본문은 일상적인 대화에서 화자가 청자에게 전달하는 구문 내용은 크게 ‘사건정보’ 와 ‘화자정보’로 나누어지며, 청자가 두 가지 정보를 모두 이해하면서 완전한 의사소 통이 이루어진다고 보았다. 또 ‘능원동사(조동사)’가 표현하는 의미에는 ‘화자정보’의 요소가 더 많이 함유되어 있기에, ‘사건정보’를 중심으로 한 어법기능이나 품사분류 에서 모호한 성분으로 남을 수밖에 없다고 판단하였다. 지금까지 연구에서는 ‘사건정 보’를 기반으로 한 어법관계를 통해서 능원동사의 어법기능을 파악하고자 하였고, 또 양태의미를 통한 의미영역의 분석에서도 개별 능원동사의 ‘다의성(多义性)’만을 제시 했을 뿐이다. 그래서 본문은 ‘사건정보’보다는 ‘화자정보’의 측면에서 능원동사의 의 미정보가 서로 다른 언어환경에서 어떻게 변화하는지를 고찰하고자 하였다.

This article is a diachronic study of different constructions involving the verb DARE from Old English (OE) to Modern English (ModE). With regard to the Late ModE (lModE) change, this paper examines the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) covering 1810 to 2009. It is found that the general tendency is a decline of the frequency of DARE in terms of both the modal auxiliary and the main (lexical) verb uses in American English. However, the frequency of the auxiliary use, contra Taeymans (2004), has more rapidly decreased, while that of the main verb use has less drastically dropped. The blend constructions have had a low frequency throughout the past 200 years. Yet, the inflected blends(e.g. dared, dares) showed gradual decrease of frequency, whereas the DO-support blends did not. This study also examines historical changes from OE to Early ModE (eModE). It is found that lexical and modal properties coexisted from OE to Early Middle English (eME), the modal ones climaxing during the eME period. This paper argues that the grammaticalization from lexical to modal was triggered before the OE period and thereafter until eME is the period of gradual extension. From the lME period lexical properties increasingly occurred, which led Beths (1999) and Taeymans (2004) to argue for degrammaticalization. This paper accounts for the same phenomenon in terms of renewal, a natural process in grammaticalization. There are lME evidences showing phonological and semantic reductions of DARE, which necessitated a renewal of DARE. This study, moreover, shows that the words of the same category can follow different paths of change with time.