Modal verbs and aspect: The event structure in syntax

This dissertation explores modal verbs as an aspectual phenomenon, explaining their unique position among the class of verbs as a result of feature checking in the syntax. Focusing primarily on German, Dutch and English, I discuss syntactic-semantic interface issues surrounding what have traditionally been understood as the "core set" of modals, explaining why traditional grammars find it necessary to use both syntactic and semantic criteria in order to identify a set of modal verbs, to the exclusion of other verbs that may take a bare infinitive complement or semantically related constructions, such as semi-modals. After exploring the historical and morphological connection between modal verbs and lexical and grammatical aspect, I investigate the interrelationship of modality and aspect as both relate to the syntactic structure of an event. Since a strong case can be made for the relevance of aspect to the mapping of argument structure onto phrase structure positions, I propose, given this interrelationship, that modality, too, should be considered as a syntactically relevant feature, so as to avoid a redundancy effect between the lexicon and syntax. Operating within the Minimalist Program, I propose a syntactic model in which a modal feature is checked in a functional projection within the vP, the same position that is responsible for checking a telicity feature with regard to aspect. Morphosyntactic phenomena of modal verbs are investigated with respect to the proposed syntactic model, and applications of the model to other constructions exhibiting modal readings are also discussed.