By Tenses, Modal verbs

Hello everyone, I've just joined this forum and couldn't but help noticing this thread. I'm doing some research on modals so I'd like to offer my two cents worth: I will propose that modals bear syntactic tense, not semantic tense. What I mean can be seen by Seqeunce of Tense (SoT) observations....

This hypothesis appears to account for all the examples given so far by JTT, CJ, and MrP: Sometimes 'could' acts without apparent tense.¹ Sometimes it acts as the past tense of 'can'.² Sometimes we have to know the context, to know which kind of 'could' it is.³ ¹ a) 'Could you open the door,...

If it looks like a past tense, acts like a past tense, and has the 'semantic role' of a past tense – it's a past tense. What other criteria are there? ## JTT: It's these looks that are deceiving you, MrP. ## You haven't answered the question, JT. What are the other criteria? This is a...

CJ: I answered this once before. >>>>>>>>>> JTT: No, Jim, you failed to answer it the first time. As I stated, I was not looking for any kind of reported speech. Jim wrote: However, to be more exact, the prototypical modal for the meaning "it is possible that" is "may". Frequent substitutes...

JTT: "The possibility started yesterday. It therefore started in the past." But it has not come to fruition. It can have no past tense because nothing has past, ie. nothing has finished. How curious. A possibility has no past? Maybe I misremembered the conversation with Casi: Casi: I hear you...

JTT wrote: You couldn't have done more than glanced at the box "May/might", at the 'commnet' site, Mr P. If you had, you'd have noticed the glaring inconsistencies that show "that different people DO NOT hear conditional and modal verbs slightly differently. No need for all caps, JTT. Please use...

Re: The tenseless modals verbs of English Posted: 13/02/2005 09:52 PM JTT wrote: Every modal verb in English can operate in past, present and future situations. Modals carry modal meaning into sentences, they do not carry tense. "operate", yes. I agree. Both statements are true. I trust...

Mr P wrote: I think you'll find history mostly relates to the past, JT. JTT: A given, Mr P. But within that past, some aspects point to the future. After explaining yourself so well in that post, you're back to your glib responses. These don't help at all, Mr P. They are, as I've mentioned,...

JTT wrote: Every modal verb in English can operate in past, present and future situations. Modals carry modal meaning into sentences, they do not carry tense. "operate", yes. Both statements are true. I trust you'll find the following site and its links more than supportive, if not...

Mr Pedantic wrote: The OED's 'may/might' entry takes us back to Fortiter's thread: 1. If that were true, he would be wearing a nasturtium in his buttonhole. 2. If that was true, why wasn't he wearing a nasturtium in his buttonhole? If we were to apply the logic of earlier posts in this...