Look at the following sentence:

The students can submit the assignment tomorrow.

Why might can be functioning as a modal auxiliary (T) in this sentence?

Question

Look at the following sentence:

The students can submit the assignment tomorrow.

Why might can be functioning as a modal auxiliary (T) in this sentence?

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Modal auxiliaries occupy the T (tense) position and select a following bare infinitive, so the immediate adjacency of can to submit with no tense morphology is diagnostic of its being a modal auxiliary.

1) Relevant knowledge points and concepts
- Modal auxiliaries (can, could, will, must, may, etc.) sit in the T head of the clause and are followed by a bare infinitive (no to).
- They do not carry tense morphology (no -s for 3rd person, no past/present inflection) and do not use do-support for negation or questions.
- Syntactic tests: inversion for questions (Can the students…?), negative formation (cannot / can’t), absence of agreement (-s), and selection of a bare verb (submit).

2) Step-by-step reasoning
- In the example sentence The students can submit the assignment tomorrow, can directly precedes submit, which is in the bare infinitive form (no to, no -s, no tense marking).
- Replace with a non-modal auxiliary: if can were a lexical/main verb, we’d expect different morphology or argument structure and do-support for negation/questions (The students do not can … is ungrammatical).
- Form question: Can the students submit the assignment tomorrow? shows inversion with can, characteristic of auxiliaries in T.
- Negation: The students cannot submit … (or can’t) — again typical auxiliary behavior rather than using do-support.

3) Calculations/intermediate steps
- Not applicable here; tests are linguistic diagnostics rather than arithmetic. Intermediate diagnostic checks performed: adjacency to bare infinitive, inversion in question, negation without do-support, lack of inflection.

4) Why the correct answer is correct
- The key diagnostic stated in the answer — that can appears immediately before a verb without tense marking (submit) — matches the defining syntactic behavior of modal auxiliaries in T. This placement and form (bare infinitive following) directly indicate can is functioning as a modal auxiliary.

5) Why other options are incorrect
- No alternative choices were provided in the prompt. Potential confusions (e.g., treating can as a lexical verb) fail the diagnostics: lexical verbs would require different morphology/structure and do-support for negation/questions, which is not observed here.

6) Conclusion
- Therefore, can is functioning as a modal auxiliary (T) because it appears immediately before the bare verb submit with no tense marking, confirming the provided answer.

Look at the following sentence: The students can submit the assignment tomorrow. Why might can be functioning as a modal auxiliary (T) in this sentence?单项选择题

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