The article investigates an overlooked development in the history of the English modals, namely the regularization of their plural inflection in Middle English (e.g. prs.ind.pl shulleþ for expected shullen). Using the LAEME and eLALME atlases and a number of electronic corpora, I document the frequency and dialectal distribution of such regularized modal verbs. It is shown that regularized shall was fairly common in Late Middle English, regularized can less so, and regularized may only very sporadically attested. The distribution of these forms shows a clear areal pattern, being most numerous in manuscripts from the southwest Midlands. I suggest that the most likely explanation for the observed patterns is interparadigmatic analogy with the ‘anomalous’ verb will, which in some dialects had developed the same stem vowel as plural shall.

这篇文章调查了英语情态变化历史上一个被忽视的发展，即它们在中古英语中复数变化的正则化（例如prs.ind.pl shulleþ for expected shullen）。使用 LAEME 和 eLALME 地图集以及大量电子语料库，我记录了此类规则化情态动词的频率和方言分布。结果表明，正则化的shall在中古英语中相当普遍，正则化的can较少，正则化的may只有非常零星的证明。这些形式的分布显示出清晰的区域模式，在米德兰兹西南部的手稿中数量最多。我建议对观察到的模式最可能的解释是与“反常”动词will的范式间类比，在某些方言中它发展出与复数shall相同的词干元音。