A detailed account of the many uses and functions of these verbs. The nature of modality, and some controversial issues, are also discussed.

This book offers original theoretical accounts and a wealth of descriptive information concerning modality in present-day English. At the same time, it provides fresh impetus to more general linguistic issues such as grammaticalization, colloquialization, or the interplay between sociolinguistic and syntactic constraints. The articles fall into four sections: (a) the semantics and pragmatics of core modal verbs; (b) the status of emerging modal items; (c) stylistic variation and change; (d) sociolinguistic variation and syntactic models. The book is of considerable value to students and teachers of English and Linguistics at undergraduate and graduate level worldwide.

Main description: This volume presents strongly empirical, corpus-based studies of a range of English modal auxiliaries and modal constructions in specific uses. It also approaches some of the classic issues in the field of modality from new perspectives, notably that of the 'Theory of Enunciative Operations' developed by the French linguist Antoine Culioli and his colleagues.

The book presents new issues and areas of work in modality and evidentiality in English(es), and in relation to other European languages (French, Galician, Lithuanian, Spanish). Given the complexity of the relations among modal and evidential expressions, their constant diachronic evolution, and the variation found in different English-speaking areas, and in different genres and discourse domains, the volume addresses the following issues: the conceptual nature of modality, the relationship between the domains of modality and evidentiality, the evolution and current status of the modal auxiliaries and other modal expressions, the relationship with neighbouring grammatical categories (tense, aspect, mood), and the variation in different discourse domains and genres, in modelling stance and discourse identities.

Modals and Quasi-modals in English reports the findings of a corpus-based study of the modals and a set of semantically-related ‘quasi-modals’ in English. The study is the largest and most comprehensive to date in this area, and is informed by recent developments in the study of modality, including grammaticalization and recent diachronic change. The selection of the parallel corpora used, representing British, American and Australian English, was designed to facilitate the exploration of both regional and stylistic variation.

This new study on modality in English represents a departure from more traditional approaches to the subject, where the modal auxiliaries have been the usual focus of attention, by examining in detail the nature of their association with different categories of modal adverb. Modality is notoriously complex but the present work offers an accessible introduction to the topic, a comprehensive account of modal-adverb co-occurrence, and a reappraisal of the English modal system. The descriptive framework draws fresh insights from syntactic, semantic and pragmatic approaches to the study of language and communication, and from recent work in corpus linguistics. The book includes contrastive reference to the expression of modality in Spanish and a discussion of modality in such applied contexts as language teaching. A major feature is its reliance on authentic spoken and written language data. The study is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students of linguistics, English language, communications studies and related disciplines.

Modality is a grammatical, or semantic-grammatical, category. It is an important component of human languages. This is at least the case in most European languages. To what extent is it a near-universal? This thesis is to contribute to the question. It focuses on modal verbs in English and Chinese, two genetically and geographically unrelated languages, and analyzes what these two languages have in common and how they differ in their systems of modality. To achieve the aim, the thesis adopts the theoretical framework proposed by van der Auwera (1996, 1998 with Plungian, 2001) for the typological study of modality. Its language-specific descriptions involve the morphosyntactic features, notional functions, modal logic, and diachronic development. With these descriptions, it constructs a cross-linguistic database in a uniform, parallel structure. Then on the basis of this database, it deals with the cross-linguistic issues about modality in English and Chinese. Like many of the studies in this area, this research makes use of the well-sampled data in the relevant literature, thereby assuring the same degree of representativeness. When the data do not meet this need, it resorts to computer-based corpora. In the diachronic study of Chinese modality, quantitative analysis is adopted in proposing a development path for the senses of a modal. English translation is given particular attention in the description of Chinese modality and cross-linguistic analyses. One can only know one's own language only if one compares it with other languages. The present study is conducive to a better understanding of English and Chinese. It contributes not only to the investigation of language universals, but also to the study of human cognition and other linguistic or applied linguistic issues.

Diploma Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1, University of Bucharest (Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures), language: English, abstract: Modality is a semantic concept that covers notions such as possibility, probability, permission, ability, volition, necessity and obligation. The class of modals is in many languages both syntactically and semantically highly irregular and unpredictable: modals frequently have idiosyncratic conjugational patterns and are subject to highly specialized syntactic rules. One of the main characteristic of modal verbs is their relatively imprecise and indeterminate meaning, their ambiguity: the same modal can be deontic (i.e. based on rules and regulations), but it may also involve processes, sets of knowledge or belief systems, and thus get an epistemic interpretation. In order to define the class of modals or to provide a set of environments in which a modal may be correctly or appropriately used, one must refer to many levels of language: the purely syntactic environment, as well as the logical structure, the context of the utterance, the assumptions that are shared by the speaker and the addressee, the social situation assumed by the participants in the discourse, the impression the speaker wants to make on the addressee, and so on. There is also the question of the appropriate context environments, that is, the semantic-pragmatic issue. Therefore, a complete analysis of a particular modal can only be achieved by looking both at its syntactic features and at its semantic structure; in other words, the syntax of a modal verb is based on its semantics, and these two dimensions are inseparable.