Abstract
The development of English modal from main verb in Old English to auxiliary in early Modern English, has been analysed on the one hand as a categorial reanalysis from V to Aux, on the other as a grammaticalization process. It is clear that the historical changes affecting the modal verbs take place very gradually, which would seem on the surface to argue for a grammaticalization approach. However, it is unclear what the grammatical correlates are for the various stages in this grammaticalization process. It will be argued that the graduality of the changes is to some extent illusory; modals in Old English are lexical verbs that select a propositional VP complement, as opposed to IP or CP with other verbs. A number of syntactic changes, themselves reanalyses, conspired to induce a categorial reanalysis from V to Aux. Thus we will see that the gradual process can be viewed as a series of discrete and independently motivated steps.
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