Does French have modal verbs?

Question

I was reading about English modal verbs a few days ago, and on the same page the author pointed out that the French don't have modal verbs. Fair enough. They don't have the equivalent of our "shall" and "would", and instead they use conjugated verbs like "devoir" before an infinitive, as in: "Vous devez les informer."

Then today I came across another article on a different site:

Defining modal verbs: A modal verb is a verb that qualifies an action with regard to its desirability, its necessity, its possibility or its futurity. While this is a clear and concise definition, it is an unsatisfactory definition which does not even fully account for all modal verbs in English. As far as French linguistics are concerned, it is often said that French does not have modal verbs. Whether or not this is the case is a matter of opinion, not fact, and will always be a good subject for academic argument among linguists; in recent years, and by assimilation with English and other languages, the expression "verbes modaux" is increasingly used.

http://about-france.com/french/modal-verbs.htm

Is this person wrong...or what is going on?

Answer 1

Since neither @Laure or @Gilles wish to post an answer, I'm posting their comments until they want to or someone gives more informations :

@Gilles :
I think the distinction is that French, like English, has modal verbs as a grammatical function (e.g. I want to drink // je veux boire), but not modal verbs as a separate grammatical nature (there's no equivalent of words like can and shall that don't follow the usual rules such as third person singular -s ending, present participle formed by adding -ing, etc.

@Laure :
French has modal verbs. What you quote doesn't say the opposite. I says " Whether or not this is the case is a matter of opinion,". Pouvoir & devoir are definitely modal verbs, there are a few others. Some grammarians call them semi-auxiliaires but they refer to the same thing.

More info : Pragmatique des verbes modaux en français : aspects synchroniques et diachroniques.

Answer 2

This is not an independent answer, but rather an addition concerning the practical aspect of modal verbs. From the point of view of a language learner (disclosure: English and French are both 'second' languages to me), the principal aspects of the modal verbs in English are:

• they are always followed by an infinitive
• they take infinitive without "to" (with some must-know exceptions)
• they form questions without an auxiliary verb

When studying French one confronts a rather different problem: whether and which preposition to use for introducing infinitive. In this respect devoir, vouloir and pouvoir are rather similar to modals, but there are many more verbs which behave in a similar fashion. Thus, the concept of a modal verb is not a very useful one.