quasimodals?

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:24 PM -0500 2/5/02, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>I'm not sure why the presence or absence of "to" is indicative of modality.
>My memroy is that such constructions as FIXIN' TO are usually considered
>quasimodals. Given that there are verbs such as HELP and (for some speakers)
>ASSIST and HELP for which the TO is dead optional, the presence or absence of
>the infinitival marker would seem to me to be just a minor surface-structure
>phenomenon that has little to do with more "profound" grammatical
>characterization.

Not to mention MAKE, where the TO is out for most speakers ("I made
him (*to) leave"), but shows up in the passive ("He was made *(to)
leave").

Larry