Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, Series Number 165) 1107021227, 9781107021228

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
List of
Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of
Abbreviations and Special Symbols
Introduction
I Modes of Modality
1 Pragmatics: Modality and Speaker Orientation
1.1 The Human as an Animal Catoptricum
1.2 Modality, Deixis, and Orientation in Displaced Worlds
1.3 Simple and Double Displacement as Basic Building Blocks of Modality
1.3.1 Cognitive and Linguistic Perspectivization: The Viewpoint Constellation
1.3.2 Simple and Double Displacement
1.3.3 Viewpoint vs. Displacement: Two Different Frameworks?
1.4 Modal Verbs and Modal (Discourse) Particles: Their Derived Double-Displacement Status
1.5 The Fundamental Pragmatic Nature of Modality
1.5.1 Modality, Displacement, and Theory of Mind
1.5.2 Displacement of the Origo
1.5.3 ATMM and Double Displacement
1.5.4 Modality and the Grammatical Category of Person
1.5.5 Modality and the Development of Theory of Mind
1.5.6 Lexical Deixis vs. Grammatical Deixis
1.6 Modality and Certainty
1.7 Modality and the Different Qualities of Double Displacement
1.8 Wrap-Up: Subjectivity Warranting Certainty?
1.9 Different Types of Long-Term Memory and the Coding of Different Grammars of the Possible
1.10 Summary and Outlook: The Linguistic Basis of a Non-naive Realism
2 (Inter)Subjectification and Foreign Consciousness Alignment
2.1 Modality and Others’ Minds
2.2 Theory of Mind and Foreign Consciousness Alignment
2.3 Foreign Consciousness Alignment on Modal Particles, Modal Root, and Epistemic Verbs
2.4 Intersubjectification and Foreign Consciousness Alignment on Hidden Modality
3 Modality as Distance: From Aspect to Modality
3.1 Methodological Caveat
3.2 Once Again: What Modality Is About
3.3 Brief Exposition of Von Wright’s Modal Logic
3.4 Graded Modality (Relative Modality)
3.5 Concepts and Terminologies
3.6 The Modal Verb in a Special Class of Verbs
3.6.1 Modalization in the Modalized V-Complex
3.6.2 Modality and Future Topic Time
3.7 Aspectual Selection Restriction on MV-Modality
3.7.1 The Contextual Perfective-Imperfective Choice
3.7.2 MVs as Prototypical Non-Progressives
3.7.3 The Aspect-Modality Link in Languages without Modal Verbs
3.7.4 On the Covert Link between Imperfectivity and Epistemicity
3.8 Memory Affinities of Modalization
II Verbal Modality
4 The Syntax–Semantic–Pragmatic Interface of Modal Verbs
4.1 Root Modality vs. Epistemic Modality
4.2 Sentential Readings under Negation
4.3 Modal Verbs, Aspect, and Negation in English
4.4 The Scope Differential
4.5 The Logical and Syntactic Relations between Negation and Modality
4.6 Scalar Relations: Scope Reach and Negation
4.7 The Practical Usage of the Scope of Negation
4.8 Are Epistemics Different from Evidentials?
4.9 The Evidential and Epistemic Differential: Constraining Criteria
4.10 Criteria of Person Origo
4.10.1 Grammar vs. Lexicon: Modal Verbs vs. Modality Adverbials
4.10.2 The Source Evidence Differential: Person Shift in Epistemicity
4.11 Summary: Epistemics, Evidentials, and Negation
4.12 Aspectual Contingency of the Root-Epistemic Distinction
5 The Perspectival Specifics of Verb Modality in German
5.1 The General Characteristics of Modal Verbs?
5.2 Modal Verbs under Negation: Fundamentals
5.3 Negation Contexts in Verbal Modality
5.4 Marked Scoping: The Not-Only Cases in Verbal Modality
5.5 Morphosyntax
5.5.1 First Status Complements
5.5.2 Compactness – ‘Strong Coherence’
5.5.3 Compactness: Right-Branching vs. Left-Branching
5.5.4 The Infinitivus-Pro-Participio Effect (Ersatzinfinitiv)
5.5.5 IPP-Effects and the Status 1 vs. Status 3 Difference
5.5.6 Inflective Morphology
5.5.7 Syntax-Semantics
5.5.7.1 Covert Subject PRO
5.5.7.2 Extraction from the V-Cluster
