Re: "can" "able to" mood
From: | Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> |
Date: | Monday, December 17, 2007, 13:08 |
Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:
> I think the difference is syntactic rather than semantic. In English
> et sim, you construct it with helper verb + inf, so it's clearly not a
> mood. But logically, the function seems more moodlike than aspectual,
> so I see no reason why it couldn't be a mood in some other lang...
I don't see why analytic construction would exclude moodhood?
FWIW, the name I learnt for "can", "may", etc in school was "modal auxiliaries".
Andreas