A note on modality in French

Abstract

This paper deals with certain lexicogrammatical, rather than the more commonly treated semantic, aspects of modality in French. The realization of modal meaning in French covers more or less the same range of resources as English, with the exception that where English has an auxiliary + verb construction, French does not, and uses rather a verb + infinitive construction. French grammars usually call the finite verb in this construction a “semi-auxiliary”. The remarks in this paper relate specifically to pouvoir and devoir. Formally similar constructions in English are frequently dealt with in terms of phase; however, the concept of phase, in terms of a complex verb phrase which realizes a single process, is open to question. An alternative solution is to treat the infinitive as the verb of a rankshifted infinitive clause. This can be applied to clauses with pouvoir and devoir in French, but raises the question of the transitivity status of such clauses. The suggestion is made that they encode a form of relational process. This solution might be seen not as a replacement for more traditional analyses, but as an alternative co-existing in a relationship of relativity with them.