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GÜNTER RADDEN, Meaningful Grammar

Modal verbs are grammaticalized from main verbs, and their sense
developments can be traced back to Old English. Can goes back to cun-
nan ‘know how to do X’ and, via implicature, developed the senses of
‘ability to do X’ and ‘objective permission-granting’. May derives from
magan ‘have power, physical ability’ and developed the senses of ‘sub-
jective permission-granting’ and ‘subjective epistemic possibility’.
Why can has adopted objective enabling senses and may subjective
ones is elusive. Must goes back to mōtan ‘have to, be able to’ and its
meaning has, due to its competition with objective have to, been nar-
rowed down to subjective compelling senses.
The distribution of these four modals gives the impression that
deontic and epistemic modalities are more complex than the other two
types of modality. In fact, they are usually at the center of studies on
modality—it should be mentioned, though, that the most frequently
used modal verb is can in the sense of intrinsic possibility.

(ii) Deontic and epistemic modality have been shown to share the
property of force dynamics (Sweetser 1990). The notion of force dy-
namics pertains to the opposition between forces and counterforces.
Forces typically apply to the physical and social worlds. Obligations
are straightforward instances of force-dynamic situations. When your
father is telling you, “You must clean up your room”, he is adopting
the role of a powerful force assuming that you, as the weaker coun-
terforce, will comply with his request. Its equivalent in epistemic
modality is logical necessity. When looking at old family photos, Dad
might point at one and say: «This must be our great grandmother
Mimi». He makes use of the force of evidence — yellowed photo, old-
fashioned clothing, resemblance with their grandmother — that al-
lows him to come to this conclusion. The counterforce would be a
tinge of uncertainty, otherwise he would have said «This is great
grandmother Mimi».
The deontic notion of permission also has a force-dynamic basis.
When you are in authority to grant permission, you lift a potential bar-
rier and thereby enable the permission-seeker to pass through. Like-
wise, when you express an epistemic possibility, as in “You may be
right”, you remove counter-evidence as a potential barrier so that the
hearer is free to accept or dismiss the speaker’s assessment. The rela-

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