Relativism and Universalism in Linguistics - Fachbereich 10 ...

Workshop 1 – Abr 145
and Dasher 2002), and illustrating that the determination of modal type is a result of historical
developments. Abraham (1998-2002) has also shown that historical factors are at issue,
including the loss of Old English perfective prefixes and the development of definite articles,
which co-occur with the tendency for deontic modality to associate with perfective main
verbs and epistemic modality to be found with imperfective main verbs. Evidence from a
study of the history of be supposed to reveals that a pre-modal stage of marking generic
aspectual situations may be found prior to the development of deontic meanings (Ziegeler
2003; in prep.); further evidence is found in the case of a core modal, will, for the same
generic aspectual conditions to arise in Old English examples, prior to the stage known as
'future-projecting modality'. In the latter case, the generic examples studied are all seen to
have generic subjects, thus creating the meaning of general proclivity rather than intention, a
semantic property of individuated subjects.
Compositional theories of aspect refer to the need to consider not only verbal semantics but
the semantics of the entire construction of verb plus nominal arguments and adjuncts in
describing aspect (Verkuyl 1993; 1999). In other studies, e.g. Visconti (2004), and as also
suggested by Bybee (1985), the shift to deontic meanings of be supposed to took place when
the main verb referred to events taking place after the moment of speaking (thus entailing
perfective aspect in the verb). However, even with a perfective main verb, the presence of
generic subjects still renders the meaning of the construction truth-conditionally gnomic, and
such generic uses of the emerging modal were frequent in early stages of development. In the
shift from generic aspectual functions to future-projecting modality seen in the present
studies, it will be observed that the increase in individuated, specifically-referring arguments
plays a significant role. However, the present paper will examine what additional factors may
have been relevant in the transition from generic, pre-modal constructions to the futureprojecting
modality associated with the development of deontic functions today.