A CORPUS ANALYSIS OF CHANGES IN THE USE OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH MODALS AND SEMI-MODALS

This data applied during two ways; the first one is to test the modal replacement hypothesis proposed by Smith (2003) and discussed by Leech (2003), on the basis of data from the Hansard Corpus (THC- 1.6 billion words, 1800-2000) and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA - 400 million words, 1810-2000). The second purpose of the study was to draw upon time series models to generate insights about how modal and semi-modal frequencies have changed over time. Cumulatively, these two forms of analysis addressed an acknowledged gap in the current literature on modal and semi-modal frequency change, namely the question of whether modals are being replaced by semi-modals.