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nglish. In modern English, modal verbs are concerned with the “opinion and attitude” (Lyons, 1977: 452) of the speaker such as possibility, necessity, prediction, and volition. Quirk et al. (1985: 137) provide a synchronic continuum of auxiliary verbs where the class of auxiliaries can be easily identified, which is “probably the best and best known” (Krug, 2000: 43). It is shown in Table 2.1 below. 

According to Table 2.1, from central modals to main verbs each category forms a rank by degrees of auxiliaryhood. Central modals and main verbs are the two ends of the line and the other categories are referred to as the intermediate area (Quirk et al., 1985). It is the two marginal modals need and dare that are given extra attention in this study as they lie in the intermediate area between auxiliaryhood and lexicality.

2.2 Historical linguistics

Historical linguistics is the formal study of the causes and patterns of language change. To describe or reconstruct languages in a certain period of history, historical linguists base their methodology on the comparison between languages in different phases of time or in different places. In this light, historical linguistics makes it possible to observe the similarities or differences between languages.

It is until 19th century that historical linguistics become recognized as established science. Since then, it has experienced three stages of development. R. Rask from Denmark, J. Grimm, and F. Bopp from Germany are considered the foremost scholars to systematically research on historical linguistics. “R. Rask investigates the ancient Nordic language and discover the phonetic patterns that determine the genetic relationship between languages. J. Grimm points out the phonetic similarities between Greek, Heuttian and High German in Germanic language, which is commonly recognized as the Grimm’s law or the first Germanic sound shift. F. Bopp then compare the morphological characteristics of Sanskrit with some other European and Asian languages and propose that there exists an archaic proto-language in which Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages are originated from.  Relevant studies of the above three scholars have laid a solid foundation for the theoretical development of historical linguistics” (Shao, 2012). 

Chapter 3 Methodology.....................25

3.1 Method.....................25

3.1.1 Corpus-Based Methods.....................25

3.1.2 Diachronic and Synchronic Methods.....................25

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion......................34

4.1 Diachronic analysis of need and dare......................34

4.1.1 Need and dare in full, modal and blend construction ......................34

4.1.2 The diachronic variation of need and dare’s negation......................34

Chapter 5 Conclusion......................71

5.1 Major findings.......................71

5.2 Implications....................74

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