allthingslinguistic:

panda-robot:

justindennis4:

the verb “can” is so fuckin weird

for starters, most verbs have a “to” like “to love”, “ to want”, “to fight”, but you can’t say “to can”. in fact, you’d say “to be able to”.

which brings me to the fact that “can” is basically a random substitute for “to be able to” depending on the indicated time ???

like for example:

Past: I wanted
Present: I want
Future: I will want

Past: I was able to (or I could, it depends)
Present: I can
Future: I will be able to

like you can say “I can go to the store” but you can’t say “I will can go to the store” you have to say “I will be able to go to the store”.

and like technically I guess we could replace the present “can” with “to be able to” and it would work but just sound hella awk like “I’m able to go to the store”

PLUS it doesn’t get conjugated AT ALL

ex:

I want, he wants
I fight, she fights
BUT
I can, he can
You can, she can

IT NEVER GETS AN “ S” it’s never “he cans” or “she cans”

like I’m sure there’re very logical yet bizarre and fascinating linguistic reasons for all this but just like whatthefUCK “can” ????!??!??

“Can” isn’t a “full-fledged” verb. It’s a modal/auxiliary verb like could, would, should, may, must, might and will. All of these have the same quirks that you talk about.

They generally have specific temporal meanings so they can’t be used in some tenses. They don’t conjugate for person either!

they all have to go with another verb, even if the verb isn’t pronounced. Generally if you say “I can”, it’s understood that you can X because of context

My favourite thing about modals is that they originally come from full verbs (”can” has the same root as “know”, “will” is related to “be willing”), but we also have a set of currently-being-created modals that still have a pretty transparent relationship to their full verbs: gonna, hafta, wanna, gotta.