Happy to report that my paper, Transitioning developmental paths in modal flavors: an experimental pilot study, co-authored with Remus Gergel, has been accepted to Evolutionary Linguistic Theory. In this paper we introduce a new experimental paradigm for testing pathways of diachronic development which shed light on the conditions necessary for semantic change. Pre-final draft: https://www.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/upload/lehrstuhl/gergel/publications_gergel/Modal_development_experiments.pdf