. Again, this is a semantic property of intensional predicates (subsuming raising predicates), unrelated to argument structure. To sum up, the wide-scope/narrow-scope effect described by May amounts to two different, partly unrelated phenomena. One is the "no presupposition of existence" effect arising in intensional contexts: propositions embedded under modal predicates such as raising verbs allow the speaker to be agnostic about the factual existence of the entities described in the proposition. This phenomenon affects all indefinites contained in a proposition embedded under an intensional predicate, irrespective of their status as subject, object, or complement of a preposition (cf. (52) and (53)). As this effect in itself is unrelated to syntactic positions, it should not be linked to the upper versus lower subject position in a raising structure. The second observed effect, the specific-nonspecific distinction, is present in all indefinites, partly unrelated to the semantic nature of the matrix predicate. Therefore, it should be considered an inherent property of indefinites, not linked to upper or lower subject positions. I conclude that both the wide- and narrow-scope readings of indefinites are unrelated to syntactic subject positions. Summing up our findings of syntactically encoded scope relations between quantified DPs, we found that the three families of arguments invoked are not invulnerable. The first argument, based on the interplay of nobody/somebody in raising and control structures, turned out to be less sound than often claimed. Not all raising structures result in the lack of contradiction predicted; some are judged to be just as contradictory in this

228 Norwegian modals: Argument structure respect as control structures. Hence, this argument fails to clearly distinguish raising from control structures. The second argument is based on the relative scope of some/every, where some is the matrix subject and every is contained within the embedded clause. It has been claimed that raising structures allow, and control structures reject, the embedded quantified phrase to take scope over the matrix quantified phrase. My informants disagree with this generalization and allow for both scope possibilities in raising and control structures. The third argument rests on the ambiguity of indefinites in raising structures. In principle, indefinites are ambiguous between a specific and a nonspecific reading in any position and I argue that this ambiguity should be treated as an inherent property of indefinites. A second type of ambiguity is the lack of presupposition about the factual existence of the entity described by the indefinite. This was argued above to be a result of the indefinite belonging to the proposition embedded under an intensional predicate. This effect encompasses all indefinites in the proposition, not only the subject. Hence, this is an effect arising from the semantics of intensional predicates and should not be ascribed to the subject position.

3.5. Subject-orientedness and subject positions If subject scope is not what is encoded by the upper and lower subject positions, these positions could be related instead to the subject-oriented reading of the modal. We have seen that there is a correspondence between subject scope and subject-orientation; specifically, the subject-oriented reading of a modal requires a wide-scope subject. Moreover, the lower subject position is required for a proposition-scope reading of the modal. I have also argued that what we normally refer to as subject scope in raising constructions (±specific; ±presupposition of existence) is not encoded in the upper and lower subject positions. Instead, the upper subject position is related to subject-orientation of the upper predicate, the lower one to the lack thereof. Finally, proper raising structures give rise to a propositionscope reading, a reading with nothing resembling a Theta-relation between the subject and the raising verb. Thus, I argue that the subjects of raising verbs (including proper names) are interpreted in the lower subject position. In this position, an indefinite yields either a narrow- or a wide-scope reading. The subject still overtly appears in the upper subject position in raising structures due to other requirements (e.g. EPP), but given a proposition-

Modais in pseudoclefts

229

scope reading, it is always interpreted in the lower subject position. The proposition-scope reading is the only reading if the verb is a genuine raising verb (like epistemic must), not a subject-oriented Doppelgänger such as those possible with ser ut til ä (Norwegian), scheinen (German) and seem (English). Raising verbs, including proposition-scope readings of modals, are illicit when the lower subject position is deleted, as in (60) and Figure 15. Retaining this position in pseudoclefts allows the proposition-scope (raising) reading of the modal, as in (61) and Figure 16. (60)

a.

Det Jon mä, er ä vcere arkitekt. it Jon must, is to be an architect 'What John must do, is to be an architect.'

(61)

a.

Det Jon mä vcere, er arkitekt. it Jon must be, is architect 'What John must be, is an architect.'

230 Norwegian modals: Argument

structure

Figure 16

V

ti

vcere

To sum up, what separates the discussion of subject scope in the present proposal from that of May (1977, 1985) is the argument that wide-scope subjects, including proper names and specific indefinites, do not obligatorily occur in the upper subject position; they can occur in either the upper or the lower subject position. When these subjects are interpreted in the upper subject position, the modal (or raising verb) obligatorily gets a subject-oriented reading. When they occur in the lower subject position, the modal gets a proposition-scope reading, scoping over the subject. May assumes that there is an "empty expletive" filling the upper subject position of narrow-scope subjects such as non-specific indefinites. I agree that non-specific indefinites are unique in that they cannot occur in the upper subject position on LF, perhaps because they lack a crucial semantic property required for this position; they may be semantically incapable of participating in the relation giving rise to subject-orientedness (cf. Vangsnes 2002 who proposes that different subject positions impose different semantic requirements on a DP occupying them). It may be that May's "empty expletive" occupies the upper subject position in these cases. If the spec-head relation between the modal and the subject holds in overt syntax, and is forced to hold at LF (because the lower subject position is elided), this forces a subject-oriented reading of the modal. But what if the subject is prevented from occurring in the upper subject position because of a visible expletive subject? We revisit the relevant data in (62).

Modais in pseudoclefts

(62)

231

a.

Det skal bestandig vcere minst to voksne til stede. there shall always be at-least two adults present 'There should always be at least two adults present.'

b.

Det mä komme minst femtipersoner. there must come at least fifty persons 'At least fifty people must show up.'

c.

Det bor bli for andringer m.h.t. denne praksisen. there should occur changes in this (code of) practice 'This code of practice ought to change.'

d.

Det kan vcere opptil fire patroner i hylsa pr. ladning. there can be up-to four cartridges in caseDEF pr load 'There can be up to four cartridges in the case in one load.'

e.

Det behover/ti~enger ikke vcere noen voksne til stede. there need not be any adults at-placeDAT 'There need not be any adults present.'

As (62) shows, when an expletive occupies the upper subject position, the subject-oriented reading is impossible and the modal has a propositionscope reading only. Again, this might be a consequence of the nature of the postverbal DPs since all the relevant DPs in (62) have a nonspecific reading. It is impossible to combine a subject-oriented reading (directed deontic) of the modal with a non-specific reading of the subject, so we construct a context allowing a specific construal of the indefinite. (63)

a.

Det skal alltid vcere en voksen til stede, nemlig Jon. there shall always be an adult at place, specifically Jon 'There should always be an adult present; specifically Jon.'

b.

Det kan komme en venn i selskapet ditt; there can come a friend in partyDEF yours 'There may come a friend to your party, jeg tenkte pä Marit. I thought of Marit I am thinking, Marit.'

232 Norwegian modals: Argument structure By means of the added referent, the indefinite is assigned a specific reading. However, this does not yield a subject-oriented reading: (63a) still does not mean that Jon has a personal obligation; the natural reading is that someone else (e.g. the addressee) is responsible for making sure Jon is present. Likewise, (63b) does not mean that Marit is the one who is given permission to come to the party. Instead, the natural reading is that the speaker grants the addressee the permission to invite a friend, e.g. Marit, to the party. This does not prove, of course, that the lack of access to the upper subject position is what prevents subject-oriented readings. The expletive requires an associate DP with a non-specific interpretation, which may be incompatible with subject-orientedness. The subsequent addition of a specific referent may not be enough to override this initial interpretation at the relevant point in the structure. What it does suggest, however, is that the associate postverbal DP, en voksen 'an adult' in (63a), does not raise to fill the upper subject position in covert syntax, if interpretation in this position is related to subject-orientation (at LF). Building on Chomsky's (1986, 1991, 1993) idea that the expletive there is replaced by its (postverbal) associate at LF, 53 Lasnik (1999) assumes that the expletive there is an "LF-affix." 54 Lasnik (1981: 34) suggests there is "a general 'stranded affix' constraint demanding that underlyingly freestanding affixes ultimately be attached to an appropriate host." That is, if the associate of there does not adjoin to there, the derivation will crash at LF. This alleged adjunction of the postverbal DP to the expletive at LF does not result in a subject-oriented reading of the modal; this is unexpected, given that the configuration between the initially postverbal DP and the modal ought to be just right-at LF-for the association between the modal and the DP. Apart from the fact that Lasnik's account rests on a number of stipulations (that there is an LF-affix, a notion otherwise unheard of, to my knowledge), it cannot explain why modals reject the subject-oriented reading unless a thematic subject is granted access to the upper subject position 53

This is inaccurate. Chomsky (1986a) introduces the "replacement" idea; in Chomsky (1991, 1993) "replacement" is itself replaced by "adjunction," the associate of there adjoins to there at LF to check its Case. 54 Lasnik (1999: ch. 4 and 6) suggests that there lacks agreement features, which means that the agreement features of Agr s would not be checked unless some movement takes place. The main objective for Lasnik (as for Chomsky before him) in this approach is to explain the agreement facts of English existential constructions, where the verb agrees morphologically with the postverbal DP.

Modais in pseudoclefts

233

in overt syntax. 55 I take this as evidence against the hypothesis that expletive there is replaced by the associate at LF. The data suggest that access to the upper subject position is a prerequisite for subject-oriented readings. When this subject position is occupied by an expletive, a subject-oriented reading cannot arise. In addition, the pseudocleft data show that a lower subject position is crucial for a propositionscope reading of the modal. Thus, subject-orientedness seems to be syntactically encoded. When a thematic subject is interpreted in the upper subject position, this gives rise to subject-orientedness. There are other ways to explain the data, of course. It is very likely that the expletive is what forces the non-specific reading of the associate, and a non-specific subject does not simultaneously give rise to a subject-oriented reading of the modal. If so, the expletive is only indirectly responsible for the lack of subject-orientation, not by means of occupying the subject position and preventing a spec-head configuration between the modal and the associate, but by means of its requirements towards the associate, making it semantically unfit as a subject for a subject-oriented modal. Likewise, we know that control verbs typically do not allow their subjects to reconstruct and give rise to a proposition-scope reading (Hornstein 1998; May 1985). Thus, assuming that the modal assigns an external Thetarole on its subject-oriented reading would give the modal the right property to prevent the subject from reconstructing. The upper subject position in

55

Another strong objection to the idea that the associate of the expletive is raised and adjoined to the expletive at LF is the observation in Lasnik (1999: 136) that this putative raising of the associate is unable to create new scope relations between negation and the associate. (i) There aren't many linguists here. Many linguists necessarily scopes under negation, although if this constituent is raised and adjoined to the expletive at LF, we expect this construction to exhibit the same scopal relations between Many linguists and negation as the ones found in ii): (ii) Many linguists aren't here. However, this is not what we find. To account for this fact, Chomsky (1991, 1993) stipulates that the operation of adjunction, as opposed to replacement, does not create new scope relations. However, Lasnik (1999: 137) points out that on the theory of adjunction, developed in May (1985) and "assumed in all of Chomsky's writings ever since" (Lasnik 1999: 137), the adjunction procedure does create a relevant c-command relation and should be expected to give rise to new scopal relations.

234 Norwegian modals: Argument structure and of itself is secondary; the theta-role is what is important, and only verbs that assign an external theta-role allow for a pseudoclefted complement. W e may very well accept this as the explanations for the observed facts and refer to the upper and lower subject positions simply as labels for the relations, or the lack of relations, w e observe. The crucial claim I am making here is that interpreting the subject in the lower subject position is the defining characteristics of a raising verb and that interpreting a Thetasubject in the upper subject position entails the relation of subjectorientation. Unlike Barbiers (1995, 2002), I do not claim that this semantic relation is encoded by a designated syntactic head (Barbiers' "D"). Instead, I propose that a subject-oriented reading arises by means of the spec-head relation between the subject and the modal when the subject is interpreted in the upper subject position. Wide-scope subjects, such as proper names and specific indefinites, are interpreted in the upper subject position on subject-oriented readings of modals and in the lower one on propositionscope readings. Non-specific subjects are not allowed in the upper subject position; thus, they never occur with subject-oriented readings. As non-specific subjects are always interpreted in the lower subject position, whether or not there is an overt expletive occupying the upper subject position, we would expect to find semantic similarities between constructions with non-specific subjects and existential constructions with overt expletives. In fact, many speakers evidently perceive an "empty expletive" occupying the upper subject position of a proposition-scope modal with a non-specific subject. In an expletive-associate construction, the expletive, not the non-specific associate, functions as the subject in a corresponding tag, as in (64a). Likewise, a non-specific subject of a proposition scope modal is not accepted as the subject in a tag, as (64b) shows. (64)

a.

Det kommer mange, g/0r det ikke? There comes many, does there not 'There is a lot of people coming, isn't there?'

b.

En kvinne b0r bli vär neste statsminister, a woman should become our next prime minister Ά woman should be our next prime minister, b0r *hun/?det ikke? should she it not should she/it not?'

Modais inpseudoclefts

235

I solicited the judgments of a number of informants about a sentence very similar to (64b). Their answers are summed up in Figure 17. A total of 25 informants participated in the test: nine accepted neither of the possibilities, one said that hun 'she' is possible, one said both are possible, and 14 preferred the expletive det as the subject of the tag.

How would you continue sentence c, based on the pattern in ab? How do you assess its grammaticality (not its content)? Alternatives: None is possible, hun 'she', det 'it', both are possible. a. b. c.

Kristin Halvorsen bor vel bli vär neste statsminister, bor hun ikkel 'Kristin Halvorsen should probably be our next PM, should she not?' Det bor vel bli Kristin som blir vär neste statsminister, bor det ikkel 'It should be Kristin who is our next prime minister, should it not?' En kvinne bor ihvertfall bli vär neste statsminister, bor...ikkel Ά woman should, at least, be our next prime minister, should...not?'

Figure 17

• none • hun • det • both

One informant volunteered that "it feels like the subject (of the tag) refers to the entire proposition, instead of the subject." These facts, though not conclusive, suggest that the proposition-scope reading of the modal leads to a demoting of the subject, comparable to constructions with an overt expletive in the upper subject position: 15 out of 25 speakers accept an overt expletive as the subject of the corresponding tag. These judgments lend support to the assumption that the non-specific subject, whether an exple-

236 Norwegian modals: Argument structure tive is overtly present or not, is interpreted below the upper, 'canonical' subject position, in what I refer to as the lower subject position.

3.6. Reanalysis verbs The emerging picture in this investigation is that modals behave like raising verbs in some respects and like control verbs in others. If this is the case, it would be surprising if modals were the only verbs behaving in this way. In this section, I examine some verbs that resemble modals in many respects, a group of verbs dubbed the threaten class (Arad 1998; Johnson 1985; Zubizarreta 1982). I refer to these verbs as reanalysis verbs as they are said to undergo reanalysis (Arad 1998; Johnson 1985). Examples of such verbs are promise and threaten and their counterparts in various languages: German Es versprach zu regnen'it promised to rain' (see Arad 1998 for French, Hebrew and Italian counterparts). The agentive reading has been considered the primary reading of these verbs. In addition, these verbs have another interpretation, described by Johnson (1985: 25-26) as "events are in motion, such that χ is imminent" (as quoted in Arad 1998: 115). These verbs may take a DP complement, as in (65a), in which case the verb has only the agentive reading. In fact, whenever the DP encoding the recipient of the threat or promise is present, the non-agentive reading is blocked, as in (65b). On the other hand, a nonagentive subject gives rise to the non-agentive reading only, (65c), whereas an agentive subject gives rise to both readings, provided the main predicate allows for a causer or an agent (Arad 1998), as in (65d). (65)

a. b. c. d.

John threatened Mary, (agentive reading only) John threatened his mother to marry Mary. (agentive reading only) The ice-cream threatens to melt. (non-agentive reading only) John threatened to destroy the party. (agentive/non-agentive)

(65 d) is ambiguous between a reading where John states his intention to destroy the party (agentive) and a reading where his presence or behavior 56

1 am indebted to Philippa Cook for bringing this example to my attention.

Modais in psendoclefts

237

suffices to ensure the party is destroyed (non-agentive). In the latter case, John might not even be aware that his behavior is destroying the party for everyone else; he might be causing this result by his mere presence. Johnson (1985), Ruwet (1991), and Zubizarreta (1982) observe a range of similarities between the reanalysis (non-agentive) readings of these verbs and raising verbs (the list is adopted from Arad 1998, Zubizarreta 1982): (66)

I. Π.

III.

In both, the subject role is defined by the lower predicate. Both can host in their subject position an idiom which is associated with the lower predicate (e.g. The shit threatens to hit the fan). Both allow e«-cliticization in French (which indicates a connection with a lower position in the structure).

However, the reanalysis readings of these verbs differ from raising verbs in a number of ways: (67)

I. II. III.

Reanalysis verbs do not allow expletive it as a subject, or French il. Reanalysis verbs do not allow narrow scope of the subject. Reanalysis verbs do not allow any object to intervene between the matrix verb and its complement (compare threatens #me to... vs. It seems to me that...).

The set of Norwegian reanalysis verbs is small and my data consist of the compound verb corresponding to threaten (true med). This verb, evidently unlike its French and English counterparts, does allow for expletive subjects, at least marginally, as in (68). (68)

a.

Det truer med ä bli en fryktelig oppstandelse it threatens with to become a terrible commotion pä jobben i morgen. at work tomorrow Ά terrible commotion threatens to take place at work tomorrow.'

The second alleged difference between raising verbs and reanalysis verbs, (6711)—and typically illustrated by means of the quantified phrases some

238 Norwegian modals: Argument structure and every—is not correct, according to my English-speaking informants. Note the scope ambiguity in (69). (69)

a.

Some tornado threatened to destroy every city.

This sentence does in fact yield 'for every χ, χ a city, some tornado threatened to destroy x ' as one possible reading, according to my informants. The generalization that adding the recipient of a threat (or a promise) blocks the reanalysis reading holds even in Norwegian. Adding the recipient of a threat gives the construction a directed reading which is evidently incompatible with the reanalysis reading 'events are in motion, such that χ is imminent.' I can offer no explanation for this restriction. 57 These verbs are of interest to us because they reject a reanalysis reading in exactly the same environment where modals reject a proposition-scope reading—when their complement is pseudoclefted, as in (70). (70)

a.

Det Jon truer med, er ä odelegge selskapet. it Jon threatens with is to destroy the party 'What John threatens to do, is to destroy the party.'

b.

*Det iskremen truer med, er ä smelte. it ice-cream-DEF threatens with, is to melt. 'What the ice-cream threatens to do, is to melt.'

In these environments, the matrix verb has only the agentive, subjectoriented reading and requires an agentive subject; thus, (70b) is ill-formed, unless we assign a human-like property to the ice-cream. Modals do not allow for a subject-oriented reading when they take expletive subjects. Reanalysis verbs take true expletives only marginally, but notice (68) above and also (71). 58 (71)

a.

IDet truer med ä komme to inspektßrer hit i morgen. it threatens to arrive two inspectors here tomorrow 'Two inspectors threaten to arrive here tomorrow.' 5 9

57 Especially since there are raising verbs with an experiencer argument: Marit forekommer meg a vcere irritert lit. 'Marit seems me to be annoyed'. 58 They also take weather-arguments, as in Det truer medä regne/sno i morgen 'It threatens to rain/snow tomorrow'.

Modais in pseudoclefts

239

To the extent that (71) is acceptable, it only yields the non-agentive, proposition-scope interpretation. Reanalysis verbs in a pseudocleft where the lower subject position is retained within the relative are hard to find. Notice, however, (72). (72)

a.

?Det mora di truer med ä bli, er virkelig tjukk. it motherDEF yours threatens to become, is really fat 'What your mother threatens to become, is really fat.'

Again, to the extent that this construction is possible, it is ambiguous between the agentive and the non-agentive reading, as expected if reanalysis verbs are anything like modals. It seems then that in Norwegian reanalysis verbs have a lot in common with modals. They allow for subject-oriented readings as well as proposition-scope readings and obey the same restrictions in pseudoclefts, allowing solely for the agentive or subject-oriented reading when their complement is pseudoclefted. When the lower subject position is retained, they are ambiguous between a subject-oriented and a proposition-scope reading. They disallow a subject-oriented reading when they have an expletive subject or a proposition-scope reading. Thus, it seems we can describe reanalysis verbs with the same type of figure used to illustrate scope and subjectorientedness for Norwegian modals, Figure 9, repeated here as Figure 18. 60

59

The judgments about this sentence vary from 'excellent' to 'unacceptable'. Reanalysis verbs, like modals, typically denote agent-oriented, mental, socially determined actions and states such as promise or threaten (cf. section 3.4. of Chapter 2). I assume that reanalysis verbs do not have all the properties associated with raising verbs because they are less "grammaticalized," they have not yet completed their transformation to raising verbs. Evidently, not all modals went through all changes at the same time either. For instance, the modals kunne and ville and their cognates in several languages continue to occur as lexical verbs, and Thräinsson and Vikner (1995) provide data from the Icelandic Sagas indicating that the modals skulu 'should' and munu 'may' had an epistemic reading earlier than any of the other modals. Likewise, Elly van Gelderen (p.c.) suggests that can has lost its epistemic reading in English, but it is still defined as a modal. 60

240 Norwegian modals: Argument structure Figure 18 Reanalysis verb raising structures IP Subject'

odP Modal

• Scope:

Reading:

SUBJ >

F

•

VERB > SUBJ

i

I

Subject-oriented (agentive) Proposition scope (non-agentive).

I assume this to be the right description of reanalysis verbs. Unlike other authors who have examined these verbs, I assume that on the reanalysis reading, there is no semantic threaten-relation between the subject of these verbs and the complement of threaten and no semantic relation between the matrix verb and its syntactic subject. Instead, I argue, the reanalysis reading of threaten-class verbs (like the proposition-scope reading of modals) arises w h e n the subject of these verbs is interpreted in the lower subject position, within the syntactic scope of the matrix verb. When the subject is interpreted in the upper subject position, the matrix verb is construed as subjectoriented for modals and reanalysis verbs alike.

3.7. Raising verbs and pseudoclefts In the preceding sections, we investigated various constructions to explain the behavior of Norwegian modals in pseudoclefts. Subject-oriented modals behave like control verbs in these constructions whereas proposition-scope modals (root and non-root) behave as raising verbs. Therefore, it seems likely that the analysis of modals in these constructions ought to be related to an analysis of control and raising verbs in pseudoclefts. 6 1 61

Where the raising verb's subject is not part of what is pseudoclefted, cf. fn. 29.

Modais in pseudoclefts

241

We considered solutions that attribute the distinction to a) Case; b) the requirements of the definite operator "op"; c) an ungoverned trace in [spec, IP] of the Focus constituent; and d) (lack of) access to subject positions. I will revisit briefly each of these solutions. Finally, I investigate if either e) controllability or f) ±external Theta-role could be the decisive factor in the pseudocleft constructions under consideration.

3.7.1. The Case

solution

Thräinsson and Vikner (1995) suggest that the Case requirement of the complement, the wh-trace in the relative clause of the pseudocleft, is responsible for the pattern we observe. Only a verb that assigns an external Theta-role assigns Case to its complement (Burzio 1986). Propositionscope modals cannot partake in this construction because they do not assign an external Theta-role to their subjects and thus assign no Case to their complement; this means that the wh-trace would not receive the required case feature. Although Thräinsson and Vikner fail to observe the existence of proposition-scope root modals, this account can easily be extended to include both root and non-root proposition-scope modals. One problem for this account is data as in (73). B ' s answer consists of a wA-question, where the moved constituent is the complement of an auxiliary. The auxiliary presumably does not assign Case. This suggests that complements of raising or auxiliary verbs are in fact able to undergo whmovement, even though their governing verb is not a Case-assigner (or Case checker, depending on your theory). (73)

a.

A: Jon harfaktisk solgt bilen uten hennes samtykke. Jon has actually sold car-DEF without her consent 'John actually sold the car without her consent.' Β : HVA har han?! what has he 'What has he (done)?'

If we chose to ignore data like those in (73), or if we found a different explanation for their grammaticality (perhaps involving specific properties of focus movement), the Case solution could still be viable.

242 Norwegian modals: Argument structure 3.7.2. The "op" solution The point of departure for this account is the fact that the operator "op" in relative clauses cannot refer to a non-specific indefinite; one cannot relativize the position of a postverbal associate in an existential construction like the one in (74b); see (74a) and (23) for more data. (74)

a.

*Jeg traff en mann som det kom forbi. I met a man that there came by (Intended: Ί met a man who, there was t, passing by.')

b.

Det kom en mann forbi. there came a man by Ά man came by.'

Assume that subject-oriented modals, like control verbs, select for a complement which is definite in the relevant sense, fulfilling the requirement of the operator "op." For instance, assume that this complement is a CP, a (prepositional) phase in the sense of Chomsky (2001, 2004). Not so for raising verbs. The complement of raising verbs, according to our assumptions, is an IP (or TP), hence not a phase, and presumably not referential or definite in the relevant sense. Thus it does not fulfill the requirement of the operator "op" and cannot be relativized. Proposition-scope modals (root and non-root) behave like raising verbs and could be assumed to take an IP complement. This IP complement cannot be relativized; therefore, cannot be pseudoclefted.

3.7.3. The ungoverned trace I have assumed (following Heycock and Kroch 1999) that the pseudocleft is an equative structure, with two referential elements equated by means of a copula. A (free) relative clause is the first part, the Ground, and a Focus constituent the second. A control verb selects for a complete propositional Phase, CP, an element referential enough to partake in an equative structure. Thus, the Focus constituent equated with the relative clause may be a CP, corresponding to the complement of a control verb. There is referential identity between the operator "op" and the Focus CP.

Modais in pseudoclefts

243

Figure 19 OK:

TopP

Spec: Ground

Top'

Figure 20 Ungrammatical: TopP

'What

Jon

anlas is-presumed

is

to

eat bananas'

The complement of a raising verb is not a complete propositional phase; instead, a raising verb requires an IP complement. Thus, the focus constituent of a pseudocleft where the head predicate of the relative is a raising

244 Norwegian modals: Argument structure verb ought to be an IP. However, an IP complement of a raising verb generated as the Focus constituent presumably contains an illicit trace in [spec, IP] and the structure is ruled out (cf. Figure 20).

3.7.4. Access to subject

positions

This proposal assumes that the subjects of all raising verbs are interpreted in a subject position within the syntactic scope of the raising verb ("reconstruction"), whether they yield a narrow- or wide-scope reading. An interpretation in the subject position of the raising verb (the upper subject position) entails a subject-oriented reading of the predicate. It is impossible for raising verbs or proposition-scope modals to accept a pseudoclefted complement as this operation deletes the lower subject position essential for their reading. Subject-oriented modals (like control predicates) require their subjects to be interpreted in the upper subject position, hence they are licit in this construction. (75)

a.

*Det Jon antas, er ä vcere arkitekt. it Jon presumePASS, is to be an architect 'What John is presumed to be, is an architect.'

Figure 21

antas

Modais in pseudoclefts 3. 7. J.

245

Controllability

All the proposals we have examined so far tacitly accept ±external Thetarole as one factor since this feature is assumed to separate control predicates from raising ones. We have suggested that whatever explains the ban on raising verbs in certain structures can also explain the non-occurrence of proposition-scope modals. It seems worth investigating, however, whether we can account for the data about modals in pseudoclefts without referring to the assignment of an external Theta-role. Not all verbs typically construed as raising verbs reject a pseudoclefted complement. If the main verb of the focus constituent is a passive, a proposition-scope reading of the modal is more natural, as in (76a). This reading of the modal does not allow for a pseudoclefted complement. However, this effect can be overridden, if we can construe the passive as some kind of quasi-agentive predicate, as in (76b). (76)

a.

*Det Jon absolutt ikke mä, er ä bli oversett. it Jon absolutely not must, is to be ignored 'What Jon absolutely shouldn't be, is ignored.'

b.

IDet Jon mä, er ä bli oppdaget αν et plateselskap. it Jon must, is to be discovered by a record company 'What Jon must do, is to (let himself) be discovered by a record company.'

(76b) marginally has a subject-oriented reading conveying that Jon has the capacity of creating a situation where he is discovered by a record company, the quasi-agentive reading. 62 Since no such effect is present in (76a), perhaps it is controllability that is crucial for accepting a pseudoclefted complement; this would separate control verbs and subject-oriented root modals from proposition-scope modals and raising verbs. This seems a natural route to follow, in particular if we accept Diewald's (1999) analysis of modals as the "passive" or "resulting state"

62

Hornstein (1998: 120) discusses examples where arbitrary PRO has a 'quasiagentive' reading: PRO to appear to be intelligent is harder than one might think. Chomsky (1995b) assumes this reading to be a by-product of raising; "this is the sort of interpretation one gets in the raised subject position." Hornstein continues (fn. 30): "it is plausible that these effects are quasi-thematic properties of IP."

246 Norwegian modals: Argument structure equivalent of a directive (e.g. an imperative). One cannot felicitously issue a directive to a subject who has no potential control over a situation. Also, control verbs often have an agentive flavor: decide, try, promise. Raising verbs, on the other hand, constitute predicates where the subject has no control over the situation described: seem, appear, be likely to. This line of thought is supported by the fact that, in English, a modal does not accept a pseudoclefted complement unless it is replaced by do (an agentive lightverb), as well as the fact that in German the corresponding lightverb tun is optional in the constructions we are examining. 63 However, we have seen data suggesting that subject-orientation is the decisive property. For instance, the Norwegian construction ser ut til a is accepted in these constructions, provided the main predicate is subjectoriented and the reading of ser ut til ä is the direct visual access reading, as in (77a). A predicate such as borte 'gone', forcing a proposition-scope reading of ser ut til a and incompatible with the visual access reading, renders the construction ungrammatical, as in (77b). (77)

a.

IDet Jon ser ut til, er ä vcere irritert. it Jon looks out to is to be annoyed 'What Jon seems (to be), is annoyed.'

b.

*Det Jon ser ut til, er ä vcere borte. it Jon looks out to is to be gone 'What Jon seems (to be), is gone.'

The subject Jon has no more control over the situation in (77a) than in (77b), but there is a transparent semantic relation between this subject and the matrix predicate in (77a), what we have referred to as subjectorientation. This suggests that it is in fact subject-orientation, not controllability, that allows ser ut til a to partake in this construction.

3.7.6.

±Theta-role

Another way to account for the difference between raising and control verbs in pseudoclefts would be to argue that the assignment of an external 63

As pointed out to me by one reviewer for Mouton de Gruyter. The light verb gj0re 'do' is optional in the Norwegian constructions, too.

Modais in pseudoclefts

247

Theta-role is in fact responsible for the observable facts. However, the restriction is not derivative from Theta-assignment in the form of a Case or definite reference requirement; instead, it refers directly to Thetaassignment, Theta-identification. This approach builds on Zubizarreta (1982: 97), where the term thematically identified is defined as follows: [E]very Α-position must be thematically identified. A position is thematically identified if it is a semantic position or...linked to a semantic position. In the structure in (77a), for instance, all elements occurring in A-positions are thematically identified: "op" receives an internal Theta-role from the raising verb and the subject Jon is identified through its semantic relation to the matrix verb. In the ungrammatical (77b), the subject Jon is not thematically identified within the relative clause since the matrix verb is unequivocally a raising verb and assigns no θ-role to its subject. Thus, the DP Jon is not identified as to argument status or θ-properties. This sentence violates the first half of the theta-criterion, which states that each argument (DP) must be assigned a theta-role; thus, (77b) is ungrammatical for the same reason that (78) is ungrammatical. (78)

a.

*Det Jon, var at han ble overkjert av toget. it John, was that he was run over by the train * 'What Jon, was that he was run over by a train.'

If we choose this approach, we are in fact claiming that modals assign a Θrole in the relevant pseudoclcft structures—when their complement is pseudoclefted, the main predicate is agentive, and the raised subject is an intentional subject. In these pseudoclefts, the modal must assign a θ-role for the structure to be well-formed. This explains why modals always get a subject-oriented reading in these structures since the subject DP must be thematically identified. The only option is to construe the modal as a Θassigner, and a Theta-assigning modal is always subject-oriented. Whether we want to call this an external, adjunct, additional, or secondary Thetarole, this θ-role assigned by the root modal to the subject is a prerequisite for a pseudoclefted complement and makes the modal display the characteristics of a control verb. When no semantic role is assigned to the subject, as in root or non-root proposition-scope modal constructions and with raising verbs, the complement cannot be pseudoclefted. This does not necessarily entail that subject-oriented root modals are in fact full-fledged control

248 Norwegian modals: Argument structure predicates. I will discuss different potential approaches to this question in the following two sections.

4.

Explaining subject-orientedness

In this section, I consider ways of accounting for the subject-orientedness effect of modals. This effect occurs in pseudoclefts, as only subjectoriented modals accept a pseudoclefted complement. Also, only subjectoriented modals accept a definite proform dette 'this' as their complement. The structures in (79) cannot give rise to a proposition-scope reading of the modal; the obligatory subject-oriented reading makes a generic reading of en kvinne 'a woman' the natural reading in (79b). (79)

a.

Dette kan/vil/skal/mä/bor jeg ikke. this can/will/shall/must/ought I not Ί can't/won't/shouldn't/mustn't/ought not to do this.'

b.

Dette kan/vil/skal/mä/ber en kvinne. this can/will/shall/must/ought a woman Ά woman can/will/should/must/ought to do this.'

Another important point is that a subject-oriented modal with a symmetric predicate as its complement gives rise to different inference patterns than a raising verb or a proposition-scope modal (cf. Chapter 3, section 2.11). Symmetric predicates are relations for which the following inference pattern is valid: R(x,y) -> R(y,x)· If x resembles y, then y resembles x. According to Brennan (1997, 2004), 64 if clauses with symmetric predicates also contain modals, the inference R(x,y) -> R(y,x) only remains valid under non-root readings, (80b), not under root readings, as in (80c). (80)

64

a. b. c.

Arthur looks like Susan -> Susan looks like Arthur Arthur might look like Susan --> S. might look like Arthur Arthur can look like Susan -|-> Susan can look like Arthur

See also Brennan (1993). Diewald (1999: 62) observes restrictions on activepassive alternations such as (81) for the German dürfen.

Explaining subject-orientedness

249

If it is a possible assumption that Arthur looks like Susan, then it must also be a possible assumption that Susan looks like Arthur. However, in (80c), Arthur may have great impersonation skills, allowing him to look like Susan, but Susan may lack any such skills, preventing her from looking like Arthur. This pattern seems to result from subject-orientedness. These data resemble a fourth construction not mentioned so far—the active-passive alternation possible with raising verbs. As noted by Rosenbaum (1967: 59-61) and Davies and Dubinsky (2004: 5), for raising verbs such as seem, the sentence with the active complement is usually synonymous with the corresponding sentence with a passive complement, a situation unlike that of control verbs. This alternation is not always possible with root modals, an unexpected fact if root modals are raising verbs. (81)

a. b. c.

The doctor seems to have examined John —> John seems to have been examined by the doctor. The doctor decided to examine John -|-> John decided to be examined by the doctor. The doctor can examine John -|-> John can be examined by the doctor.

These four constructions evidently depend on subject-orientedness for their grammaticality. The question is: what does subject-orientedness consist of?

4.1. It is not a real Theta-role What I referred to as subject-orientedness in the discussion above (Barbiers 1995, 2002) is exactly what numerous authors, advocates of the CvR analysis, call a θ-relation, or a dyadic reading. 65 As shown in the survey of earlier proposals in Chapter 3, however, many authors are reluctant to describe this relation as a full-fledged Theta-relation and instead invoke terms such as 65

Within the functionalist literature on modals, the term agent-oriented is preferred (Bybee et al. 1994; Bybee and Fleischman 1995). The problem with this term is that it is sometimes used to refer to an agent that is not syntactically present: Das Bier sollte hallt sein 'The beer should be cold' has an agent-oriented reading, according to Heine (1995: 26), where "agent" is used to designate the person who acts on this sentence, the one who puts the beer in the fridge. Thus this term sometimes incorporates information that is of no relevance to us here for describing the behavior of modals in pseuodclefts.

