A Study on Usage of Can and May

Abstract

Using Stories from New Yorker 1950-1960 as a text, the usages of auxiliaries can and may, could and might are analyzed in the context. The result shows that may used to express permission is more often used than can regardless of degrees of politeness. In the sense of possibility may is used in statements, on the other hand, can in questions or negative clauses. Could and might express hypothetical possibility with little difference in their meaning, and as modals they express politeness, suspicion or supposition in present tense. This leads to further studies on how can and may keep their links or dissolve together in the sense of permission and the sense of possibility, and how could and might will be treated in the feature of tense and how they will be defined as modals.