This paper presents a comparative synchronic corpus investigation of Mainland Scandinavian må, måtte and måste ‘must, may’. These modals developed a wide range of different meanings and uses within the realm of necessity, possibility and beyond, i.e., ability, capacity, need, desirability, permission, wish, obligation, uncertainty, probability and concession. The rise of modal and postmodal meanings is a well-known instance of semantic change that follows predictable grammaticalization paths. Furthermore, the development of modals is a prototypical instance of grammaticalization as they are forms on their way from lexical to grammatical status. Because of this, modals have properties of both main verbs and auxiliaries to various extents. This paper will outline the etymology, grammaticalization paths, semantic distributions and formal properties of må, måtte and måste and show that these modals represent different stages of grammaticalization in the Mainland Scandinavian languages.