250 Norwegian modals: Argument structure adjunct, additional, or secondary Theta-role, the properties of which are slightly different from those of regular argument Theta-roles. 66 Within the "all modals are raising verbs" camp, various accounts of the subject-orientedness effects have been proposed. Wurmbrand (1999) suggests that, in these cases, what appears to be a θ-role assigned by the root modal is in fact something else, a role or function assigned contextually, not syntactically. Modals do not assign an external θ-role, but certain apparent thematic relations result from a "rich contextual component" (13) of modal statements. Wurmbrand (1999: 13) claims that these apparent thematic relations are not syntactically encoded, as demonstrated by the fact that non-directed interpretations (proposition-scope readings) are available in most modal constructions. The availability of non-directed 'interpretations' shows that roles/functions like 'obligee' or 'permissee' etc. do not have to coincide with a specific syntactic argument in the sentence. In other words, the determination of these roles cannot be seen as a mapping between θ-roles and syntactic arguments. While this claim is correct for modals in most constructions and sentence types, the problem with modals with a pseudoclefted complement and the definite complement dette 'this' is that in these constructions the nondirected reading is never available. The subject-oriented reading is the only one possible. An approach that invokes contextually determined Thetaassignment would have to explain why the contextually determined role must be assigned in pseudocleft cases. What contextual properties of the pseudocleft prevent the proposition-scope reading from arising? 66

Zubizarreta (1982) also counts adverbs as adjunct theta-role assigners, e.g. subject-oriented adverbs such as intentionally, unwillingly, etc. (whereas Muysken (1981) claims that adverbs are important to interpretation, but less important to the structure of a clause). As pointed out by a reviewer for the publisher, who evidently leans towards the "all modals are raising verbs" analysis, this entails that we need the term adjunct Theta-role anyway. This is true, and in my view, what we lump together as Theta-roles is probably a much more gradable property. 67 Two comments are in order: firstly, Wurmband never discusses modals and pseudoclefis in the article referred to here or in the 2001 book. Secondly, she explicitly states that the section containing the proposal of contextually assigned roles is "somewhat preliminary." 68 It is not without precedence to claim that contextual information and world knowledge affects syntactic operations. Erteschik-Shir (1981) notes that wItextraction from an NP depends on contextual differences:

Explaining subject-orientedness

251

In contrast to Wurmbrand's proposal, Barbiers (1995, 2002) maintains that subject-orientedness is syntactically encoded, not as lexically encoded argument structure, but as an abstract head D heading a designated projection in the sentence phrase marker. This head D establishes the semantic relation between the subject and the verb, and "it depends entirely on the base position of the modal" relative to this D head whether the semantic relation will be established or not, as Figure 22 shows (see section 2.7 of Chapter 3 for a more detailed account). If the modal is generated below D, a subject-oriented reading results; if the modal is generated above D, the structure yields the non-root (epistemic) reading. The proposition-scope root reading of the modal arises either because the head D is entirely absent from the structure, or because the subject reconstructs at LF into a lower subject position (Barbiers 2002: 67). Figure 22 a.

root

b.

Mod

IndP

non-root

Dv

IndP

If we adopt Barbiers' D-projection to account for the subject-orientedness of modals and claim that only in Figure 22a does the modal accept a pseudoclefted complement, we still need some auxiliary hypotheses to explain why this is the case. Why is D obligatorily generated between the subject and the modal in exactly these cases?

(i) Which car did you like the gears in? (ii) #Which car did you like the girl in? Bouchard (1995) claims that there is a transparent relation between gears and cars, but a non-transparent relationship between girls and cars. This transparency affects the extraction possibilities. Alec Marantz (p.c.) suggests that the relationship between gears and cars, unlike the relation between girls and cars, amounts to a headcomplement relation which is encoded in (covert) syntax, as shown by the fact that the gears of the car is a felicitous construction whereas the girl of the car is not.

252 Norwegian modals: Argument structure 4.2. Occasional redefinition of argument structure If we do not accept the idea of adjunct Theta-roles, for instance, because of their half-way status, and we do not want to assume that root modals come in both a raising and a control variety, we might be inclined to propose that root modals—although they are always defined as raising verbs in the lexicon—are able to be redefined as control verbs is some structures. This is not unprecedented: it is possible for certain verbs with a specific type of argument structure to be forced into a different one. (82)

A:

Fjernkontrollen har forsvunnet. remote-controlDEF has disappeared 'The remote control has disappeared.'

Β:

Uasä, hvem har forsvunnet den, da? really, who has disappeared it then 'Really, who disappeared it?'

Forsvinne 'disappear' is clearly an unaccusative, non-agentive verb in Norwegian. Nevertheless, it is marginally possible to force an agent into this construction. 69 The resulting construction has a causative reading, 'who made the remote control disappear'. However, allowing deontic modals to be redefined in this way is an unsatisfactory solution for several reasons. Forcing a verb with a given argument structure into a different verb frame typically gives rise to deviating readings. No such effect is observed with modals in pseudoclefts. Furthermore, how could we restrict this kind of redefinition so as to allow root modals to undergo redefinition of argument structure and disallow other raising verbs? Finally, if we allowed root modals to be control verbs in certain constructions, couldn't we simply allow for double lexical entries of each root modal?

69

Interestingly, it is a prerequisite that the additional argument forced into this construction be a prototypical agent. If we replace hvem 'who' with hva 'what', the construction is close to nonintelligible, according to my informants: (i) ΊΊ*Ηνα har forsvunnet fjernkontrollen? what disappeared remote-controlDEF 'What disappeared the remote control?'

Explaining subject-orientedness

253

4.3. Double entries The fastest and simplest way to account for the double behavior of root modals—their subject-oriented and proposition-scope readings—would be to propose that each root modal corresponds to two different modals, 7 0 the way Brennan (1997: 226) does: [E]ach modal auxiliary is actually two modal auxiliaries: mays is translated as an operator which combines with a (proposition-level) conversational background and a proposition to form a modal proposition; mayvP is translated as an operator which combines with a (property-level) conversational background and a property expression to form a modal property expression. I make parallel claims for the other modal auxiliaries. I do not identify the interpretive class of mays as epistemic or of mayvf> as root. In Brennan's proposal, all non-root (epistemic) modals are raising verbs and root modals come in two varieties—a raising variety that does not assign a Theta-role to its subject and another one that does. The latter may be considered a full-fledged control verb, as proposed for all Norwegian root modals by L0drup (1996a) and Dyvik (1999). W e would then be assuming, in addition to an entry for the non-root version of the modal, two lexical entries for each root modal, one control and one raising version. Consider once again the table of readings for Norwegian modals. Table 6 Readings available for Norwegian modals: Dyadic: ville: volition; kunne: ability Root:

Dynamic: Monadic: tendency (ville\ strong; kunne: weaker) Dyadic: directed obligation/permission Deontic: Monadic: non-directed obligation/permission

Non-root:

70

Monadic: epistemic; metaphysical; evidential

Her analysis at this point builds on the analysis of Perlmutter (1970), who identifies two verbs begin. As noted by Perlmutter and Brennan, many of Perlmutter's arguments carry over to modals.

254 Norwegian modals: Argument structure Translating these readings into argument structure, the dyadic or subjectoriented readings arise when the root modal assigns a subject θ-role; the absence of a subject θ-role yields the monadic, proposition-scope reading. Indeed, we would say that a dyadic reading arises exactly because the modal in these cases is a two-place predicate syntactically—it assigns both a subject and an object role. This yields a homomorphic relation between the syntactic properties of a modal and its available readings. This analysis has several advantages. Firstly, it reconciles the two main families of analyses within the P&P framework—the control versus raising analysis and the "all modals are raising verbs" analysis. Thus, it unifies analyses and insights from both camps. For instance, works within the control versus raising camp have often ignored the proposition-scope readings of root modals, which results in a skewed picture of the relevant data. On the other hand, even authors who maintain that all modals are raising verbs need a way to account for the subject-orientedness effects. An analysis postulating two versions or lexical entries for each root modal makes it possible to maintain many of the hypotheses within the control versus raising analysis and simultaneously account for proposition-scope readings of root modals. Assuming the existence of a raising root modal in addition to the control version would simply function as an extension of the theory by means of an additional lexical entry for each root modal. However, within the P&P framework (unlike several other generative frameworks), one is typically reluctant to resort to double entries in the lexicon. One reason is the conceptual problem resulting from the existence of homonym pairs for all root modals, where each pair is identical semantically, except in terms of θ-properties. Secondly, say we implement this idea by assigning a control structure to the subject-oriented root modal whereas the proposition-scope reading is construed as a raising verb. In any sentence containing the modal, there would be a structural ambiguity with regard to the complement of the modal—whether the complement is a CP or an IP. A potential problem with this massive doubling of possible structural representations is that in most non-cleft sentences this structural ambiguity would have no observable syntactic consequences. We would have a stronger case if the subject-oriented modal displayed a number of syntactic properties not found in its proposition-scope counterpart: if subjectoriented root modals, but not proposition-scope ones, could passivize,for instance. Or we might expect the complement-taking properties of one member of the pair of homonyms to differ from those of the other. There are admittedly two such differences in the complement-taking properties of

Explaining subject-orientedness

255

subject-oriented and proposition-scope modals: only the subject-oriented version accepts pseudoclefts and the definite proform dette 'this' as its complement. However, these facts could presumably be explained independently of the selectional requirements towards a complement. As this addition of lexical entries is theoretically unattractive within a P&P framework (Barbiers 1995: 156), I will consider another possible explanation for the double behavior of modals.

4.4. Optional Theta-assignment In this section, I consider an approach allowing us to keep the complement of a modal constant while varying its property to assign an external Thetarole. The external Theta-role is optionally assigned, which gives the modal the characteristics of a control verb (if the role is assigned) and those of a raising verb (if the role is not assigned). The properties of the complement, however, remain unchanged. This approach avoids the massive structural ambiguity of the double entry approach, but it does force us to stray from certain well-established 'truths' in Theta-theory. Luckily, the path is not untrodden: Hornstein's movement theory serves as the point of departure for this proposal.

4.4.1. Hornstein

(1998, 1999, 2000)

The objective of Hornstein (1998, 1999, 2000) is to reduce the notions of raising and obligatory control (as opposed to arbitrary control) to one notion. He concludes that both phenomena can be reduced to raising and presents a range of arguments to support his analysis; I review some important ones and refer the reader to Hornstein's articles for more details. Firstly, Hornstein observes that the interpretational properties and distribution of Obligatory Control PRO (OCP) and Non-obligatory Control PRO (NOCP) differ in important respects. He goes on to note that the difference between OCP and N O C P structures is that OCPs behave like anaphors whereas NOCPs behave like pronouns. 71 The interpretive data point

71

Properties of OCP are illustrated in (i); those of NOCP in (ii) (paradigms deriving from Fodor 1975, Higginbotham 1992, Lebeaux 1985, and Williams 1980).

256 Norwegian modals: Argument structure to the conclusion that PRO is ambiguous. However, a PRO theorem approach to P R O ' s distribution cannot accept ambiguity. The PRO theorem relies on the assumption that every PRO is simultaneously [+pronominal, +anaphor]. Instead, Hornstein proposes an account of PRO where N O C P is assumed to equal (small) pro, the null counterpart of the pronoun one. Firstly, the 'arbitrary' reading characteristic of non-obligatory control PRO can be accommodated under this assumption. Secondly, N O C P readings are largely restricted to positions from which movement is not allowed— complex subjects or w/i-islands (cf. also Manzini 1983). In Hornstein's analysis, OCP is reduced to Α-movement, this empty category being simply an intermediate NP-trace. The theoretical obstacle to this move is obviously the θ-criterion, retained in the Minimalist Program. Chomsky (1995a) restricts θ-assignment to the merger of trivial (one-membered) chains, which assures that Θassignment happens prior to any Α-movement and that movement from one θ-position to another is strictly forbidden. 72 Hornstein (1999: 71) suggests it is time to reexamine these assumptions:

(i)

a. * It was expected PRO to shave himself. b. *John thinks that it was expected PRO to shave himself c. *John's campaign expects PRO to shave himself. d. The unfortunate expects PRO to get a medal. (ii) a. It was believed that PRO shaving was important. b. Johnj thinks that it is believed that PROj shaving himself is important. c. Clinton 'Sj campaign believes that PRO, keeping his sex life under control is necessary for electoral success. d. The unfortunate believes that PRO getting a medal would be boring. (ia) and (iia) show that OCP needs an antecedent whereas NOCP does not. (ib) and (iib) show that the antecedent of OCP must be local; if NOCP does have an antecedent, it need not be local, (ic) and (iic) show that the antecedent of OCP must ccommand PRO while that of NOCP need not do so. In (id) and (iid), the issue is whether PRO must have a de se (reflexive) reading. For OCP only the de se reading is possible, in that the unfortunate expects himself to get a medal; in the NOCP construction, a non-de se interpretation is possible—(iid) could mean 'for anyone to get a medal would be boring'. 72 Brody (1995: 12) also includes as a fundamental constraint the theta-criterion; in this approach dubbed the Main Thematic Condition: "All non-root positions of chains are nonthematic (where the root of the chain is its most deeply embedded position)." Further, "only the root position(s) of a chain can be theta-related (i.e., assigning or receiving a theta role)" (77).

Explaining subject-orientedness 257 How well motivated are they? Why assume that chains are biuniquely related to θ-roles? What goes wrong if movement takes place from one Θposition to another? Why distinguish trace from PRO? As is generally the case with minimalist meditations, I assume that the burden of proof is on those who wish to promote these assumptions and invoke these distinctions. What is not at issue is that control and raising sentences manifest different properties. The minimalist question is whether these differences require the technical apparatus standardly invoked to distinguish them.

Hornstein does, however, acknowledge the set of data constituting the empirical basis for prohibiting movement from one θ-position into another. (83)

a. b.

*Jo hri] s aw tj. (meaning: John saw himself) * Johnι believes t/ to be a fool. (meaning: John believes himself to be a fool).

In "an inadequate sketch," Hornstein suggests that the sentences may violate Case theory: the verbs in (83) may have an accusative Case feature which must be checked by an overt DP. In these cases, what we find instead of a phonetically null DP-trace is a reflexive. In other words, reflexives are also the residue of movement; they are spelled-out DP-traces (Kayne 1996 proposes something similar for reflexive se in French). When the verb in question does not require its accusative Case feature to be expressed, the reflexive is no longer obligatory, as in (84). (84)

a. b.

Mary washed (herself) thoroughly. John shaved (himself) carefully.

Although there are many remaining questions for this approach to control versus raising phenomena, I will leave those aside for now and proceed to summarize the main points of Hornstein's theory. Firstly, he assumes that links, not chains, are the actual entities of interpretation. (85)

a. b.

c. d.

At the CI Interface (LF) an Α-chain has one and only one visible link. DPs begin in VP internal positions-their θ-domains-and move to VP external specifier positions to check morphological features such as Case. Movement is actually copy plus deletion. Grammatical conditions apply exclusively at LF.

258 Norwegian modals: Argument structure (85a) requires that all but one link of a chain delete, but it does not specify which one is retained nor does it favor the deletion of lower links over higher ones, which implies that "lowering" is possible in Α-chains. Lowering happens when higher links of a chain are deleted and a lower link is retained. Chain links rather than chains are responsible for determining relative scope, by means of the interpretive rule α scopes over β just in case a c-commands β. Secondly, Hornstein makes some assumptions concerning the nature of Θassignment. Importantly, θ-roles are considered semantic features on verbs and predicates; thus, they may be checked by DPs (Hornstein 2000: 38). 73 (86)

a. b. c.

θ-roles are features on verbs. A DP "receives" a θ-role by checking a θ feature of a verbal/predicative phrase that it merges with. There is no upper bound on the number of θ-roles a DP can have.

As mentioned above, nothing in the fundamentals of this proposal prevents the upper link from being deleted and a lower (or intermediate) link to be retained. However, certain properties of a sentence and the grammar may force the upper link to be retained for the sentence to converge. One such property may be the requirements of binding theory, as in (87). (87)

a. b.

A studenti seemed to hiSj supervisor [ti to read every book]. A studenti seemed to himselfi [t, to read every book].

In these phrase markers, the lower copies (in brackets) must delete, otherwise binding of the pronoun/reflexive is not possible, and the sentence is 73 Manzini and Roussou (1997) propose an analysis of control that shares many of these assumptions. The main difference is that Manzini and Roussou suggest that DPs are base generated in their Case position, hence, that Α-movement does not exist. The θ-features of the embedded predicate(s) raise to adjoin the head Infi of the matrix sentence, aquiring the right spec-head relation to the matrix subject DP. PRO positions are phonetically null because there is nothing there at all, according to this proposal. For my purposes, Hornstein's approach is better suited, since it also addresses scope issues and allows for "lowering" of a DP into an embedded subject position.

Explaining subject-orientedness

259

ill-formed. Another property that would force the upper link of the A-chain to be retained is the expression of θ-roles, as in (88). (88)

a. b.

*The shit expects [t to hit the fan]. *There expects [t to be a man in the garden].

These sentences are ill-formed because idiom subjects (The shit) and expletives (Therej are unable to check θ-roles (although they are able to check the EPP-feature). Thus, verbs that assign an external θ-role need a thematic DP of a certain kind in their subject position. Provided this spec-head relation must hold at LF—which seems reasonable, given that thematic roles are important to the overall interpretation of a sentence—a matrix verb assigning an external θ-role would always force the upper link of an Achain to be retained and all other links to be deleted. Deleting the upper Alink would leave the θ-feature of the verb unchecked and the sentence would not converge at LF. Hornstein mentions (1998: fn. 10) that a weak-strong distinction might be relevant to the checking of θ-roles. θ-roles are presumably interpretable. As such, they need not be checked.... One could argue that θ-theory requires these roles to be expressed and nominals to bear them.... One might further ask why θ-roles must meet this requirement.... An answer consistent with the spirit of MP is that θ-roles are bound affixes. If so, they would need nominal support. If these affixes are strong, then they would have to be supported in overt syntax. If weak, a Θfeature could be checked at LF. For modals, it is a prerequisite for a +Θ (subject-oriented) reading that the subject position not be filled by an expletive in overt syntax. On the other hand, if any verb has a weak θ-feature, it must be root modals, since they allow for a θ-reading-given that they have a thematic subject-but they also allow for their θ-feature to be unexpressed (even at LF). However, the Θreading cannot arise at LF unless established in overt syntax by means of the overt spec-head relation between the modal and the subject. It would thus make sense to ascribe a weak θ-feature to modals only if the weakstrong distinction is taken to mean optional vs. obligatory assignment of a(n external) θ-role, where this relation holds in overt syntax as well as at LF. As the terms strong and weak are associated with other, specific theoretical assumptions regarding overt syntax/LF discrepancies, I will utilize instead the terms optional and obligatory.

260 Norwegian modals: Argument structure It is not unheard of to ascribe an optional θ-role to modals. Zubizarreta (1982: 84) refers to the subject position of modals as receiving a "nonobligatory adjunct external θ-role." Hornstein's theory, where the Θcriterion is modified to allow for movement into a θ-position, allows us to assume that the Theta-role assigned by modals is an argument Theta-role, not an adjunct one. Let us investigate then what happens if we classify Norwegian root modals as raising verbs that optionally assign an external θ-role to their subjects and non-root modals as raising verbs that never assign an external Θrole to their subjects.

4.4.2. Optional versus obligatory

Theta-assigners

Ascribing the property of being optional θ-assigners to root modals allows us to account for their syntactic behavior without assuming two different entries in the lexicon for each root modal. That is, instead of the two-entries listing in (89a), we can assume the single-entry listing in (89b). (89)

a.

ma, root modal: [ θ, Θ (CP)] ma, root modal: [ _ ,θ (IP)]

b.

mä, root modal: [(θ),θ]

Under this approach, Norwegian root modals (and presumably, reanalysis verbs) are described in the lexicon as raising verbs with an optional external θ-role. This θ-feature is optionally checked or discharged by an agentive DP entering into a spec-head relation with the modal at some point before Spell-Out, i.e. during the part of the derivation belonging to overt syntax. Discharging this θ-feature forces a subject-oriented reading of the modal and simultaneously prevents the DP from being interpreted in the lower subject position; thus, the proposition-scope reading of the modal is unavailable. However, it is also possible for the agentive DP to enter into a spec-head relation with the modal in overt syntax without discharging the θ-feature, to fulfill the EPP or subject requirement of a clause. In this case, lowering (interpretation of the lower DP-link) is allowed, and the proposition-scope reading of the modal arises. 74 74

This distinguishes modals from verbs like rope 'call'. In Norwegian, impersonal

Explaining subject-orientedness

261

Figure 23 a.

b. ModP

ModP DP [Θ+Θ] Marit

'Marit

Tvlod'

must

DP[e Marit

'Marit

must

In Figure 23a, the DP Marit checks the theta-feature of smile by merging with it; this results in a spec-head configuration, and the theta-feature of smile is checked (represented by V ) . This is an obligatory operation, since smile obligatorily assigns a theta-role. Next, the VP [Marit [smile]] merges with the modal. This operation is also obligatory given the string at hand. The third merger is also obligatory, presumably because of the EPP: the M o d ' merges with the raised subject. However, at this point there is an optional operation: either the subject DP checks the theta-feature of the modal mä or it does not. If it checks this feature, the resulting representation is Figure 23a, where the subject DP ends up bearing two theta-roles. If the subject DP does not check the theta-feature of the modal, the resulting structure is Figure 23b, where the subject DP has only one theta-role, the one assigned by the embedded predicate smile. Considering the possible interpretations of these phrase markers, we find that when the subject DP checks the theta-feature of the modal, as in Figure 23a, the subject must be interpreted in this position: the topmost link of the DP-chain is the link retained and interpreted, as in Figure 24a. Howconstructions are possible with these highly agentive verbs; e.g. (i): (i) Det roper i skogen. (ii) Jon roper i skogen (lit.) 'There calls in the woods.' I. 'Jon calls in the woods.' II.# 'Something calls "Jon" in the woods.' Thus, these verbs could easily be argued to assign an optional external theta-role, like modals. However, these verbs do not allow for non-thematic (propositionscope) readings when they have an intentional subject (ii), unlike (deontic) modals.

262 Norwegian modals: Argument

structure

ever, if the Theta-feature of the modal is left unchecked, as in Figure 23 b, the lower link of the DP-chain (the subject trace) is the link retained and interpreted, as in Figure 24b. Figure 24

b.

a. ModP

ModP

DP fe+θ] Marit

Mod0 (Θ)

Mod0 mä

t;

DP [θ]

mä

Marit

V° Ve smile

'Marit

must

'Marit

must

smile'

This implies that a proposition-scope modal construction would prevent its subject from binding an anaphor in an adjunct scoping over the lower subject position; recall the data in (87) above. (90)

a.

En kvinne, berffor

sin, egen del] tt bli

statsminister.

a woman should for SELF own part become prime minister Ά woman should for her own sake be the prime minister.' b.

En apej berffor

sin, egen del] i, ikke mates av

besokende.

an ape should for SELF own part not feedPASS by visitors 'An ape should not, for its own sake, be fed by visitors.' As expected, it seems impossible to get a proposition-scope reading of the modal in these sentences; the natural reading is the subject-oriented one, requiring either a specific or a generic (both wide-scope) reading of the subject. The non-specific reading of the subject, which guarantees the narrow-scope reading of the modal, seems impossible. A note of caution, however: the judgments about (90) need not be due to subject scope; a nonspecific subject may be referentially too rudimentary to function as a binder

Explaining subject-orientedness

263

for the anaphor (this may be the case even in Hornstein's data in (87) above). 75 An appropriate question at this point is: What prevents the modal from assigning a theta-role to an argument other than the raised subject? If the modal optionally assigns a theta-role and the embedded predicate assigns another theta-role, what excludes strings like (91a) and (91b)? (91)

a.

* Marit mä Jon r0mme. Marit must Jon escape 'Marit must Jon escape.'

b.

*Det mä Marit remme. there must Marit escape 'There must Marit escape.'

To provide an answer, I will invoke an assumption f r o m Nordgärd and Äfarli (1990: 100) that modal auxiliaries are not Case assigners. Consider the structures in Figure 25. Figure 25 b.

a. ModP DP (ß] Marit

ModP

^^Mod' Mod1 V(0) mä DP Jon[Q]

'Marit

must

Jon

Mod"

Τ

V Ve remme escape'

VP

(Θ)

mä

DP [θ] Marit

V'

v° Ve romme 'There (expl.) must Marit escape'

The sentence Jon bor for sin egen del holdes utenfor 'Jon should for his own sake be kept out of it' corroborates the latter assumption. Here, a proposition-scope reading of the modal is possible, but Jon can still bind the anaphor sin. This sentence would still be ungrammatical with a pseudoclefted complement and a proposition scope reading of the modal. I can offer no explanation at this point. 75

264 Norwegian modals: Argument

structure

In Figure 25 a, Marit will be assigned Case by whichever head assigns Case to the subject of finite clauses. However, Jon will not be assigned Case, because the modal is not a Case assigner. Likewise, in Figure 25b, the expletive will be assigned Case because it is the subject of a finite clause; Marit, however, will not be assigned Case because the modal does not assign Case to a DP it C-commands (and this particular structure would be ruled out anyway, because of the defmiteness-effect). Would it be possible for a subject DP to acquire a θ-feature from the modal before lowering into the lower subject position? The resulting reading ought to be simultaneously subject-oriented and proposition-scope. More generally, control verbs (obligatorily subject-oriented) do not allow for proposition-scope readings. Hornstein suggests that deleting the upper Α-link would leave the θ-feature of the verb unchecked and the sentence would not converge at LF. (92)

a. Delete all links in the Α-chain except one. BUT: b. The retained link must be at least as high in the structure as the topmost θ-position.

In the case of root modals then either the θ-feature is discharged, which prevents lowering, or it is not, and interpreting the lower link in the DPchain is allowed.

4.5. Evaluating the alternatives At this point, we have four competing hypotheses accounting for the subject-orientedness of root modals. I will discard the first hypothesis, outlined in 4.1, that subject-orientedness does not amount to a real Theta-role and/or that it is contextually defined. When we consider subject-oriented modals and control verbs on one hand, and proposition-scope modals and raising verbs on the other—and compare their behavior in pseudoclefts and other obligatorily subject-oriented constructions—we find a striking similarity between control verbs and subject-oriented modals and between raising verbs and proposition-scope modals. If the presence of an external Thetarole is what separates control verbs from raising verbs, it seems counterintuitive to claim that the corresponding difference between subject-oriented modals and proposition-scope modals should receive an entirely different explanation.

Explaining subject-orientedness

265

I have already discussed my objections to the "occasional redefinitionof argument structure" hypothesis outlined in section 4.2. Restricting the proposed redefinition to exactly the right cases and accounting for the fact that the deviating readings typically resulting from this type of redefinition do not occur in modals is problematic, to say the least. The two remaining hypotheses account for the subject-orientedness effect by assuming the assignment of an external Theta-role for root modals with subject-oriented readings. This is why the inference tests with activepassive and symmetric predicate complements do not work (cf. the alternations in (80) and (81)); modals have subject-oriented readings as well as proposition-scope readings (unlike most raising verbs), so they behave like control verbs on at least one reading. This is also the feature allowing them to take as their complement definite dette 'this' and to appear in pseudoclefts where raising verbs are typically ungrammatical. Both hypotheses have strengths and weaknesses. The "optional Thetarole" hypothesis requires deviating from well-established facts in Thetatheory in allowing movement into a Theta-position. 76 The "double entries" hypothesis, on the other hand, requires double entries in the lexicon, where each root modal has one raising version and one control version. As Barbiers (1995: 156) points out, a double-entry solution is considered theoretically unattractive within a P&P framework. In addition, this move forces us to assume a massive structural ambiguity in each and every sentence containing a root modal, especially as regards the properties and categorial status of the modal's complement. Apart from these theoretical differences, both approaches seemingly account for the observed facts although they do so in different ways. The facts are summarized in (93). (93)

a. b.

76

Non-root modals have only proposition-scope readings and behave like raising verbs, Root modals exhibit double behavior. They take nonargument subjects and display scope ambiguities reminiscent of raising verbs. In these cases, they get a propositionscope reading. In certain constructions though, they behave

Bouchard (1995: 59) argues against the concept of theta-roles altogether and claims that the term theta-role has no identifiable content across verb classes: "If verbs can vary so much in restrictiveness, a given thematic role could be associated with no selectional restrictions. For example, seem could assign a 'Seemer' role, with no selectional restrictions - anything can seem."

266 Norwegian modals: Argument structure

c.

like control verbs. In these constructions they obligatorily get a subject-oriented reading, Even the subject-oriented modals take directional (raising structure) complements.

In both accounts, non-root modals are raising verbs; both explain (90a) in the same manner. On the hypothesis that root modals are specified in the lexicon as optionally assigning an external Theta-role, (90b) can be straightforwardly explained. The subject-oriented reading arises when the optional Theta-role is assigned; the proposition-scope reading is the result of the modal not assigning its optional external Theta-role. The doubleentry hypothesis is not very different; here, root modals each have two entries in the lexicon, one specified as assigning an external Theta-role and yielding the subject-oriented reading, another specified as not assigning an external Theta-role and giving rise to the proposition-scope reading. Both approaches can account for the behavior of modals in pscudoclefis and constructions with a definite complement dette 'this'; in doing so, however, they rely on a different set of auxiliary hypotheses. In section 3.7, I reviewed various accounts explaining the differences between raising (and proposition-scope modals) and control verbs (and subject-oriented modals) in pseudoclefts. Some of the accounts ascribed the difference to the complements of raising and control verbs (the Case solution in 3.7.1, the "op" solution in 3.7.2. and the ungoverned trace approach in 3.7.3). These accounts would not lend support to the optional Theta-role hypothesis, since this hypothesis assumes that the complements of proposition-scope and root modals are structurally identical. Instead, the optional Theta-role hypothesis would need to refer to the 'access to subject positions' approach (section 3.7.4) or the 'Theta-identification' approach (section 3.7.6) to account for the ban on proposition-scope modals in pseudoclefts. The double-entries hypothesis can be supported by any approach in section 3.7. Apart from this difference, both hypotheses seem equally well-equipped to account for the data at hand. There is one construction that they cannot explain equally well, however, the construction where the modal takes a directional complement, mentioned in (93 c) above. If we choose the double entries hypothesis, it would be natural to let ourselves be guided by the table of possible readings when we decide what entries to assume.

Explaining subject-orientedness

267

Table 7 Readings available for Norwegian modals: Dyadic: ville·. volition; kunne·. ability Root:

Dynamic: Monadic: tendency (ville: strong; kunne·. weaker) Dyadic: directed obligation/permission Deontic: Monadic: non-directed obligation/permission

Non-root:

Monadic: epistemic; metaphysical; evidential

Recall that monadic means a proposition-scope and dyadic a subjectoriented reading. The subject-oriented reading of ville 'want to' is thus the volitional reading, and this volitional modal ought to be listed as a control predicate in the lexicon. Likewise, the ability reading must be the subjectoriented reading of the dynamic kunne ' c a n ' . However, we k n o w that these modals take directional complements even on these subject-oriented readings, 77 and these structures have all the features of raising structures (see the discussion of the data (18) and (19) in section 3 for more detail; (19) is repeated here as (94)). For instance, the subjects in these structures display the subject-predicate scope ambiguity typical of raising structures, as (94a) shows. (94)

77

a.

En mann mä ut αν styret. a man must out of boardDEF Ά man must leave the board.'

b.

Ola ville hjem. Ola wanted home 'Ola wanted to go home.'

c.

Marit var syk og kunne ikke pä skolen. Marit was ill and could not on schoolDEF 'Marit was sick and couldn't go to school.'

Kunne 'can' more reluctantly than ville 'want to' in standard Norwegian.

268 Norwegian modals: Argument structure d.

Können Sie selber ins Auto? German can you self in-the car 'Are you able to get into the car by yourself?'

This constitutes a problem for the double entries hypothesis: if these structures are indeed raising structures, we would not expect to find them as the complements of subject-oriented modals. The double entry hypothesis rests on the assumption that subject-oriented modals are control predicates. Hence, the fact that these modals show raising verb behavior in certain constructions is a serious blow to the double entries hypothesis. Not so for the optional Theta-role approach. Under this approach, the behavior of the subject-oriented modals in (94) is just what we would expect. Control verbs are simply raising verbs with an attitude; the complements of raising and control structures are identical and only the properties deriving from the matrix external Theta-role of the construction separate control from raising constructions structurally. This being the case, the optional Theta-role approach accounts for a bigger set of data than the double entry approach, and I conclude that it is superior. Whereas Norwegian non-root modals are raising verbs that never assign an external Theta-role, root modals are best described as raising predicates that optionally assign an external Theta-role. When this role is assigned, the modal gets a subject-oriented reading. When the optional external Theta-role is not assigned, the reading is proposition-scope. Nonroot modals, on the other hand, have only proposition-scope readings since they never assign an external Theta-role.

5.

The Source of modality: Two semantic levels

In this section, I explore who or what may constitute the source of modality. In the functionalist literature, this question is an important one, as it is claimed that the source of an obligation or permission determines to a great extent the overall interpretation of an utterance containing a modal in a specific context; cf. Heine (1995: 29). Functionalists are not the only ones who take interest in this issue, however; there are attempts to formalize the source of an obligation or permission in logic (the dyadic deontic logic of Hansson 1970), Transformational Grammar (Newmeyer 1969) and Government and Binding (Öhlschläger 1989).

The source of modality

269

To clarify, so far we have been exclusively concerned with what is known as the goal of modality—the individual towards whom the obligation or permission is directed on a directed deontic or subject-oriented reading (and correspondingly, towards whom no obligation or permission is directed on a proposition-scope reading). At this point, we want to look at the source of modality (German: Quelle). Calbert (1975: 24) states that [E]ach modality can be expressed from the point of view of the Source (X in [a below]) or from the point of the Goal (Y in [b below]). These alternatives may be called Source-oriented and Goal-oriented modalities respectively...: a. X wants Y to... b. Y has to... Heine (1995: 29) dubs this source Force and explains it as follows: There is some force F that is characterized by an "element of will" (Jespersen 1924: 320-1), i.e. that has an interest in an event either occurring or not occurring. Newmeyer (1969) suggests that deontic root modals are ditransitive semantically: must in the sentence John must eat soup has a semantic structure like require in the sentence Something requires of John that he eat soup. In early Transformational Grammar literature, the source is often referred to as the rule-giver argument (Brennan 1997: 38). The interpretive importance of the source of modality is thus acknowledged in a variety of linguistic frameworks. One might rightfully argue that the rule-giver or source of modality belongs to the pragmatic information provided by the context; thus, it is not obvious that this matter needs to be examined in a semantic-syntactic investigation. In my opinion, however, investigating the source of modality helps sort out certain quasi-conceptual influences which direct the readings of modals in specific ways, readings that have been taken to be syntactically encoded (Barbiers 1995, 2002). The source of modality expressed by modals thus implies a mostly contextually determined presence of a rule-giver that may or may not be explicitly expressed. However, even if this rule-giver is overtly expressed, this entity does not occupy an argument position of the modal, at least not an argument position in any current understanding of the term. In (95), the rule-giver or source of modality is explicitly expressed.

270 Norwegian modals: Argument structure (95)

a. b. c. d. e.

According to your mother, you ought to become a doctor. The doctor said that I may stop taking this medicine. In my view, you shouldn't do that. Regulations indicate that all students must take this exam. Thanks to his exceptional physical shape, John can cross the river.