5.5.7.3 Control Constructions Mapping Full (Infinitival) CPs – Disallowing MVs
5.5.7.4 Raising Constructions Mapping Theta-less MV-Clusters – Allowing MVs
5.5.7.5 Scope Relations
5.6 What Do ECM-Verbs and Modal Verbs Have in Common?
5.6.1 ECM-Verbs and Modal Verbs
5.6.2 The Constraints at a Glance
5.6.3 Final Remarks on MV-Syntax in German and Other Languages
6 The Syntax of Modal Verbs in German, Dutch, and English
6.1 Again: What Are Modal Verbs across Languages?
6.2 The Major Distributional Differences
6.3 Syntactic Reflexes of the Root-Epistemic Distinction in German and Dutch
6.4 Deontic Modal Verbs, Full Verb Status, and Finite Auxiliaries
6.4.1 The Event Structure of Modal Verbs
6.4.1.1 Inchoativity as the Central Aspectual Property of DMV
6.5 On the Volatility of the Aspect-Modality Relation
6.6 The Deeper Interaction between Aspect, or Aktionsart, and Modality
6.6.1 Aspect Determines the Semantics of Aktionsart
6.6.2 The Principled Link between Modality and Aspect
6.6.3 The Aspect-Modality Correlations in Languages without Modal Verbs
6.6.3.1 Typological Sources
6.6.3.2 Slavic Correspondents of German of Voluntative Modality: Wollen ‘Will’
6.6.3.3 Slavic Correspondents of German of Weak Deontic Modality: Sollen ‘Shall’
6.6.3.4 Slavic Correspondents of German Possibility: Können ‘Can’
6.6.3.5 Slavic Correspondents of German Strong Deontic Modality: Müssen ‘Must’
6.6.3.6 Slavic Correspondents of German Voluntative Modality: Mögen ‘May’
6.6.3.7 Slavic Correspondents of German of Permissive Modality: Dürfen ‘May, Be Allowed To’
6.6.3.8 On the Interdependence of the Thematic Properties of Modal Verbs and the Root-Epistemic Distinction
6.7 Comparative Syntax
6.8 Wrap-Up
6.9 Modal Interpretation by Phase
6.10 Properties of Modal Verbs: The Main Criteria
6.10.1 Word Order
6.10.2 Scope
6.10.3 Modals Yield Asymmetric Predicates
7 Modal Verb Semantics
7.1 Origo Perspectives of Modal Verbs and Their Complexes
7.2 Conceptualizations: ‘Viewing Distance’
7.3 Imperfectivity Does Not Always Link with Epistemicity
7.4 The Copula as a Complement
III Adverbial Modality
8 Modal Particles: The Enigmatic Category
8.1 Modal Particles as an Illocutionarily Distinct Type of Discourse Marker
8.2 Modality in the Narrow Sense
8.3 MP-Source Categories and Their Underspecified MP-Results
8.4 Modal Particles as Free Grammatical Morphemes in German and in Other Languages
8.5 Word Order Options for Modal Particles under Finiteness and Non-finiteness
8.6 Serialization Options and Constraints between Modal Particles
8.7 Conclusion
9 The Attitudinal Force of Modal Particles
9.1 Strong Modality and Truth Valuability
9.2 The Category of German Modal Particle – and Its Merging Property
9.3 What Is Topic Reference of Modal Particles?
9.4 Modal Particles in Independent Sentences
9.5 Modal Particles in Dependent Sentences
9.6 MP-Selection: Speech Act Prerequisites
9.7 External Syntax of Adverbial and Other Dependents: Force as an Extension of CP
9.8 Autonomous or Inherited Force?
9.9 Phase and Edge Conditions: Clausal Dependency and Root Qualities
9.10 How Do Dependent Clauses Receive Force Potential?
9.11 Speaker Deixis and the Subjunctive: Liberalizing the Left Periphery
9.12 The Special Architecture of the Force Phase: Phase Motivation
9.13 The Internal Phase Architecture
9.13.1 Intact vs. Defective Left Phase Edges
9.13.2 Quote Prosody and the Factive/Non-factive Distinction
9.13.3 Bridge Test
9.14 Autonomous Speaker-Deixis Potential on Non-factive Complements
9.14.1 The Speaker-Deixis Potential
9.14.2 No Speaker-Deixis Potential on Factive Complements
9.14.3 No Speaker-Deixis Potential for Temporal-Locative Adverbial Clauses
9.14.4 The Speaker-Deixis Potential for ‘Logical’ Adverbial Clauses
9.14.5 Adnominal Dependency: Restrictive vs. Non-Restrictive Relative Clauses
9.15 Phase-Anchoring Speaker Deixis
