Linguistic modality

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A modal form is a provision of syntax that indicates the predication of an action, attitude, condition, or state other than that of a simple declaration of fact. The modality of a grammatical form is the quality or state in question. These include the assertion or denial of any degree or manner of affect, belief, certainty, desire, obligation, possibility, or probability on the part of the utterer. Another definition of modality is given as follows:

"the relativization of the validity of sentence meanings to a set of possible worlds. Talk about possible worlds can thus be construed as talk about the ways in which people could conceive the world to be different" (Kiefer 1994:2514).

Contents 1 Explanation 2 Form 3 Mood and modality 3.1 Deontic moods 3.1.1 Commissive moods 3.1.2 Directive moods 3.1.3 Volitive moods 3.2 Epistemic moods 3.2.1 Evidentiality 3.3 Other moods 4 See also 5 External links 5.1 SIL: ("what is...?") 6 Bibliography

[edit] Explanation

When considering modality it is useful to distinguish between two parts:

• the dictum: what is said
• the modus: how it is said (that is, the speaker's cognitive, emotive, and/or volitive attitude about what is said)

For example, a sentence could have the following dictum:

It is hot outside.

This dictum could be paired with various types of modi, such as the following:

I think that it is hot outside.

I believe that it is hot outside.

I know that it is hot outside.

I hope that it is hot outside.

I doubt that it is hot outside.

It must be hot outside.

It has to be hot outside.

It might be hot outside.

It could be hot outside.

It needn't be hot outside.

It shouldn't be hot outside.

It is probably hot outside.

Perhaps it is hot outside.

It is possible that it is hot outside.

It is certain that it is hot outside.

It is probable that it is hot outside.

It is likely that it is hot outside.

Traditionally, studies of modality distinguish between:

• (a) sentence modality, which deals with sentence types, such as declarative (a statement), imperative (a command), interrogative (a question), optative (a wish), exclamative (an exclamation), etc., and
• (b) verbal modality, which deals with the modal verbs and the mood of verbs.

[edit] Form

Many languages will mark some modalities with particular word endings, etc., but will leave other means for marking other modalities (e.g. phrases).

[edit] Mood and modality

Languages differ in how fine distinctions of mood they make grammatically. No language would provide grammatical markings for all the moods below, although they are all expressible in any language using sufficient phraseology.

In language, modality is the subject concerning so-called modal auxiliary verbs like can, must, and should, that are customarily used to modify the meaning of other verbs (which in turn tend to take an infinitive form). Modal verbs express possibility (and impossibility, necessity, contingency, etc.), permissibility (and obligation, proscription, etc.), probability (and improbability, etc.). A distinction can be made between both grammatical modality and grammatical mood. Linguistic modality can also refer to the type of communication, whether vocal, signed, or written.

[edit] Deontic moods

Deontic moods include the commissive, directive and volitive moods.

[edit] Commissive moods

Indicate promises or threats.

[edit] Directive moods

Indicate requests, commands, instructions, etc.

• Precative mood: signifies requests, e.g. Could you pass me the salt?
• Deliberative mood: asks whether something should be done, e.g. Should we go to the market?
• Imperative mood: expressing commands, e.g. Pass me the salt!
• Immediate imperative mood: commands that should be implemented immediately, e.g. Pass me the salt right now!
• Jussive mood: indicates commands, permission or agreement with a request, e.g. Why don't you pass me the salt.
• Permissive mood: indicates that the action is permitted, e.g. You may come inside.
• Prohibitive mood: indicates that the action of the verb is not permitted, e.g. You can't come in!

[edit] Volitive moods

Indicate desires, wishes or fears.

• Imprecative mood: indicates a desire for a threatening event to occur, e.g. May he lose the race.
• Optative mood: indicates wishing or hoping for an event to occur, e.g. I hope I win the race.