Öhlschläger (1989) offers a G&B approach for addressing the source of modality. Although he relegates the rule-giver argument exclusively to the semantics of the modal, he recognizes that this produces a discrepancy between his syntactic description of modals as raising verbs and the semantic description, which contains an argument not expressed in syntax (op.cit. 246; my translation). [T]here is a discrepancy, an opposition, between my syntactic and semantic descriptions, rooted in the fact that I invoke a θ-role source in my semantic description that does not correspond to an argument position in the Dstructure of raising verbs, which leads to a violation of the θ-criterion. In my opinion, however, the syntactic arguments support an analysis of modals as raising verbs just as unequivocally as the semantic arguments support a semantic explication of the kind I have proposed. One way to resolve this opposition would be to add an argument position in D-structure. The author is reluctant to make this move, however, since this would amount to proposing an argument position not occupied in overt syntax; thus, he leaves the issue unresolved. The core problem is accurately identified by Öhlschläger: the semantics of modals seemingly encode some kind of argument, the Source, which does not correspond to a syntactic argument position. The way D-structure is employed within G&B, this is a serious problem. There is something about modals—especially non-root and deontic ones—that implies the presence of an intentional, rational mind, an authority or a narrator, and it is not obvious that this is simply in the realm of pragmatics. Modals require a Source argument much in the way speaker-oriented adverbs such as luckily, obviously, unfortunately, and evidently are associated with the speaker: these adverbs can only be interpreted as evaluations expressed by the speaker (cf. Jackendoff 1972 for similarities and differences between modals and speaker-oriented adverbs). 78 One might quite rightfully claim that 78

Op.cit. 104: "The claim, then, is that speaker-oriented adverbs and epistemic modals, which are syntactically totally dissimilar except that they are daughters of

The source of modality

271

this type of information needs to be expressed in the semantic representation of an entry in the lexicon, not contextually inferred. Since D-structure argument positions cannot do the job (and since D-structure no longer exists in the Minimalist Program version of P&P), one might imagine that Source interpretations could be encoded by LF-relations, as implied by Barbiers (1995). Barbiers proposes a syntactic projection DP headed by an invisible determiner D to account for subject-orientedness. The subjectorientedness of kunnen 'can' may be interpreted either as ability or as permission. According to Barbiers (1995: 186), this is due to the abstractness of the head D. The relations established by D are the other building blocks: the possibility of the...event is determined and the subject is the determiner. Since the notion of determiner is taken to subsume notions such as source, possessor, origin and so on, the subject...can be interpreted as the source of the possibility [my italics], which yields the ability interpretation, or as the possessor of the possibility, which yields the permission reading. The ambiguity between a dispositional and a directed deontic interpretation is thus ascribed to the ambiguity of, or rather the abstractness of D, just as in the case of John's portrait, where the semantic relations between John and portrait established by D can be interpreted as possessor, artist, source... Some readers may find it strange that the subject itself could be considered a source of modality, as we earlier equated Source with rule-giver. However, within the German tradition at least, it is common to recognize two major types of Source: subject-external and subject-internal modality. Only in the former case does it make sense to equate Source with rule-giver; typical examples are deontic modals. In the latter case, the Source of modality resides within the entity described by the subject DP, for instance the subject-internal intention of wollen (Germ.)/v;7/e (Norw.)/wz7/erc (Dutch) 'want to' or the subject-internal enabling properties of the ability reading of können (Germ,)/kunne (Norw.)/kunnen (Dutch). Instead of invoking abstract LF heads, or writing this off as pragmatic/contextual/world knowledge, the present proposal situates the Source of modality on the border between semantics and pragmatics. In an effort to examine the Source of modality, I adopt the idea of a two-level semantics of the kind advocated by Bierwish and Lang (1989) and Bouchard (1995). 79

S, are treated identically by the semantic component, which only makes use of the single syntactic property they have in common." 79 There are differences between Bouchard's levels and Bierwisch and Lang's

272 Norwegian modals: Argument structure Although I will not use the elaborated notation and machinery of Bierwisch and Lang here, I will utilize their idea of separating a level of Semantic Form (SF) from a level of Conceptual Structure (CS). The two semantic levels allow us to describe linguistic objects by two different semantic representations; Bierwisch and Lang (1989: 474) maintain that [C]ertain properties of the lexical items which determine their syntactic behavior are established in their internal SF structure. This applies in particular to the syntactic argument structure of lexical items, determined by the θ-grid, a structure which has crucial bearing on the syntactic functions of lexical items.... [S]ince...the conceptual interpretation of the [linguistic objects] must be distinguished from their SF structure, there can be no general identity between SF and CS. This gives us a system allowing for one semantic level operating close to syntax and another one operating close to conceptual organization and the important assumption that no general identity exists between them. I will pursue the following idea: at the SF-level close to syntax, non-root modals are one-place predicates that take the embedded proposition as their argument. Root modals are either one-place or two-place predicates; they optionally assign an external θ-role to a subject while obligatorily taking the embedded proposition as an internal argument. However, I assume that at the CS level close to conceptual organization all modals are two-place predicates, where the second argument is the embedded proposition, and the first argument, the Source, may be instantiated by one of three options—Speaker, Subject or External. (96)

Semantic Form: Non-root modals: Modal (p) Root modals: Modal (p) or Modal (x,p) & [x = Subject]

Conceptual Structure: All modals: Modal (x, p) & [x = Speaker] or [x = Subject] or [x = External]

levels. The latter assume Theta-roles to be essential to Semantic Form. Bouchard (1995: 41-51) rejects that Theta-roles belong to grammar: "Theta-roles are...not appropriate primitives to use in constructing Semantic Representations. They are unsuitable to represent meaning because any slight change in the context can bring about a change in roles.... [A] thematic representation is, in a sense, analogous to the situation it describes; it corresponds to the situation itself.... The very notions on which Theta roles are based are external to Grammar."

The source of modality

273

I consider the term Speaker self-explanatory, 80 Subject refers to the syntactic subject of the modal, but External requires an explanation. First of all, External refers to an entity different from the Speaker and the Subject. Secondly, it does not refer to an entity necessarily external to the discourse; on the contrary, the External Source entity is in general easily recoverable from the overall context. Moreover, External does not always refer to an entity external to the sentence either; the Source of modality may be specified and explicitly expressed in a sentence albeit not as a syntactic argument of the modal, as in (95) above. In general, however, the external Source of modality does not need to be explicitly expressed. The term external is chosen for two reasons. Firstly, because the Source is in general sentence-external and, secondly, because the term external modality is often used in the German literature on modals. Admittedly, this term traditionally incorporates Speaker as Source readings; moreover, external modality is sometimes treated as an inherent property of deontic modals; Heine (1995: 30) states that: Force [i.e. Source] is different from C [the agent] in the case of modals such as müssen 'must', sollen 'shall, should' or können 'can'. This is not completely accurate, however, at least not for Norwegian. Deontic modals allow for an external Source of modality, but they do not rule out the possibility of the subject being the Source of modality in some cases. This is particularly obvious in (97) below: (97)

a.

Jon skalpa kino. Jon will to movies 'Jon is going to the movies.'

b.

Marit mä kaste opp. Marit must throw up 'Marit must throw up.'

The more natural reading of both sentences requires the subject to be the Source of modality (Jon's intention for skal; Marit's physical condition for mä) although one might object to this reading in the latter case. Marit does 80 A temporal point of reference can be shifted, or the reference of the first person pronoun I can be shifted from the speaker to some other referent given that the sentence is embedded within a discourse of reported speech, a letter etc.; Speaker as a first CS argument can likewise be shifted.

274 Norwegian modals: Argument structure not require of herself that she throw up; instead her physical condition requires that she throw up. On the other hand, 'the physical condition of x ' is traditionally considered sufficiently subjective in the case of kunne 'can' to be dubbed internal modality on this paraphrase. Thus, this ought to suffice in the case of matte 'must' as well. Another pressing question in describing the argument structure of modals on two semantic levels is whether it is possible to find paraphrases or semantic descriptions substantial enough for a close-to-syntax semantic level and sufficiently abstract to allow for a "conceptual argument" not expressed in overt syntax, with a core meaning covering all root and nonroot readings. I do agree with Dyvik (1999: 6) that the analysis of epistemic and root modals as distinct lexemes would give rise to a puzzlingly systematic homonymy linking pairs of epistemic and root modals in Norwegian, a systematicity which would then be unaccounted for. The formal identity of all morphosyntactic forms which they both have, along with their obvious semantic relatedness, would appear accidental. This quote places Dyvik (1999) in the Unifiers camp, whereas some of my descriptions signal an affinity with the Dividers camp; the terms are due to Brennan (1993), who described the two major approaches to the dual reading of root versus non-root modals. Unifiers argue that there is only one lexical entry with two different uses, non-root and root. The context, the syntactic surroundings are responsible for the difference in meaning. Dividers argue that modals are lexically ambiguous, that there are (at least) two different lexical entries for each modal. In principle, I agree wholeheartedly with the Unifiers; thus, I set out to find semantic descriptions that cover both non-root and root readings, descriptions that function simultaneously on a Conceptual Structure level as well as on the level of Semantic Form. This turned out to be quite a challenge and the suggestions 1 have made should be considered tentative descriptions that ought to pave the way for better developed concepts. In some cases, I decided to pursue two different descriptions of root and non-root readings although I believe it is possible in principle to find more abstract notions that could encode both root and non-root versions. For instance, I have described the core semantic content of skulle 'shall' as intention on the root reading, but opinion on the evidential reading even though there is probably a more abstract concept covering both. For example:

The source of modality (98)

a. b. c. d.

275

He insists that I leave him. He insists that I left him. John is supposed to become an architect. John is supposed to be an architect.

In (98a), insists means roughly 'forcefully expressing an intention that p' whereas in (98b), it means 'expressing a convinced belief that p'. Although it is possible to account for this fact by assuming two different lexical entries for insist, it is tempting to conclude that insist denotes a concept covering both intention and opinion. The same overlap can be observed with be supposed to in (98c) and (98d): intention and opinion are the relevant readings. These two readings are found with one and the same linguistic form in case after case, which indicates the two concepts are closely related, perhaps different aspects of one and the same concept on a more abstract level. However, since I have found no word in my vocabulary corresponding to this more abstract concept, I have resorted to two different descriptions for root and non-root skulle. Thus, I have chosen to give skulle 'shall' the following semantic description: (99)

Skulle: Semantic Form: Root: There exists an intention that ρ is made true V θ : The subject has the responsibility of acting on this intention. NoV θ : The intention is not addressed to any particular individual. Non-root: There exists an opinion that ρ is true

Conceptual Structure: Root: Intention of (x) that ρ is made true [x = Speaker] or [x = Subject] or [x = External] Non-root: Opinion of (x) that ρ is true [x = External]

The choice between Speaker, Subject, and External as the first CS argument produces three nuances of meaning. If Speaker instantiates this first argument, the reading of the modal is typically performative, as the Speaker reports his or her intention that ρ be made true. This does not necessarily mean that the utterance is perceived as an order or command; that depends on whether the subject is 2 nd or 3 rd person (a 2 nd person subject favors a command reading), but the utterance may just as well be perceived as a

276 Norwegian modals: Argument structure promise (cf. Dyvik 1999 for the promise reading of skulle), or a threat, depending on whether the state of affairs described by the embedded proposition is perceived as positive or negative for the hearer; cf. (100). (100) a.

Du skal ikke pä kino i kveld. You will not to moviesDEF tonight 'It is my intention that you do not go to the movies tonight'

In my view, the perlocutionary (Austin 1962) aspects of the utterance— how an utterance is perceived by a hearer—belong to the pragmatics component, and I do not intend to formalize these aspects of modals here. Thus, whether the utterance is considered a command, a promise or a threat depends on the context. The Source of modality for a modal, however, can and should be systematized and formalized in order to shed some light on the complex semantics of modals. The sentence in (100) has another reading where the subject is the Source of modality; the intention reported belongs to the subject, which thus constitutes the first CS argument. This reading is more visible if we make the sentence into a question, as in (101). (101)

a.

Du skal ikke pä kino i kveld? You will not to moviesDEF tonight 'Is it your intention not to go the movies tonight?'

The third possibility is that the source of modality is neither Speaker nor Subject, but some other entity, typically an authority of some kind. Say John's baby sister, Mary, delivers the following message from their parents: (102)

a.

Du skal ikke ρä kino i kveld. You will not to moviesDEF tonight 'It is their intention that you not go to the movies tonight.'

Here, the Source is external, neither Speaker nor Subject. Instead, the intention of the parents is denoted by skulle in this context. In many sentences, the Source of modality—the entity whose intention is expressed by skulle—cannot be the subject because the syntactic subject does not denote a rational being, as in (103). As indicated by the gloss, the intention reading is particularly clear here.

The source of modality (103)

a.

277

Maskinen virker ikke slik den skal. machineDEF does not work like it should ' T h e machine does not work the way it is intended.'

Another intriguing fact about the Source of modality, in this case the entity with the intention, is that it need not be constant throughout a context or even throughout a sentence. The following authentic example is particularly enlightening (a response from an official to a curious journalist's questions about a suspicious deal; roughly, Why w e r e n ' t the proper authorities informed about this deal?). (104)

a.

Det var aldri noen annen intensjon enn there was never any other intention but [si at [s2 tense > aspect] is the expected relative order. Cinque is by no means the first author to argue that the relative order of modality, tense, and aspect in creole languages is universal. The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis of Bickerton (1981, 1984), described as a watershed in the literature on pidgin and creole languages, focuses on the expression of tense, mood, and aspect (TMA-markers) in Creoles.14 The empirical findings underlying his theory are in fact not new; the surprisingly similar properties of TMA markers in Creoles with radically different lexical bases were noted by various authors as early as the nineteenth century; Singler (1990: vii ff.) mentions Van Name (1869-70) and Schuchardt (1882) as early works commenting on this similarity. Thompson (1961) and Taylor (1971) later drew attention to these TMA systems. Specifically, these authors make the following observations about the preverbal TMA particles found in Creoles (summarized by Muysken 1981: 183): a. Each Creole language tends to have three of them; a past tense marker; a potential mood marker; and a durative aspect marker. b. When we find more than one particle accompanying a verb, the particles always occupy a fixed order; tense, mood, aspect, main verb. The combinations of the particles are interpreted in fixed, and rather complex ways.

14

There are other categories in Creoles considered to constitute the unmarked settings of language parameters. Bickerton (1999: 59) lists this set of unmarked settings of semantic oppositions: (in TMA systems) anterior/non-anterior, realis/irrealis, punctual/non-punctual; (in nominal systems) specific/non-specific; and (in aspectual systems) accomplished/unaccomplished and stative/nonstative.

314

Norwegian

modals, aspect and tense

B i c k e r t o n a r g u e s that Creoles p r o v i d e a w i n d o w into U n i v e r s a l G r a m m a r — o u r innate linguistic c a p a c i t y — a n d that t h e o b s e r v a t i o n s m a d e a b o u t t h e m c a n be u s e d to d e m o n s t r a t e the d e f a u l t settings of p o s s i b l e s e m a n t i c a n d s y n t a c t i c p a r a m e t e r s . T h e inventory and relative o r d e r i n g of Creole syntactic m a r k e r s h e n c e point to the d e f a u l t syntactic structure of h u m a n language. T h e f u n d a m e n t a l s o f the h y p o t h e s i s are outlined in M u y s k e n and Smith ( 1 9 9 5 : 11): The bioprogram theory claims that Creoles are inventions of the children growing up on the newly founded plantations. Around them they only heard pidgins spoken, without enough structure to function as natural languages, and they used their own innate linguistic capacities to transform the pidgin input from their parents into a full-fledged language. Creole languages are similar because the innate linguistic capacity utilized is universal, and they are simple because they reflect the most basic language structures. One feature shared by all Creoles that would derive from the innate capacity is the system of pre-verbal tense/mood/aspect particles. Not only do they seem limited in the Creole languages to a particular set of meanings, but they also seem always to occur in a particular order. The system of tense/mood/aspect particles, its interpretation and its ordering would directly reflect universal aspects of the human language capacity. M u y s k e n ( 1 9 8 1 ) p r o p o s e s that T M A particles, u n l i k e adverbs, are constrained b y principles o f core g r a m m a r . This p r o p o s a l m a y b e seen as an early a t t e m p t to s p e c i f y a universal o r d e r i n g o f f u n c t i o n a l h e a d s or f u n c tional categories and, in d o i n g so, separate f u n c t i o n a l categories f r o m lexical o n e s (such as adverbs), 1 5 the latter not s u b j e c t to t h e constraints of c o r e g r a m m a r . M u y s k e n (1981: 187) p r o p o s e s the f o l l o w i n g : Semantic interpretation involves two components...: SI-1, constrained by principles of core grammar, and SI-2, determined by the interaction of pragmatic, lexical, cognitive, and other considerations. The elements in the auxiliary, which may include tense, mood, and aspect, are interpreted by component SI-1. The interpretation rule can be roughly formulated as follows: [ S ... [AUX Τ , Mj, A K , ..·] ..·] is interpreted as: Τ M j A K (P), where Ρ corresponds to the propositional content of S. Traditionally, the p r o p o s e d d e f a u l t o r d e r o f T M A particles is e x p l a i n e d either b y u n i v e r s a l syntactic o r d e r i n g p r i n c i p l e s — w h i c h m a y or m a y not be

15

Muysken's proposal thus differs from Cinque's (1999) more recent theory where even adverbs are associated with specific functional projections, as adverbs are specifiers of projections whose heads have semantic content similar to the adverb.

Scope, readings, and universality

31 5

directly determined by interpretation—as in Woisetschlaeger (1977), or by the assumption that the structure of creole languages directly reflects universal semantic structures (The Hypothesis of Semantic Transparency). The latter view takes Creole T M A particles to reflect separate logical operators, fairly directly mapped onto surface structures; thus, the syntactic ordering between them reflects the universal relative semantic scope of these semantic operators (cf. Cinque 1999; Muysken 1981; Muysken and Smith 1995: 11).

A third influential view (especially within functionalist frameworks) is that of Bybee (1985), where the constraint responsible for the relative order of T M A markers or morphemes (in this case, T M A type inflections) is the principle of relevance, defined as follows (Bybee 1985: 13 and 15): A meaning element is relevant to another meaning element if the semantic content of the first directly affects or modifies the semantic content of the second.... Among inflectional categories, we can distinguish degrees of relevance of the concept expressed inflectionally to the concept expressed by... a verb stem. A category is relevant to the verb to the extent that the meaning of the category directly affects the lexical content of the verb stem. The workings of this principle of relevance thus rigidly restrict the relative ordering of T M A markers or morphemes, as described in Hopper and Traugott (1993: 143): Given the hypothesis of relevance, aspect is most relevant to the verb, tense less so, since it relates the time of the situation to some other time, and mood least so since it expresses speaker point of view on the situation. If that which is most relevant is that which is most likely to be close to the verb, then we would expect aspect to be most likely of the three categories to be ordered next to the stem (or even be part of it, as a derivational form), tense next, and mood last... [T]he natural order is mood-tense-aspect-V (or, in OV languages, V-aspect-tense-mood). The concept of relative closeness to the verb stem is the common element of these approaches to T M A markers. In the case of free-standing T M A particles, relative closeness to the verb stem is signaled by the overt sequence of (in this case) pre-verbal markers, where the marker closest to the verb occurs in the rightmost position in the T M A cluster. With T M A inflections, relative closeness to the verb stem refers to the position of an inflectional morpheme, an affix, encoding tense, mood, or aspect, relative to the verb stem and the other T M A affixes.

316 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense The findings of Bybee (1985) suggest that the relative ordering of TMA markers or morphemes is mood > tense > aspect rather than tense > mood > aspect. Bybee thus objects to the relative ordering of TMA markers considered universal by Bickerton and his followers; her sample of 50 languages contains only one (Ojibwa) in which the mood marker occurs closer to the stem than the tense marker (Bybee 1985: 35). One might try to explain this fact by assuming that TMA morphemes display a different relative ordering when expressed by inflectional morphemes then when expressed by freestanding, synthetic particles (a line of thought pursued and ultimately rejected by Bybee). However, if functional elements such as TMA markers head their own syntactic projections regardless of their status as affixes or free-standing particles and we adopt the Mirror Principle of Baker (1985), which states that "morphological derivations directly reflect syntactic derivations and vice versa," the universal relative ordering of TMA markers and their relative closeness to the verb stem ought to be identical regardless of their status as bound or free morphemes. There ought to be no divergence between free-standing particles and inflectional morphemes with regard to relative closeness to the verb stem, if we adopt the Mirror Principle. A slightly modified version of the Mirror Principle, dubbed the Lexicalist Mirror Principle, is proposed in Thräinsson (1996: 258). This, or some similar version of the Mirror Principle, is generally assumed within the Principles and Parameters framework. Let us make the natural assumption that morphological features are not associated with each lexical element as a set (i.e. in an unordered fashion) but rather with the relevant overt morphemes (when such morphemes are available). Thus the morphological feature of tense is associated with the tense morpheme of a verb, and morphological features of person and number (e.g. subject agreement features) of a finite verb are associated with the agreement morpheme of the verb in question. These morphological features are then checked off in a cyclic fashion as the verb form is adjoined to the relevant functional head, beginning with the features associated with the morphemes closest to the stem of the verb since features associated with "outer" morphemes are not visible until features associated with morphemes closer to the stem have been checked off. In a language where a tense morpheme is closer to the stem of a finite verb than a subject agreement morpheme for instance, this would mean that the functional head Τ (i.e. the head against which the morphological feature of tense is checked) would have to be lower in the syntactic structure than AgrS (the head

Scope, readings, and universality

317

against which the subject agreement feature is checked). I will refer to this version of the Mirror Principle as the Lexicalist Mirror Principle. In keeping with the Mirror Principle, w e expect the affix closest to the stem to be lower in a syntactic structure and have a narrower scope than an affix further away from the stem. In a universalist approach, the relative ordering of T M A morphemes ought to be identical on this level of abstraction, regardless of their status as inflections or free-standing particles. Thus, the difference between different sets of T M A morphemes (apart from their lexical content) should reduce to their status as bound or free morphemes, the relevant feature being [± affix]. Imagine two languages employing the same number of T M A morphemes (see Figure 9). The only (presently relevant) difference between these two languages is that the language in (9a) has affixal T M A morphemes and the language in (9b) free-standing preverbal T M A particles. Abstracting away from all potential issues (e.g. portmanteau-/zero morphemes; head-complement direction, possible mixes of prefixes, infixes and suffixes, possible combinations of pre- and postverbal markers), the two structures in question would look as follows: Figure 9 a. Bound TMA affixes

T.+Aff

[ Aff Tense [Aff Mood [Aff Aspect [V-stem]]]]

b. Free-standing TMA particles

T„

Tense Mood Aspect Verb

The status of a morpheme as [± affix] hence should not affect its position relative to the stem; the discrepancy between the findings of Bickerton (1981, 1984) and those of Bybee (1985) regarding the position of mood particles relative to tense particles is unexpected. Bybee (1985: 197 ff) proposes a solution to the puzzle. The " m o o d " particles employed in the Creole systems investigated in Bickerton's work are examples of "agent-

318 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense oriented modality" markers, i.e. root modality, rather than mood or nonroot modality markers, she claims. Thus, it comes as no surprise that these modality markers occur closer to the verb stem than tense particles. Root modals scope under tense and non-root modality and mood (the way she employs this term) cannot be modified by tense, and always scope over tense (see also Cinque 1999 and the data in (19)).

4.1.1. A digression on mood and

modality

It may seem unnecessarily confusing to treat non-root modality on a par with mood. However, it is by no means unusual to think that non-root (epistemic or evidential) modals express mood-like semantic content. Bybee (1985: 28) defines mood as follows: Mood refers to the way the speaker presents the truth of the proposition, whether as probable, possible, or certain. Palmer (2001: 8) suggests that epistemic modals express the speaker's attitude about the truth-value or factual status of the proposition; hence, they fit Bybee's definition of mood. Huddleston (1984: 164) proposes that modal auxiliaries constitute "an analytic mood system." Cinque (1999: 78), although he does distinguish between mood and modality, claims that the difference is in many cases virtually non-significant: "the same category may be expressed via mood in one language and with a modal in another, thus suggesting a close link between the two. 'Mood' is traditionally restricted to modal categories...which are expressed in verbal morphology [Cinque's italics], Modals instead are typically independent words (verbs, auxiliaries, or particles)." Roberts (1985: 41-2), among others, suggests that the loss of subjunctive mood markings in Middle English paved the way for more frequent non-root uses of modals, where the modals were construed as clausal operators similar to subjunctive inflection. Hence, modals were "semantic substitutes" for subjunctive mood inflection. In the same vein, Afarli (1995: 146) suggests that it is perhaps suggestive that we find modal and aspectual auxiliary verbs in languages like Norwegian or English, i.e. languages that lack mood and aspect affixes on verbs. This might suggest that modal auxiliary verbs are less likely to be found in languages with inflectional mood or designated preverbal mood markers.

Scope, readings, and universality

3 19

However, Muysken (1981: 199) mentions as a possible issue for his own proposal on TMA markers the existence of modal verbs in Creole languages in addition to preverbal TMA particles: A second, quite major, problem concerns the interaction between the preverbal particles and the modal verbs, which have not been mentioned so far, but which occur in most Creole languages as well.16 Alternatively, one might be inclined to think that in languages employing inflectional mood or designated mood markers in addition to modal auxiliaries, inflectional mood would render non-root readings of modal auxiliaries superfluous, so root readings would be the only readings of modal auxiliaries. However, languages such as German and Icelandic defy this expectation since they employ inflectional mood and modal auxiliaries; the modal auxiliaries in these languages express both non-root and root modality, similar to modal auxiliaries in Norwegian and English. In fact, in German, for instance, we even find a subjective inflection on the modal itself, and the modal may still have a non-root (i.e. epistemic) and a subjunctive reading simultaneously, as in (20). (20)

a.

Das dürfte wahr sein. that dareSUBJ2 true be 'That might be true.'

4.2. TMA markers in Norwegian Norwegian and other Germanic languages do not employ the same kind of preverbal tense-mood-aspect particles as creole languages. Norwegian and other Mainland Scandinavian language also do not productively employ inflectional mood or aspect affixes. In fact, it used to be widely accepted

16

Another problem, which unfortunately seems to be rarely addressed, concerns the fact that one and the same form may take on not only one root and one nonroot modality reading, but a range of different functions and readings, depending on other elements present in the same clause. It is far from trivial to determine which form (with a corresponding distribution) expresses a given content in a given construction. For instance, according to Baptista (1997: 106), the TMA particle to in Capverdean Creole expresses a) futurity, b) purpose, c) continuation, d) an infinitive marker, and e) a mood marker.

320 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense that m o o d and aspect are not functional categories in Germanic languages. A s Thrainsson (1996: 262) states, Interestingly, most syntacticians working on Germanic languages, for instance, seem to assume that Mood and Aspect do not play any role as Functional] Categories] in these languages. I have seen no syntactic evidence that they do and the approach advocated in the present paper would predict that they do not since Mood and Aspect are not marked separately in the overt morphology of these languages. O n e ' s point of v i e w on this matter will be dictated in part by o n e ' s approach to universality. If one assumes a Strong Uniformity Hypothesis (Thrainsson 1996: 255), one must assure that "all clauses in all languages have the same set of functional categories and [that] their sequence (cc o m m a n d relation) is u n i f o r m . " This is the view advocated in Cinque (1999). A Weak(er) Uniformity Hypothesis entails that not all functional categories need be present in all languages; however, " f o r any functional categories F; and Fj the sequence will be u n i f o r m whenever they occur" (Thrainsson 1996: 255). This is the view hinted at in Äfarli (1995) although the author is not strongly committed to it. Finally, one m a y assume that variation is possible, not only in the inventory of functional categories (FCs), but also with regard to the c - c o m m a n d relations b e t w e e n them. This is The Limited Diversity Hypothesis (Thrainsson 1996: 257): The Limited Diversity Hypothesis (LDH): Clausal Architecture is determined by UG in the sense that UG defines the set of functional categories, (F|, F 2 ..., F„}, that languages "select" from. Cross-linguistic and intralinguistic variations are limited to the following: a.

It is not the case that all FCs are instantiated in all languages.

b.

The FCs selected by a given language may not be present in all clause types of that language.

c.

The sequence (c-command relations) of those functional categories (dominance relations between the functional projections) that are directly related to morphological distinctions may vary from language to language, consistent with the Mirror Principle.

As mentioned above, C i n q u e ' s (1999) seminal work advocates the Strong Uniformity Hypothesis and assumes a universal ordering of functional categories. Contrary to "most syntacticians working on Germanic lang u a g e s " (Thrainsson 1996: 262), Cinque claims that modals and the perfect

Scope, readings, and universality

321

could be seen as mood (i.e. non-root modality) and aspect markers in Germanic languages on a par with TMA markers in creole languages. However, Cinque's views on this matter have a predecessor in Äfarli (1995), who tries to align the modal and aspectual auxiliaries of Germanic languages with the tense-mood-aspect (TMA) particles in Creoles. Äfarli suggests that there is evidence for the functional categories tense, mood, and aspect in Norwegian, just like in creole languages. Whereas in creole languages these categories are expressed by designated preverbal markers, Norwegian mood and aspect operators are expressed by modal and aspectual auxiliaries. One difference between Norwegian and the creole languages under discussion is that in Norwegian, tense is a covert, abstract functional operator assigning a tense feature to a mood operator or an aspectual operator in its domain; Äfarli (1995: 146): If we assume that tense can in fact be assigned to the overt mood operator, we get an overt mood operator with a tense affix. In other words, we get what is usually called a modal auxiliary verb. Tense in Norwegian is assigned to and expressed by an affix on the topmost verbal category, whether this is a main verb, a modal auxiliary (i.e. a mood operator), or an aspectual auxiliary (i.e. an aspectual operator). In creole languages, mood and aspect particles do not have a tense affix; instead, tense is expressed by a designated free-standing particle scoping over the entire proposition. Äfarli is not strongly committed to a Uniformity Hypothesis though he does suggest that tense scopes over mood: 17 [T]he order of functional projections is such that the covert tense [operator] c-commands the overt auxiliary verb.... Laka (1990) independently argues that tense is the highest functional projection. This is compatible with the observation made in Muysken (1981) that the normal order of functional particles in Creole languages is tense, mood, and aspect, (fn. 5). Although Bybee (1985) and Bickerton (1981, 1984) arrive at different universal relative orderings for mood and tense markers, a discrepancy that Bybee (1985) explains by assuming two different modalities (like Cinque 1999), they agree that mood and modality universally scope over aspect. According to both proposals, aspect markers always occur closer to the verb (stem) than any type of modality. Under both the strong and the weak uniformity hypotheses, we would not expect to find an aspectual operator 17

Äfarli also claims that evidence for a proposed functional category must be found in each language and for each clause type, see Iatridou (1990a).

322 Nonvegian modals, aspect and tense scoping over modality in any language. However, although we regularly find the sequence modal-aspect, as in (21a) where the modal is ambiguous between a root and a non-root reading, aspectual auxiliaries regularly occur with modal auxiliaries as complements in Norwegian and other Germanic languages (except English). In (21b), ha precedes a root modal and in (21c) a non-root modal. In addition, we find examples of non-root modal > aspectual > root modal sequences, as in (2Id), and even two (or more) occurrences of aspectuals in the same sentence, as in (21e). The latter pattern is admittedly marginal in Norwegian, but evidently sounds less marginal in Swedish. (2If) is from Wiklund (1998: 18); including the aspectual is possible, but not obligatory in each and all positions indicated. (21)

a.

Pakken mä ha ankommet pä fredag. parcelDEF must have arrived on Friday 'The parcel must have arrived by/on Friday.'

b.

Han hadde ikke kunnet komme fer. he had not canPERF arrive earlier 'He hadn't been able to arrive earlier.'

c.

Han har mätta arbeidd med det i heile natt. he has mustPERF workPERF on it in all night 'He must have worked on it all night through.'

d.

De kan ha mattet stoppe pä veien hit. they may have mustPERF stop on wayDEF here 'They may have had to stop on their way here.'

e.

?Jeg skulle gjerne ha kunnet ha kommet f0r. I should gladly have canPERF have comePERF earlier Ί should gladly have been able to have arrived earlier.'

f.

Jag skulle (ha) velat (ha) kunnat I shouldPAST have wantPERF have canPERF (ha) äkt skidor pä fredag. have goPERF skis on Friday Ί would have liked to be able to go skiing on Friday.'

Scope, readings, and universality

323

As these data show, ha sometimes follows both non-root and root modality (21a); in other cases, it is sandwiched between non-root and root modality (2Id), (21e), and (2If). Sometimes it precedes not only root modality, (21b) and (2Id), but non-root modality as well (21c). Thus, assuming that ha marks the same category in all cases, we need a hypothesis at least as flexible as the Limited Diversity Hypothesis (LDH) to account for these word order facts. LDH allows us to assume that different languages allow for different orders of TMA markers because these markers are directly related to morphosyntactic distinctions. However, the LDH does not help us resolve the issue of different possible orderings of TMA markers within one language. Thräinsson (1996: 257) emphasizes that it follows from... the Mirror Principle that the sequence of any two functional categories that are directly related to morphological distinctions is uniform for all clause types within each language, as long as the order of morphological markers... does not vary in the language in question. Thräinsson adds (fn. 4) that he does not know of any languages where the order of (morphological) markers varies in this sense; yet, to maintain the hypothesis that aspectual auxiliaries always instantiate the same type of aspect operators, we would have to assume that Norwegian is such a language. If the surface order of auxiliaries reflects the underlying order (a question I discuss more thoroughly in section 4.4), we need to assume that the dominance relations between certain functional projections in Norwegian may vary from one sentence to another. One alternative is to suggest that ha marks several different types of aspect categories, which would not be unprecedented. Cinque (1999) assumes a range of aspect categories to be accessible in the universal functional hierarchy, and one and the same form is regularly employed to fill several different projections, for any type of functional domain. This is not only a theoretical device; cross-linguistically functional elements are typically multifunctional. Baptista (1997: 106), for instance, claims the TMA particle ta in Capverdean Creole to be a multifunctional item with a range of different meanings and functions: "Ta\ conveys futurity whereas /«2 expresses purpose and continuation and ta3 may be closer to an infinitive marker like English to." In addition, ta functions as a mood marker. If we were to assume something along these lines for ha in Norwegian, a major issue is that ha conveys the same meaning, performs the same task, and has the same semantics in all positions. There is no semantic difference between the three occurrences of ha in (2If). Likewise, ha does the same

324 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense semantic j o b regardless of whether it modifies (and scopes over) a main verb or a modal. It seems that ha marks some kind of recursive category at least in Norwegian and Swedish. This, I believe, is one crucial distinction between ha and aspectual TMA markers in Creoles. The aspectual ha 'have' will be a recurring topic in later sections.

4.3. Modal-aspectual sequences in other languages It is widely assumed in the literature on modality in Germanic languages that modals denoting non-root modality obligatorily precede any aspectual in the sentence. This claim is made by van Gelderen (2003, 2004) for English, by Wurmbrand (2001) for German, by Picallo (1990) for Catalan, by Barbiers (1995) for Dutch, and by Dyvik (1999) for Norwegian. It entails that when a modal follows an aspectual (which is not possible in English, except for semi-modals like have to), the modal is necessarily a root modal. Very often, this assumption is accompanied by the claim that a root modal cannot precede an aspectual auxiliary. 18 We already know the latter claim to be inaccurate (cf. e.g. the data in (12) and (15) and the discussion of van Gelderen's (2003) proposal above), and we will also need to modify the first of these assumptions; however, we allow both assumptions here for the sake of exposition. We can depict this generalization as in Figure 10, where M o d i is the designated functional head of non-root modalities and Mod2 is the corresponding head position for root modalities. 19

18

Barbiers (1995: 197, fn. 41): "The order MOD AUX can also have a polarity [i.e. root] interpretation.... 1 leave this for further research." The sequence [HaveMod] though always yields a root reading of the modal, according to Barbiers. 19 Palmer (1986: 19): "There is... a distinction in Modern Greek. Here, the same verb (BORO) is used in both senses, but in the epistemic sense the 'impersonal' (3rd person singular) form is found, with no agreement with the subject, while in the deontic and dynamic senses fully inflected forms, with agreement, are used." One might imagine that this variation is due to the different properties of the two heads Modi and Mod2 and that Modi never interacts with AGR(eement), but Mod2 does. Since the analysis depicted in Figure 10 cannot be upheld, the restriction must lie with the categories themselves: non-root modals, unlike root modals, are specified in the lexicon as being unable to interact with AGR.

Scope, readings, and universality

325

Figure 10

Modi Non-root modal

As] aspectual Mod2 Root modal

a. mä must 'must

ha have have

kunnet canPERF been able to

spille piano play piano play the piano'

b.

ha have have

mattet mustPERF had to

spille piano play the piano play the piano'

kan can 'may

Dyvik (1999: 5) illustrates this generalization with the data in (22), where (22a) yields non-root and (22b) root readings: (22)

a.

Han vil/kan/mä/skal ha dreiet händtaket. he will/can/must/shall have turned leverDEF 'He will/may/must/is said to have turned the lever.'

b.

Han har villet/kunnet/mättet/skullet dreie händtaket. he has [want-to/can/must/shall]PERF turn leverDEF 'He has wanted/been able/obliged to turn the lever.'

Wurmbrand (2001) provides the following data for German and notes that the epistemic reading is favored, but not forced, in (23a): (23)

20

a.

Moel muß die Oliven gegessen haben. Moel must the olives eaten have 'Moel must have eaten the olives.'

Van Gelderen (2003: 30, fn. 3) notes that Abraham (1999[2002]) argues for this type of structure and she agrees that this may be a viable analysis for German and Dutch, though she assumes a different structure for English (cf. fig. 7 and 8 above).

326 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense b.

Sue hat zu hause arbeiten müssen. Sue has at home work must(IPP) 'Sue (has) had an obligation to work at home.'

Picallo (1990: 293) observes the same phenomenon in Catalan, and uses these data to support the claim that epistemic modals are constituents of TNFL, while root modals are adjuncts of VP. (24)

a.

