On the historical development of English and German modal verbs

Abstract

The paper presents some of the morphosyntactic peculiarities of modal verbs in English and German and studies the origin of these properties by outlining their development from the Proto-Indo-European period to the present. It shows that the unique morphological features of English and German modal verbs, namely ablaut or the lack of agreement, have their origin in the earliest stages of the development of modals, whereas other defects of modals, such as the lack of non-finite forms, are typical only of the English language, and developed quite recently, namely in late Middle English period.