The Semantic Predecessors of Need in the History of English ...

Necessity is a primary meaning which is expressed diversely in the languages of the world and whose evolution helps describe the human cognitive development. In the history of English at least five verbs have been found to mean 'need' Þurfan, beÞurfan, need, behove and mister. By adopting a corpus-based approach, this book studies all of them diachronically, from the origins of the language (c.750) to the end of the early Modern English period (1710).

In this work, Loureiro-Porto analyzes the corpus data from the double perspective of modality and grammaticalization. Her approach to modality follows cognitive models, and so necessity is understood in terms of forces; grammaticalization is the framework within which the level of auxiliarihood of each of the verbs meaning 'need' is measured throughout history. The results of this study will appeal to researchers in the areas of grammaticalization and modality from a diachronic point of view, and also to scholars and students interested in PDE modal auxiliaries.