En Joan pot haver anat a Banyoles. 'Joan may have gone to Banyoles.'

b.

En Joan ha pogut anar a Banyoles. has could go 'Joan has been allowed to go to Banyoles.'

The same pattern seemingly exists in English, except that embedded modals have to be substituted by the semi-modal have to: (25a) is from van Gelderen (2003: 32) and (25b) from Quirk et al. (1985: 145). (25)

a. b.

He must have read that letter. The administration has had to make unpopular

decisions.

Barbiers (1995: 197) illustrates the same generalization for Dutch, using the data in (26). (26)

a.

Jan moet zijn kamer gisteren hebben opgeruimd. John must his room yesterday have cleaned 'John must have cleaned his room yesterday.'

b.

Jan heejt de hele dag aardig moeten zijn. John has the whole day kind must be 'John (has) had to be kind all day.'

So far the same claim has been made for five different languages: a modal preceding a perfect auxiliary gets a non-root reading, a modal following a perfect auxiliary gets a root reading. There are, however, data that pose serious problems for an analysis like the one depicted in Figure 10. We already know that the sequence modal > aspectual may give rise to a root reading of the modal, in addition to the

Scope, readings, and universality

327

expected non-root reading. I provided examples from Norwegian, Dutch and English in section 3.2 of this chapter, and I repeat those data here. (27)

a.

Pasienten mä ha blitt feilbehandlet for ä fa erstatning. patientDEF must have been wrong-treated for to get compensation 'The patient must have been subject to malpractice in order to get compensation.'

b.

Du skal ha gjort ferdig leksene dine ferst. you shall have done finished homework yours first 'You must have finished your homework first.'

c.

Paris er en av de stedene man bare mä ha vcert. Paris is one of the places one just must have been 'Paris is one of those places one simply must have been.'

d.

Jan moet morgen zijn kamer opgeruimd hebben. John must tomorrow his room cleaned have 'John must have cleaned his room (by) tomorrow.'

e.

Students must have taken calculus by the start of their senior year.

In addition, according to the generalizations proposed by Dyvik, Picallo, Barbiers, Wurmbrand and many others, and depicted in Figure 10, a modal auxiliary following an aspectual auxiliary has only a root reading. While this generalization holds for the two standard Norwegian dialects (Bokmäl21 and Nynorsk), it does not hold for non-standard dialects spoken in western and northern parts of Norway, where the non-root reading is available even for a modal embedded under an aspectual, as in (28a), (28b), and (28c). (28)

21

a.

Han har mätta arbeidd med det i heile natt. he has mustPERF workPERF on it in all night 'He must have worked on it all night through.'

One informant claims the structure in (28) exists in dialects closer to Bokmäl.

328 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense b.

Han har skulla vorre en sjarm0r i sine yngre daga. he has shallPERF bePERF a charmer in his younger days 'He is supposed to have been a charmer in his youth.'

c.

Hu har kunna vorre her ogforre igjen. she has canPERF bePERF here and leavePERF again 'She may have been here and left again.'

Vikner (1988) provides Danish examples, taken from Davidsen-Nielsen (1988), illustrating non-root readings of modals in the perfect: (29a) and (29b); (29c) and (29d) are data from the Finnish-Swedish dialect Solv. 22 (29)

a.

IDer har mäske nok kunnet vcere tale om en feil. there has maybe probably could be talk about a mistake 'It might have been a mistake.'

b.

ΊΗαη har skullet bo i Arhus. he has should live in Ärhus 'He is supposed to have lived in Ärhus.'

c.

An a noo mätta/mästa arbet me e hejla natten. he has probably mustPERF work with it all nightDEF 'He must have worked on it all night.'

d.

On a noo kona varijeer ä fori pä nytt. she has probably could been here and left again 'She may have been here and left again.'

Mainland Scandinavian dialects are not the only ones that allow this type of construction, however: (30a) and (30b) are Dutch examples from Boogaart (2005), (30c) is a German sentence from Fagan (2001), 23 and (30d) is a Spanish example from Stowell (2004). All allow for non-root readings (some of them in addition to root readings).

22

These data were kindly provided by Professor Jan-Ola Östman, Helsinki. To avoid misrepresenting Fagan (2001), I will note that she observes a difference between evidential sollen and wollen on the one hand and epistemic modals like können and müssen on the other. The latter, she claims, cannot occur in the perfect.

23

Scope, readings, and universality (30)

a.

...hoe onzeker Beethoven geweest heft moeten zijn. how insecure Beethoven been has must be '...how insecure Beethoven must have been.'

b.

...dat het vertoon van strijdmachten de aanzeet heeft that the display of armed forces the beginning has kunnen zijn voor de recente verandering... couldINF be for the recent change

329

'...that the display of armed forces may have been the trigger for the recent change...' c.

Er hat krank sein sollen. he has sick be shall 'They claimed that he was sick.'

d.

El ladron ha podido entrar por la ventana. the thief has canPERF enter through the window 'The thief may have entered through the window.'

So far we have proven that a root modal preceding an aspectual may have a root reading in addition to the expected non-root reading, as the data in (27) show. Also, a modal following an aspectual auxiliary may have a non-root reading in addition to the expected root reading, not only in Norwegian dialects, as in (28), but also in other Mainland Scandinavian languages (29), other Germanic languages (30a), (30b), and (30c), and even in Romance languages (30d). This means that the analysis presented in Figure 10 not only fails to account for the fact that root modals may take perfect complements, but it also fails to account for the fact that many languages allow a non-root (epistemic and/or evidential) modal to follow an aspectual auxiliary.

4.4. Universalist approaches and the modal-tense-aspectuals data In this section, I discuss some issues with applying universalist approaches such as Bickerton's, Bybee's or Cinque's hierarchy to Norwegian modals and aspectuals. One major issue is that we regularly find sequences and

330 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense morpheme orders that ought to be ruled out by (any strong version of) the hypothesis of a rigid syntactic hierarchy. Cinque (1999: 87) admittedly suggests that the hierarchy he proposes encodes scope relations existing in the representation before (head) movement or after reconstruction. This allows for substantial LF-restructuring of overt markers, aligning them with the universal hierarchy. In this interpretation, the Cinque hierarchy is an LF-representation, and the overtly realized sequence of markers is of less importance to scope relations. At best, we might expect to find a universal tendency towards overt sequences that correspond to the universal LF-hierarchy. However, when Cinque discusses the hierarchy, he illustrates the proposed sub-sequences with overt markers in various languages, which suggests to the reader that there ought to be a strong correspondence between the sequence of overt markers and the universal hierarchy. Faced with data that disprove such a correspondence, authors have proposed various procedures and mechanisms for explaining 'scope-reversal' facts. Invoking the autonomy of syntax is one legitimate practice: the requirements of syntax force the presence and sequence of certain markers not dictated by the primitives of the semantic component (cf. Hornstein 1990: 5). Also, the view that some formal features of languages are in fact purely ornamental is widely accepted (McWhorter 2005: 315). 24 In what follows, we first investigate some modals-aspectuals data; then, we briefly examine the mechanisms needed to associate and dissociate modals and tense. Lastly, we study some modal + modal data. The conclusion is that the discrepancies between the overtly manifested orders and the proposed universal syntactic hierarchies require many patch-up mechanisms, sometimes to the extent that little is gained by assuming (a strong version of) a rigid syntactic ordering such as a full-blown Cinque hierarchy. These issues emphasize the need for a different approach, one based on semantic compositional principles instead of a rigid syntactic hierarchy.

24

McWhorter (2005) suggests that inflectional affixes do not necessarily serve any functional purpose (315): "They are, in Lass's (1997: 13) terms, 'linguistic male nipples'."

Scope, readings, and universality

331

4.4.1. Modals and the perfect A conclusion to be drawn from the previous two sections is that, contrary to the claim of Afarli (1995), Norwegian aspectuals cannot easily be accommodated in a universalist approach along the lines of Bickerton (1981, 1984), Bybee (1985) and Muysken (1981). If Norwegian aspectuals are aspect heads resembling the creole preverbal aspect markers, we must explain why they do not obey the alleged universal rigid order modality > aspect (where aspect is closer to the verb stem than any type of modality) as well as why multiple occurrences of an aspectual in what appears to be the same clause are possible; see (21e) and (2If). The latter fact is particularly troubling if one adheres to the exclusiveness of grammatical categories noted in Bybee (1985: 191): The notion of grammatical category is central to all modern linguistics, and has developed over the years in the work of Boas, Whorf, Sapir, Jakobson, Bienveniste, Kurylowicz and many others. The basic idea is that sets of conceptually-related morphemes contrast with one another, in the sense that the presence of one excludes the presence of another. It seems that in (many dialects of) Mainland Scandinavian any verb in a sentence can project an aspectual on top of it, whether it is a main verb, a passive auxiliary, a root modal, or a non-root modal. Also, as shown in section 4.3, the possibility to project an aspectual on top of a non-root modal is by no means limited to Mainland Scandinavian dialects; this needs to be accounted for in any universalist analysis. Cinque (1999) advocates a more flexible approach than Bickerton (1981, 1984), Bybee (1985) and Muysken (1981) although he too proposes a rigid universal ordering of functional categories qua functional heads. Cinque, however, proposes a vast number of functional projections, allowing for a number of different Asp heads, some of which scope over certain modality heads. Also, since root modality scopes over certain other Asp heads, this proposal might, at least in theory, account for the fact that a root modal may either precede or follow an aspectual (recall also that Cinque allows for LF-restructuring of overt markers). In addition, the proposal might provide the number of functional heads necessary to account for the fact that there may be more than one perfect auxiliary, more than one perfect construction in (what appears to be) the same clause. Cinque's (Cinque 1999: 106) hierarchy is presented in Figure 11.

332 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense Figure 11 The universal hierarchy of clausal functional projections (2nd approach) [>a«WjMood speech aot [/ortMraate/_yMoodevaiuative [ allegedly Moodevidentai [probably Moodepistemjc [ once T(Past) [ //je/iT(Future) [perhaps Moodirreai,s [ necessarily Modnecessity {possibly Modpossibiiity [usually Asphabituai [ again Asprepetitive (i) [ often AspfrequentatiVe (i) [ intentionally Modvoiltlona| [ quickly Aspceieratlve a ) [ already T(Anterior) [ no longer Asptermmative [ still Asp contmuatlve [ always AsppelfeCt(?) [just Aspretrospectlve [ soon Asp proximative [ briefly Aspdurative [ characteristically{?) Aspgenenc/progressive [ almost Aspprospectlve [ completetly AspSgcompietive (i) [ tutto Asppicompiefve [ well Voice [ fast/early Aspce|eratIVe(ii) [ again Asprepetitive (II) [ often Aspfrequentative(ii) [completetly AspsgCompletive(II)

The topmost root modality category in this hierarchy is the Modvo|jtlonai head since the relative ordering of modality heads is Modepistemic > Modn(.cesslly > ModpOSSibihty > Modvoiition > Mod0biigation > Modabiiity/permiSsion, and the Mod neces . sity and ModpOSSibiiity heads are alethic modality heads (Cinque 1999: 81). Root modality hence scopes over Asp heads such as perfect; we can thus account for the fact that we find root modals with perfect complements. 25 Likewise, non-root modality (evidential and epistemic) scopes over any type of aspect; this allows us to account for the fact that we find non-root modals with perfect complements. Deriving the sequence aspectualmodality is more difficult for non-root modality since no Asp or T(ense) head scopes over these modalities. Assume that the aspectual ha can realize or occupy a T(ense) past head, whereas the participle marking of the perfect construction must occupy some Asp head. This Asp head ought to scope over the root modality head so the modal can move and adjoin to the Asp head, checking its features. However, in my view, none of the three Asp heads scoping over root modality in Cinque's hierarchy (habitual, repetitive, frequentative) is semantically a plausible candidate to host the past participle marking. As mentioned above, no Asp or Tense head scopes over epistemic or evidential modality; hence we would not expect to find aspectuals preceding a non-root modal in any language. Of course, one could always claim that any aspectual > modal structure is not mono-clausal, but biclausal. This doubles the inventory of functional heads theoretically available to us, which greatly increases the number of possible word orders. However, this makes universalist proposals much less 25

Although on p. 76 it is suggested that perfect aspect scopes over root modality.

Scope, readings, and universality

333

appealing. Cinque (1999) already proposes a large number of functional projections: it seems counterproductive to assume seventy to a hundred functional projections to account for the fact that aspectuals precede root and non-root modality in certain languages. Moreover, it is rather unusual to assume that an aspectual auxiliary can be the main predicate of a(n embedding) clause, which would force us to redefine the notion of a clause. A different solution is suggested by Vikner (1988: 6), who explains why the perfect of a non-root modal, surprisingly, is "not completely unacceptable" (these data were also given as (29a) and (29b) above). (31)

a.

IDer har mäske nok kunnet voere tale om en feil. there has maybe probably could be talk about a mistake 'It might have been a mistake.'

b.

ΊΗαη har skullet bo i Arhus. he has should live in Ärhus 'He is supposed to have lived in Ärhus.'

Vikner (1988: 7) argues that this is an instance of "misplaced tense"; semantically the perfect belongs to the main verb, not the modal, and the relative semantic scope of the perfect and the modal is the same as in a corresponding sentence with a modal + perfect structure. (32)

a.

Der kan mäske nok have veer et tale om en feil. there may maybe probably have been talk about a mistake 'It might have been a mistake.'

b.

Han skal have boet i Arhus. he shall have lived in Ärhus 'He is supposed to have lived in Ärhus.'

This is also the view adopted in Stowell (2004) who suggests that the nonroot modal moves, at LF, to a position above that of the perfect, which allows the modal to scope over the perfect in semantic representation. An aspectual can thus only apparently scope over a non-root modal. The underlying order of semantic operators still follows the Cinque hierarchy; according to this proposal, restructuring at LF produces the right order. There is one quite striking but to my knowledge ignored fact that supports this kind of analysis of the present perfect of non-root modals. A pre-

334 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense sent perfect of a modal is in principle ambiguous between a root and a nonroot reading, at least in many Norwegian dialects, as in (33a). However, if we add a punctual adverbial to the construction, the construction is no longer ambiguous, as (33b) shows. 26 Only the non-root reading of the modal seems possible on the punctual reading of the adverbial. 27 (33)

a.

Huhar mätta ete. she has mustPERF eatPERF 'She must have eaten/She has had to eat.'

b.

Hu har mätta ete klokka to. she has mustPERF eatPERF clock two 'She must have eaten at two/*She has had to eat at two.'

This pattern suggests that the present perfect of the non-root modal is in fact not semantically a present perfect since the present perfect has a strong restriction against co-occurring with a punctual adverbial. Crucially, we do not find this restriction with the present perfect of a non-root modal. Instead, the present perfect of a non-root modal behaves in this respect exactly like a construction where the modal scopes over a present perfect (cf. section 5.3 for a more detailed description of this effect); it seems that a scope-reversal analysis, such as that of Vikner (1988) or Stowell (2004), is needed to account for this fact.

4.4.2. Modals and tense Cinque (1999) argues that epistemic and evidential modals are universally high in the functional structure; they occupy two of the highest projections. Tense projections are lower than epistemic and evidential modality, but higher than root modality. Cinque supports his assumptions primarily with data manifesting this relative order in visible morphemes and syntactic markers. According to analyses by Stowell (2004) and Bartos (2000), however, the order of visible morphemes is not critical to deriving the semantic

26

According to my own grammatically judgments. Thanks to Björn Lundquist in Troms0 for inquiring about these issues and thereby bringing them to my attention. 27 Note that on a habitual reading of the adverbial even the root interpretation is grammatical. Habitual adverbials are typically possible with the present perfect.

Scope, readings, and universality

335

scope of the operators of tense and modality. Discrepancies between morpheme orders and the Cinque hierarchy are straightforwardly resolved by allowing for substantial restructuring at LF. Stowell (2004: 631) assumes the usual once-and-for-all relative ordering of modals and tense in Cinque's hierarchy. Epistemic modals (semantically) scope over tense and tense scopes over root modals, regardless of the morpheme order in any given sentence. Modepistemic > Tense > ModRoot Finite tenses are not the only ones that may instantiate tense heads; the past participle suffix may originate in the head position of a tense phrase TP. A root modal moves from below this suffix and undergoes head movement to combine with the suffix. An epistemic modal originates in the higher modal position above the suffix; in this case, the suffix undergoes head movement to the epistemic projection to combine with the modal. This is paralleled by other scope-reversal constructions, where the reversed scopes are those of a modal and a finite past tense; Stowell (2004: 626): (34)

a.

There had to be at least a hundred people there. 'There must have been at least a hundred people there.'

One premise of the analysis of this sentence is reminiscent of an idea advocated by Hornstein (1990: 36)—that the sequence modal + have is in fact the past tense of a modal. The aspectual have, denoting past, overtly follows the modal in a must have sequence, displaying the natural way to instantiate the relative order of non-root modality and tense. The sequence had to be in (34) is assumed to overtly instantiate the order [past < non-root modality]; as this is the wrong relative order of non-root modality and tense, a scope-reversal procedure must override the overt marking and restore it to the order corresponding to the sequence must have (see Stowell's 'translation' of (34)). Tense marking of modals is thus not necessarily compositional, according to these proposals. Instead, Hornstein (1990: 5) suggests that "natural-language grammars do not go directly from tense morphemes to temporal interpretation." The syntax of tense is autonomous, with principles "not definable in terms of semantic notions relating to the temporal interpretation of the sentence;" bridge principles are needed anyway to bridge the gap between the syntax and the interpretation of tenses.

336 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense Bartos (2000), addressing similar scope-reversal data in Hungarian, advocates a slightly different analysis. (35)

a.

Vär-hat-t-ak. wait-poss-past-3pl I. 'They were allowed to wait.' Τ Past > Mod Poss II. 'They may (possibly) have waited.' Mod Poss > Τ Past

While Bartos assumes restructuring principles rearranging the functional categories at LF to fit the universal relative ordering, he assumes restructuring by means of a "proxy" head, an empty head of a functional projection available as an adjunction site for tense and modality affixes base generated in a lower position. This adjunction to a proxy head allows a category to scope over another category at LF, i.e. the scope relations in overt syntax may be inverted by means of this proxy head. Bartos notes (fn. 4) that scope inversion in (35) is accompanied by a switch in modality from root (I) to non-root (II). He speculates that the two modalities might be represented in the syntax by two different projections embracing the projection of tense, an approach compatible with Cinque's hierarchy and Stowell (2004). However, Bartos points out an issue with this type of an approach. As always, the analysis must face the "crucial problem of deriving the identical morpheme orders" (Bartos 2000: 18, fn. 4). The relative order of affixes does not change, and the same morpheme order gives rise to both root and non-root interpretations of the modal in Hungarian, just like the sequence aspectual > modal may give rise to a root or a non-root reading in many languages (cf. the data in section 4.3). We face a related problem with simple tenses and modals in Germanic. A present tense modal has a tense affix independent of its reading as a nonroot or root modal. However, according to the proposals mentioned in this section, the present tense morpheme is useless to a non-root modal; nonroot modality is beyond the influence of tense. A present tense affix on a non-root modal does not receive a semantic temporal interpretation and is in a sense 'cancelled' at LF. Similarly, an epistemic modal with a past tense affix does not encode past modality, according to Stowell (2004: 626); cf. the English example in (34). This is another case of misplaced tense, where the past tense marking belongs to the main predicate. In contrast, Boogaart (2005) argues that Dutch epistemic modals are in fact sensitive to tense distinctions; Fagan (2001), following Iatridou

Scope, readings, and universality

337

(1990b), assumes that evidential predicates, such as German evidential modals, have a time variable. Stowell (2004), like Condoravdi (2002), assumes that metaphysical modals such as could and might can express temporal distinctions. If these proposals are correct, it would be wrong to claim that any type of non-root modal is "outside the scope of absolute tense altogether" (Cinque 1999: 79). I revisit this issue in section 7.

4.4.3. The positions

of modals

Another discrepancy between word order and the Cinque hierarchy is noted by Roberts and Roussou (2002: 20, fn.7), who adopt Cinque's hierarchy as "the null hypothesis." The authors address the high position proposed for epistemic and evidential modals, which seems counterintuitive for Mainland Scandinavian languages: It may seem strange to propose that epistemic modals in Danish occupy a very high functional position like M o d E p j s t e m i c when the evidence is that all verbs, including modals, occupy just two positions in this language: The V2 position (presumably C) and what appears to [be] the base V-Position (see Vikner 1995 and the references given there). The problem really concerns associating the epistemic interpretation with the low position. As alluded to in this quote, Vikner (1995: 143 ff) provides evidence that although main clauses in MSc display V2, I-to-C movement of the finite verb, as in (36a), the finite verb in embedded clauses remains in situ, in its base position in V, as in (36b). (36)

a.

Jon kunne plutselig ha tatt boka. Jon could suddenly have taken bookDEF 'Jon might suddenly have taken the book.'

b.

Marit mistenkte [at Jon plutselig kunne ha tatt boka], Marit suspected that Jon suddenly might have taken bookDEF 'Marit suspected that Jon might suddenly have taken the book.'

In the main clause in (36a), the finite epistemic modal moves past the adverbial plutselig; in the embedded sentence in (36b), on the other hand, the

338 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense verb is considered to remain in situ. It is not easy to determine which of Cinque's projections would be the most likely candidate to host an adverbial such as plutselig 'suddenly' in its specifier position; it seems likely that it is an Asp head, perhaps the head that hosts quickly, A S P C E L E R A T I V E (please consult Cinque's hierarchy as depicted in Figure 11). The Asp heads are lower in the hierarchy than the designated position of the epistemic modal. If the adverbial plutselig sits in the specifier of an AspP, and the epistemic modal follows this adverbial, as in Norwegian embedded sentences, the surface position of the epistemic modal must be lower in the structure than any of the modal heads, not to mention the head position of the designated functional projection of the epistemic modal. Roberts and Roussou (2002: 20) point out that this is a problem for MSc languages, whether we assume Cinque's hierarchy or not. This problem is just an instance of the general problem that arises in Mainland Scandinavian languages... of associating functional information (at the very least Tense) with the in-situ verb, and as such is not created by assuming the Cinque hierarchy. Whatever the technical device we postulate to associate tense with the in-situ verb (affix-hopping, chain-formation, LFmovement, etc.) can be exploited to associate an epistemic modal with its functional position.

Van Gelderen (2003: 31) notes that since epistemic modals precede and root modals follow irrealis modality in Cinque's hierarchy, this would predict a tendency for an epistemic modal to be followed by an irrealis or possibility adverb; a deontic modal ought to follow such an adverb. However, van Gelderen's investigations of two corpora (the 100 million word BNC and the 2 million American Athelstan) show that there is in fact no difference between the two types of modals. Instead, both are typically followed by the adverb. Cinque does seem to claim (p. 87) that all modals of all types end up in T, van Gelderen says, "but that takes the sting out of the proposal." Since Picallo (1984), many proposals have assumed root modals to be lower in the sentence structure than non-root modals. This assumption is also adopted in the Cinque hierarchy. A prediction of many of these analyses (which assume only one position for non-root and one position for root modals) is that in double modal constructions the first modal gets an epistemic reading and the second one a root reading. This prediction is by and large borne out, but there are exceptions, at least in Norwegian. In certain sequences of two modals, both may get a non-root reading, especially if the second one is kunne 'can, may' (cf. Vikner 1988: 9-10 and Thräinsson and

Scope, readings, and universality

339

Vikner 1995: 76); this is most clearly the case before the perfect auxiliary ha (the sentence is from Dyvik 1999). (37)

a.

Han vil kunne ha reist i morgen. he will may have traveled tomorrow 'Tomorrow it will be the case that he may have left.'

In Cinque's account, the modal ville would be assumed to instantiate the head T(future); hence, ville would probably not be counted as a (proper) modal, 28 whereas kunne is an example of "alethic" (possibility) modality, which can be affected by tense. Condoravdi (2002) and Stowell (2004) refer to this modality as metaphysical modality and agree that this is one of the (non-root) modalities that do in fact scope under tense. However, it is also possible to get what is indisputably a root reading of both modals in a modal + modal sequence in Norwegian. (38)

a.

Det er absurd at vi skal matte gä til domstolen It is absurd that we shall must go to courtDEF med disse sp0rsmälene. with these questions 'It is absurd that we are supposed to have to go to court with these questions.'

b.

Jenter bürde mätte ta en pr0ve fßr de gär ut med deg. girls should have to take a test before they go out with you 'Girls should have to take a test before dating you.'

This fact is harder to explain in the Cinque hierarchy since the modals in both sentences seem to qualify as Mod 0 bii g ation in Cinque's terms, and there is only one head for modality of obligation. Thräinsson and Vikner (1995: 78) correctly observe that a monosentential structure containing a sequence of two modals where a root modal

However, we could replace vil in (37) with the evidential modal skal 'is supposed to' and still get a grammatical sentence. In that case, we would have a sequence of two non-root modals, which would also be allowed by the Cinque hierarchy since evidential modality skulle scopes over "alethic" modality kunne. 28

340 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense scopes over a non-root modal is impossible. They ascribe this effect to the different argument-taking properties of root and non-root modals. Since epistemic modals predicate of a whole proposition whereas root modals predicate of one of the arguments (typically the subject) of a proposition, we would not expect root modals to be able to take scope over epistemic modals. Thräinsson and Vikner assume that root modals always assign a(n additional) theta-role, whereas epistemic modals assign no theta-role. As discussed in Chapter 4, root modals may have proposition scope readings where they do not assign a theta-role to the subject, just like non-root modals. It seems that even in a sequence of two root modals, a propositionscope modal scopes over a subject-oriented modal, never the other way around. The argument-taking properties of modals are hence seemingly important for explaining the fact that a non-root modal always scopes over a root modal. However, they cannot explain why a root modal with a proposition-scope reading cannot scope over a non-root modal, which ought to be possible, given that neither assigns a Theta-role. Instead, this is one effect that seemingly ought to be ascribed to a rigid ordering of functional projections, reflecting a universal ordering of semantic operators, guided by a Semantic Transparency principle. Of course, this is a stipulation, but it does capture what seems a robust pattern. To summarize the discussion in section 4.4, what is implied by the proposals of Vikner (1988), Stowell (2004), Roberts and Roussou (2002, 2003) and Bartos (2000) is that although non-root modals such as epistemics and evidentials may surface as subordinate to tense and aspectuals, logically and interpretationally they scope over tense and aspectuals. Hence, the overt sequence of morphological markers is undone at LF, adhering to a universal hierarchy where non-root modals "are outside the scope of absolute tense altogether" (Cinque 1999: 79). To maintain the hierarchy, we need to allow for substantial LF rearranging and scope reversal procedures in spite of the many projections at our disposal. For instance, we need to allow for LF-movement of an epistemic or evidential modal surfacing "too low" in a structure—in subordinate clauses in Mainland Scandinavian or when the non-root modal is preceded by an aspectual. We need to allow for a great number of non-compositional tense constructions, e.g. Hornstein's (1990: 31) claim that must have is the "regular" past tense of the modal. We need to stipulate why the order aspectual > modal sometimes yields a root reading and sometimes a non-root reading of

Scope, readings, and universality

341

the modal and why the default (i.e. root) interpretation sometimes gets cancelled. This begs the question of what it takes to force an LF scope reversal movement and how we can predict it. We need similar stipulations for the sequence modal > aspectual, which displays the same type of ambiguity, with the non-root reading as the default. Moreover, a past marking on a modal is sometimes interpreted and sometimes 'cancelled' at LF, and a present marking on a non-root modal is always assumed to be pleonastic. In sum, whatever overt sequences might arise, it can seemingly be explained by means of a range of LF procedures that resolve the lack of correspondence between overt syntactic sequences of markers and the proposed LF hierarchy. One serious problem with these analyses is that the arguments utilized come (almost) exclusively from recalcitrant and subtle intuitions about relative semantic scopes of syntactic operators. This is not necessarily a problem for an analysis aspiring to be semantically based. However, the analyses discussed in this section adhere to the autonomy of syntax; in this type of analysis, utilizing solely intuitions about semantics and interpretation is considered theoretically inadequate. Hornstein (1990: 5) states that I would argue that the substitution of syntactic notions and methods for semantic ones has been one of the major factors in the success of the generative program. This, of course, is not to say that issues of semantic interpretations are unimportant, or that the interpretative properties of sentences is an improper topic of study. However, the syntactic turn within grammatical theory has tended to emphasize two oft-neglected facts: semantic notions are terribly obscure, and theories incorporating them often inherit this lack of clarity; and there is a real cost to premature interpretation. In what follows, I will explore a different line of analysis. Instead of assuming that the temporal construals of modals are exclusively due to their predetermined positions relative to tense and aspectual heads in a universal syntactic (LF) hierarchy, I argue that temporal construction in modal constructions is typically highly compositional and quite transparent for root and non-root modals alike. Particularly enlightening are the data in (14), section 3.2, repeated here as (39). In (39a), the non-root reading is more natural; in (39b), the root reading is more natural; in (39c), the non-root reading is the natural, perhaps the only reading. (39)

a.

Jon mä ha spist. Jon must have eaten 'Jon must have eaten.'

342 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense b.

Jon mä ha spistf0r han kommer. Jon must have eaten before he arrives 'Jon must have eaten before he arrives.'

c.

Jon mä ha spist for han kom. Jon must have eaten before he arrived 'Jon must have eaten before he arrived.'

In order to prove this compositionally determined temporal construal of modal constructions, however, we need a truly compositional tense system. That is what we turn to next.

5.

A compositional tense system for Norwegian

In this section, I will take as my point of departure the approach of Julien (2000a, 2001). I present some of her fundamental assumptions and the workings of her model. In section 5.2,1 argue against some of Julien's assumptions; I also adopt certain claims that, in my opinion, offer valuable insights. Elaborating on these insights, I propose a system of Tense chains, where each verb in a sentence is temporally ordered with respect to the ccommanding verb or the speech event S and where each and every verb has an inherent tense feature. I use this model to account for the default and override effects in perfect constructions discussed in earlier sections.

5.1. Julien (2000a, 2001) Julien (2000a, 2001) proposes a universal theory of tense in natural language. One crucial assumption is that any clause contains two temporal heads, past and future, T(past) scoping over T(future). Each head can each have a positive or a negative value, where the positive value is spelled out by a corresponding tense marker.

A compositional tense system for Norwegian

343

Figure 12 TP(past) .JP(past) Τ (Past) [± PAST]

TP(Future) TP(Future) T(Future) [± FUT]

VP

A positive value for T(past) combined with a negative value for T(future) yields simple past. A positive value for T(future) combined with a negative value for T(past) yields simple future. A negative value for both heads yields present tense. It is also possible for both heads to have a positive value; this results in "a future viewed from the past," as in the following sentence (Julien 2000a: 130): (40)

a.

She

woul-d write. FUT-PAST

In Julien's theory, there is a distinction in the universal tense system between finite and non-finite tenses (in the words of Comrie 1976, absolute and relative tenses). Julien argues quite convincingly that the perfect, the progressive, and the prospective should be viewed not as aspects, but as non-fmite tenses: the perfect is a relative past, the progressive is a relative present, 29 and the prospective is a relative future. The difference between finite or absolute tenses and non-finite or relative tenses is that the latter are unable to relate to the moment of utterance (or the speech event), whereas the former typically do relate to it. Hence, non-finite tenses will always be embedded under some other, finite verbal element, whereas finite tenses occur as the highest tense element in a sentence functioning as a complete utterance. A third important assumption in Julien's theory is that tense elements are dyadic predicates of temporal ordering. They are considered abstract 29

See also Demirdache and Uribe-Extebarria (2000), Comrie (1976), and Gueron and Hoekstra (1995) for closely related ideas.

344 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense entities although they are phonologically realized by appropriate tense markers 30 such as affixes or designated preverbal particles. The two arguments of a tense element are both events,31 and each tense element specifies a temporal relation between these two events. To exemplify, let Τ be a tense element, hence a dyadic predicate, specifying a temporal relation between its two arguments, ei and e 2 . Let the tense element in question encode the temporal relation precedence, such that ei precedes e 2 . This would be a description of a tense element encoding that e 2 is future with respect to e ]5 as in (41). (41)

T+FUT & -PAST

--> (ei < e 2 ) 3 2

In any tense construction, the highest tense element can have the speech event S as one of its arguments. The lowest tense element must have the predicate event, E, as one of its arguments. Ε is syntactically represented by VP. It follows that in simple tenses, where there is only one active tense element (Julien suggests that the non-active tense element may be inert), this tense element must have both S (the speech event) and Ε (the predicate event) as arguments, so that S is directly related to E; in this case, e, and e 2 in (41) would correspond to S and E, respectively. The two events, S and E, must be related in one of three ways, which exhaust the logical possibilities: precedence, subsequence, or simultaneity.

30

"Tense markers" may sometimes be phonologically zero: the present tense is often phonologically zero, according to Julien (2001: 129). In such cases, it is customary to assume that "zero morphemes" still have a denotation because of their paradigmatic opposition to other, phonetically realized tense markers. 31 Julien discusses and rejects various hypotheses about the arguments of tense elements (cf. also section 2.1 of the present chapter) and adopts the assumption of Giorgi and Pianesi (1997) that tense elements relate not time points or time intervals but events, where event is construed as a cover term for events in the narrow sense (i.e. non-states/dynamic situations) and states; it is synonymous with the eventuality of Bach (1981) or the situation of Barwise and Perry (1983). Julien (2001: 127): "On this approach, John ran is true iff before the speech event there was an event of John running, similarly, John was sick is true iff before the speech event there was an event that consisted in John being sick. It follows that the precise extension in time of the event or state becomes irrelevant, and the problems associated with the time point or time interval approaches disappear." 32 This formula amounts to my understanding of Julien's assumptions; it is not quoted from Julien's work; thus, any errors are mine.

A compositional tense system for Norwegian (42)

a. b. c.

Mary loves John. S = Ε ( S is contemporaneous with E ) ; T . F U T & Mary loved John. S > Ε (S follows E); Τ -FUT & +PAST (ei> e 2 ) Mary will love John. S < Ε (S precedes E) T +FUT & -PAST (ei < e 2 )

PAST ( E I

=

345

E2)

These options exhaust the possible orderings of S and E. However, S and Ε do not account for all possible temporal orderings in natural language, as is well known. Reichenbach (1947) introduced R, reference time, to account for the intricacy of natural tenses; each tense is considered a global ordering of S, R, and E. In response to the shortcomings of Reichenbach's system, Vikner (1985) proposes that every tense involves two Rs, two reference times. Julien rejects both of these views and argues instead that each tense element specifies only one relation, a relation between two events, where the speech event may constitute one of those events. Furthermore, there is in principle no upper limit on the number of such relations within a construction. Instead, the number of reference times R is a function of the number of tense elements present in the construction. Since Tense elements are realized in Tense projections projecting on top of VPs, the number of tensed verbs (finite or non-fmite) in a construction determines the number of reference times R.33 However, there is a requirement that every R must serve a function to be licit at LF. Thus R„ cannot coincide with either S or Ε or Rn_i; Julien claims that this is why (43) is ungrammatical. (43)

*She is being reading LGB.

Here, the finite auxiliary states that S is simultaneous with Rj (R, is the reference time introduced by the finite auxiliary). Moreover, the progressive being adds another R, R 2 , simultaneous with R,. Finally, the progressive reading states that R 2 is simultaneous with E. In other words, Ri, R 2 and Ε are all simultaneous. The two Rs cannot both have a function; therefore, the construction is ungrammatical. 33

This is inaccurate, as Julien proposes (see above) that both T(FUT) and T(PAST) may be active in one and the same clause, as in (40), where the verb would is taken to realize both T(FUT) and T(PAST). If both heads have a positive value, there are two tense elements present in the same extended projection of one and the same verb; thus, the number of Rs is only partly determined by the number of verbs.

346 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense Julien elaborates on the function and syntactic realization of R, claiming that R is a perspective time, a time from which another event is viewed, and that it might be encoded by the syntactic head T(Future), at least in certain cases; or R might not have a syntactic representation at all and might be just an interpretational link between tense heads (2001: 130).34 For Julien, the difference between the (present) 35 perfect and the simple past—and the difference between the progressive and the simple present— is that the simple, finite tenses directly relate S to E; the complex, nonfinite tenses contain an R in addition to S and E. It is the tense marking of the auxiliary that specifies the relation between S and R, whereas the tense marking of the main verb -en (and presumably -ing in the progressive) specifies the relation between R and E. In the present perfect, R is simultaneous with S and focuses on the fact that Ε is viewed from S, as in (44b). (44)

a. b.

