On the Modality of the English Verbs of Seeming

Abstract. This paper concerns the syntax-semantics interface in the analysis of two complementation types of the English verbs of seeming, namely structures containing phrases with the copula to be and those with zero copula (look/seem/appear to bePvs. 0 P). The aim of this study is to see what kind of modal meaning can be attributed to the verbs under investigation and how the observed meanings are dependent upon the complement type.