Modal Verbs and Negation in English: A Cognitive Perspective

This paper is a preliminary report of my research project to reveal syntactic structures of English sentences from theoretical perspectives: Generative Grammar and Cognitive Grammar. Towards this research goal, the aim of this paper is two-fold: to provide a descriptive analysis of modal verbs, may, can, must, and negation in English; to provide a theoretical analysis of these constructions by virtue of metaphorical extension and Force dynamics and Subjectification in the cognitive framework.
First, scrutinizing descriptive and theoretical studies concerning these constructions in past literature, this paper examines the interactions between modal verbs and negation in English. A brief overview of the distributions and two usages of modal verbs, i.e., root and epistemic, along with the distributions of negation, are provided. Relative scope between modal verbs and negation, are given emphasis. May scopes either over negation or below negation. Can mostly scopes below negation, while must mostly scopes over negation. Then, by presenting two past studies of English modals, theoretical analyses of the phenomena are provided. In one way, the diverse applications of modals can be formalized through metaphorical extensions in the framework of Force Dynamics. Namely, epistemic meaning is metaphorically derived from root meaning.
Meanwhile, from the cognitive perspectives, the root-to-epistemic extension can be explained as a process of subjectification, a process where the reference point is subjectified and separated from the event. After pointing out issues arisen against the former analysis, it is instead shown that the latter model properly capture the aspects of modals and negation in English that are discussed in the previous sections.