Help with "may"

[Miss_Pink]

What sentence costituent is "may" in this sentence??

That Republicans are still in charge, and may remain so after November, is due, they allow, to Bill Clinton’s personal misconduct and to September 11th 2001. But the new majority, they insist, is ripening

[Soup]

It's a modal auxiliary.

[Clark]

Syntactically, I would single out 'may remain so' and classify it as a mixed modal-nominal predicate, Where 'may' is a modal component.

[Soup]

I see ellipsis here:

Ex: That Republicans are in charge, and [that they] (subject) may (modal) remain (verb) so...

Note that 'so' replaces the phrase in charge.

[Clark]

Exactly. That's why I think that 'remain so' is a nominal part.

(They) remained in charge.
link veb + predicative

in charge = so = predicative

may remain so = modal part (may) + nominal part (remain so)

[Clark]

Originally Posted by Miss_Pink

What sentence costituent is "may" in this sentence??

That Republicans are still in charge, and may remain so after November, is due, they allow, to Bill Clinton’s personal misconduct and to September 11th 2001. But the new majority, they insist, is ripening

'That Reoublicans are still in charge, and may remain so after November'. If you consider the second fragment elliptical, then we have here two homogenious subject clauses. Right?

[Soup]

Hi Clark

Notice that, remain doesn't have -ed morphology, which would make it a participle, a nominal. Note also that, the modal may cannot function as a verb. Which means that remain is the verb.

There are three verb phrases:

Ex: That Republicans are still in charge, and [that they] may remain so after November, is due ... to Bill Clinton's ... .

The ellipsis is 'that they', giving the subject-verb pair here:

Ex:...and that they may remain ...

[Miss_Pink]

Originally Posted by Clark

'That Reoublicans are still in charge, and may remain so after November'. If you consider the second fragment elliptical, then we have here two homogenious subject clauses. Right?

Hmm...its getting a bit to complex for me

All i need to know is if "and may remain so after november" is a clause??

Also - if it is a clause, is may the predicator or is remain the predicator?

[Clark]

Originally Posted by Miss_Pink

Hmm...its getting a bit to complex for me

All i need to know is if "and may remain so after november" is a clause??

Also - if it is a clause, is may the predicator or is remain the predicator?

If it weren't for the comma before 'and', the fragment 'and may remain so ..' couldn't be treated as a separate clause. We would consider it as another predicate's group.
The predicate is 'may remain so'. It is a compound mixed modal-nominal predicate.

Soup, I don't think 'remain' is a participle. It is a bare infinitive. Any modal predicate consists of a modal verb (or expression) and an infinitive. 'May remain' is no exception.

[Soup]

Originally Posted by Clark

Soup, I don't think 'remain' is a participle.

Oh, OK. I may have misunderstood your meaning in post #5:

Originally Posted by Clark

nominal part (remain so)