Modals as Closure Gates in the English Ghost-System

This paper reanalyzes English modals (can, may, must, will, shall) not as verbs, auxiliaries, orT-heads, but as typed closure gates in the English ghost-system. Parallel to the definite articleand infinitival to, modals are treated as partial operators defined only on independentlyadmitted predicational bases (PredBase), yielding closed modalized predicates (Pred_MOD)that higher templates can host. Under this view, the classical “defective verb” profile—absenceof non-finite forms, bare-V selection, resistance to nominalization—follows from gate-typing,not from stipulative gaps in a verbal paradigm.The analysis is embedded in a two-level grammar with an OBJ/META regime discipline: inOBJ, modals exhibit strict undefinedness on non-admissible classes (must frankly, must that),while META mention-constructors (WORD/SAY/QUOTE) create admissible targets thatsupport target-shift repairs. Independent admission diagnostics (HOST + RED/DED) preventcircularity by defining PredBase without reference to the modal itself.We unify modals with the broader ghost-connector family (Y, CH, D_art, TO_inf, NOT),provide a boxed proposition for MOD_op, and supply falsifier-grade predictions. Apreregisterable acceptability experiment (48 critical + 48 fillers) and analysis scriptsoperationalize the predicted gate signature: OBJ-low / META-high for hard classes, stability foradmitted bases. The result is a single, testable closure-gate architecture that replaces theauxiliary-verb view with a morphodynamically grounded operator theory.