조동사 NEED의 쇠퇴에 대한 코퍼스 연구

A Corpus Study of the Decline of the Auxiliary Verb NEED

This paper is a corpus-based study in the modal auxiliary need, the main verb need to and their blends. The examination of the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) covering from 1810 to 2009 shows the continuous fall of the frequency of the modal need: The frequency of [need not (needn’t)+bare infinitive] has dropped by 85.3% from its peak period (the 1880s) to the 2000s, and that of the inverted [need+nominative+bare infinitive] has dropped by 92.6% from the 1810s to the 2000s. By contrast, the frequency of the main verb need to shows the continuous rise from the 1810s to the 2000s: The 2000s shows about 100 times increase compared with the 1810s. The main verb use exceeded the modal use around 1910/20 and rapidly increased (showing a steep “s” curve) since the 1970s. The blending constructions have also been found throughout these years, such as [needs (not)+bare infinitive], [needed (not)+bare infinitive], [aux+need+bare infinitive], [need+nominative+to-infinitive], though they were unproductive. This paper attempts to explain why the modal use is declining while its counterpart is increasing. In the long span of history, NEED underwent grammaticalization, like the central modals WILL, SHALL, CAN, etc. However, NEED began to develop its grammatical function (i.e. modal verb) much later (around the end of the fifteenth century) than these central modals, and while the new function was not fully established and the layering of the old and new ones still existed, the reduction of the overall modals began to occur in recent English.