LAUSR

ABSTRACT The paper discusses an analysis of the modal predicate with can and the perfect in American English. The study uses language samples excerpted from The Corpus of Contemporary American English and The Corpus of Historical American English, and it takes both a synchronic and diachronic approach. The investigation has four aims: (i) examining the meaning(s) expressed by can with the perfect, (ii) establishing the semantic field of can in predicates with the perfect, (iii) pinpointing the factors that are responsible for the particular meanings, and (iv) describing the development and contemporary status of the studied construction. The study has shown that can with the perfect expresses either speaker’s reasoning about a hypothetical past possibility or speaker’s certainty about the non-occurrence of a past situation; thus epistemic modality. It has also proven that modality interacts with the perfect and negation, yielding epistemic readings of can. In addition, the study has extended the array of the negative contexts that influence the modality of can in the analysed predicate type. Further, the investigation has established that can with the perfect is generally a rare construction, with the most intensive use recorded before the 20th century. At present, we may be witnessing its obsolescence.