I couldn’t help but wonder: do modals and negation attract?

Abstract

The present paper focusses on the historical development of the relationship between the English core modals can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might and must and the negator not. It explores whether semantic and morphosyntactic factors, particularly the emergence of do-support in Early Modern English, the increase in the popularity of contracted forms such as won’t in the nineteenth century and the loss of core modals in the twentieth century, had an influence on negation rates. Large-scale empirical analyses of modal use in historical corpora of British prose fiction published between ca. 1500 and 1990 reveal that many modals—particularly high-frequency will, would, can and could—indeed attract not. The establishment of the contractions n’t, ’ll and ’d had the strongest effect on the modal-negation system after 1500. The availability of the contracted modals ’ll and ’d led to a functional split whereby will and would became much more strongly associated with negation while contracted ’ll and ’d repel not-negation.