I bought that book. S > Ε I have bought that book. S = R & R > Ε

Since R = S, the only temporal adverbials compatible with these constructions are the ones denoting the moment of utterance. The focusing function of R in the present perfect, Julien claims, prevents adverbials from specifying the predicate event E. This entails that they must specify R, which in the present perfect is contemporaneous with S.36 34

Cf. also Giorgi and Pianesi (1997: 30), who suggest that R does not correspond to an event (unlike S and E, each having a relationship with a T-projection). Instead, "the variable corresponding to R constitutes the trait d 'union between the event variable and the context," although R can also be provided by a superordinate clause or a superordinate auxiliary. 35 The present perfect is a perfect where the auxiliary has present tense. Thus, I have seen him is the present perfect, I had seen him the past perfect. 36 Two objections: In Norwegian you may add to the present perfect adverbials not specifying the moment of speech if they denote the current daily, weekly, monthly or yearly cycle; e.g. Jeg har kjopt mange beker i dag/denne uka/denne mäneden/i är Ί have bought many books today/this week/this month/this year'. Julien (2001: 143) mentions that the speech event is not necessarily construed as punctual, an assumption that might be able to account for this fact (in some type of "extended now" approach). As to Julien's claims about the possible specification of R versus E, cf. (i), where both Ε and R of the present perfect are specified. (i) Hver gang jeg ringer min mor, har hun sovet därlig nattenfor. 'Every time I call my mother, she has slept poorly the night before.' Hver gang 'every time' specifies R and natten fer 'the night before' specifies E.

A compositional tense system for Norwegian (45)

a.

I have bought that book

347

now/*yesterday.

On the other hand, in the past and future perfect, R does not coincide with S, which is why temporal adverbials in these constructions need not specify R; according to Julien, they may also specify E. This accounts for the ambiguity of the following sentences: (46)

a. b.

Mary had arrived at six ο 'clock. When you arrive at seven, she will have arrived at six.

The ambiguity is in the two possible paraphrases of each sentence: either M a r y ' s arrival took (or will take) place at six o'clock or she had (or will have) arrived by six o'clock. In the former case, the adverbial specifies E, the predicate event time; in the latter, it specifies R, the reference time.

5.2. A different approach Although I consider Julien's system superior to many other syntactic approaches to tense, I have strong objections to it. Firstly, in this approach, complex tenses typically imply the existence of several clauses, one embedded into the other. Each verb in a construction projects the two temporal heads T(Past) and T(Future) on top of it, with past scoping over future; since Julien states that each clause can contain a maximum of two temporal heads, w e need (in most cases) one clause with two heads for each verb. 37 If two past relations are to be licit in one construction (e.g. She had [past] eaten [past]), we need two T(PAST) heads. If it is a universal principle that only one T(PAST) head—and one T(FUT)—is projected in each clause, it follows that such constructions must be biclausal. The definition of clause is thus fully dependent on the assumption that universally two is the maxim u m number of T(ense) heads in a single clause. 3 8 I will not adopt this assumption or this definition of the term clause. 37

Again, with the exception mentioned in fn. 33. In addition, every extended projection of each verb in a clause must contain a FinP, encoding ±finiteness. This, in my view, creates unnecessarily complex structural representations for each sentence. I see no a priori reason why finiteness and tense could not be encoded by the same functional head, as long as they do not clearly correspond to two different, separable affixes in Mainland Scandinavian. Julien's reason for assuming a separate Finiteness projection is the correlation 38

348 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense Secondly, although Julien assigns a temporal function to the perfect participle, she assigns no such function to the infinitive, the sole function of which is to lexicalize the V head of the predicate VP. In fact, Julien (2001: 126) explicitly rejects the idea that the infinitive has tense features: "the (infinitival) main verb is uninflected." In my view, the infinitive does have a temporal function on a par with the perfect participle and partakes in the temporal construal of sentences; thus, I will ascribe temporal properties to the infinitive as well. I elaborate on this point below. Thirdly, it seems arbitrary to stipulate that R is encoded by the syntactic head T(Future). There seems to be no semantic reason, for instance, to assume that R has a particular affinity with future tense. Resorting to the assumption that R has no syntactic realization seems unsatisfactory as well, especially since w e know that 'an R different from S' is always dependent on the presence of an aspectual auxiliary or a modal; at least this is the case in the languages presently under consideration. Fourthly, although it may very well be that the T(FUT) and T(PAST) heads are the only tense heads universally available in natural languages (as Julien claims), this does not necessarily entail that all languages make use of both. Contrary to Julien (2001: 128), I suggest that the inventory of tense heads may be parametrized: languages may select T(Past) only, T(Future) only, both, or neither. Specifically, I propose that Mainland Scandinavian languages do not employ T(future) in their tense systems: the tense feature denoting future is never morphologically encoded in these languages. Comrie (1985: 48 ff) discusses languages where a) only a future/nonfuture distinction is present—the language Hua in N e w Guinea (the basic system of Capverdean Creole is seemingly also of this type, according to Baptista 1997); 39 b) languages where only a past/non-past distinction is

between agreement and finiteness (Julien 2000a: 63): "Since subject agreement always co-occurs with finiteness, one might reasonably guess that it is the Finite head which hosts subject agreement." Assuming a separate projection FinP is one way of accounting for this fact; another way is to assume that a feature [FIN] may be hosted by another projection, e.g. a T-projection. A T-projection carrying the feature [+FIN] would then be assumed to trigger subject agreement; a T-projection lacking this feature does not trigger subject agreement. Moreover, MSc in general does not employ subject-verb agreement, except as relics. Thus, one might claim that even FINP could be parametrized and possibly absent in MSc. 39 In this language, a bare verb form is inherently underspecified as to whether it denotes present or past. A dynamic predicate usually gets a past reading and a stative one a present reading. The future is encoded by a separate marker. There is

A compositional tense system for Norwegian

349

present such as German and Finnish; and c) "languages that lack tense altogether" (Comrie 1985: 50), like Burmese and probably also the Australian language Dyirbal. Julien (2001: 129) provides data from Irish and Turkish, evidently both languages with both past/non-past and future/non-future distinctions. These facts can easily be taken to support the idea of parametrized tense heads. This information is presented in Figure 13: +T(Past) means the language employs the T(Past) projection and the corresponding morphological (or syntactic) marker; +T(Fut) means the language does employ this projection and a corresponding marker; -T(Past) and T(Fut) means the language does not select for the projection in question. Figure 13 - T(PAST)

+ T(PAST) + T(FUT) - T(FUT)

Irish Turkish Norwegian Finnish

d b

Hua Capverdean creole Burmese Dyirbal

a c

Mainland Scandinavian languages thus belong to category b); they make the past/non-past distinction only. This certainly does not mean that Norwegian has no means of expressing future. Just like languages altogether lacking morphologically or syntactically encoded tense features may express temporal relations by modal or lexical means, MSc employs modals and adverbials to fill in the gaps in the tense paradigm. Thus, contrary to Julien's assumptions, I do not take the modal ville 'will' to be a marker of future tense, 40 but a modal auxiliary denoting 'intention' on its root reading and 'prediction' on its non-root reading. Since it denotes intention or prediction, it requires a future reading of its complement, but it does not belong to the inventory of tense markers in Norwegian. Recall that all root and non-root modals in Norwegian may give rise to or allow for a future reading of their complements without functioning as tense markers. Thus, I take the two-way distinction—past vs. non-past—to be the fundamental

also a past marker, which, I assume, does not belong to the basic system. Julien mentions Sola (1994), who argues that future in English is not a tense but a mood. As I argue for Norwegian, Sola assumes one tense distinction [± PAST] in English.

40

350 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense split in the Norwegian tense system. Comrie (1985: 48) claims this is the basic distinction in many European languages: While the general theory allows us a three-way distinction within absolute tense, many languages in fact have a basic two-way split.... Past versus nonpast is... the basic tense-split in many European languages, with subdivisions within non-past (especially future as opposed to the present) being at best secondary: thus the so-called present tense in such languages is frequently used for future time-reference. Adopting Julien's hypothesis about the existence of non-finite tenses, 1 propose that Norwegian employs the following distinctions: finite vs. nonfinite and past vs. non-past. Unlike Julien, however, I claim that the infinitive is the non-finite non-past tense in Norwegian tense constructions. Julien (2001: 132) explicitly states that the perfect is the non-finite past. 41 I claim that the past participle, by itself, is the formal non-finite past in Norwegian. This yields the paradigm in Figure 14, where every Norwegian verb form encodes an inherent tense feature (note that present participles are adjectives, not verbs, in Norwegian). Figure 14

+ Finite

- Finite

+ Past

preterite

participle

- Past

present

Infinitive

The main differences between Julien's model and the system I propose are: firstly, I do not assume for each clause a range of empty or inert T-heads whose presence is dictated by a universal hierarchy; I also do not accept her definition of clause, a structure containing the two T-heads: T(past) and T(future). Secondly, I assume that Norwegian selects for the T(Past) feature only. I do not assume 'future' to be expressed by a designated tense element in Norwegian although this is one of the readings of the non-past forms—the present and the infinitive. Thirdly, I ascribe to the infinitive a

41

Like Stowell (1996), Julien assumes that the participle does encode past, but the auxiliary is an intrinsic part of the construction, allowing for the generation of the topmost set of T-projections hosting the finite tenses; cf. section 5.2.5.

A compositional tense system for Norwegian

351

prominent place in the tense system, unlike Julien, who assumes that the infinitive has no tense features. Lastly, I argue that each R has a syntactic expression, not as a T-head, but encoded by a verb or an auxiliary. I will, however, adopt Julien's assumption that tense elements, expressed by affixes in Norwegian, establish a temporal ordering between events, of which the speech event may be one.42 Unlike Julien, I argue that each and every verbal predicate denotes an event (in the broad sense, encompassing states; cf. fn. 31) and that this event takes part in the temporal construal. This means, for instance, that I take modal auxiliaries to denote their own events; they do not express temporal facets of other events, as suggested by Julien. That is, in my approach, modals provide their own Es (predicate events). In addition, I adopt the idea that finite tenses typically relate to S and non-finite tenses to R. However, I claim that the R in question is provided by the c-commanding verb; in fact, in my proposal, there are in a sense no Rs, only Es, since each verb and auxiliary provides an Ε that functions as an R with respect to the following verb. Finally, I assume that any verbal predicate in Norwegian hosts a tenseelement, which entails that there are no untensed verbs in Norwegian. Semantically, the tense element of any verb encodes a temporal relation between two events. If the tense element is non-finite, it encodes a relation between the event denoted by the previous verb—the verb c-commanding the tense element—and the event denoted by the verb hosting the tense element. If the tense element is finite, it encodes a temporal relation between S (the speech event) and the event denoted by the verb hosting the tense element. Syntactically, this tense element is expressed by a designated affix. More abstractly, a given tense element can be described as a positive or negative value on the verb, i.e. the V-head itself, or a vP-local T-projection (like a T-shell on a lexical V-root, or a projection just above vP), rather than a separate extended projection high in a structural hierarchy. Every tense element expresses a local syntactic relation between two events, where every verb encodes such an event. Thus, every verb requires its own local tense domain, its own TP. These are not unprecedented thoughts. For instance, Butler (2003: 987) suggests that in addition to the functional layers existing at the topmost domain of each clause, there is a full structure of "a Rizzi CP" (cf. Rizzi 42

"Event" may be seen as short-hand for "event-argument;" cf. Davidson (1967).

352 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense 1997) above vP, i.e. projections encoding functional information such as finiteness. Other authors—Starke (1993), Belletti (2001) and Jayaseelan (2001)—have also suggested that clauses contain a functional layer immediately dominating vP, i.e. quite low in the clause. The present proposal simply exploits such ideas to argue that every verb comes with its own local tense package. This solves the problem of associating a tense feature with a finite verb in situ (cf. section 4.4.3 above), pointed out by Roberts and Roussou (2002). There is no need for LF-movement, affix-hopping, or chain formation to associate a Norwegian verb with its tense features. The tense features were never separated from the verb in the first place.

5.2.1. Tense chains and temporal

relations

A sentence containing three verbal predicates contains three tense elements, hence three temporal relations; each relation specifies the temporal ordering of two events. This means that there are four events in all, S being the topmost one. The three verbal predicates constitute a tense chain with four links, with S as the topmost or left-most link, as in (47). The preterite modal ville, for instance, hosts the tense-element [+PAST, +F1N(ITE)], thus taking S as its first argument.

(47)

ej e2 es Marit ville prove ä komme. —> ville (S, Z\),pr0ve (ei, e 2 ), komme (e2, e 3 ) Marit would try to come 'Marit would try to come.'

This tense chain consists of four events: S, ei,e 2 and e3; e, is the event denoted by the modal ville, e2 the event denoted by the verb prove, and e3 the event denoted by komme. The verbal predicates involved are hooked up to one another in a 'tongue and groove' fashion; each tense element anchors its verb to the previous event in the chain, and the event denoted by the verb itself provides the anchor for the next tense element in the construction. Thus, the tense element of ville orders the event denoted by ville with respect to S, the tense element of prove orders the event denoted by prove with respect to the event denoted by ville, and the tense element of komme orders the event denoted by komme relative to the event denoted by prove.

A compositional tense system for Nonvegian

353

I stated above that Norwegian employs a past/non-past distinction only, which entails that the two relations, past and non-past, are the only two relations encoded by Norwegian tense elements. I will represent the past relation as ei > e2. This encodes that the past tense element takes ei as its first argument and orders it as temporally subsequent to e 2 (ei is after e 2 ) The second temporal relation expressed by Norwegian tense affixes is the non-past. Recall the quote from Comrie (1985) that the non-past form encompasses present as well as future. Thus, we have at least two possible ways of representing this relation. One choice is to represent it as a disjunction—((ei = e 2 ) ν (ei< e 2 ))—which means that either ei is simultaneous with e 2 or ei precedes e 2 . This means that e 2 is either present or future with respect to ei; the non-past forms are underspecified with respect to these two relations and encode both simultaneously. An alternative is to represent the non-past relation simply as the "elsewhere" case, as the negated past relation —i(ej > e 2 ), which means non-past. This amounts to saying that the nonpast form encodes everything but the past-relation—the present as well as the future. The latter representation is the one I will employ in what follows while assuming that it equals the representation ((ei= e 2 ) ν (e,< e 2 )) in all relevant respects. The past relation is expressed by the participle, encoding the non-finite past relation, and by the preterite, encoding the finite past relation. The finite non-past relation is encoded by the present and the non-finite nonpast relation by the infinitive (cf. Figure 14). The difference between finite and non-finite tense elements is that finite tense elements typically relate to S (which means that they take S as their first argument), whereas non-finite tense elements relate to the c-commanding verb.

5.2.2. The preterite The past relation the preterite modal ville expresses in (47) takes S as its first argument and the event denoted by ville as its second argument, ordering S after the event denoted by ville, as shown in (48). (48)

ville [+PAST, +FIN] (S >

CVILLE)

The tense element of the preterite ville thus consists of a matrix with two formal features. Firstly, the past relation encoded by the tense element signals that the event instantiating its first argument is subsequent in time to

354 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense the event instantiating its second argument. Secondly, the positive finiteness feature [+FIN] signals that the first argument of this specific tense element is S, the speech event. In short, the speech event S is temporally subsequent to the event denoted by ville, which means that the event denoted by ville is past relative to S.

5.2.3. The present The finite non-past tense element is encoded by the present. The present is hence represented by the matrix [-PAST, +FIN], which means that it imposes a non-past relation on its two arguments; because of the positive value of the finiteness feature, the first of these arguments is S; see the identical matrices of the verbs in (49a) and (49b). (49)

a.

b.

Marit kommer. Marit comePRES. 'Marit arrives.' kommer [-PAST,+FIN] - I (S >

ΘΚΟΜΜΕ)

Marit liker Jon. Marit likePRES John. 'Marit likes John.' liker [-PAST,+FIN] - , (S >

CURE)

The information encoded in this tense element is that it imposes a non-past relation on its two event arguments, a relation encompassing the present as well as the future. Thus, the event denoted by the verbal predicate is anything from future to concurrent with S, the speech event. We know from section 3 that dynamic predicates tend to get a future reading and stative predicates a present one. We can observe this effect in (49a) and (49b). The dynamic predicate kommer 'comes' is easily construed as future with respect to the speech event S, whereas the stative predicate liker 'likes' is difficult to construe as future. The natural reading of the stative predicate is simultaneity, hence present. However, this is not information encoded by the tense element. The tense element encodes only two pieces of information: the relation imposed by the tense element on its two arguments is the non-past relation and the first of these arguments is S since the tense element has a [+ FIN] feature. The choice between a future and present read-

A compositional tense system for Norwegian

355

ing is not imposed by the tense element; it is the result of the lexical aspectual properties of a given predicate hosting the tense element. The tense element itself is blind to these aspectual properties although they are important to the temporal construal of a construction, conducted by other conceptual-interpretational modules in the language user.

5.2.4. The

infinitive

As shown in Figure 14, in the present system the infinitive is the η on-finite non-past. Julien (2000a, 2001) does not ascribe any tense properties to the infinitive, a claim also found in Comrie (1985: 52): In many languages with tense distinctions, certain non-finite forms, in particular, lack tense oppositions.... Thus, in English, the infinitive after the verb promise shows no tense opposition, e.g. John promised to give me ten pounds. However, it is possible to deduce that the time reference of to give me ten pounds is to a time subsequent to the time of John's promise, i.e. relative future tense. This deduction has nothing, however, to do with the ... grammatical expression of time reference.

This is not the case in Norwegian where the event described by an infinitive can never be construed as prior to the event described by the preceding verb, even if the predicates and adverbials partaking in the construction favor, or force, a past reading of the infinitive.43 (50)

*Hun hevder ä ankomme

igär.

she claims to arrive yesterday Intended: 'She claims to have arrived yesterday.' Hence, I argue that the infinitive is the non-finite tense form encoding the entire temporal stretch from present to future; the relation this tense element imposes on its two event arguments is non-past, just like the present. However, unlike the present, the infinitive does not take S as its first argument. Being non-finite, it takes the event of the c-commanding verb as its first argument.

43

English "Exceptional Case Marking" contexts (non-existent in Norwegian) seemingly can. Stowell (1982: 566) observes that ECM contexts (but no other infinitivals) allow for past tense construal: I remember John to be the smartest.

356 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense (51)

a.

b.

Jon skal arbeide. Jon shall work 'Jon is supposed to work.' arbeide [ - P A S T , - F I N ] - , ( e S K u L L E Jon skulle arbeide. Jon should work 'Jon was supposed to work.' arbeide [-PAST,-FIN] - , ( G S K U L L E

^ A R B E I D E )

>

^ARBEIDE

)

The representation of the infinitival tense element is identical in (51 a) and (51b). With respect to S, however, the event denoted by arbeide is future or present in (51a), while it might be past relative to S in (51b). This is expected under the theory outlined here. The tense element of arbeide, being non-finite, cannot relate directly to S. It relates only to the event denoted by the c-commanding verb, in this case skal/skulle. Whereas skal in (51a) is present, hence encodes a [-PAST, +FIN] tense element, skulle in (51b) is preterite and encodes a [+PAST,+FIN] tense element. Thus, skal is nonpast with respect to S, and skulle is past with respect to S. The tense element of the leftmost (or topmost) verb relates to S; the infinitive relates to the preceding verb. Thus, the event denoted by arbeide must be construed as non-past relative to S in (51a) because of its dependence on the ccommanding verb, which is non-past relative to S. The event denoted by arbeide in (51b) may be construed as past relative to S because its ccommanding verb is past relative to S. This amounts to a kind of "temporal inheritance" for the infinitive, since the temporal construal of arbeide relative to S depends on the relation between the c-commanding verb (,skal/skulle) and S. Consider (52), an apparent counterexample to this claim. (52)

a.

Jon skulle arbeide i morgen, sa han. Jon should work tomorrow, said he 'Jon was supposed to work tomorrow, he said.' arbeide [ - P A S T , - F I N ] - , ( e S K u L L E > β A R B E I D E )

Here the event denoted by arbeide is construed as future relative to S, even though skulle is still past relative to S. This appears to be a counterexample to temporal inheritance. However, arbeide in (52) is still non-past relative to skulle, which is the information encoded by the tense element, so

A compositional tense system for Norwegian

357

it may be construed as future relative to skulle; since the tense element does not encode any restriction on how far into the future with respect to skulle this event may be located, it follows that the event denoted by arbeide may even be construed as future relative to S. The tense system simply remains silent about this relation; the only two relations encoded are the one between arbeide and skulle (encoded by the infinitive) and the one between skulle and S (encoded by the preterite). The future specification of the nonpast tense is provided by the adverbial imorgen 'tomorrow'. Figure 15 S

(S>ESKULLE)

imorgen 'tomorrow'

1

(^SKULLE

skulle

>

EARBEIDE )

arbeide

The specification of a tense element (the infinitive) through the aspectual properties of the predicate or by means of adding an adverbial to the construction must always be compatible with the overall temporal construal. This requirement is fulfilled in (52), but not in (53). (53)

a.

*Jon skal arbeide i gar, sa han. Jon shall work yesterday said he 'Jon will work yesterday, he said.' arbeide [ - P A S T , - F I N ] (eSKuLLE

>

^ARBEIDE )

In this sentence, there is no tense element capable of licensing the adverbial i gär 'yesterday': the only two temporal relations encoded are the non-past relation encoded by the infinitive arbeide and the non-past relation encoded by the present skal. Thus, neither of the events may be construed as past relative to S, and the adverbial i gär is illicit. As for the interpretational choice between future and present, both being encompassed by finite and non-finite non-past forms, we already know that the aspectual properties of the verb hosting the non-past tense element are decisive. Dynamic predicates typically give rise to a future construal and stative predicates to a present construal. We observed that the present, the finite non-past tense element, is subject to this effect in (49a), as compared to (49b). In that case, the interpretation is future or present relative to S. We observed in section 3 that this effect is also found with the infinitive; in this

358 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense case, however, the construal is future or present with respect to the ccommanding verb. In (54), the c-commanding verb in question is the modal mä. With a dynamic predicate such as komme 'come', the infinitive is construed as future with respect to the modal (54a), whereas the stative verb like 'like' is typically construed as present with respect to the modal, as in (54b). (54)

a.

b.

Marit mä komme. Marit must come 'Marit must come.' komme [-PAST,-FIN]

(e M A

>

ΘΚΟΜΜΕ)

Marit mä like pannekaker. Marit must like pancakes 'Marit must like pancakes.' like [-PAST,-FIN] - , (eMÄ > e LIKE )

As represented in the matrices, the choice between future and present is not encoded by the tense element of the infinitive. The tense element encodes solely that the relation between its two arguments is the non-past relation and that the first of these arguments is the event denoted by the ccommanding verb. The choice between a future or present construal of the non-past relation is instead affected by the aspectual properties of the predicates involved, as paralleled by the finite non-past, i.e. the present, as described above (cf. 49). However, unlike the finite non-past, which relates directly to S, with the non-finite non-past, the infinitive, the properties of the c-commanding verb are also important; the lexical properties of the c-commanding verb affect the choice between the future and present readings of the infinitival complement. For instance, if we replace the modal mä in (54b) with ville, it is easier to get a future construal even of the stative infinitive simply because ville denotes intention (root) or prediction (non-root), both being futureprojecting predicates in the sense that their complements are construed as future with respect to the modal.

A compositional tense system for Nonvegian 5.2.5. The past participle

and the

359

perfect

In the system proposed here, the non-finite past tense element is encoded by the past participle (Figure 14). Non-finite tense elements relate to the event denoted by the c-commanding verb: the participle is past with respect to the c-commanding verb, here the aspectual auxiliary ha ' h a v e ' . Ha comes in three tense forms—present, preterite, and infinitive—and hosts its own tense element. Hence, a non-finite perfect, for instance, is compositionally built from two tense relations: the non-finite non-past of the infinitival auxiliary ha ' h a v e ' and the non-finite past of the participle. Julien (2001: 136) assumes that "the u n i n f e c t e d " auxiliary have is inserted into a V head, projected solely to allow for the T-heads to be projected on top of it; a T-head may be filled by what she assumes to be the future tense marker, the modal will. Figure 16 T(PAST) She

T(FUT) will

V have

T(PAST) [writt]i-en

T(FUT) V tj

This entails that she considers the "uninflected" auxiliary have to have no tense features (which is in keeping with her assumption that infinitives, which she claims to be uninflected, have no tense properties). Thus, in Julien's approach, the non-finite perfect is in a sense a compound, consisting of the non-finite auxiliary have and the perfect participle, and this complex construction encodes non-finite past tense. There are several problems with these assumptions, some conceptual and others empirical. Firstly, in Julien's approach, some auxiliaries lexicalize only T-heads (will), others only V-heads (have). There is no natural dividing line corresponding to the finite/non-finite distinction; instead, some non-finite verb forms, such as past participles, have tense features, whereas others, such as infinitives, have no tense properties. Moreover, although Julien illustrates these claims with an English example and English modals like will cannot occur in the "uninflected" form, the corresponding modal in Norwegian may occur in the infinitive, as in (55). (55)

a.

Dette antas ä ville bli et problem. this supposePASS to willINF become a problem O n e supposes that this will become a problem.'

360 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense What is the status of ville in this example? Does it lexicalize a T-head, because it is the "future tense marker" or a V-head since it is arguably an infinitive? It is hard to decide, in Julien's system. One may be inclined to accept these quirks of the system if it yielded the right empirical results. However, this is not the case. For instance, it is not obvious how to explain the data in (14) and (39), repeated here as (56), in Julien's system. (56)

a.

Jon mä ha spist. Jon must have eaten 'Jon must have eaten.'

b.

Jon mä ha spist fer han kommer. Jon must have eaten before he arrives 'Jon must have eaten before he arrives.'

c.

Jon mä ha spist f0r han kom. Jon must have eaten before he arrived 'Jon must have eaten before he arrived.'

Whereas (56a) and (56c) can be accounted for by Julien's assumption that the perfect is the non-finite past tense, the temporal construal of (56b) is much worse. What is the position of mä? How come it allows for a future construal of its complement if the perfect is a non-finite past tense and the modal mä is not a future tense marker? The present proposal, I argue, is sufficiently flexible to account for the data in (56); it also has a regularity and predictability lacking in Julien's system. This proposal thus has better empirical coverage in addition to having more adequate explanatory power. We start out by summarizing the basic properties of the system, gradually closing in on the data in (56). We already know that a predicate hosting a non-past tense element (finite or non-finite) may be construed as future or present, depending on the its aspectual properties: a dynamic predicate is typically construed as future and a stative one as present. However, we can override this default reading of the stative predicate if we add an adverbial denoting a point in the future, as in (57). (57)

a.

Jon spiser. Jon eatPRES 'Jon is eating/eats.' spiser [-PAST, +FIN] - , (S > eSpisE)

A compositional tense system for Norwegian 361 b.

Jon spiser när han kommer. Jon eatPRES when he arrives 'Jon will eat/eats when he arrives.' spiser [-PAST, +FIN] - , (S > eSP,sE)

Note that the reading of the predicate spiser in (57b) can be either stative or dynamic: either Jon will start eating when he arrives, or he will be eating when he arrives. Hence, it would be wrong to claim that the adverbial cancels or overrides any semantic or syntactic features present in the predicate, that it turns a [+stative] feature into a [+dynamic] one; instead, the future adverbial simply specifies the non-past tense of the present tense element. This overrides the default construal of a stative predicate as present. The aspectual auxiliary ha 'have' is a stative predicate (see for instance the descriptions of the perfect quoted in section 3.2 of the present chapter). Hence, the default reading of a non-past ha will also be present; this default construal may be overridden if a future-denoting adverbial is added to the construction. The non-past tense element in (58) is the present, hence the finite, non-past tense element. (58)

a.

Jonhar spist. Jon has eaten 'Jon has eaten.' har - , (S > e HA ); spist (eHA > eSPiST )

b.

Jon har spist när han kommer. Jon has eaten when he comes 'Jon has eaten when he arrives.' har - , (S > e H A ); spist (eHA > eSPisT)

In (58a), the reading of the aspectual is by default present with respect to S since ha is stative; thus, har denotes a present state. In (58b), the non-past tense is specified as future by means of the future-denoting adverbial, and the reading of the aspectual is future with respect to S, a future state. Note that this pattern is paralleled by the stative predicate spiser 'eats' in (57). The perfect in (58) consists of an auxiliary and a past participle. Whereas the finite non-past auxiliary har may be construed as present or future with respect to S, the participle must be past relative to har in both cases, (eHA > eSPisT ), since the past participle is the non-finite past tense

3 62 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense element and it takes the c-commanding verb as its first argument. The two construals may be depicted as the two timelines in Figure 17. Figurel7 a.

S

(e H A>e S pisT)

-.(S>eHA)

spist

har

b. S

Jon's arrival

(eHA >

e

spisT)

spist

—ι ( S > e H A )

har

The first timeline illustrates the interpretation 'there is a present state consisting in Jon's having eaten'; the second is the interpretation 'by the future point in time characterized by Jon's arrival, a state will have commenced, consisting in Jon's having eaten'. Note that the position of spist 'eaten' on the second timeline is somewhat arbitrarily chosen as subsequent to S. In reality, spist may be anywhere on the timeline, including before S, as long as it precedes har, since this relation is all that is encoded by the non-finite past tense element hosted by spist. This also captures our intuition about this construction; we cannot tell from the tense elements present here when the eating took place, before or after S; we only know that it preceded ha. We expect the non-finite perfect to behave like the present perfect with regard to temporal construal since the auxiliary ha hosts a non-past tense element in both cases; we also know from the data in (54) and (57) that the infinitive behaves like the present with regard to default and override in temporal construal: a non-past stative is typically construed as present, but may be forced into a future reading by means of an adverbial. The difference between the present and the infinitive is that the construal as present or future is relative to S in the case of the present, but relative to the ccommanding verb in the case of the infinitive. At this point, we return to the data in (56), repeated here as (59).

A compositional tense system for Norwegian 363 (59)

a.

Jon mä ha spist. Jon must have eaten 'Jon must have eaten.' mä -i(S > eMA); ha -.( eMA > eHA); spist (eHA > e5pisT)

b.

Jon mä ha spist for han kommer. Jon must have eaten before he arrives 'Jon must have eaten before he arrives.' mä -i(S > eMA); ha -.( eMA > eHA); spist (eHA > eSPiST)

c.

Jon mä ha spist for han kom. Jon must have eaten before he arrived 'Jon must have eaten before he arrived.' mä ->(S > eMA); ha -,( eMA > e H A ); spist (eHA > eSPiST)

The modal mä 'must' is [-PAST, +FIN], a finite non-past. This means that it is non-past with respect to S. However, modals are stative predicates (cf. Barbiers 1995; Boogaart 2005); hence, the default construal is present. The [-PAST, -FIN] aspectual ha is also a stative, and its default construal is present relative to the c-commanding verb, i.e. simultaneous to ma. The participle is [+PAST, -FIN], hence past relative to ha, no matter how the two preceding verbs are construed. This default construal, exemplified by (59a) above, is depicted as the first timeline in Figure 18. Figure 18 a.

S

(eHA > espisT) spist

(S>e M A ) mä ( eMA > e HA ) ha

b.

J o n ' s arrival

(S > eMA) mä

(eHA > espisT) spist

"'(eMA > eHA)

ha

364 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense Like the second timeline in Figure 17, the non-past tense element of the aspectual ha can be specified by means of a future-denoting adverbial. This forces the stative ha to encode a future state, with the participle tagging along since it must be past with respect to ha. The interpretation of (59b) is hence that there is a present necessity (mä) that by a future point in time— characterized by Jon's arrival—a state would be established, characterized by Jon's having eaten. Again, spist may be anywhere on the timeline (even to the left of S), as long as it is to the left of ha. In (59c), there is no futuredenoting adverbial to force a future interpretation of the aspectual, only an adverbial denoting a time point in the past. The aspectual, being stative, assumes its default reading, as present relative to the c-commanding verb mä, and the timeline will look just like the one for (59a), the first of the two timelines in Figure 18. The difference is that in (59c) the past-denoting adverbial specifies the past tense element hosted by spist 'eaten' since this is the only past relation in the construction. Mä and ha both encode nonpast relations, and neither of these elements allows for a past-denoting adverbial to specify them. This captures our intuitions about the temporal construal of (59c): there is a present necessity (mä) that there be a state (ha) consisting of the aftermath of the event of Jon's eating before he arrived. Considering that even the modal mä 'must' is a non-past stative, the modal too should be able to yield a future interpretation if modified by a future adverbial. This is correct. If we add the adverbial imorgen 'tomorrow' to (59b), yielding (60), we may construe the sentence as in Figure 19. (60)

a.

I morgen mä Jon ha spist fer han kommer. tomorrow must Jon have eaten before he arrives 'Tomorrow, Jon must have eaten before he arrives.' mä -,(S > eMA); ha -.( eMA > eHA); spist (eHA > eSPiST)

Figure 19 tomorrow

f S

λ

Λ

Jon's arrival

(S > e M A)

(enA > espisT) spist

mä -i(eMA > eHA) ha

A compositional tense system for Norwegian 365 There are of course several other possibilities given that every non-past is in principle underspecified as to future or present, and given that the participle may be anywhere on the timeline as long as it is to the left of ha. The reading of the timeline in Figure 19 is 'tomorrow it will be necessary that Jon will have eaten before he arrives'. In this system, deriving the correct tense relations for the past perfect is trivial. The auxiliary hadde 'had' denotes a past state, as the preterite form encodes [+PAST, +FIN], past with respect to S. The participle encodes the non-finite past relation and is thus past with respect to hadde. Thus, (61) receives the interpretation depicted in Figure 20. (61)

a.

Jon hadde spist. Jon had eaten 'Jon had eaten.' hadde (S > eHA); spist (eHA > espisT)

Figure 20 S

(βΗΑ > ßSPIST )

(S > ΘΗΑ)

spist

hadde

Finally, we put our system to the test on a somewhat longer tense chain, where the temporal relations call for a complex temporal construal. (62)

a.

Han mätte ha villet prove ä la dem se henne sv0mme. he mustPAST have wanted try to let them see her swim 'He had to have wanted to try to let them see her swim.' mätte

[+PAST,+FIN]

ha

[ - P A S T , - F I N ] - , (ε Μ ΑττΕ > e H A )

(S > ε Μ Αττ Ε )

villet

[+PAST,-FIN]

prove

[ - P A S T , - F I N ] - , (eviLLET > e P R 0 v E )

(e H A > e V i L LET)

la

[ - P A S T - F I N ] - , (ePR0VE > e L A )

se

[ - P A S T - F I N ] - , (eLA > eSE)

i V 0 m w e [ - P A S T - F I N ] - , (e S E > e S V 0MME)

366 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense This tense chain consists of eight events—one encoded by each verb plus S, the speech event. These events are ordered by seven tense elements, each encoded by a tense affix on a verb. Only the topmost tense element is finite; it is the only tense element that takes S as an argument. All other tense elements in this chain are non-finite; each takes the event denoted by the ccommanding verb as its first argument. Two of the relations in this chain are past and five non-past. All of the non-past relations may in principle be construed as future or present, depending in part on the aspectual properties of the predicates involved. We may depict these tense relations as in Figure 21.

Figure 21 S

(S > eMATTE) mätte 1 e

(MÄTTE > eHA ) ha

(eHA > eVILLET ) villet ' (eVILLET > epR0VE) prove ~11 (epR0VE > eLA) -I (öLA > 6SE) la se (eSE > eSV0MME) svomme Ville 'want t o \ p r 0 v e 'try', and la 'let' are all future-projecting predicates; I have represented this by positioning their complements further to the right on the timeline (although this is not information encoded in the tense elements). Stative predicates like mä 'must' and ha 'have' are typically present with respect to their c-commanding verb and I have represented this default reading on the timeline. Se 'see' is also a stative, but complement of the future-projecting verb la 'let'; hence it is future relative to la 'let'. The swimming event must be simultaneous to the perception event denoted by se 'see', which I have represented in the figure. Keep in mind, however, that the timeline in Figure 21 is only one of many possible construals of this sentence allowed by the underspecified tense system. For instance, the

A compositional tense system for Norwegian

367

verbs pmve, la, se, and svomme may all be to the right of mätte, ha and even S, i.e. they may be future relative to S. What is encoded by the nonpast tense elements is simply that the event of verb hosting the tense element is not to the left of the c-commanding verb. As long as it is at least as far to the right as the verb preceding it in the sentence, it may in principle be anywhere on the timeline. I argue that the tense system outlined here is flexible enough to account for the tense relations we observe in MSc while also being regular, predictable, and attainable. Each tense marker always performs the same job, each verbal element, whether it is a main verb, an aspectual, or a modal, has access to the same tense features. Simple elements, each with little information, interact to create a powerful tool of temporal expression. There is in principle no upper limit to the number of tense elements in a sentence or a tense chain since any verb is anchored to the previous event in the chain; thus, there is no definite number of Rs. In fact, as mentioned above, in this system, there are no Rs, only Es, and each Ε acts as an R to the next tense element in the chain. There is hence no upper limit on the number of tense projections in a clause: each verb provides its own tense package.

