Modality in English: Theory and Description

✍ Scribed by Raphael Salkie (editor); Pierre Busuttil (editor); Johan van der Auwera (editor)

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 390
• Series: Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL]; 58
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This volume presents two kinds of studies on English modality.

On the one hand, there are strongly empirical, corpus-based studies of individual uses of English modal auxiliaries and modal constructions, such as may in interrogatives, might in concessive clauses, shall and may vs must in legal English, the use of surprised if and surprising if constructions, the use and history of adhortative constructions, or the modal-aspectual use of come to in I came to realize that X. The book also contains work that presents new views on some of the classical issues, like the relations between modality and time, modality and commitment, modals and (inter)subjectivity. A special place is given to work that approaches the English modals from the perspective of the 'Theory of Enunciative Operations' developed by the French linguist Antoine Culioli and his colleagues.

Thus the book provides new perspectives and answers on basic questions about modality, in general, and its expression in English, in particular.

✦ Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Contents
Introduction
Towards a typology of modality in language
‘Not-yet-factual at time t’: a neglected modal concept
Semantic ascent, deixis, intersubjectivity and modality
Degrees of modality
Another look at modals and subjectivity
For a topological representation of the modal system of English
Epistemic might in the interrogative
MAY in concessive contexts
When may means must: deontic modality in English statute construction
Legal English and the ‘modal revolution’
Posteriority in expressions with must and have to: a case of interplay between syntax, semantics and pragmatics
Using the adjectives surprised/surprising to express epistemic modality
Commitment and subjectivity in the discourse of a judicial inquiry
Hearsay adverbs and modality
When Yes means No, and other hidden modalities
Modality and the history of English adhortatives
On the “great modal shift” sustained by come to VP
Backmatter