[edit] Epistemic moods

Indicate the epistemic probability of an uterrance being true. Some epistemic moods:

• Assumptive mood: indicates that the statement is assumed to be true, usually because it is, although there may not be any specific evidence that it is true because in this particular case
• Declarative mood: indicates that the statement is true, without any qualifications being made
• Deductive mood: indicates that the truth of the statement was deduced from other information, rather than being directly known. For example, There's gas in the house! Someone must have left the stove on! (deductive indicated by must)
• Dubitative mood: indicates that the statement is dubious, doubtful, or uncertain
• Hypothetical mood: the statement, while not actually true, could have been true - e.g. You could have killed him.
• Interrogative mood: the statement is a question, Did you do that?
• Speculative mood: based on the available information, the statement might be true but that is admittedly a speculation

• Realis moods: indicates something is actually the case, most commonly the indicative/declarative mood

[edit] Evidentiality

• Quotative evidential mood: indicates that the utterance is based on someone else's say-so, e.g. I've heard she can be difficult sometimes.
• Sensory evidential mood: indicates the utterance is based on what the speaker has seen/heard with their own eyes/ears. Sometimes, sensory evidential moods are distinguished based on what sense this sensory experience was from, e.g. sight v.s. hearing.

[edit] Other moods

• Alethic moods: indicate the logical necessity, possibility or impossibility of the state of affairs. For example, in "A circle can't be square", "can't be" is an alethic mood, whereas "He can't be that wealthy", "can't be" is not an alethic mood.
• Irrealis moods: indicates that something is not the case
• Subjunctive mood: a mood found in some languages (e.g. many European languages), which conflates together notions of counterfactualness, hypotheticality, the optative mood, etc. It groups together irrealis modalities which are distinguished as separate moods in some other languages.

[edit] See also

• Grammatical mood
• Modality (semiotics)
• Modal logic
• Deontic logic
• Epistemology
• Epistemic modality
• Epistemic mood
• Evidentiality

[edit] External links

• Modality and Evidentiality

[edit] SIL: ("what is...?")

• mood and modality
• deontic modality
  • commissive modality
  • volitive modality: (imprecative mood, optative mood)
  • directive modality: (deliberative mood, imperative mood, immediate imperative mood, jussive mood, obligative mood, permissive mood, precative mood, prohibitive mood)
• epistemic modality
  • judgment modality: (assumptive mood, declarative mood, deductive mood, dubitative mood, hypothetical mood, interrogative mood, speculative mood)
  • evidentiality
• irrealis modality: (subjunctive mood)
• alethic modality
• realis modality
• possibility
• necessity

[edit] Bibliography

• Blakemore, D. (1994). Evidence and modality. In R. E. Asher (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (pp. 1183-1186). Oxford: Pergamon Press. ISBN 0-08-035943-4.
• Bybee, Joan; & Fleischman, Suzanne (Eds.). (1995). Modality in grammar and discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Bybee, Joan; Perkins, Revere, & Pagliuca, William. (1994). The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press..
• Calbert, J. P. (1975). Toward the semantics of modality. In J. P. Calbert & H. Vater (Eds.), Aspekte der Modalität. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
• Chung, Sandra; & Timberlake, Alan. (1985). Tense, aspect and mood. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description: Grammatical categories and the lexicon (Vol. 3, pp. 202-258). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Kiefer, Ferenc. (1986). Epistemic possibility and focus. In W. Abraham & S. de Meij (Eds.), Topic, focus, and configurationality. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Kiefer, Ferenc. (1994). Modality. In R. E. Asher (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (pp. 2515-2520). Oxford: Pergamon Press. ISBN 0-08-035943-4.
• Kratzer, A. (1981). The notional category of modality. In H.-J. Eikmeyer & H. Rieser (Eds.), Words, worlds, and contexts: New approaches in word semantics. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
• Palmer, F. R. (1979). Modality and the English modals. London: Longman.
• Palmer, F. R. (1986). Mood and modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-26516-9, ISBN 0-521-31930-7. (2nd ed. published 2001).
• Palmer, F. R. (2001). Mood and modality (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-80035-8, ISBN 0-521-80479-5.
• Palmer, F. R. (1994). Mood and modality. In R. E. Asher (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (pp. 2535-2540). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
• Saeed, John I. (2003). Sentence semantics 1: Situations: Modality and evidentiality. In J. I Saeed, Semantics (2nd. ed) (Sec. 5.3, pp. 135-143). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-22692-3, ISBN 0-631-22693-1.
• Sweetser, E. E. (1982). Root and epistemic modality: Causality in two worlds. Berkeley Linguistic Papers, 8, 484-507.