5.3. The function of ha 'have' In Julien's (2001: 136) system, the aspectual have is a proxy element. It does not have any semantic content (except for formal features, op.cit. 137); it is simply a realization of a V, allowing for the projection of the tense head hosting will on top of it. In contrast, the present proposal ascribes certain semantic features to the corresponding Norwegian aspectual ha. Specifically, the aspectual provides the perfect construction with stative features and acts as a stativizing operator (Michaelis 1998: 51, also section 3.2). In the words ö f t e r Meulen(1995: 5 -6), The difference between the simple past and the perfect is... aspectual in nature: The former describes events in a context-dependent way, whereas the latter gives only stative information. The 'present perfect puzzle' is usually characterized as the observation that a past-denoting adverbial cannot cooccur with the present perfect. Julien's solution is the stipulation that in the present perfect, the reference time R is necessarily focused; hence any temporal adverbial must specify R and not E, the predicate event time. However, this is inaccurate. It is possible to

368 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense specify both R and Ε in a present perfect, i.e. one may actually specify both tense elements, as in (63). (63)

a.

Hver gang jeg ringer min mor, Every time I call my mother, har hun sovet därlig natten f0r. has she slept poorly nightDEF before 'Every time I call my mother, she has slept poorly the night before.'

Here, the adverbial Hver gang jeg ringer min mor specifies R, i.e. the tense element denoted by har, and natten f0r 'the night before' specifies E, i.e. the tense element denoted by sovet. What the perfect puzzle reveals is that a punctual past-denoting adverbial such as yesterday cannot cooccur with the present perfect. However, as mentioned in fn. 35, 'current cycle' adverbials, i.e. adverbials denoting the present daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly cycle are always licit with the present perfect in Norwegian. Adverbials setting up a cycle, such as hver gang 'every time', are also perfectly fine. 44 Thus, I believe that the present perfect is a tense construction signifying 'there currently exists a state consisting of the aftermath of a past event', where 'currently' can be paraphrased 'within some (salient) current cycle'. In Norwegian, the present perfect is hence the proper 'past tense for the current cycle', and it seems legitimate to characterize it as an immediate past. Any event taking place in the previous cycle must be signaled by the preterite, which acts as the remote past. As observed by Bybee et al. (1994: 100), many languages distinguish between immediate and remote pasts, and I claim that Norwegian is such a language. This is the reason for the 'present relevance' reading of the present perfect-it denotes a state consisting of the aftermath of a past event that took place within the current cycle. I also believe that one important difference between the uses of the German and the Norwegian present perfect is that Norwegian makes the distinction between immediate and remote past, whereas German does not. The German present perfect can be used to describe a situation in the previous cycle, unlike its Norwegian counterpart. I thus do not assume that the semantics of the German present

44

See also the observations made in Comrie (1985: 78-9) and Giorgi and Pianesi (1997: 111) that habitual adverbials are possible with the present perfect.

A compositional tense system for Norwegian

369

perfect is different from the present perfect in Norwegian. It is more a question of use; the German present perfect has a wider domain of functions as it is allowed to signify previous cycle, unlike Norwegian present perfect. These assumptions are presently not much more than speculations, I admit. However, they have at least as much explanatory significance as the stipulation offered by Julien (2001)—that R is obligatorily focused in the present perfect, such that any adverbial must specify R, not E. Not only is this a stipulation, but it is not descriptionally adequate. The distinction between remote past (preterite) and immediate past (present perfect) disappears when the present perfect is embedded under a modal, as in (64a). In this context (unlike in the present perfect, cf. (64b)), the participle may be modified by an adverbial denoting previous cycle. (64)

a.

Jon mä ha kommet i gär. Jon must have arrived yesterday 'Jon must have arrived yesterday.'

b.

*Jon har kommet igär. Jon has arrived yesterday 'Jon has arrived yesterday.'

In cases like (64a), the domain of the immediate past, the present perfect, is extended to cover the remote past, the preterite, which semantically would be the correct past in this construction. In such cases, there are conflicting requirements from the syntax and the semantics. The semantic component requires the remote past as the adverbial igär denotes previous cycle. However, there is no way to embed a remote past under a modal, due to the modal's strict syntactic selectional requirements, which specify that it accepts only a complement with the matrix [-PAST, -FIN], Hence, as observed by Hofmann (1976: 94), the preterite must be replaced by the non-finite perfect under a modal, and is "of course, the only way to represent past time [under a] modal." The remote past is replaced by the immediate past, fulfilling the syntactic requirements: the auxiliary ha contributes the right feature specification and the past participle provides the past tense element. Hence Β is the answer to the question in (65b) as well as the one in (65a). (65)

a.

A: Tror du Marit har drept ham? believe you Marit has killed him 'Do you believe that Marit has killed him?'

370 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense b.

A: Tror du Marit drepte ham? believe you Marit killed him 'Do you believe that Marit killed him?' B: Hun mä ha drept ham. she must have killed him 'She must have killed him.'

The non-finite perfect shows up not only under modals, but in every case where the semantic component requires the preterite and the selecting element requires a non-past complement. The clause in (66b) is the non-finite version of the one in (66a). It employs the non-finite perfect to express the past expressed by the preterite in the corresponding finite clause. The infinitival marker ä requires a complement with a matrix [-PAST, -FIN], just like a modal; the way to meet his requirement and preserve the past reading is to employ the immediate past, i.e. the (non-finite) present perfect, as a substitute for the remote past, the preterite. (66)

a.

Hun hevder at hun ankom i gär. she claims that she arrived yesterday 'She claims that she arrived yesterday.'

b.

Hun hevder ä ha ankommet igär. she claims to have arrived yesterday 'She claims to have arrived yesterday.'

How come the non-finite past cannot be expressed by the participle in these cases? We know that at least sometimes modals accept a past participle as their complement, as in (67) (repeated from section 4.1. of Chapter 2), where ha can be omitted in every case. (67)

a.

Jon bürde (ha) vcert pä kontoret. Jon ought-to have been on office-DEF 'Jon ought to have been in his office.'

b.

Marit kunne (ha) sv0mt. Marit could have swum 'Marit could have swum.'

A compositional tense system for Norwegian 371 c.

Pasienten mätte (ha) blitt behandlet straks. patientDEF mustPRET have become treated immediately 'The patient had to have been treated immediately.'

d.

Begge skulle (ha) reist i morgen. both should have left in morning 'Both of them were supposed to have left tomorrow.'

e.

Myndighetene ville (ha) revet huset. authoritiesDEF would have torn-down houseDEF 'The authorities would have demolished the house.'

As noted by Julien (2000b), two important observations concerning haomission in Norwegian are presented by Taraldsen (1984) and Wiklund (1998). Taraldsen (1984) observes that ha cannot be omitted after a modal verb that does not have a counterfactual reading, as in (68). (68)

a.

Han krevde at vi skulle *(ha) gjort det innen mandag. he demanded that we shouldPRET have done it by Monday 'He demanded that we should have done it by Monday.'

Wiklund (1998: 15) observes that ha can only be omitted if the combination of ha and the participle does not require "a perfect state reading." She supports her claims with the following Swedish sentences (cf. also Julien 2000b: 41 for similar data). (69)

a.

Han skulle ha last boken pa mandag. he should have read bookDEF on Monday I. 'He should have read the book on Monday.' II. 'He should have read the book by Monday.'

b.

Han skulle last boken pä mändag. he should readPERF the book on Monday I. 'He should have read the book on Monday.' II. *'He should have read the book by Monday.'

Julien (2000b) explains the grammaticality judgments in (69) by analyzing the perfect as a non-finite past. Thus, the ambiguity of (69a) stems from the

3 72 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense fact that the perfect provides an R and an E, both of which can be specified by the temporal a d v e r b i a l p ä mändag (Julien 2000b: 43, details omitted): Figure 22 [ Han skulle (Τι) [ ha last (T 2 ) [ boken pä mändag]]] he should have read the-book on Monday Ti = Past: S after R T 2 = Past: R after Ε

Ε J

R |

S |

^

If the temporal adverbial specifies E, the predicate event, we get reading I of (69a). When this adverbial specifies R, however, we get reading II of (69a). Julien goes on to claim that the lack of ambiguity in (69b) is explained on the assumption—based on Taraldsen's (1984) observation mentioned above—that the modal in these cases does not instantiate a T(ense) head at all, but a M(ood) head. This means that the only Τ head in this sentence is the one instantiated by the participle, so Τ in this case is spelled out by a non-finite past: (70)

[ Han skulle (Μ) [ läst (Τ]) he should read (Participle) Τ, = Past: S after E

E

[ boken pä mändag]]] the-book on Monday S

While this accounts for the observed data, it cannot be correct, even within Julien's system. If the modal in these cases is inserted in a M o o d head, and the participle is what spells out the obligatory tense features, there would be a range of Norwegian sentences where no tense features would be spelled out at all. In Julien's account, the adverbial is in effect parasitic on a T-feature, but if we accept Julien's (2000a, 2001) assumption that the infinitive has no temporal properties (a claim that was disputed in the previous section), no tense features are present in (71a) and (71b). However, we can still modify the event by means of temporal adverbials. What is sometimes known as "the modal use of past" (cf. e.g. Palmer 1986: 210 ff) is by no means excluded for modals with an infinitival complement.

A compositional tense system for Norwegian (71)

a.

Vi kunne reise imorgen. we could travel tomorrow 'We could leave tomorrow.'

b.

Du skulle heller komme pä fredag. you should rather come on Friday 'You ought to come on Friday instead.'

373

In the present system, R, the "extra" temporal reference point found with the perfect, is provided by the auxiliary ha 'have'. It is thus to be expected that the omission of ha prevents a temporal adverbial from specifying the state denoted by ha (R, in Julien's terms). Omitting ha leads to the absence of one temporal relation present in the corresponding construction with ha. However, if Αα-omission is simply a phonological procedure, deleting an element that is recoverable (because the perfect participle requires to be governed by an overt or covert auxiliary), we would expect the sentences where ha is omitted to be synonymous to those where ha is retained. This is not the case: /(«-omission always gives rise to the counterfactual reading only, as observed by Taraldsen (1984). Julien (2003), unlike Julien (2001), discusses the semantic properties of the participle in these constructions and argues (convincingly, in my view) that the participle can act as an irrealis marker in Mainland Scandinavian. Thus, what looks like a participle in (69b) and (72) is in fact an infinitive. It is an irrealis infinitive, but an infinitive nevertheless. As such, it fulfills the strong selectional requirements of a modal, encoding the matrix [-PAST, FIN], (72)

a.

Jon bürde vcert pä kontoret. Jon ought-to been on officeDEF 'Jon ought to have been in his office.'

b.

Marit kunne svemt. Marit could swum 'Marit could have swum.'

c.

Pasienten mätte blitt behandlet straks. patientDEF mustPRET become treated immediately 'The patient had to have been treated immediately.'

374 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense d.

Begge skulle reist i morgen. both should left in morning 'Both of them were supposed to have left tomorrow.'

e.

Myndighetene ville revet huset. authorities-DEF would torn-down house-DEF 'The authorities would have demolished the house.'

This also explains why /za-omission is only allowed after a (root or nonroot) modal in the preterite. A present modal cannot signify a counterfactual. For this, we need what Langacker (1978: 855) dubs a distal form, a term covering both past tense and unreality (cf. also Joos 1964: 121-2, "the essential common feature is remoteness, in time or reality"). Distal forms such as the preterite are used for modal purposes in many languages, as discussed in Palmer (1986: 208). Julien (2003) notes that the irrealis supine is only licensed in a counterfactual domain. If the participle is in fact a substitute infinitive, as I claim here, we would expect to find this form even after the infinitival marker a, if the supine is otherwise licensed by a counterfactual context. This is borne out, as (73) shows. (73)

a.

Det hadde vcert artig ä sett deg igjen. it had been fun to seePERF you again 'It would have been fun to see you again.'

b.

Jeg kunne ikke klart ä gätt lenger. I could not managed to walkPERF further Ί could not have managed to walk further.'

In this view, what has been dubbed /za-omission is in fact no omission at all. It is a different strategy for fulfilling the selectional requirements of the modal (or the infinitival marker). Instead of selecting an infinitival auxiliary ha with the right matrix to mediate between the modal and the past participle, we select the irrealis infinitive directly. This infinitive looks like the participle, but it is distinguishable by means of its semantic requirement: it is only licit in counterfactual contexts. The counterfactual modal constructions discussed above illustrate another parallel between the finite and non-finite past tense forms: both are used to express counterfactuality and these constructions observe compositionality. There is a gradually increasing "distance to reality" in the modal

A compositional tense system for Norwegian

375

constructions in (74), from the potential reading of (74a), via the hypothetical reading of (74b) to the counterfactual reading of (74c). (74)

a.

Dette kan vcere en Ißsning. this may be a solution 'This may be a solution.'

b.

Dette kunne vcere en losning. this mayPRET be a solution 'This might be a solution.'

c.

Dette kunne vcert en Ißsning. this might been a solution 'This might have been a solution.'

The participle, even without the aspectual ha, is able to encode a distal relation, just like the preterite. 45 One may rightfully ask whether the construction in (72) and (74c) can be described as perfect since it is a common assumption that the aspectual ha is an intrinsic part of the perfect. If this is a criterion, we ought to find a different name for the construction in (74c). It is not simply a perfect with a PF-deleted ha; there never was an auxiliary there in the first place. In addition to its formally being different from the perfect, the construction in (74c) also has specific semantic features, notably counterfactuality. Likewise, for a non-finite perfect to fulfill its potential range of temporal functions, ha can never be omitted since it provides the tense chain with one additional event and one additional tense element.

45

In Icelandic this is not as clear-cut as in MSc. Here, a preterite modal + a participle may encode what corresponds to the 'hypothetical' construction in (74b). To encode counterfactuality, the aspectual hafa must be added. Thanks to Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson for the data and judgments, (i) Hann gceti oröid fyrir slysi (ii) Hann gceti hafa ordid fyrir slysi He could become for accident He could have become for accident 'He could hurt himself.' 'He could have hurt himself.'

376 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense 6.

The properties of the complement: tense and aspect

Stative complements such as the non-finite present typically give rise to a non-root reading of the modal, whereas dynamic, future-denoting complements typically occur with root modals. I argue in section 6.1 that aspectual properties are subordinate to temporal ones in this pattern; the correlation dynamic complement + root modal and stative complement + non-root modal exists because dynamic predicates are usually future-denoting, whereas stative predicates usually denote present. In section 6.2, I discuss directionals and seek an explanation for the fact that directional complements of modals never give rise to a non-root reading of the modal.

6.1. Default and override We are finally in a position to pursue a semantic explanation for the default and override rule discussed in section 3. We observed that stative complements of modals, such as non-finite perfect complements, by default give rise to a non-root reading, as in (75a). However, when we add a certain type of adverbial—a temporal future-denoting adverbial or a purpose clause—the natural reading of the modal is a root reading, as in (75b). Adding an adverbial denoting a point in the past to the perfect construction once again yields a non-root reading, as in (75c). (75)

a.

Jon mä ha spist. Jon must have eaten 'Jon must have eaten.' mä -i(S > eMA); ha -,( eMA > eHA); spist (eHA > eSPiST)

b.

Jon mä ha spist für han kommer. Jon must have eaten before he arrives 'Jon must have eaten before he arrives.' mä -,(S > eMA); ha -.( eMA > e HA ); spist (eHA > eSPiST)

c.

Jon mä ha spist f0r han kom. Jon must have eaten before he arrived 'Jon must have eaten before he arrived. mä -,(S > eMA); ha -.( eMA > e H A ); spist (eHA > eSPiST)

Properties of the complement: tense and aspect

377

Root and non-root modals have different communicative functions. Root modals are used as indirect directives; 46 they state what is required, needed, allowed, or intended to hold at some point in time. The situation described by the modal's complement—the situation that is required, intended, needed, or allowed to hold—cannot denote a point in time preceding the time denoted by the tense element of the modal; this would lead to a conceptual crash. It would make no sense to require, intend, want, need, or permit a situation to take place in the past. This is why all root modals are future-projecting—their complements describe a situation that is temporally subsequent to the eventuality-time of the modal, for conceptual reasons. When we require, intend, want, need, or permit a situation to hold, we know that our intentions, wants, or needs cannot possibly influence events that have already taken place. 47 However strongly I might have wanted my requiring John to have eaten before S to alter the actual sequence of events, this is not possible. In the word of Lyons (1977: 843), John may have come yesterday construed as a permission-granting utterance is semantically anomalous for the same reason that Come yesterday, John! is anomalous. When an event embedded under a modal is construed as temporally preceding the eventuality-time of the modal (because the complement is a nonfinite perfect in the function of a non-finite, remote past tense, for instance), the reading of the modal is non-root, as in (76a). When the situation described by the modal's complement is construed as simultaneous to the modal's tense, the reading of the modal is usually non-root, as in (76b). Only when the complement of the modal is construed as future with respect to the time denoted by the modal's tense element does the root reading become felicitous and natural, as (76c) shows.

46

This is confirmed by the fact that in MSc languages modals take on the function of the imperative in embedded clauses (imperatives cannot be embedded). (i) Han sa: gä! —> Han sa at vi skulle/mätte gä. 'He said: Leave! —> He said that we should/had to leave.' (ii) Han sa: Bare gä! —> Han sa at vi kunne gä. 'He said: Just leave! —> He said that we might leave.' 47 Unless, of course, you live in a universe where time travel is possible and trivial, cf. e.g. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams 2005), where excessively complex tense systems had to be invented to describe exactly this type of situation.

378 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense (76)

a.

Jon mä ha vcert arkitekt. Jon must have been architect 'Jon must have been an architect.'

b.

Jon mä vcere arkitekt. Jon must be architect 'Jon must be an architect.'

c.

Jon mä bli arkitekt. Jon must become architect 'Jon must become an architect.'

Figure 23 'past'

S48

'future'

modal

V

A

V Non-root only

J Y Root and non-root possible

I argued in section 3 that root modals take Stative complements construed as simultaneous with the modal. The examples are repeated here for convenience (ignore for the moment that a non-root reading is also possible). (77)

48

a.

Dette skal jeg egentlig ikke vite, men det gjor jeg. this shall I actually not know but that do I Ί am not actually supposed to know this, but I do.'

b.

Jon mä vcere pä kontoret. Jon must be in officeDEF 'Jon must reside in his office.'

In this figure, the modal is set to be simultaneous with S, but modals can occur in various tenses (see section 7), and in every case, the relative temporal construal of the modal and its complement is the important feature, not the relation between the modal and the speech event S, or the complement of the modal and S.

Properties of the complement: tense and aspect

379

The situations described by the complement of the modal—'my knowing this' and 'Jon's being in the office', respectively—may very well hold at the time of utterance; in (77a), this is the natural, perhaps the only reading, given the rest of the sentence—'but I do'. However, simultaneity is not the construal implied by the communicative function of a root modal. As noted in the quote from Lyons (1977) above, it makes no sense to allow a person to do something yesterday. Likewise, it makes little sense to order a person to bed, if that person is already in bed, or more generally, to permit, forbid or require a situation that already holds. However, it is quite irrelevant for the root reading of a modal whether or not the situation embedded under the modal may be construed as already existing. The root modal states that 'from now on (i.e. from the time encoded by the modal's tense element), the following situation must, may, is supposed to hold'; the modal makes no reference to whether the complement is describing a situation already in existence. This, I believe, is what is referred to in various descriptions of the future-projecting properties of root modals. Since a modal is a stative predicate that sometimes takes stative complements, we may create construals where the time of the complement partly overlaps with the time of the modal. However, given the communicative function of root modals as indirect directives, the modality will always have commenced before the existence of the situation described by the complement became relevant. Unlike root modals, non-root modals grade or modify the truth value of the proposition encoded by their complements. Thus, they do not require the situation to take place in the future; on the contrary, most non-root modals are perfectly comfortable with, and even prefer, propositions denoting events in the past, or situations holding at the modal's evaluation time. This is natural, since it is typically easier for a language user to decide what degree of likelihood to ascribe to a proposition describing a situation that already exists or used to exist. The only non-root modal that clearly requires its complement to denote 'future with respect to the modal' is the metaphysical modal ville, denoting prediction. All other non-root modals in Norwegian may take future-denoting complements as well, some more marginally than others. For instance, kunne 'may' is used more often with future complements than matte 'must', presumably because kunne denotes possibility whereas matte denotes necessity and it is difficult to know what will necessarily take place in the future. 49

49

This is confirmed by the fact that many languages use mood markers instead of tense markers to refer to the future: in languages like Dyirbal and Burmese, the

380 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense With these assumptions, we can explain our intuitions about the natural readings of the modal in (75a), (75b), and (75c), repeated here as (78), (80), and (81). (78)

a.

Jon mä ha spist. Jon must have eaten 'Jon must have eaten.' mä -,(S > e M A); ha -i( eMA > e H A ); spist (e HA > eSPisT)

Figure 24 S

(eHA>espisT)

spist

~1 (S>e M A) mä -ι ( eMA > eHA) ha

There are two features facilitating the non-root reading of the modal here. First of all, the complement of the modal is stative (it is headed by a stative aspectual ha) and by default simultaneous with the modal. This simultaneous construal of the complement favors a non-root reading. Secondly, we know that the non-finite perfect may be a substitute for the remote past (the preterite) when embedded under a modal or when selected by an infinitival marker; hence, we are allowed to construe the complement as past relative to the modal. Root modals cannot take complements denoting past relative to the modal, so this construal forces the non-root reading. However, there are several construals of (78) that allow for a root reading such as the one illustrated in Figure 25. It may be easier to see this reading with an example such as (79). Note that even (79) can be construed as in Figure 24 and still (marginally) allow for a root reading, cf. the discussion of the stative examples in (77). (79)

a.

Paris er en av de stedene man bare mä ha vcert. Paris is one of the places one just must have been 'Paris is one of those places one simply must have been.'

irrealis form is used to refer to future situations (Comrie 1985: 45).

Properties of the complement: tense and aspect

381

Figure 25 S

(eeA > eV/ERT) vcert

-> (S > eMA) mä

( CMÄ > eHA) ha

Again, the tense elements involved allow for the construals in Figures 24 and 25. We may also construe the participle as future with respect to S, as long as it is past relative to ha. This is the construal in Figure 26, one possible construal of (80) (and (79) and (78)). Whenever the aspectual is forced to denote future (by means of an adverbial), as in (80), the root reading of the modal is possible and felicitous. (80)

a.

Jon mä ha spist for han kommer. Jon must have eaten before he arrives 'Jon must have eaten before he arrives.' mä -i(S > e M A); ha -i( eMA > e H A); spist (eHA > eSPiST)

Figure 26 S

—ι (S > eMA) mä

Jon's arrival

(eHA > SSPIST ) spist

(^MA > eHA) ha

Finally, adding an adverbial denoting a point in the past gives rise to the non-root reading of the modal, and the temporal construal of the sentence in (81) is the same as the one for (78). Here, no future-denoting adverbial forces ha into the future, and the default readings of the respective predicates once again kick in. We are allowed to construe the non-finite perfect as an embedded remote past (embedded preterite); this gives rise to the non-root reading of the modal. (81)

a.

Jon mä ha spist for han kom. Jon must have eaten before he arrived 'Jon must have eaten before he arrived.' mä i(S > e M A); ha -i( eMA > e H A); spist (e HA > e SP i S T)

3 82 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense Figure 27

(eHA > espisT)

spist

—ι (S > eMA) mä -ι ( eMA > eHA) ha

At this point, we have an explanation for the fact that a modal preceding an aspectual ha 'have' by default has a non-root reading. The complement headed by the stative aspectual ha is stative; thus, it denotes an existing state. This favors a non-root reading. Likewise, the non-finite perfect often acts as a substitute denoting embedded past; hence a non-finite perfect may also encode a situation construed as temporally prior to the eventuality-time of the modal. Root modals are not felicitous with complements denoting situations preceding them in time. We also have an explanation for the fact that a temporal adverbial denoting a point in the future with respect to the modal's eventuality-time or a purpose clause (which has the same type of temporal function) may give rise to a root reading of the modal even though the complement of the modal is the non-finite perfect. Even in this case the participle is construed as past with respect to ha, but ha is forced into a future reading by means of the adverbial; hence the modal's complement is future relative to the modal. As such, it is a possible complement for a root modal, and the root reading becomes possible. Finally, a temporal adverbial denoting a point in time prior to the modal's eventuality-time does not have the same effect; it cannot act as a trigger for the override rule, forcing the stative aspectual into a future reading. Thus, the root reading becomes unnatural, though not impossible: on a construal such as the one in Figure 25, even (81) should give rise to the root reading though this reading is hard to get with the elements involved in (81). Adding an adverbial like om to minutter 'in two minutes' perhaps paves the way for the construal in Figure 25, where the aspectual and the participle envelope the speech event S. The reading is: 'In two minutes, a state must have commenced consisting of the aftermath of Jon's eating before he arrived.' Conceptually, this is still a difficult construal to get because it requires Jon's having eaten before S; the addressee cannot possibly change this event. The state that has to commence in two minutes consists of the aftermath of the eating that has already taken place; thus, the only felicitous reading is in

Properties of the complement: tense and aspect

3 83

effect that 'In two minutes, I want you to inform me that Jon ate before he arrived'. On this construal, the root reading is possible because the complement of the modal is future, as in (82), but it remains a far-fetched and awkward construal. (82)

a.

Om to minutter mä Jon ha spistfer han kom. In two minutes must Jon have eaten before he arrived 'In two minutes, Jon must have eaten before he arrived.'

The default and override effect, as outlined here, concerns all stative predicates, not only (non-finite) perfects, although the complex temporal relations of the perfect add another dimension to the issue. However, the fact that a root modal prefers a dynamic predicate and a non-root modal (except for the metaphysical ville 'will') prefers a stative predicate is stems from the temporal properties of any verbal complement of a modal. Root modals are future-projecting and dynamic predicates give rise to a future construal by default. A stative predicate yields a present reading by default and thus occurs more often as the complement of a non-root modal. However, if we force the stative predicate into a future construal by means of a futuredenoting adverbial, the root reading becomes felicitous and natural. To exploit the aspectual properties of a predicate to specify an otherwise underspecified tense system is evidently a common practice in natural languages. In Capverdean Creole, for instance, the bare verb form is ambiguous between a past and present reading. However, a dynamic predicate typically yields a past reading, a stative predicate a present reading (Baptista 1997). It is possible to override these default readings by adding other elements, but in the default case, the stative is present and the dynamic is past (cf. also fn. 39). In this section, I have argued that the semantic properties of the perfect—specifically, its temporal and aspectual properties—are responsible for its behavior when embedded under a modal. Likewise, we saw that the temporal and aspectual properties of the modal's complement are important even when this complement is a garden-variety infinitive. A (single-event construal of a) dynamic verb typically yields a future reading which easily gives rise to a root reading of the modal; a stative infinitival complement, typically construed as present, facilitates a non-root reading of the modal.

3 84 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense 6.2. Truth values and tenses, verbs and directionals There is one type of construction that, although it frequently occurs as the complement of a modal, has been ignored in the discussion in the preceding section. This is the directional construction, illustrated in (83). (83)

a.

Marit skal hjem. Marit shall home 'Marit is supposed to go home.'

b.

Jon mä pä butikken. Jon must in storeDEF 'Jon must go to the store.'

c.

Greina vil ikke αν. branchDEF wants not off 'The branch does not want to come off.'

Directionals never occur as the complement of a non-root modal, as discussed in section 3.1 of Chapter 2. It is tempting to dismiss this fact as being due to the different selectional requirements of root and non-root modals, along the lines of Barbiers (1995, 2002), and claim that the dynamic, future construal of the directional makes it unfit to be the complement of a non-root modal. It is true that directionals fulfill the aspectual and temporal requirements of a prototypical root modal complement in that they are construed as dynamic, hence future with respect to the modal. On the other hand, we know that all non-root modals in Norwegian allow for [+dynamic, +future] complements (on their metaphysical construal), and the non-root modal ville 'will' even requires its complement to denote future. However, not even non-root ville can take a directional complement; the reading of (83c) is the volitional, not the prediction, reading, even with an inanimate subject like greina 'the branch'. I propose an explanation based on the assumption that directionals lack tense features. If directionals are indeed headed by a phonetically empty motion verb GO, as suggested by van Riemsdijk (2000a, 2000b) and discussed in Chapter 2 section 3.1 of the present work, this empty verb evidently cannot host a tense element, unlike all other verbal predicates in Norwegian. Gueron and Hoekstra (1995: 101) argue, on quite different grounds, that non-verbal small clauses lack an "independent T(ense)-

Properties of the complement: tense and aspect

385

Operator," regardless of their being resultatives like John ran [the pavement thin] or "epistemic" small clauses of the type John considered [students boring]. I will adopt this assumption here and argue that directionals and other small clauses lacking a phonetically realized verb do not constitute their own tense domain; they do not express a tense element. Why should the presence of a tense element in the complement be of concern to a non-root reading of a modal? To answer this question, we need to investigate the function of finite tenses and finiteness in general. The feature finiteness is not exclusive to tense; the category mood may fulfill the finiteness requirement of a declarative clause. Thus, in (84a) the finiteness requirement is satisfied by tense, in (84b) by subjunctive mood.50 (84)

a.

Er kann es gesagt haben. he canPRES it sayPERF havelNF 'He may have said it.'

b.

Er könnte es gesagt haben. he canSUBJ2 it sayPERF havelNF 'He might have said it.'

It is a widespread assumption that finiteness is the common trait of mood and tense. Holmberg and Platzack (1995: 23), for example, argue that A category related to tense and mood is the category of finiteness.... In traditional grammar finite has roughly the meaning 'restricted to the particular situation', i.e. the finite form of a verb indicates the existence of a predication at the time of the utterance.... Thus, in a way, finiteness is a prerequisite for tense and mood: Unless a predication is related to the time of utterance via the concept of finiteness, we have no basis for expressing the relative position in time of the situation expressed by the predication vis-avis the utterance, and we cannot relate the attitude of the speaker to the situation.

This idea is further developed in Platzack and Rosengren (1998: 189 ff); they implement the idea that tense and mood are related to finiteness by assuming that the category Fin0 (finiteness) attracts a feature [finite], pre50

These data are taken from Reiten (1990). The mood in (84b) is the Konjunktiv II, a more distal mood than Konjunktiv I. According to Reiten (1990: 207), there is no temporal distinction between these two forms, although Konjunktiv II is some-

times referred to as the Konjunktiv Präteritum.

3 86 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense sent in tense and m o o d — t h a t both tense and m o o d may instantiate fmiteness. Moreover, the semantic function ascribed to finiteness is that of referentiality: finiteness endows the proposition with a reference. Platzack and Rosengren (1998: 191) state: Let us finally consider the contribution of Tense/Mood and Finiteness to the finite clause. Generally speaking, Mood indicates whether the event described is relevant for our world (indicative) or for some other world (subjunctive) whereas Tense relates the event or situation referred to by the clause to a time line. Finiteness, finally, anchors the event in time and space, by identifying a point on the time line with the speaker's here and now. In other words, a finite utterance is referring to an event in the speaker's world or some other world. I exploit this idea by assuming that finiteness is an inherent part of an assertion. 1 want to distinguish between an assertion, which I define as ' a proposition with a (potential) truth value' and a proposition, consisting solely of a subject-predicate relation (not necessarily with a truth value). 51 Thus, (85a) is a proposition but not an assertion; (85b) is both a proposition and an assertion due to the presence of a finite verb. 5 2 (85)

a. b.

Unicorns Unicorns

(to be) in the garden. are in the garden.

O n e crucial difference between a proposition, as defined above, and an assertion is that the latter has a truth value. T h e linguistic expression Unicorns (to be) in the garden has no such value, since it is not anchored with respect to the m o m e n t of utterance neither by means of tense, w h i c h w o u l d anchor the event on a timeline, nor by means of mood, which w o u l d anchor

51

I take a predication relation to hold between a thematic subject and a predicate only. An expletive subject + a predicate still constitute a proposition although there is no predication relation between them (Äfarli and Eide 2001). 5Z This assertion can be further operated on by a question operator, for example, questioning either whether the truth value is true or false (in yes-no questions) or what referent must be filled in to make the truth value true (vcA-questions). The notion of assertion is often taken to partake in the opposition between questions, assertions, and commands (cf. e.g. Stenius 1967); thus a different term should perhaps be found for the notion 'proposition with a truth value'. It is not important, however, if the term 'assertion' is the best term possible. What is important is the distinction made.

Properties of the complement: tense and aspect

387

the event with respect to reality. 53 It is of course not a novel idea that the truth value depends on the presence of tense. Higginbothham (1997: 27) states: [I]t is attractive to take the logic peculiar to tenses as intentional, so that sentences of natural languages can be evaluated as true or false only relative to moments or intervals of time. A similar statement is found in Larson and Segal (1995: 510): Tense thus brings in an important element of deixis or indexicality. Tenses force sentences to be evaluated relative to the moment of utterance. I will combine the assumptions of Higginbotham and those of Platzack and Rosengren (1998) that fmiteness is what endows the event described by a proposition with referentiality. I claim that this referentiality turns a proposition into an assertion and gives rise to a truth value. In what follows, we will concentrate on tense as the expression of fmiteness since Norwegian does not employ mood (except as relics). In other languages, however, mood provides a proposition with fmiteness and turns it into an assertion. Non-root modals, as mentioned above, target the truth value of their complement and grade, qualify, or modify it (see the discussion in section 7): they are assertions about assertions. 54 From what I have said so far, it ought to follow firstly, that non-root modals are always finite (I postpone this question until section 7) and secondly, that they take finite complements only. However, it is easy to find counterexamples to the latter claim. Non-root modals exclusively take infinitival, i.e. non-finite, complements, as in (86). (86)

53

a.

Jon mä vcere pä kontoret. Jon must be in officeDEF 'Jon must be in his office.'

Here, I ignore recent approaches to Mood suggesting that the realis/irrealis division is inadequate and impressionistic and, at the very best, too coarse-grained to account for the observed interpretations of e.g. the subjunctive; cf. Quer (1998). 54 This is a simplification, as non-root modals may occur in questions: (i) Ok, so John is a thief. Must he therefore be a murderer? The second sentence could be paraphrased as follows: What is the truth value of [it is necessarily true [that John is a murderer]?

388 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense b.

*Det mä at Jon er pä kontoret. it must that Jon is in officeDEF

c.

Det kan vcere at Jon er pä kontoret. it may be that Jon is in officeDEF 'It may be that Jon is in his office.'

Note that even in (86c), the complement of the modal is an infinitive. Thus, we need to refine our hypothesis. This is possible by means of the system of tense chains developed in the previous sections. In this model, the infinitive contains the tense element [-PAST,-FIN], The tense element of a non-finite verb takes two arguments—the event argument of the closest c-commanding verb as its first argument and the event denoted by the verb hosting the non-finite tense element as the second. The tense element of the infinitive encodes a non-past relation: —i(ei> e2). If the verb is stative, as is often the case with the complement of nonroot modals (see the previous section and section 3), the non-past relation is taken to be one of simultaneity. The closest c-commanding verb in the cases under consideration is the non-root modal. This modal is finite, and a finite tense element takes S as its first argument and the event argument of the verb hosting the tense element—in this case the modal—as the second one. The finite tense in (86a) and (86c) is present, so the relation between S and the modal is non-past, —i(S > ei). This non-past relation is construed as one of simultaneity since the modal is stative. (87)

a.

