The modals of today essentially occur only with a plain infinitive. However, they
were not so restricted during OE and ME. Many of the premodals could be used
intransitively with an adverbial adjunct indicating direction into eModE times (18-35).
Shall and may could further be used intransitively without a directional adverbial, though
this was less common (36-39).
The pre-modals could also be used transitively, governing NP direct objects, noun clauses, that-clauses, and past participles. When pre-modals appeared with direct objects, they had notional meaning. Shall with an object apparently died out in the fifteenth century, while can, could, will, would, and may all continued to take objects into the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Visser makes a distinction between "modal" (54, 56) and "non-modal" (53, 55) would, stating that the latter, with a noun clause, was less peremptory, and was initially less common. May and especially will were known to take that-clauses (56-59). When used with a past participle, passive (60-63), active preterite, or perfect (64-67) interpretations were possible (Plank, p. 332).
Selection of the bare infinitive further distinguished the pre-modals. In OE, the to-
infinitive began to occur in variation with the plain infinitive, gradually displacing the
latter in most contexts. Statistical analyses (Warner 1982, 1993) show that while most
verbs were indiscreet in their choice of infinitive, the plain infinitive was regularly
preferred by cann, dearr, m�g, mot, sceal, �earf, and wile, as well as a handful of certain
other verbs. During ME the to-infinitive was used with the pre-modals only if the
infinitive preceded the pre-modal or if there was intervening material. This usage was by
far most frequent with will and would, and rarest with can and could, and died out during
the sixteenth century (68-77).
The premodals appeared in constructions parallel to modern post-auxiliary ellipsis (78-80) and pseudo-gapping (81-84) during both OE and ME (Warner 1993, p.114-115).
During OE and ME, pre-modals often occurred in constructions with impersonal (nonfinite) verbs, with no nominative subject. The impersonal construction was maintained even though the verb was subordinated to the modal, and the modal was "transparent" to the construction in which it was located. Few other verbs behaved this way (Warner 1993, p.123).