The "Nonpast" Features of the English Modals

Abstract

English modals can be inflected by a contextual feature called "nonpast," which denotes the present and the future time. This linguistic feature can co-occur with other contextual features in English such as perfective, progressive, generic, and non-generic. However, when a modal is used in a sentence, it does not only express the meaning of time, and the completion or continuity of an action. Nor does it simply show whether an action