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本文是一篇英语语法论文，本文通过比较need和dare作为主动词、语气助词和混合结构的频率数据，发现随着need逐渐去辅助化，dare在形态句法中变得越来越自主，need和dare在MOE中经历了相反的语法化过程。
Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research background

“All language changes all the time, except for dead ones. And this change is just a matter of fact, which cannot be prevented or avoided” (Campbell, 2011: 2). It is one of the most pivotal missions for linguists to explore and figure out the causes and mechanisms of language change. As “grammar refers to the set of structural rules, which set limits on the arbitrariness and the chaotic nature of language” (Saussure, 2011: 130), “the changes to the grammatical elements can perfectly reflect what happen to the language itself” (Bybee, 2002). Therefore, to better understand language change, it is important to explore the causes and mechanisms of the grammatical variation of language. 

According to Meillet (1912), grammaticalization is a major concept in interpreting the mechanisms of grammatical variation. “There are mainly two types of definition for grammaticalization, one from a morpho-syntactic perspective, and one from a semantic-pragmatic perspective.” (Peng, 2009) The morpho-syntactic view of grammaticalization defines it as a process of formal change, “by which the parts of a constructional schema come to have stronger internal dependencies” (Haspelmath, 2004), whereas the semantic-pragmatic view defines it as a process of functional change, “where a lexical unit or structure assumes a grammatical function, or where a grammatical unit assumes a more grammatical function” (Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer, 1991). It is believed in this study that grammaticalization should entail changes on both formal and functional levels of languages.

1.2 Research significance

Based on the data result in this study, it is found the morpho-syntactic view from Lehmann (1995 [1982]) and the semantic-pragmatic perspective from Hein & Kuteva (2007) are rich in interpreting the formal and functional change of need and dare in the current language development. need is found to be diachronically enduring a process of “de-auxiliarization” as its lexical constructions gradually outnumbers its modal constructions, whereas dare is found to be gaining “syntactic automation” with the climbing statistical significance of blend constructions. Statistically, the diachronic trend is further evidenced by the synchronic result in COCA, displaying that these trends are found to be more statistically significant in stylistically colloquial registers such as TV/MOVIES and SPOKEN, which is in consensus with the famous assumption of Leech (2004) in recognizing colloquial language as most representative for modern language variation. In general, the grammatical variation of need features the notion of “decategorialization” from Heine & Kuteva (2007) but on the contrary direction, while the trend of dare is found to be explained by “objectification” from Lehmann (1995 [1982]) also to the opposite direction. In conclusion, they all can be interpreted to have experienced “degrammaticalization” in modern American English.

Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Modal verbs

2.1.1 Definition and classification of modal verbs

Modal verbs, or modals, have been a major component of verbal constructions in E本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。