On the origin of the modal verb need 1 Johan van der Auwera Martine Taeymans University of Antwerp Limburg University Centre For Lachlan The English modals are a classical problem for students of English. Mackenzie (1997), too, devotes, a full chapter to them, and he points out that present-day English need is in some respects rather like present-day Dutch hoeven (Mackenzie 1997: 81). Etymologically, of course, need and hoeven are quite different. This paper attempts to shed some light on the early history of the English verb. 1. Introduction The present-day English verb need has attracted a lot of attention, especially because need comes in two versions, (i) a full verb with a third person indicative present -s, do for negatives and questions, and a to infinitive, and (ii) an auxiliary, without the -s, without do, without infinitival to, and also without a positive affirmative use. (1) a. Does he need to see this? b. He does not need to see this. c. He needs to see this. (2) a. Need he see this? b. He need not see this. c. *He need see this. Studies hail from the partially overlapping fields of English modals (Duffley 1994) or modals in general (van der Auwera 2001), grammaticalization theory (Taeymans 2004), and negative polarity semantics (Van der Wouden 2001). In this paper we turn to the origin and the early development of this verb. We will see that there are puzzles there too, and that some are relevant for understanding the 1 This paper was presented at the 25th conference of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (Verona 2004). Thanks are due to the Research Council of the University of Antwerp for supporting this work with a “GOA” grant (2003-2006). Special thanks are also due to Louis Goossens. The glosses use the following abbreviations: ACC ‘accusative’, DAT ‘dative’, DEF ‘definite’, F ‘feminine’, GEN ‘genitive’, IND ‘indicative’, M ‘masculine’, PRS ‘present, ‘PTR’ ‘preterite’, SUBJ ‘subjunctive’, 2 ‘second person’, and 3 ‘third person’.