Jon mä vcere pä kontoret. Jon must be in officeDEF 'Jon must be in his office.'

mä [-PAST,+FIN] —. (S > e M A ) ; e i v t A :stative -> simultaneity viere[-PAST, -FIN]-. (eMA>ev/ERE); eV/ERE :stative -> simultaneity The complement of the modal is "finite by inheritance," i.e. it is anchored on the timeline with respect to S via its relation to eMA, the event argument of the modal. To maintain our hypothesis that non-root modals are assertions about assertions, we need to say that this explicit semantic temporal anchoring with respect to S suffices to give the complement of a modal a truth value; it converts it from a proposition to an assertion. Thus, the generalization we are looking for is not that a proposition must be endowed

Properties of the complement: tense and aspect

3 89

with a finite verb to be interpreted as an assertion, but that a proposition must contain at least one member of a tense chain to be interpreted as an assertion. A sentence becomes the member of such a tense chain by means of an overtly expressed tense element, finite or non-finite. If the assertion contains a finite tense element, it is directly linked to S; if it contains a nonfinite tense element, it is indirectly linked to S by means of at least one intermediate member of a tense chain where the topmost tense element relates to S. If finiteness endows the proposition with a truth value, and if this truth value is what gives it a reference (by turning it into an assertion), one would expect finiteness to be 'inherited', as suggested here. We know that a comparable mechanism exists in the nominal domain in the procedure of ascribing reference to anaphors. An anaphor has no independent reference; although it may possess a range of semantic features (e.g. phi-features), it receives reference only by means of being a member of an argument chain, where the topmost member is the R-expression, the element with an independent reference. 55 Thus, an anaphor has the same type of dependent reference as a non-finite tense element. Just like an anaphor, a non-fmite tense element gets its reference from being the non-topmost member of a referential chain. A nominal R-expression is, for instance, a proper name. A temporal R-expression is a finite tense element. For any proposition to become an assertion, it must contain a tense element that is a member of a tense chain. This tense chain must contain a finite verb as its topmost member (the R-expression). In Norwegian, only verbs host tense elements and they are inherently temporal. Thus, Norwegian verbs cannot not express tense since no verb form comes without either a finite or a non-finite tense element. The only way to express a seemingly tenseless verb is by means of a non-finite verb not partaking in a tense chain with a finite verb as its topmost member, as in (85a). In this case, nothing instantiates the first event argument of the tense element since non-finite tense elements cannot relate directly to S; they require the event argument of a c-commanding verb as their first argument. This would be like employing a nominal anaphor with no antecedent: *each other liked. There is nothing to give reference to the anaphoric element, in contrast to they liked each other, where the anaphor gets its reference from they. Nonfinite tense elements are anaphoric and only tense elements can inherit ref55

See Reinhart and Reuland (1993) for this specific use of the term R-expression, where R-expression includes deictic pronouns.

390 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense erence from a finite antecedent. Since only verbs host tense elements in Norwegian, this means that for any clause to be interpreted as an assertion, it must contain at least one verb. This hypothesis straightforwardly explains the ban on directionals as the complements of non-root modals. Only phonetically realized verbs are equipped with tense elements. Directionals contain no tense element and, therefore, cannot be interpreted as assertions, only propositions. But propositions as defined above consist solely of a subject-predicate relation and do not give rise to truth value. Thus, the bracketed parts of the sentences in (88) are propositions, not assertions, because of the lack of a tense element. (88)

a.

MaritIskal[tihjem\. Marit shall home 'Marit is supposed to go home.'

b.

Jorij mä [tr pä butikken]. Jon must in storeDEF 'Jon must go to the store.'

c.

Greina/ vil ikke [ti av\ branchDEF wants not off 'The branch does not want to come off.'

Since these directionals lack a tense element, which is a requirement for a proposition to be interpreted as an assertion, they have no truth value. Since they have no truth value, there is nothing for a non-root modal to qualify. Thus, the non-root reading of the modal is excluded and the root reading is the only possibility.

7.

The tense properties of root and non-root modals

In this section, I briefly consider the relatively non-controversial temporal properties of root modals before investigating the more recalcitrant tense properties of non-root modals. Then, I elaborate on the claim from the previous section that non-root modals are assertions about assertions. In this discussion, I draw on properties of generic sentences (semantically quite similar to non-root modals) and sequence of tenses phenomena. I also chai-

Tense properties of root and non-root modals

3 91

lenge the long-standing "finiteness requirement" assumed to hold universally for non-root modals.

7.1. The tense of root modals Most proper modals in English have a simplified paradigm of tense forms, 56 but this is a rare situation in Germanic languages more broadly. There is a general consensus in the literature that modals in most Germanic languages have a full paradigm for tense; the controversy revolves around what types of modals have access to which forms. Even on this issue, however, most authors agree that root modals have full sets of non-pleonastic tense forms, including the infinitive and the perfect. Accordingly, the modality denoted by root modals is sensitive to tense distinctions; in Iatridou's (1990b) terms, root modals contain a time variable. This can be seen, for instance, in the fact that quantificational adverbials like ofte 'often' may easily take semantic scope over a root modal, as in (89). (89)

a.

Ofte vil Jon pä fotballkamp när jeg vilpä kino. Often wants Jon to football match when I want on cinema 'Often, Jon wants to see a football match when I want to go to the movies.'

b.

Marit mä ofte passe lillesesteren. Marit must often watch baby sisterDEF. 'Often, Marit must watch her baby sister.'

c.

Ofte kan ikke sykkelen tas med pä bussen. Often can not bicycleDEF takePASS on busDEF. 'Often, one cannot take one's bicycle on the bus.'

Root modals are stative predicates; they typically denote simultaneity when equipped with a non-past tense element—the present or the infinitive. They are also possible complements of non-root modals, in which case the choice

56

Palmer (2001: 100) notes that English modals lack non-finite forms and nearly all of them have past tense forms not denoting past (could is an exception and may refer to past time; Stowell (2004) suggests that even might may be used to express past). Must has no past tense form and is replaced by had to for past reference.

392 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense of non-root modal may influence the temporal reading of the root modal. For instance, the non-root ville 'will' denotes prediction, and root modals, like other verbs (even stative ones), yield a future reading when they follow ville.

7.2. The tense of non-root modals Non-root modals, and their compatibility with tense, are the subject of much more controversy in the literature than root modals. It has often been claimed that non-root modals cannot interact with tense, that they occur with a pleonastic present form only, not in past or non-fmite forms. There are at least three plausible approaches to these issues. One might imagine that non-root modals do not have access to the right forms, that they are specified as having no past or non-finite forms in the lexicon. Secondly, there is the approach often advocated in recent generativist proposals—that there is a universal hierarchy forcing non-root modals to occur in specific head positions in the clause, positions that prevent them from interacting with tense heads. We discussed some of the problems with this type of an approach in section 4, in particular in section 4.4. Thirdly, one might imagine that it is the semantics of these modals that make them reluctant to interact with tense and express tense alternations. The third approach is the one I advocate here. First, I will show that non-root modals have access to non-fmite forms such as the infinitive and the participle. Secondly, I address the question of past tense root modals in sequence of tenses and certain other contexts.

7.2.1. Non-root modals and

finiteness

A widespread assumption in the literature on Germanic modals seems to be that non-root modals have no non-finite forms. Denison (1993: 311), for instance, referring to Old and Middle English, states that "the modal in the infinitive is non-epistemic," 57 which in our terms means that no non-root modal occurs in the infinitive. Furthermore, Plank (1984: 314), objecting to Lightfoot (1979), states that 57

He does, however, comment on three examples that show a slight possibility of an epistemic interpretation although the modal is non-finite.

Tense properties of root and non-root modals

393

[P]remodals when used epistemically in general do not seem to have occurred non-finitely in OE and ME in the first place. (Note that an identical finiteness requirement characterizes epistemic modals also in other Germanic languages where there can be no question of modals not being verbs; in fact, a requirement to this effect can presumably claim general rather than language particular validity.) Roberts and Roussou (2002) follow Vikner (1988) and van Kemenade (1985) who make similar claims about non-root modals in Danish and Dutch, respectively. In the present proposal, however, there is no a priori reason to assume that non-root modals cannot occur in the infinitive. I argued in section 6.2 that the tense element of a non-fmite verb suffices to turn a proposition into an assertion if it belongs to a tense chain where the first tense element is finite. The criterion is explicit semantic anchoring of the relevant tense element. Thus, even if non-root modals are assertions about assertions, one would expect them to be able to appear as infinitives when embedded under another verb hosting a finite tense element. Of course, it would take a predicate of the right kind to embed these speakeroriented non-root modals; since non-root modals never assign a Theta-role to a subject, they would not be expected to show up as the downstairs clausal head of what is usually considered a control structure. This is because control structures demand a PRO subject and PRO usually requires a Theta-role. We would have no reason, however, to expect non-root modals not to occur in raising constructions. Our expectations are borne out, as the data in (90), repeated from Chapter 2 section 2, show. 38 (90)

58

a.

Nevßen pästäs ä skulle vcere morderen. nephewDEF claimPASS to shall be the killer 'The nephew is claimed supposedly to be the killer.'

b.

Dette antas ä matte vcere en misforstäelse . this supposePASS to must be a misconception O n e supposes that this certainly is a misconception.'

See also Faarlund et al. (1997: 578), where an embedded skulle occurs in the infinitive and retains an evidential reading. They also show in effect that skulle inherits tense anchoring from the tense of the matrix verb embedding it.

3 94 Nonvegian modals, aspect and tense c.

Denne tabben fryktes ä kunne ha kostet dem oppdraget. this mistake fearPASS to may have costed them the job O n e fears that this mistake possibly made them loose the job.'

d.

Dette anses ä bürde vcere et tilbakelagt stadium. this regardPASS to ought-to be an endured stage 'This is regarded as most likely a thing of the past.'

e.

For andringen forventes ä ville 0ke sal get. changeDEF expectPASS to will increase saleDEF 'The changes are expected to increase the sales (in the future).'

In all sentences in (90), the embedded modal is infinitive, has a non-root reading and sounds somewhat bookish and perhaps redundant, but not ungrammatical or infelicitous. There are even exceptional examples where (what I believe to be) the evidential skulle occurs in an infinitival construction with an arbitrary PRO reading, as in (91a). In this case, there is a "quasi-agentive" reading of arbitrary PRO, comparable to the reading with other raising verbs in a similar context, as in (91b), quoted here from Hornstein (1998: 120) and also discussed in Chomsky (1995b). 59 (91)

a.

Det er belastende ä skulle vcere fadermorder. it is straining to shall be father-murderer 'It is straining to be an alleged father-murderer.'

b.

To appear to be intelligent is harder than one might think.

We have also already seen many examples of non-root modals in the present perfect (the data in (28) through (30)), and we know from Chapter 2 that there are counterfactual constructions where epistemic modals occur in what is formally a past perfect construction.

59

Chomsky (1995b: 436, fn. 27) assumes this reading to be a by-product of raising, this is the interpretation one gets in the raised subject position. Hornstein (1998: fn. 30) continues: "it is plausible that these effects are quasi-thematic properties of IP." Or perhaps something like subject-orientedness could be involved, at least in the case of (91b); cf. sections 3 and 4 of chapter 4.

Tense properties of root and non-root modals (92)

a.

395

Dersom tyngdekraften ikke fantes, if gravityDEF not existed, hadde det mättet vcere vanskelig ä holde beina päjorda! had it mustPERF be hard to keep legsDEF on groundDEF 'If gravity had not existed, it would have to be difficult to stay grounded!'

b.

Hvis jeg hadde kunnet vcere morderen, herr Holmes, if I had can-PERF be killer-DEF, mr.Holmes, hadde politiet arrestert meg for lenge siden. had policeDEF arrested me for long since 'If it were possible that I was the killer, Mr. Holmes, the police would have arrested me long ago.'

We may conclude, therefore, that the finite requirement assumed for nonroot modals (at least epistemic ones) in Germanic is not a requirement, but a tendency, albeit a very strong tendency. The semantics of these predicates make them more comfortable with finite than non-finite forms, and there is no doubt that statistically their finite forms are much more frequent. However, their semantics does not exclude the possibility of non-finite forms, as demonstrated by the data in (91) and (92); see also (28)-(30) in section 4.3 for present perfect data.

7.2.2. Non-root modals for the past and future According to Cinque (1999), non-root modalities such as epistemic and evidential are outside the scope of tense altogether. Hence, we would not expect non-root modals to be able to interact with tense at all, and we would not expect such modalities to be sensitive to temporal alternation. More recent work in the Principles and Parameters framework has challenged this conjecture, however. Stowell (2004) and Condoravdi (2002) suggest that "metaphysical" modals such as could and might in fact encode tense information; these forms are not always pleonastic tense forms. 60 Fa-

60

Stowell (2004: 628) aligns this metaphysical modality with Cinque's alethic modality which may be affected by tense even in Cinque's system.

396 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense gan (2001) suggests that German evidential (but not epistemic) modals can undergo tense alternations, and Boogaart (2005) argues that even epistemic modals are sensitive to tense alternations. There are a number of different opinions on this matter, and we need to go into the details if w e are to make sense of the claims. There is no reason to reject the assumption that different types of nonroot modality behave differently with regard to temporal alternation. For instance, Iatridou (1990b) observes a difference between two types of modal adjectival predicates taking propositional complements in the frame [It was/will be A P that S]. Predicates like evident/obvious are fully acceptable in this context, whereas predicates like possible and probable are not; observe the difference between (93a) and (93b). (93)

a. b. c.

It was/will be evident that John stole the tapes. #It was/will be possible/probable that John stole the tapes. It is possible/probable that John stole the tapes.

Iatridou assumes that evidential predicates like obvious and evident contain a time variable, unlike epistemic predicates like possible and probable.61 This assumption also explains the contrast in (94), according to Iatridou, since adverbials like often are predicated of a time variable. (94)

a. b.

It is often obvious (to me) that you don't study enough. * It is often possible that you don't study enough.

The lack of a time variable is claimed to be responsible for the fact that epistemic predicates cannot be modified by a past or future tense, as (93b) suggests, and cannot scope under a quantificational adverbial like often. Fagan (2001: 31) adopts this analysis and applies it to German modals. She finds that evidential modals like sollen 'shall' and wollen 'will' indeed undergo temporal alternation, which is best witnessed in the perfect, as in (95a) and (95b), the latter originally from Leirbukt (1988: 178). This distinguishes German evidential modals from epistemic ones, according to Fagan.

61

Iatridou uses the term epistemic for predicates I call evidential and the term metaphysical for predicates I call epistemic.

Tense properties of root and non-root modals (95)

a.

Er hat krank sein sollen. he has sick be shall-IPP 'They claimed that he was sick.'

b.

Man hat später wissen wollen, dass... one has later know will-IPP, that O n e later claimed to know that...'

397

However, Dyvik (1999: 5) provides examples where the Norwegian epistemic modal kunne follows a metaphysical ville and suggests that this is clearly a future reading of kunne, as in (96a): kunne is at least able to denote a future modality, suggesting that epistemic modality may undergo temporal alternation. Likewise, Vikner (1988: 9-10) and Thräinnson and Vikner (1995: 76) claim that only kunne can be the second of two Danish non-root modals in a sequence, as in (96b), which "is totally mysterious under our analysis." (96)

a.

Han vil kunne ha reist imorgen. Norwegian. he will mayINF have travelled tomorrow 'Tomorrow, it will be the case that he may have left.'

b.

Det vil let kunne gä noget gait. Danish. there will easily canINF go something wrong 'It will easily be possible that something goes wrong.

I suggested in section 6.1 that kunne occurs more easily with propositions denoting future situations than matte 'must', presumably because kunne denotes possibility whereas matte denotes necessity. It is impossible to tell what will necessarily happen in the future; hence, it is typically infelicitous to use a necessity modal about a future situation (many languages use irrealis to encode future tense; see Comrie 1985: 45). Likewise, ville 'will' denotes prediction and it seems counterintuitive to embed a necessity modal under a prediction. The informant test discussed in section 3.4 of Chapter 2 shows that Norwegian speakers prefer the bare form of a main verb to the corresponding construction with ville + main verb for expressing a firm conviction about the future: ville encodes a certain degree of uncertainty, a plausible reason for its incompatibility with the epistemic modals encoding necessity. There is a parallel explanation for the fact that might and could

398 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense can be used for situations that were future unrealized possibilities of past situations, as (97), from Condoravdi (2002), shows. (97)

He might have won the game. I. He might have (already) won the game (# but he didn't). II. At that point he might (still) have won the game (but he didn't in the end).

A necessity modal such as had to could not replace might here and give the counterfactual, metaphysical reading in II since a non-root necessity modal would signal that the situation described was the only possible future at that point. The counterfactuality of the construction in II indicates that the situation did not take place, hence it was not the only possible outcome; thus, the non-root necessity modal would be infelicitous. The only reading of the modal in At that point, he had to have won the game is the root reading: 'It would have been necessary for him to win the game'. Of course, this does not entail that non-root necessity modals are completely insensitive to tense alternations. Boogaart (2005: 16) argues that the past of epistemic modals is just like any other past of stative, imperfective predicates. He supports his assumptions with data such as (98). (98)

a.

The voices melted into his reality and he didn't realize that he could be ill.

b.

Why didn't he want to be a doctor or a lawyer? He must be ill, mad, or very bad!

c.

Η et moest wel een lieh en lief geheim zijn... Dutch it mustPRET probably a light and sweet secret be 'The secret had to be a light and sweet one...'

Boogaart continues: The past tense in these examples does what it always does: it indicates that the reference point precedes the point of speech (R < S), i.e. not the moment of utterance but some moment in the past functions as epistemic evaluation time. In my view, there is thus no reason for claiming that the past tense of epistemic modals is in any way not a normal, real (temporal) past tense in these cases.

Tense properties of root and non-root modals

399

The data in (98) are all so-called "sequence of tenses" contexts; a verb of saying, thinking, referring is in the preterite, allowing—and sometimes forcing—the finite verb of the embedded clause to also occur in the preterite. It has been observed many times that even epistemic modals can occur in past forms in these contexts. However, Iatridou (1990b) has argued that the past in sequence of tenses is not a real past, but some kind of pleonastic past. If we want to argue that epistemic modals are sensitive to temporal alternation, we need to dispute this claim.

7.2.3. Sequence of tenses, non-root modals, and generics The claim that all non-root modals tend to avoid undergoing tense alternations seems defendable. However, evidential modals can be argued to be sensitive to past tenses, metaphysically construed possibility modals take on past (and future) tenses, and epistemic modals seemingly occur in a past form with a past reading only in sequence of tenses. This suggests that the recalcitrant tense properties of non-root modals are restricted by the semantics of these modality types, not by their syntactic or morphological properties. For instance, the fact that none of the Norwegian non-root modal types lack access to past forms is supported by the fact that they are quite comfortable with sequence of tense contexts, as (99) shows. (99)

a.

Marit pästod at Jon mätte/kunne vcere morderen. Marit claimed that Jon must/canPAST be killerDEF 'Marit claimed that Jon had to/might be the killer.'

b.

Man trodde at dette ville vcere l0sningen. one believed that this would be solutionDEF 'One believed that this would be the solution.'

c.

Ryktene sa at han skulle vcere reist. rumoursDEF said that he shallPRET be left 'The rumors said that he supposedly had left.'

As mentioned above, Iatridou (1990b: fn.l) claims that past tense in sequence of tenses contexts is irrelevant to anchoring the embedded clause in time; thus, past tense in these contexts is not a 'real' tense. This is a widespread assumption in the literature: the preterite marking of the embedded

400 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense finite verb is typically seen as some kind of non-semantic or pleonastic morphosyntactic reflex. However, En? (1987) objects to this interpretation of the sequence of tenses phenomenon and notes that the past marking of the embedded verb in sequence of tenses is not obligatory. (100)

a. b. c. d.

John John Sally Sally

heard that Mary was pregnant. heard that Mary is pregnant. told me that John was very depressed. told me that John is very depressed.

If the preterite form of the embedded finite verb were merely morphological copying of past tense from the matrix clause finite verb, a rule that is optional, one would expect (100a) to be synonymous with (100b) and (100c) with (lOOd) since the past tense of the embedded sentence is by assumption "pleonastic," i.e. semantically vacuous. This is not the case, however. There is an observable interpretational difference, which must be due to the alternation between the past and present tense marking on the embedded verb since all other elements are identical. Comrie (1985) claims that the present tense on the embedded verb signals that the proposition expressed by the embedded sentence has "present relevance." Εης: (1987) sets out to make this statement more precise. She claims that the past tense on the embedded verb signals that the embedded proposition should be evaluated not at the speech time S but at the past time given by the matrix tense. Present tense on the embedded verb signals that the proposition expressed by the embedded sentence should be evaluated at the speech time S, i.e. now. The past tense on the embedded verb hence signals a "shift in evaluation time," triggering the requirement that the embedded proposition relate temporally to the matrix event instead of the outmost speech event S. This means that the preterite marking on the embedded verb signals that the truth value of the embedded proposition is true (or false) at a time simultaneous with the matrix event. However, there are data where this assumption does not seem to yield the correct result. For instance, we can easily construct examples where the past tense of the embedded verb must be constructed as non-simultaneous with the matrix past time, as in (101). (101)

a.

Jeg hßrte at du strokpä proven. I heard that you failed on test-DEF Ί heard that you failed the test.'

Tense properties of root and non-root modals 401 Conceptually, it is natural to assume that your failing the test precedes my hearing about it, which means that the embedded predicate is construed as past relative to the matrix past. En? proposes an elaborated apparatus to account for the fact that the past tense of embedded sentences sometimes gives rise to what she calls shifted readings (i.e. past relative to matrix past) and sometimes does not (i.e. present relative to matrix past). Let us explore instead the idea that the past-past reading arises in some cases simply for conceptual reasons and that the past of the embedded predicate does not signal that the embedded event must be temporally related to the event of the embedding verb. Consider (101). The more natural reading out of context would be the aforementioned past-past reading, but this sentence could also be used to describe a situation where the speaker was standing outside the open window at the very minute the addressee failed the test and the speaker actually heard it happen. In this case, the two events are simultaneous. A past marking on the embedded predicate may even give rise to a reading where the embedded event is subsequent to the matrix event. This is shown in (102). (102)

a.

Jon er tydeligvis en stor spämann. Jon is evidently a great fortune teller. Han spädde at du strek pa preven. He predicted that you failed testDEF 'Jon is evidently a great fortune teller. He predicted your failing the test.'

Again, on conceptual grounds, the prediction event must precede the failing event; otherwise, it would not have been a prediction. These facts support the idea that the past of the embedded predicate does not force any particular temporal ordering of the embedded event with respect to the matrix event. The temporal relation between the embedded and the matrix events depends instead on the conceptual construal arising from the aspectual and conceptual properties of the two predicates. Thus, all that is expressed by the tense elements involved in sequence of tenses is that the event of the embedded sentence—your failing the test—is past relative to S, just like my hearing about it or Jon's prediction of it is past relative to S. No temporal ordering between the two events is imposed by the tense elements of the two verbs. This assumption is supported by the fact that the sequence of tense phenomenon is optional; if there is a tempo-

402 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense

ral ordering between an embedding verb and a finite embedded predicate, it cannot be obligatory. Recall that even En? agrees that the embedded predicate may relate to S whenever it is present instead of past. I suggest that there is no reason to expect that the temporal ordering of the embedded and the matrix events should be obligatory when the embedded proposition shows past instead of present tense. Furthermore, the possible construal of the embedded event as past, simultaneous, or subsequent relative to the matrix event depending on the predicates involved supports the assumption that the past of the embedded predicate does not force a particular temporal ordering of the matrix and the embedded events. Instead, the past of the embedded predicate signals one particular temporal ordering of the embedded predicate with respect to S—that the event expressed by the embedded predicate is situated at a point in time previous to S. If this is so, sequence of tenses phenomena are in fact instances o f ' r e a l ' tenses, as claimed by Eide (2002a) and Boogaart (2005) and in contrast to Iatridou's (1990b) claims. Since non-root modals partake in sequence of tenses, they must contain a time-variable, a semantically non-vacuous tense element fully able to relate the modal to the speech event S. However, the question remains how to explain the differences between the various non-root modalities pointed out by Iatridou (1990b); the data are repeated here as (103). (103)

a. b. c.

It was/will be evident that John stole the tapes. #It was/will be possible/probable that John stole the tapes. It is possible/probable that John stole the tapes.

Unlike evidentials, which denote what kind of evidence the speaker has for making the assertion, epistemic modals refer to an individual's model of the world. In this respect, epistemic modals resemble generic constructions. In fact, all non-root modals share certain semantic properties with generic constructions. Firstly, generic sentences, like non-root modals, cannot easily scope under the quantificational adverbial often, as in (104a), (104b), and (104c). Generic sentences also typically refuse past and future tenses, as (104c), (104d), and (104e) show.

Tense properties of root and non-root modals (104)

a. b. c. d. e. f.

#Two plus two often equals four. #The earth is often round. #Lions are often mammals. #Two plus two will equal/equalled # The earth was/ will be round. 62 # Lions were/will be mammals.62

403

four.

Like epistemic and other non-root modals, generic constructions appear in past forms in sequence of tenses contexts. (105)

a. b. c.

He claimed that lions were mammals. The plaque read that two plus two did equal four. The vikings believed that the earth was flat.

The atemporal flavor of generic constructions is mentioned in Carlson (1988: 167), who claims that Epistemologically, a generic sentence is one expressing a truth (or falsehood) the truth value of which cannot, in general, be ascertained solely with reference to any particular localized time. For instance, the present tense sentence "Dogs bark" is true, even though at the present time there may be no dogs barking. I assume that epistemic modals and generic constructions have common semantic traits that make them very reluctant to interact with tense. They both target the truth value of an assertion and state it (in the case of generics) or qualify it (in the case of epistemic modals). Generics are hence a particular type of assertion in that they accentuate the truth value of the assertion as much as they describe a state of affairs. Like epistemic modals, they state what are conceived as stable truths in an individual's (e.g. the speaker's) model of the world. These linguistic expressions hence encode what are considered reliable facts and stable truths as well as what is ontologically possible or necessary given an individual's model of the world. They deal with what is possible, probable, or given for this model to be a coherent model. If an individual's model of the world is rational and adequate, what is construed possible or necessary within such a model is not likely to change from one moment to another. Thus, in order for me to felicitously utter (106a), I have to believe that my model of the world will change from its present state to a different 62

Observe an apparent exception in the proverb Boys will be boys.

404 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense one in the future. Likewise, for me to utter (106b), I have to admit that what constituted my model of the world yesterday turned out to be inadequate since I obviously no longer entertain that model: (106)

a. b.

It will be possible that John is the killer. Yesterday, it was probable that Mary was killer.

This reading is odd because we do not change our perception and model of the world on purpose or by volition. Our current model of the world is the best one since we always strive to construe the model that is most accurate, given our state of knowledge. Our state of knowledge may change, in which case we are forced to reconstruct our model accordingly; this entails a different set of contingent possibilities and necessities. However, this is not in our control since our model usually changes only when our world, or our perception of it, changes. On the other hand, if we invoke a context of somebody writing a novel, where the writer is free to construct his own fictional model of the world— the discourse universe—and change this universe as he pleases from one day to the next, (106a) and (106b) are felicitous. The reading of (106a) would imply that the author intends to change the novel's universe in such a way that it will be possible that John is the killer although the present universe may not give rise to this possibility. Likewise, (106b) implies that yesterday's version of the novel's universe gave rise to the possibility that Mary was the killer although today's version of this universe may not give rise to the same possibility. However, in the actual world, where the events take place in a unidirectional manner, we cannot go back to erase or delete those events that would lead to another set of contingent possibilities and necessities. This means that the large scale traits of an individual's coherent model of the world do not change easily and many of the propositions we accept and live by may seem like unchanging truths. There are, however, numerous examples where what used to be conceived of as an unchanging truth turns out to be false. In these instances, one would expect generic sentences, for example, to be sensitive to temporal reference, as in (107), which appeared in the newspaper VG November 15th 2003 (p. 2); cf. also (108) (see also Hofmann 1976 for similar data).

Tense properties of root and non-root modals (107)

a.

405

Daglig sigarettreyking har vcert helsefarlig helt siden daily cigarette smoking has been health-damaging ever since begynnelsen av femtitallet. Passiv royking, derimot, beginningDEF of fiftiesDEF. Passive smoking, in contrast, begynte ikke ä bli ordentlig skadelig for ncermere 1980. began not to become really damaging until closer-to 1980 ' Smoking every day has been damaging to your health ever since the beginning of the fifties. Second-hand smoke, in contrast, did not start to get seriously damaging to your health until shortly before 1980.'

(108)

a.

Jorda har faktisk vcert rund i over 500 or. earthDEF has in fact been round for 500 years 'The Earth has actually been round for 500 years.'

b.

Hvaler varfisk for, men nä er de pattedyr. whales were fish before, but now are they mammals 'Whales used to be fish, but they are mammals now.'

The only natural interpretation of these sentences is not that we used to have a state of affairs where smoking cigarettes or second-hand smoke changed from being without risk to being dangerous, or that the earth used to be flat and at some point became round. The natural way to interpret (107) is that our state of knowledge has changed, not the state of affairs. Likewise, the meaning of (108a) is that five hundred years ago, we started to conceive the proposition [the earth is round] as true, whereas the same proposition used to be conceived as false before that. Also, (108b) means that we used to consider the proposition [whales are fish] to be true, but nowadays we consider the proposition [whales are mammals] to be true. Given our knowledge of the world, it would be unnatural for a species to change—overnight, so to speak—from fish to mammals. Admittedly, generic and other predicates that relate to our model of the world and what is possible, probable, or timeless truths within this model do not seem to be very dynamic either. But as the sentences above deal with specific propositions of which we know that they have "changed truth-values" in the sense that they used to be conceived as false and now thy are conceived as true, this interpretation is the more natural.

406 Nonvegian modals, aspect and tense As outlined in section 5 of Chapter 4, I assume epistemic modals to be two-place predicates on Conceptual Structure, implying that these predicates are always restricted to some individual's belief system or model of the world. In the default case, the relevant individual is the speaker; in sequence of tenses contexts this individual is often the matrix subject (or in longer sequences, a narrator implied by context); cf. the difference between (109a) and (109b) and (109c). (109)

a.

Jon mä vcere morderen. Jon must be killerDEF 'Jon must be the killer.'

b.

Marit pästod at Jon matte vcere morderen. Marit claimed that Jon mustPAST be killerDEF 'Marit claimed that Jon had to be the killer.'

c.

Marit pästod at Jon mä vcere morderen. Marit claimed that Jon must be killerDEF 'Marit claimed that Jon must be the killer.'

The speaker is committed to the truth of the embedded proposition [Jon must be the killer] in (109a), but not in (109b) and (109c). In (109b) and (109c), Marit's conviction is the one expressed by the embedded clause. Intuitively, the difference between (109b) and (109c) can be stated as follows: in (109b), the speaker asserts that the truth of the proposition [Jon must be the killer] was compatible with Marit's belief system or model of the world at some previous point in time, without any reference to whether or not the truth of this proposition is in Marit's present belief system. This previous point in time is in this case taken to be simultaneous with the matrix event, i.e. Marit's claiming that Jon must be the killer, since Marit, if she is truthful, must believe the proposition to be true at the point in time where she states it.63 In (109c), the truth of the embedded proposition [Jon must be the killer] is construed as entailed by Marit's belief system at present; the speaker has no reason to believe that Marit's system of beliefs has changed since she made the claim [Jon must be the killer]. That is, the

63

A simultaneous reading of the matrix and the embedded events in sequence of tenses requires that the embedded predicate be construed as stative. This is another indication that non-root modals are stative predicates.

Summing up

407

speaker asserts that Marit made the claim [Jon must be the killer], and by endowing this embedded proposition with the present tense, the speaker signals that he believes this proposition to still belong to Marit's system of beliefs. Hence the following contrast: (110)

a.

#Marit pästod at Jon mä vcere morderen, Marit claimed that Jon must be killerDEF, men det tror hun ikke lenger. but that believes she not longer 'Marit claimed that Jon must be the killer, but she no longer believes that.'

b.

Marit pästod at Jon matte vcere morderen, Marit claimed that Jon mustPAST be killerDEF, men det tror hun ikke lenger. but that believes she not longer 'Marit claimed that Jon had to be the killer, but she no longer believes that.'

This suggests that epistemic modals (and generic sentences) are sensitive to temporal reference even though they accentuate the truth value of a proposition as much as the state of affairs described by that proposition. They are less sensitive to tense alternations than many other types of predicates, but their tense marking, when it occurs, is not pleonastic. Just like an ordinary predicate endowed with a past or present tense encodes whether it is relevant for the present (or future) time or some past point in time, the past marking on an embedded epistemic modal in a sequence of tenses context signals a past model of the world. A present marking in the same context signals a model of the world current at the time of utterance.

8.

Summing up

In this chapter, I investigated how modals of different kinds interact with the categories aspect and tense. I started out by observing that there are certain default patterns: a modal preceding a perfect auxiliary typically yields a non-root reading, whereas a modal following a perfect auxiliary

408 Norwegian modals, aspect and tense typically yields a root reading. More generally, a stative complement typically favors a present reading of the infinitive and a corresponding non-root reading of the modal. A dynamic complement usually yields a future reading of the infinitive and more easily gives rise to a root reading of the modal. However, these are just the default readings of an underspecified system. Many languages allow for a non-root reading of a modal overtly following an aspectual, and seemingly all languages under consideration here allow for root readings of a modal preceding an aspectual auxiliary. Likewise, root modals allow for stative complements and non-root modals allow for dynamic predicates with future readings. So there are robust exceptions to the default patterns. There are many proposals regarding these subjects within universalist approaches, some of them with an extensive apparatus of functional projections to account for what is seen as a once-and-for-all ordering of the categories tense, aspect, and modality. I argued that very little is gained by adopting this type of an approach, as there is in fact no once-and-for-all ordering of the categories modality and aspect, at least not in Norwegian and many other Germanic languages. To assume a rigid hierarchy requires such a range of patch-up mechanisms that it casts serious doubts on the entire hypothesis of a universal hierarchy. Also, in my investigation of modals and tense, I reached the conclusion that a once-and-for-all ordering of modals and tense in a universal hierarchy of functional projections, as suggested by Cinque (1999) and Roberts and Roussou (2002, 2003), cannot be maintained; each modal, like any other verb, comes with its own tense package. In this discussion, I used generic constructions and sequences of tenses phenomena. I concluded that we need a much more flexible account. Therefore, I proposed a tense system for Norwegian, underspecified for present-future distinctions and exploiting the aspectual properties of predicates and temporal adverbials. This system implies that each and every verb form in Norwegian hosts a tense element; there are no non-tensed verbs. Thus, the number of tense elements (or T-projections, in Cinque's terminology), will be determined by the number of verbs present in a clause; each verb carries one tense element. I also exploited this tense system to explain why directionals cannot be the complement of a non-root modal. Furthermore, we found that the widely assumed finiteness-requirement on non-root modals does not hold. It should be replaced with a requirement that the non-root modal must be explicitly temporally anchored by means of being a member of a tense chain with the topmost member of which is a finite verb.

Summing up

409

More generally, my findings suggest that several important generalizations often assumed to be syntactic constraints on the behavior of modals are in fact semantic in nature. Semantics seems to be a far more important submodule than syntax when it comes to determining root versus non-root readings and the possible merger points of different types of Norwegian modals in a syntactic structure. Likewise, the semantic properties of modals are more important than their syntax in determining how they interact with each other as well as with the categories aspect and tense.

Chapter 6 Summing up

1.

Introduction

This chapter sums up the major points of this investigation of Norwegian modals. Modality in contemporary Norwegian has been neglected in recent linguistic research. This allows an author to present new and exciting facts, make generalizations where there were none, and draw a map of what is mostly unknown territory. At the same time, Norwegian is a well-studied language and has a great deal in common with several other well-studied languages; this means that there are frameworks, theories, and hypotheses not only for Norwegian, but for closely related languages as well. Thus, I am fortunate to work with theories and hypotheses that can be tested against data new to the linguistic audience. In the course of this investigation, I have had to modify many hypotheses and existing models, which is not uncommon. In addition, I have had to propose new models to account for the data I observed; a case in point is the compositional tense system for Norwegian proposed in Chapter 5.' Also, some of my observations about Norwegian modals contradict earlier observations by other authors about modals in closely related languages, which forced me to modify or reject hypotheses. Examples are the possible orders of modals relative to aspectuals on root and non-root readings and the dual behavior of root modals, suggesting that they have features of both control and raising verbs. In this chapter, I dedicate a section to each chapter of the book (except Chapter 1) and summarize their main points.

1

Although this system shares certain fundamentals with Julien (2001), it is different in how it is composed and how it works; the specifics of the two systems also differ on a number of points.

The facts 2.

