Grammatical categories

[Brian Richards]

Antonella,

In answer to your questions:
1. I would assume (without seeing the full context) that "I can" is
a modal verb used as an operator for ellipsis.

2. The status of "let" and "let's" is discussed in Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech
and Svartvik (1985) "A comprehensive grammar of the English language".
They regard "let" as a main verb even though it has some similaries with
modal auxiliaries in sentences like "let them come here". However, "let's"
is considered to be "a better candidat than 'let' for quasi-modal status".
(see page 148).

Brian

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Brian Richards
School of Education
The University of Reading
Bulmershe Court
Earley
Reading, RG6 1HY, UK
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On Thu, 24 Feb 2000, Antonella Conte wrote:

> Hi there fellow researchers,
>
> I am presently doing some morphological and syntactic analysis of English
> utterances.
>
> I would like to categorize or label the different words used in the
> utterances under the traditional parts of speech (noun, verb, adj, adv,
> pronoun, etc).  However, this is not as simple as it sounds... at least not
> for me.  I hope someone can shed some light on this.
>
> Question 1:
> In an utterance like : "I speak Italian" we have "pro-verb"
> In an utterance like: "I can speak Italian" we have "pro-modal verb-main verb"
> But in an utterance like: "I can"... What is the category of "can"?  Do you
> call it a modal verb or a main verb?
>
> Question 2:
> How can we categorize "let's" or let us" as in an utterance of the type:
> "Let's play hockey" or "Let him eat."  I figure "play" and "eat" are the
> main verbs, but what is "let"????? No grammar book supplies me with an
> adequate response other than stating that the utterance is imperative, but
> this is not what I'm looking for.
>
> Thank you,
> Antonella Conte
> Université Laval
>
>
>