ABSTRACT
In Modern English there is a syntactically and morphologically definable subclass of verbs, the modal auxiliaries. The chapter is organized as follows: the remainder of this introduction will be devoted to giving theoretical background to our account. In particular, we will present those aspects of Government Binding theory that are important here: government and the theory of thematic roles. The authors also propose a condition on the distribution of verbs. This condition leads to the postulation of two kinds of agreement system: one syntactic and one morphological. Thus the chapter has three distinct but related goals. First, as a contribution to Government Binding theory, we propose and motivate the condition on verbs. Second, the chapter is meant to contribute to our knowledge of the history of English by bringing together well-known facts in a novel way. Third, the chapter exemplifies an approach to diachronic syntax adumbrated in Lightfoot, where syntactic change is explicitly related to aspects of acquisition.