411

The facts

In Chapter 2 , 1 set out to provide an observationally adequate description of Norwegian modals in "theory-neutral" terms (to the extent that any linguistic description can be "theory-neutral"). The two main topics of the present investigation are the argument structure of Norwegian modals and their interaction with aspect and tense. In Chapter 2, I presented a great deal of information not specifically relevant to these two topics in order to provide a broad and comprehensive picture of Norwegian modals. The first three sections of Chapter 2 dealt with the morphological, semantic, and syntactic characteristics of Norwegian modals. The morphological characteristics derive from their status as preterite-present verbs: they lack the ending -er/-r in the present tense, and their stem vowel (normally) changes from infinitive to present, but not from infinitive to past tense. These properties distinguish modals from almost all other verbs (however, the non-modal vite 'know' is also a preterite-present). Modals lack present participles, but some other verbs such as weather verbs and transitive verbs do so as well. Certain modals marginally occur in the s-passive (kunne 'know' and ville 'want to') and the imperative (kunne 'know'). Neither of these properties thus distinguishes modals from other verbs. However, it is important to note that the modal kunne 'can' is the only modal compatible with the imperative and that only two modals, kunne 'can' and ville 'want to', may undergo passivization. These two modals, I argue, are modal main verbs and behave like transitive verbs in many respects; cf. Figure 1 below. The finiteness requirement for non-root modals, assumed by Plank (1984) to pertain to all Germanic languages, does not hold for Norwegian, where non-root modals can occur as infinitives. Finally, the often made generalization (Dyvik 1999) that non-root modals do not employ a perfect participle does not hold for a number of non-standard Norwegian dialects, and even standard dialects allow for a non-root (metaphysical) reading of the perfect participle modal in plusperfect counterfactuals. The section on the semantic properties of Norwegian modals discusses some central and widely-used modality terms. Two seminal lines of work on modality within formal semantic frameworks are the works of Lewis and Kratzer, works that have been described as a watershed for the linguistic study of modality in natural language. I reviewed the fundamentals of these approaches and discussed certain issues in order to lay the groundwork for my investigation of Norwegian modals.

412 Summing up Root and non-root modality have also been a popular topic in forcedynamic approaches to natural language, and the notion of semantic field of modality was discussed in light of such approaches. When investigating the semantic properties of Norwegian modals, I used the terms evidential, epistemic, and metaphysical to describe the nonroot readings. The latter two terms describe what seems to be the same type of modality. In the present work, however, metaphysical is employed as a more specialized term: metaphysical modality equals "epistemic modality about future situations." The root readings of Norwegian modals are deontic and dynamic. Subsection 3.4 of Chapter 2 discusses the root and nonroot readings of Norwegian modals and provides an etymological description of their meaning in Old Norse. I also included the results of an informant test where 3 5 participants reported their intuitions about the appropriateness of ville 'will' in sentences describing a firm belief about a future situation. It turned out that an overwhelming majority of Norwegian speakers prefer to employ the bare present form to convey such a belief. Some informants volunteered the information that the use of ville + infinitive sounds "less confident" than the present form. I took these facts to suggest that the modal ville is not a pure tense marker, as has been repeatedly claimed in the literature. Instead, ville clearly has modal properties and encodes 'prediction'. This property makes it a good candidate for a tense marker, but in Norwegian, the transition from modal to tense marker has not (yet) taken place. Table 1 Readings available for Norwegian modal auxiliaries: Dyadic: subject-oriented Root:

Dynamic: Monadic: non- subject-oriented

Modal Auxiliaries

Dyadic: directed deontic Deontic: Monadic: non-directed deontic Non-root:

Monadic (proposition-scope)

Norwegian non-root modals have only one-place (monadic) readings: they take the proposition in their scope as their argument, and they never assign

The facts

413

a semantic role to the subject. Root modals, on the other hand, can be construed as one- or two-place (dyadic) predicates. They are construed either as proposition-scope modals with an argument frame similar to that of nonroot modals or as two-place predicates, assigning an internal (object) role and an external (subject) role. This is shown in Table 1 above. The syntactic characteristics of Norwegian modals are not subject to the ban on co-occurrence we find with their Modern English counterparts, although not all types of combinations are possible. A typical sequence of two Norwegian modals will consist of one non-root modal preceding and scoping over a root modal. However, a sequence of two non-root modals is possible (the combination ville plus an epistemic modal kunne is not uncommon) as are sequences of two root modals. One common combination of the latter kind is a monadic root reading of burde 'should' (or the corresponding reading of skulle) followed by a dyadic reading of some other root modal, typically kunne 'can' or matte ' m u s t ' . A defining trait of Norwegian modals is their ability to take bare infinitival complements. In addition, Norwegian modals in a preterite form may take a perfect participle as their complement. In this case, the modal always has a counterfactual reading (cf. also Taraldsen 1984). Root modals take directionals as complements, and I presented evidence to support the hypothesis that there is a phonetically empty verb preceding the directional in these cases. Root modals also take pseudoclefts as complements, but only on a two-place (subject-oriented/directed deontic) reading. Elliptic constructions and tag questions help us sort out which modals are auxiliaries and which are modal main verbs. In ellipsis and tags, a modal auxiliary cannot be replaced by the verb gj0re ' d o ' ; the modal itself must be repeated. In contrast, a modal main verb—a modal taking a DP/finite clausal complement—can be replaced by gjore ' d o ' in such constructions. Only when the modal takes a DP/finite clausal complement, however, does it behave like a transitive lexical verb. When the 'same' modal takes a bare infinitival complement, it behaves like an auxiliary with regard to ί/ο-replacement in ellipsis and tags. The same tests suggest that directionals are in fact VPs at some point in the representation; this supports the hypothesis that there is an invisible motion verb between the modal and the directional. VP-pronominalization facts support this hypothesis as well. After considering three potential new candidates for the class of modals in Norwegian, I decided that the verb fä 'get' should not be considered a modal since it lacks a non-root reading. Trenger ikke, beh0ver ikke 'need

414 Summing up not', were accepted into the class of modals, however, since they fulfill most of the requirements, including the crucial requirement for a non-root reading. My revised inventory of Norwegian modals hence looks like Figure 1. Figure I Norwegian modals

Modal main verbs Kunne 'know' Ville 'want to' Trenger ikke 'need not' Behover ikke 'need not' Root

Modal auxiliaries

Deontic Dynamic Burde 'should' Kunne 'can/know' Matte 'must' Ville 'want to' Kunne 'may' Skulle 'be required to' Trenger ikke 'need not' Behover ikke 'need not'

Evidential Epistemic Skulle 'be supposed to' Epistemic Metaphysical Burde 'should' Ville 'will' Matte 'must' Kunne 'may' Trenger ikke 'need not' Behover ikke 'need not'

In Chapter 2, I also presented the inventories of modals from 7 languages closely related to Norwegian (Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Faroese, English, German, and Dutch) for comparison purposes and to provide a broader picture.

3.

Earlier proposals

Chapter 3 is a survey of 12 earlier proposals on modals in Germanic and one on modals in Romance. All the works reviewed are cast in some generative framework (GB, MP, LFG). I briefly outlined each proposal, before concentrating on two points in particular: whether or not the author of the work assumes that root modals assign an external theta-role (a subject role)

Earlier proposals

415

to their subjects and the author's view on the possible insertion point or merger site for root and non-root modals. On the first issue, there are two strong camps in the literature. The traditional, and seemingly most widespread view, is the control versus raising analysis, stemming from Ross (1969). The non-root modal is analyzed as a raising verb (or an auxiliary) with no selectional requirements towards its (derived) subject. The root modal, on the other hand, is analyzed as a kind of control verb and accordingly assigns an external theta-role (a subject role) to its subject. This subject, in turn, controls the reference of the downstairs P R O subject, the subject of the infinitive. The other widespread view is that all modals, root and non-root, are raising verbs. This analysis has seemingly been around as long as the control vs. raising analysis, but for some reason, its advocates have been less visible than the advocates of the "control versus raising" analysis. In addition, there are hybrids of these two analyses, where modals are analyzed as "raising verbs with an attitude," i.e. raising verbs that still display certain selectional requirements towards their subjects. The present work finds its natural place in this class of hybrid analyses. The other important issue in the 13 proposals reviewed is the author's view on a modal's possible position in a syntactic clause structure. This issue has been especially popular since Cinque's (1999) seminal work suggesting a fixed and universal hierarchy of functional projections; even before that, however, various authors had argued that root and non-root modals are inserted or merged in different positions. In my investigation (Chapter 5), I was concerned in particular with the interaction between modals and tense and aspect and between certain types of modality. Several authors argue forcefully for a universal relative ordering of root modality, non-root modality, aspect, and tense. It is often claimed that nonroot modals are outside the influence of tense. It is also often claimed that a modal preceding an aspectual always has a non-root reading, whereas the same modal following an aspectual always has a root reading. According to my findings, the patterns are a lot less clear-cut. In fact, an analysis based on a universal relative ordering between modals, tense, and aspect seems to take us only part of the way (and to a certain extent in the wrong direction). The counterevidence to universalist approaches suggests that a more flexible, semantically-based compositional account is called for.

416 Summing up 4.

A r g u m e n t structure

Chapter 4 provided a review of the control versus raising analysis, where root modals are analyzed as control and non-root modals as raising verbs. I listed the predictions of this (type of) analysis, outlined their theoretical motivation, and compared the predictions to empirical data from Norwegian and several other languages. Some important predictions of this analysis are summed up in Table 2 and my findings in Table 3. Table 2

a. Take expletive subjects b. Take weather-det/Pad 'it' c. Take idiom-chunk subjects d. Allow quirky subjects e. Allow passive complement with an inanimate subject f. Subject-modal scope ambiguity g. Passivize h. Pseudoclefted complement

Non-root modals yes yes yes yes yes

Root modals no no no no no

yes no no

no yes yes

Table 3 Raising verbs, Non-root modals & Root modals (Deontic & Monadic dynamic) a. Take expletive subjects b. Take weather-det/Pad 'it' c. Take idiom-chunk subjects d. Allow quirky subjects e. Allow passive complement with an inanimate subject f. Subject-modal scope ambiguity g. Passivize

yes yes yes yes yes

Control verbs, Root modals: Volition- ville Ability-kunne no no no no no

yes

no

no

yes/no

As these two tables show, almost all root modals pattern with raising verbs, not control ones, with regard to the relevant traits (a through g). These re-

Argument structure 417 suits certainly do not corroborate the control versus raising analysis; instead, a body of data (Chapter 4, section 2) supports another wide-spread analysis of modals, the (nearly-) all-modals-are-raising-verbs analysis. However, when it comes to the ability of modals to take a pseudoclefited complement, matters get more complicated. Raising verbs reject and control verbs accept a pseudoclefted complement, as shown in (la) and (lb). Although root modals behave like raising verbs in most respects, they pattern with control verbs in accepting a pseudoclefted complement, as in (lc) and (Id). Upon closer inspection, however, we find that proposition-scope readings of root modals do not behave like control verbs; they reject a pseudoclefted complement just like raising verbs, as (le) and ( I f ) show. Thus, only subject-oriented (i.e. dyadic) root modals pattern with control verbs in pseudoclefts, as illustrated by (1) and summed up in Table 4. (1)

a.

*Det Jon viste seg, var ä vcere inkompetent. it Jon showed self, was to be incompetent (Intended: 'What Jon turned out to be, was incompetent.')

b.

Det Jon provde, var ä vcere cerlig. it Jon tried, was to be honest 'What Jon tried, was to be honest.'

c.

Det Marit mä, er ä snakke med ham. it Marit must is to talk to him 'What Marit must (do), is talk to him.'

d.

Det du skal, er ä pusse tennene. it you shall is to brush teeth-DEF 'What you will (do), is brush your teeth.'

e.

*Det en kvinne b0r, er ä bli vär neste statsminister. it a woman should, is to be our next prime minister. (Intended: 'What should happen is that a woman becomes our next prime minister.')

f.

*Det apene ikke mä, er ä mates αν besekende. it monkeysDEF not must, is to feedPASS by visitors (Intended: 'What must not take place is that the monkeys are fed by visitors.')

41 8 Summing up Table 4 Readings available for Norwegian modal auxiliaries: Dyadic: ville: volition; kunne: ability Root:

π

Dynamic: Monadic: tendency (ville: strong; kunne: weaker) * Dyadic: directed obligation/permission

α

Monadic: non-directed obligation/permission

*

Monadic: epistemic; metaphysical; evidential

*

Deontic:

Non-root:

n: Accept a pseudoclefted complement; *: reject a pseudoclefted complement.

The fact that root modals behave differently in pseudoclefts depending on whether their reading is dyadic (i.e. subject-oriented) or monadic might suggest that the semantic feature of -subject-orientedness is mirrored by a syntactic difference, such that subject-oriented root modals resemble control verbs (at least in certain respects), whereas proposition-scope root modals resemble raising verbs. I investigated a range of approaches to account for the behavior of root modals, control verbs, and raising verbs in pseudoclefts, and it seems that these phenomena should be given a unified account. This entails, however, that one has to accept that root modals in fact assign something like an external theta-role on the subject-oriented reading. If we want to explain the similarity in behavior between proposition-scope modals and raising verbs on the one hand, and subject-oriented modals and control verbs on the other, and if the difference between raising and control verbs is that raising verbs do not assign an external theta-role and control verbs do, then subject-oriented modals assign an external theta-role like control verbs. These conclusions seem to support an approach where each modal has two entries in the lexicon, one control-like and one raising-like (cf. Brennan 2004). However, we also find evidence that even subject-oriented root modals, i.e. the most control-like modals, behave like raising verbs in certain constructions, e.g. when they take directional complements, as in (2). Barbiers (2002) demonstrates that these structures have to be raising structures. Also, the subject in such structures, En mann 'a man' in (2a), displays not

Argument structure

419

only the wide-scope reading, but also the narrow-scope reading typical of raising structures ('it is necessary that a man (regardless of who he is) leave the board'; e.g. because of laws and regulations). (2)

a.

En mann mä ut αν styret. a man must out of boardDEF Ά man must leave the board.'

b.

Ola ville hjem. Ola wanted home 'Ola wanted to go home.'

c.

Marit var syk og kunne ikke pa skolen. Marit was ill and could not on schoolDEF 'Marit was sick and couldn't go to school.'

Thus, we have conflicting data. On the one hand, we have clear indication that subject-oriented root modals behave like control verbs (in pseudoclefts); on the other hand, we have evidence that even subject-oriented root modals must be raising verbs (since they take directional complements). To resolve this paradox, I applied the analysis of Hornstein (1998, 1999, 2000), who sets out to reduce raising and control to raising only. He does not deny that there are semantic (and perhaps syntactic) differences between raising and control. His objective, however, is to investigate whether the two constructions can be explained without the technical apparatus usually invoked to account for them. This type of approach can account for the dual behavior of root modals: they behave like raising verbs on their proposition-scope reading, but like control verbs on their subject-oriented reading. Crucially, however, even subject-oriented modals appear in raising structures, which supports Hornstein's assumption that raising is not structurally different from control. If this is correct, control verbs are "raising verbs with an attitude." Unlike raising verbs, they have selectional and thematic requirements towards their syntactic subject. Raising verbs have no such requirements and consequently allow for a narrow-scope reading of the subject. In Hornstein's approach, an Α-chain has only one visible link at LF. However, there is no requirement that this link be the topmost link of the Α-chain. Thus, raising verbs allow for the non-topmost Α-link to be interpreted ("reconstruction"). For a control verb, the topmost Α-link must be interpreted in order for the

420 Summing up

subject theta-role to be expressed at LF. Thus, control verbs never scope over their subjects. The difference between raising and control verbs in this approach thus boils down to the properties of the topmost subject position. The complements of the two types of verbs, however, are presumably structurally the same. What is gained by this approach, as opposed to an approach where all root modals have double entries in the lexicon, is that we avoid the massive ambiguity regarding the complement of a modal— whether it is an IP (for the modal-as-raising verb) or a CP (for the modal-as-control verb). If the complements of control and raising verbs have the same structure, the difference between subject-oriented root modals and proposition-scope root modals amounts to their relationship to the syntactic subject. This solves the paradox that even subject-oriented modals occur in raising structures (with a directional complement). In addition, this could also be a viable approach to the German non-root modal wollen. Wollen is an evidential non-root modal, and there is general consensus in the literature that all non-root modals are raising verbs. However, wollen has strong selectional requirements towards its syntactic subject: the subject must denote an intentional, rational being. Moreover, this subject seemingly does not allow for a narrow-scope reading; an unusual behavior for the subject of a raising structure. Instead, this is the type of behavior we typically find with the subject of control verbs. Another apparent contradiction could thus be solved with our Hornstein-type approach. If raising and control verbs are structurally similar, and the main difference are their requirements towards the subject, one would expect the line between raising and control verbs to be blurred in certain cases: some raising verbs will have certain control verb properties (selectional requirements towards a subject, and rejecting a narrow-scope subject) and some control verbs will display raising behavior (in taking directional complements). The data corroborate this expectation. The last section of Chapter 4 outlines the two-level semantic description of modals needed to account for their various interpretations. What has been dubbed the Source of modality ("the rule-giver argument") is seemingly represented at some semantic (not pragmatic) level. While non-root modals are always one-place predicates at a semantic level close to syntax (Semantic Form; SF), they are always two-place predicates on a level closer to conceptual organization (Conceptual Structure; CS; terms from Bierwisch and Lang 1989). The various combinations of SF and CS arguments give the reading of obligation or permission as a derived meaning of deon-

Modals, aspect, and tense 421 tic modals, although this is not their core meaning. Instead, this two-level description allows us to ascribe a more abstract meaning to each modal.

5.

Modals, aspect, and tense

In Chapter 5,1 investigated how modals on their different readings interact with aspect and tense. I started out by noting certain default patterns: a stative complement typically favors a present reading of the infinitive and a corresponding non-root reading of the modal, as in (3a). A dynamic complement usually yields a future reading of the infinitive and more easily gives rise to a root reading of the modal, as in (3b). Likewise, a modal preceding a perfect auxiliary or a progressive typically yields a non-root reading, as in (3c) and (3d), whereas a modal following a perfect auxiliary typically yields a root reading, (3e). However, these are just the default readings of an underspecified system, as can be witnessed from the fact that the default non-root reading of the various constructions can be overridden by adding a purpose clause or a (future-denoting) temporal adverbial to the construction, as in (3f), (3g), and (3h). In addition, many languages allow for a non-root reading of a modal overtly following an aspectual, as in (3i). (3)

a.

Jon mä vcere arkitekt. Jon must be architect 'Jon must be an architect.' (non-root)

b.

Jon mä bli arkitekt. Jon must become architect 'Jon must become an architect.' (root)

c.

Jon mä ha spist. Jon must have eaten 'Jon must have eaten.' (non-root)

d.

The water must be boiling, (non-root)

e.

Marit har mättet klare seg med lite. Marit has mustPERF manage SELF with little 'Marit has had to make do with little.' (root)

422 Summing up f.

Jon mä vcere arkitekt for at svigerfaren skal like ham. Jon must be architect for that father-in-law shall like him 'Jon must be an architect for his father-in-law to like him.' (root)

g.

Jon mä ha spist f0r han kommer. Jon must have eaten before he arrives 'Jon must have eaten before he arrives.' (root)

h.

The water must be boiling when you pour it over the tomatoes, (root)

i.

Han har mätta arbeidd med det i heile natt. He has mustPERF workPERF on it all night 'He must have worked on it all night.' (non-root)

There are many proposals regarding the interplay of modality, tense, and aspect in universalist approaches. Some invoke an extensive apparatus of functional projections to account for what is seen as a once-and-for-all ordering of the categories tense, aspect, and modality. I argued that very little is gained by adopting this type of an approach, as there is in fact no onceand-for-all ordering of the categories modality and aspect, at least not in Norwegian and many other Germanic languages. To assume a rigid hierarchy requires such a range of patch-up mechanisms that it casts serious doubts on the entire hypothesis of a universal hierarchy. Also, in my investigation of modals and tense, I reached the conclusion that a once-and-for-all ordering of modals and tense in a universal hierarchy of functional projections, as suggested by Cinque (1999) and Roberts and Roussou (2002, 2003), cannot be maintained. Instead, each modal, like any other verb, comes with its own tense package. I used generic constructions and sequences of tenses phenomena to illustrate this. I concluded that we need a much more flexible account to accurately describe the interplay of modals, tense, and aspect in Germanic languages and proposed a tense system for Norwegian, underspecified for present-future distinctions and exploiting the aspectual properties of predicates and temporal adverbials for its specification.

Modals, aspect, and tense

423

Table 5

+ Finite

- Finite

+ Past

preterite

participle

- Past

present

Infinitive

This system implies that each and every verb form in Norwegian hosts a tense element; there are no non-tensed verbs. If a linguistic item does not host a tense element, it is not a verb in Norwegian. Thus, the number of tense elements (T-projections, in Cinque's terminology), is determined by the number of verbs in a clause. Furthermore, each tense element specifies the relation between two events, where the speech event is the topmost event in the tense chain. That is, each tense element is "local" in the sense that it relates its verbal host to the preceding verb in the tense chain, and each verb provides an event argument for the next tense element, in a tongue-and-groove fashion.

(4)

ei e3 Marit ville prove ä komme. —> ville (S, e i ) , p r o v e (ei, e2), komme (e2, 63) Marit would try to come 'Marit would try to come.'

Each Norwegian tense element expresses two pieces of information: ±FIN(ite) and ± P A S T . Any non-past tense element (expressed by present and infinitival forms) is underspecified: it does not say whether the verb should be given a future or present interpretation. However, just like noun phrases can be referentially specified by means of adjectival and adverbial modifiers, tense elements are specified by means of temporal adverbials. In several European languages as well as in Capverdean creole (Baptista 1997), Stative predicates typically yield a present reading. This is also the case for Norwegian. If the non-past predicate is stative (e.g. if it is the Stative aspectual ha 'have'), it yields a present reading by default. We can override this default reading, however, by specifying the non-past tense element hosted by the stative predicate with a future-denoting adverbial. This forces a future reading of the stative predicate and facilitates the root

424 Summing up reading of a modal governing this predicate. The semantics of root and nonroot modals ensure that root modals are future-projecting (as they are in a sense directive, and one cannot issue a directive for something to happen in the past), whereas non-root modals (because of their function of grading the truth value of a proposition) are more comfortable with present- and pastdenoting complements; they may, however, also (for most modals more marginally) take future-denoting complements. This means that a modal with a present form, being stative, will by default get a present reading, simultaneous with the speech event S. The temporal interpretation of the complement relative to the modal will determine its reading as root or nonroot. Figure 2 'past'

S

'future'

modal Λ

V γ Non-root only

y γ Root and non-root possible

With these assumptions, we can account for the default-and-override effect of modals with stative predicates as well as the puzzling facts illustrated by (5): the modal in (5a) naturally yields a non-root reading, mä ' m u s t ' in (5b) naturally gets a root reading, and the same modal in (5 c) naturally has a non-root reading. (5)

a.

Jon mä ha spist. Jon must have eaten 'Jon must have eaten.'

b.

Jon mä ha spist f0r han kommer. Jon must have eaten before he arrives 'Jon must have eaten before he arrives.'

c.

Jon mä ha spist f0r han kom. Jon must have eaten before he arrived 'Jon must have eaten before he arrived.'

Modals, aspect, and tense 425 The temporal construal of the three sentences can be represented as in Figures 3, 4, and 5, respectively (see Chapter 5, section 6 for details). The notation (eHA > espisi ) encodes that there is a past-relation between the event denoted by ha 'have' and the one denoted by spist 'eaten', such that spist is 'past with respect to ha'. - . (S > e M A ) means that there is a non-past relation between the speech event S and the event denoted by ma. Figure 3 S

(eHA > Cspist )

spist

—• (S > eMA) ma -I ( eMA > e HA ) ha

Ma is non-past, finite and stative, hence by default 'simultaneous with the speech event'. Ha is also non-past and stative, but non-finite, hence 'simultaneous with the preceding verb (ma)' by default. This forces spist to be located temporally in the past (with respect to the speech event S), by transitivity, since its tense element denotes 'past with respect to the preceding verb', in this case, the aspectual ha. Since ha is simultaneous with ma and mä is simultaneous with S, spist is past with respect to S. Figure 4 S

—i (S>CMA) mä

Jon's arrival

(eHA>espisT) spist

'(cmä >®ΗΑ) ha

In (5b), the non-past tense element of the aspectual ha 'have' is given a specification as future because of the temporal adverbial denoting Jon's future arrival. This entails that the eating event may also be temporally located in the future; all that is encoded by the tense element of spist is that it is 'past with respect to the preceding verb'. The preceding verb is ha, and when ha is given a future specification, it takes the participle along. However, all that is encoded by the participle is that it is ' past with respect to the preceding verb'; hence, we do not know whether the eating event is prior or subsequent to the speech event S. This also captures our intuition

426 Summing up about (5b): as long as Jon has eaten before his future arrival, there is no telling whether this eating has already taken place at S or will happen at some future point in time. Figure 5 Jon's arrival S

(eHA > espisT)

spist

—ι (S > Cmä ) mä -ι ( eMA > eHA) ha

The reason (5c) does not give rise to a root reading is that the temporal adverbial does not denote a point in the future, but a point in the past. Hence, it cannot be utilized to specify the non-past relation encoded by ha as future, and the default reading of ha, simultaneity, once again kicks in. Thus, the temporal construal of (5c) is similar to that of (5a). Since the complement does not denote future, unlike in (5b), the root reading is no longer facilitated, and the default reading of a modal with a stative complement, the non-root reading, is once again the relevant one. I used this tense system to explain why directionals cannot be the complement of non-root modals. They do not host a tense element, which is crucial for any predicate to be assigned a potential truth value. As non-root modals target truth values and grade them, it follows that directionals cannot fulfill the requirements of a non-root modal's complement. This explains why modals with directional complements only have root readings. (6)

a.

Mariti skal [ti hjem]. Marit shall home 'Marit is supposed to go home.'

b.

Jonj mä [ti pa butikken], Jon must in storeDEF 'Jon must go to the store.'

c.

Greinai vil ikke [ti av\ branchDEF wants not off 'The branch does not want to come off.'

Concluding remarks 427 I also found that the widely assumed finiteness requirement on non-root modals does not hold for Norwegian. Many predicates of reporting, assuming, and judging, for instance, take infinitival non-root modals as their complements. The so-called finiteness requirement should hence be replaced with a requirement that the non-root modal must be explicitly temporally anchored by means of being a member of a tense chain, the topmost member of which is a finite verb. More generally, my findings suggest that several important generalizations often assumed to be syntactic constraints on the behavior of modals are in fact semantic in nature. Semantics seems to be a far more important submodule than syntax when it comes to determining root and non-root readings and the possible merger points of different types of Norwegian modals in a syntactic structure. Likewise, the semantic properties of modals are more important than their syntax in determining how they interact with each other as well as with the categories aspect and tense.

6.

Concluding remarks

As I am writing this, I have been working on modals in Norwegian and other languages for several years. It still feels as though I have merely scratched the surface of a few interesting topics related to modals and modality. One linguist told me some time ago that "one gets taken with modality. Once started, one can never stop working on it." I believe there is some truth to this. Every day, I find new and interesting data, new pieces of a puzzle that perhaps will never be complete. Many other linguists seem to share this experience; I have been surprised to learn how many researchers, perhaps renowned for their work in fields quite unrelated to modality, have articles, papers, and drafts on modals and modality. It is the destiny of almost any analysis to eventually be replaced by a new and hopefully better approach. Hence, what one may humbly hope to achieve as a researcher in linguistics is to present new data, new generalizations, and new insights that will remain relevant even though the analysis itself may sink into oblivience.

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Index

acquisition of modality, 38 affix-hopping, 338 agent-oriented adverbs, 105 agent-oriented modality, 249 (fn.) agreement systems, 106 Aktionsart, 292 alethic modality, 26, 33, 39, 116 anaphoric clitics, 165 aspect, 290, 321 assertion, 386 belief system, 225, 406 binding, 258, 260 Bokmäl, 22, 150, 327 bouletic modality, 25, 26 Burzio's generalization, 126, 193 Capp Verde Creole, 286, 348 Catalan modals, 165 clausal operator, 169 clause, 347 coercion, 292 (fn.) complements of modals, 57 conceptual domain, 34, 37 connectedness effect, 201 (fn.) connectivity effects, 201 (fn.) construction grammar, 93 context, 28, 250 controllability, 245 control verbs, 96 control vs. raising analyses, 5, 96, 125, 135, 143, 161, 172190 predictions of, 175, 416 conversational background, 29 copula, 213 counterfactual reading, 59, 375

counterfactuals, 23 Creoles, 286, 312 ff.

Danish modals, 84-5, 121, 124 de diclo, 220 (fn.) default and override, 9, 407, 376,

421 deictic modality, 33 deontic modality, 25, 26, 42, 47 directed, 48, 132, 269 non-directed, 48, 132 de re, 220 (fn.) descriptively adequate, 15 diachronic development, 17, 36-8, 103 ff, 311 (fn.) directional small clauses, 60, 71, 135,267, 299,384,411 dispositional modality, 132 distal form, 374 distinct lexemes, 149 Doppelgänger, 2, 82, 229 double entries, 253 double modals, in English, 128, 163 in Scandinavian, 128 in Old Norse, 129 (fn.) doxastic modality, 26 durative aspect, 291 Dutch modals, 55-6, 60, 89-90, 329, 336 dyadic modal predicates, 7, 10, 47, 52, 173-4 dyadic temporal predicates, 288 dynamic aspect, 290, 296 dynamic modality, 26, 42, 47, 156 impersonal reading, 50-1 dynamic predicate, 8, 296 ff. egressive aspect, 291 ellipsis, 63, 413

454

Index

empty expletive, 221, 230, 234 endo-skeletal, 94 English modals, 54-5, 60, 87, 161,411 epistemic modality, 4, 16, 25, 26, 47, 116 subjective epistemic, 31-3 objective epistemic, 31-3 weak epistemic, 27, 42, 50 EPP, 142, 179 (fn.), 259-60 equative structures, 201, 213 etymological description, 43-5 event modality, 39, 50 eventive aspect, 290 events vs. states, 292 evidential modality, 6, 21, 26, 32-3, 42, 47, 420 existential constructions and relativization, 195 existential modality, 27 existential operator, 27, 157 existential quantifier, 202 existential subjects, 159 exo-skeletal, 94 explanatory adequate, 15 fa (Norwegian), 75-77 Faroese modals, 58, 86-7 finiteness, 385-6 finiteness requirement, 7, 21, 24, 289,390,411 Finnish-Swedish, 328 Force, 269 force-dynamic analyses, 34-5 formalist orientation, 12 free relative, 202 (fn.) functional projection, 92, 97102 functionalist orientation, 12 future, 296, 378, 395 generics, 402 ff. German modals, 54, 55, 60, 8788, 155-6, 158 (fn.)

Germanic modals, 17, 151, 167, 392 grammaticalization, 113-5,239 (fn.) Greek modals, 324 (fn.) ha function of, 367 omission of, 59, 61, 371 ff. semantics of, 323, 367 habitual adverbial, 334 (fn.) hierarchy of modalities, 118 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 377 (fn.) HPSG, 148 Hungarian modals, 336 hybrid analyses, 415 Hypothesis of Semantic Transparency, 315 Icelandic modals, 85-6, 124 imperative, 19, 20-21 imperfective aspect, 291 indefinites ambiguity of, 220 ff. INFL, 104, 164 indicative, 17 individual anchor of propositions, 226 infinitival marker ä, 56-7, 78, 203-4 infinitive, 348, 350, 355 irrealis, 373 informant tests, ville, 45 tags and subject scope, 235 ingressive aspect, 290 innateness, 11 intensional context, 220 intensional predicates, 220 intentional subject, 181 internal periphery, 160, 352 intransitive modal, 173 (fn.) inventory of Norwegian modals

Index 455 preliminary, 16, 46, 74 final, 83,414 invisible verb analyses, 61,71, 134 irrealis, 380 (fn.), 387 (fn.) iterative, 292, 306 ff. Konjunktiv, 385 (fn.) Language Bioprogram Hypothesis, 313 lexical content, 53 LF-affix, 232 LFG, 93, 148,209 Limited Diversity Hyptohesis, 320, 323 lowering, 258 Mainland Scandinavian, 337, 347 (fn.), 348 male nipples, 330 (fn.) measurer, 95 mental model, 40, 403 merge, 92, 170 metaphorical, 182 metaphysical modality, 21, 26, 3 3 , 3 9 , 4 1 , 4 7 , 297 mirror effect, 119 mirror principle, 116, 316 modal auxiliaries, 1-2, 5-6, 53, 70 modal base, 30 modality vs. mood, 318 modality head, 115 modal main verbs, 1-2, 5-6, 53, 70, 80 monadic modal predicates, 7, 10, 47,52, 173-4 mood, 115,318,385 necessity operator, 28 negated modal, 80-1 negation, 58 (fn.), 117, 160, 233 (fn.) NICE properties, 63 non-argument subject,

expletive, 130, 175-6 weather-/?, 130, 177-9 idiom-chunk, 130, 178-9 non-root modality, 5, 8, null case, 173, 203 (fn.) Nynorsk, 22, 150, 327 observational adequacy, 15 originator, 95 paradigm of modal forms, 19 past, immidiate, 302, (fn.) 368 remote, 302 (fn.) 368 past participle, 22, 58-9, 350, 359 ff. perfect, 22, 163, 301 ff. 331, ff., 359 ff. perfective aspect, 291 phase, 156, 243 philosophical fallacy, 31 pidgin, 313-314 polarity transition, 132, 137 possibility operator, 28 potential modality, 27 prediction, 45, 283 premodals, 111 present, 59, 295, 350, 354 present participles, 19-20 presupposition of existence, 222 ff. preterite, 58, 350, 353 preterite-presents, 17, 411 primary meaning, 42 Principle of Relevance, 315 PRO (non-) obligatory control of, 255 ff. proform det, 65 (fn.), 196 (fn.), 209 (fn.), 214 proform dette, 196 progressive, 57 (fn.), 163, 291, 294 (fn.), 305 ff., 312 projection principle, 96

456

Index

proposition scope readings, 48, 63, 159, 197, 200,211-2 PRO theorem, 168 prototypical readings, 43-5 pro-verb gjere, 66-8 proxy head, 336 pseudoclefts, 62, 126, 192 f f , 201 ff. 417 quantificational adverbials, 391,395,402 quantificational modality, 27, 33,42 quantifiers nobody/somebody, 217 some/every, 218, 238 quasi-agentive, 24 (fn.), 394 quasi-modals, 33 quirky subjects, 106, 125, 152, 179-181 quotative modality, 118 raising verb, 96-7 reanalysis verbs, 91, 236 ff. reconstruction, 206, 209 (fn.), 233,330,419 redefinition of argument structure, 252 reference time R, 345, 351 relative pronouns, 196 restructuring verbs, 164 root modality, 4, 8, 16, 25 root vs. non-root, formal differences, 9, 144 alleged differences, 125, 295 selectional requirements, 9 communicative functions, 377 rule-giver, 269, 420 Scandinavian modals, 54, 127 semi-modals, 33, 326 sequence of tenses, 399 shopping linguistics, 12

source of modality, 90, 140, 268 ff. Spanish, 328-9 speaker tags, 40 specific/non-specific distinction, 222 ff. speech event S, 344 statistical approaches, 294 stative aspect, 291 adverbial, 300 predicate, 8, 296 ff., 304 ff. statives, 186, 295 subject-oriented readings, 49, 132, 200,212,214, 231, 248 subject scope, 153, 183-4, 199, 205 ff. subjunctive, 226, 318-9 subjunctive readings of modals, matte, 44 (also fn. 15) skulle, 44 (also fn. 15) Swedish modals, 83-4 symmetric predicates, 158, 248 tags, 63, 66-8 tautology, 277 telic aspect, 291 tendency, 51, 174 tense, 288 ff. absolute, 343 anaphoric, 389 chains, 342, 352 ff. distinctions, 349 ff., 423 element, 288 heads, 115, 342 ff. misplaced, 122, 333 operator, 288,321,385 particle, 312 relative, 343 shell, 351 Theta-criterion, 96 Theta-role, 92, 173, 265 (fn.), 272 (fn.)

Index additional, 121, 127 adjunct, 105, 249 (fn.) external, 169, 247, 255 individual, 94 internal, 168 secondary, 167 TMA systems, 312 TMA markers, 319 ff. Uniformity Hypotheses, 320 ff. Universal Grammar, 11 universal hierarchy, 98, 115, 312 ff., 332

universal quantifier, 27, 157 universalist approaches, 312 ff., 329 unmarked settings, 313 (fn.) UTAH (Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis), 93 veridicality, 226 VP-pronominalization, 66, 71, 145,413 weak obligation, 280

457