Search

A survey of the literature on Old Saxon derivational suffixes and suffixoids does not yield a neat and clear-cut picture of forms. The reason is that some researchers take a diachronic view of the data, while others take a synchronic view. In this article I recommend apanchronicview of the data in hopes of clarifying the situation. As part of the discussion I argue that affixoids are a good example of grammaticalization. I thus also discuss and—as far as research on German is concerned—aim to resurrect the notion of AFFIXOID as a linguistic category. If successful, the results of this paper may be applied to other languages.

In this article the development of Germankönnen, dürfen, sollen, mögen, müssen, andwollenis examined in the light of grammaticalization theory. It is assumed that these verbs form a class (or subclass) of modal auxiliaries. Some of the assertions made on the development of modal verbs across languages are examined. For example, do the modal meanings develop from nonmodal meanings? Do the epistemic uses of these auxiliaries evolve from deontic ones? Can such an evolution be described in terms of metaphor and can the development of these verbs be described as following a distinct “path” that is “unidirectional”? Some of these questions are answered in the affirmative, but new question arise in the course of the investigation.