A Corpus Analysis of Changes in the Use of British and American English Modals and Semi-Modals

Abstract

This research has two main purposes. The first one is to test the modal replacement hypothesis proposed by Smith (2003) and discussed by Leech (2003), on the basis of data from the Hansard Corpus (THC- 1.6 billion words, 1800-2000) and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA - 400 million words, 1810-2000). The second purpose of the study was to draw upon time series models to generate insights about how modal and semi-modal frequencies have changed over time. Cumulatively, these two forms of analysis addressed an acknowledged gap in the current literature on modal and semi-modal frequency change, namely the question of whether modals are being replaced by semi-modals.