ModP Hypothesis: Restructuring The Syntactic Structure Of Modals

Modals, represented by must, can, could, will, would, shall, should, may and might in English, are an important but complex linguistic phenomenon. They are the hot topics in the literature of philosophy, logic, semantics and syntax. The research on modals in syntax is mainly focused on their syntactic structures.The controversies on the research of modals in syntax start with the judgment of their identity, i.e. whether modals are auxiliaries or verbs, or the ones in the continuum between the two. Different category definitions directly determine the different syntactic positions of modals. All in all, there are at least five different syntactic analyses of modals. They are analyzed as head of VP, IP, CP, TP, or vP separately. These analyses do contribute to explore the deep and essential structure of modals and even of sentences. However, they are mainly based on the distinction of epistemic modals and root modals according to their semantic or pragmatic meanings in different sentential contexts. Moreover, the distinction between lexicon and grammar is not clarified. Consequently, they all have the unavoidable dilemma and contradictions within their theoretical framework.With the minimalist spirit, this study is managed to solve the problems in the previous studies, and intended to propose a new account of the syntactic structure of modals with a new ModP hypothesis, in consideration of their idiosyncratic syntactic features. Modals, as the focus of this study, are an important modality operator of the whole sentence. They are not the necessary condition for VP in sentences, therefore their logic scope is not only over VP, but over the basic sentence clause.This study asserts that modals belong to auxiliary as a functional category, but not main verb, so the VP analysis of modals is clearly untenable. Furthermore, a conclusion drawn from the analyses is that modals do not instantiate any features of INFL, and modals, TNS and ASP are three independent categories, which all have their own maximal projections. More importantly, this thesis redefines modals, and makes clear the subcategory features of them. In the new framework, modals are reanalyzed as head of the maximal projection ModP (modality phrase). This explanation is consistent with the Modal Logic, and can be successfully used in idiom research. The Hypothesis of ModP can not only explain the generative position of modals in the syntactic structure, but it will open up the possibility to solve the problems of INFL and Complementizer. It can not only contribute to the reanalysis of the sentence structures, but pierce the logic structure and universality of human languages. Moreover, the redefining and reanalysis on modals can be dedicated to the improvement of the grammar teaching and learning.