Abstract
The article presents a description of the acquisition of modal verbs and their grammatical forms in a Czech monolingual child. The author uses a corpus of transcriptions of audio recordings from age 2.8 to 3.6 which covers the phase of protomorphology and transition to morphology proper.
Pragmatic function of verbs occurring in a child's speech is illustrated by examples, the occurrence of miniparadigms and gradual development of grammatical forms is documented. First the child produces only a limited number of forms - first just in repetitions, then the 3rd person singular present tense appears as a universal form.
Finally the 1st person singular and plural forms appear. In parallel, the child learns to use the past tense, the future tense, conditional and passives.