9.16 What Makes Non-factive Predicates Structurally Stronger than Factive Ones?
9.17 Speaker Deixis: Edge Features
9.18 Interim Summary
9.19 MP-Selection and Felicity Prerequisites
9.19.1 Felicity Conditions
9.19.2 The Source–Target Relation of MPs and Their Stressed Variants
9.19.3 Root Non-finites and MP-Selection
9.19.4 Relative MP Order
10 Modal Particles between Context, Conversation, and Convention
10.1 Modal Particles and Conventional Implicatures?
10.2 From MP-Lexical to Attitudinal MP-Status
10.3 How Does Mirativity Come About?
10.3.1 Mirativity under Accent-Free Focus
10.3.2 VF, MP, and Mirative Unexpectedness
10.4 On the Specific Relation between Verum Focus, Sentence Type, and MP-Selection
10.4.1 Verum Focus – Distributed on Grammatical-Functional Components
10.4.2 Focused MPs: The MP/MP-Focus Differential
10.5 The Mirative Import Due to Unexpected Emphasis and Modal Particles
10.5.1 Formal Assumptions
10.5.2 Mirative Import Specified by MP-Source Legacy
10.6 Modal Particles as Grammatical Functions
10.7 Modal Particles and Grammaticalization
11 Modal Particles outside of Finiteness
11.1 Modal Particles at the Word Level
11.1.1 The Phenomenon
11.1.2 The Attribute-DP Restriction for DP-Internal MPs
11.1.3 Expressive Content
11.1.4 MP-in-DP and Intersectivity of the Attributive Adjectival
11.1.5 Epistemic Force Scope in DP
11.1.6 Time Reference vs. Tense Inside DP
11.1.7 Wrap-Up
11.1.8 MP-Attraction to Wh-Pronominals
11.2 Root Non-finites and the Selection of Modal Particles
11.2.1 Root Non-finites
11.2.2 Conclusion: MP and Finiteness
11.3 Once Again
11.3.1 Thoughts Do Not Simply Travel from Speaker to Addressee
11.3.2 Derivation: From Surface to Covert Scope Position
IV Covert Modality
12 Covert Patterns of Modality
12.1 Phenomena: Modality behind the Scenes
12.2 Forms of Covert Modality
12.3 Modality Covertly Coded by Phrasal Prepositional Infinitives: Foundational Issues
12.4 The Phrasal Prepositional Status of Infinitivals Eliciting Modal Denotations
12.4.1 Subject Relative Infinitive: Illustrations
12.4.2 Object Relative Infinitive
12.4.3 Subject Relative Infinitive: The Structure
12.4.4 Subject Relative Purpose Infinitive after Directional
12.4.5 Subject Raising Infinitival
12.5 Subject Raising Infinitive on iV
12.6 Object Infinitive – Decausative iV
12.6.1 Covert Modality in Subject Infinitive – Unaccusative Verbs
12.6.2 Covert Modality in Infinitival DP Relatives
12.6.3 Covert Modality in Infinitival (Object-)DP Relatives
12.7 Overt Modal Form, but No Modal Meaning
12.7.1 Inverse Environments
12.7.2 Anaphoricity and Modality (Deontic-Root/Epistemic Modal Verbs)
12.8 Covert Modal Logic: The Root Alternatives and Epistemicity
12.9 The Root Modalities on the Gerund: Zu(m) + Infinitive
12.10 Transitivity-Intransitivity
12.11 What Is behind Covert Modality and Its Epistemicity Gap?
12.12 Perfective Aspect and Tense
12.13 Covert Modality and Diathesis
12.14 Necessity on Haben/Have + Zu/To + V
12.15 Summary: Covert vs. Overt Modality
12.16 Form and Morphologically Explicit Modality Early On: HAVE/BE(+DP) + Zu-Infinitive
12.17 Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

M O D A L I T Y I N S Y N TA X , S E M A N T I C S , A N D P R A G M AT I C S Volume 165

What do we mean when we say things like If only we knew what he was up to!? Clearly, this is more than just a message, or a question to our addressee. We are expressing simultaneously that we don’t know and also that we wish to know. Several modes of encoding contribute to such modalities of expression: word order, subordinating conjunctions, sentences that are subordinated but nevertheless occur autonomously, and attitudinal discourse adverbs which, far beyond lexical adverbials of modality, allow the speaker and the listener to presuppose full agreement, partial agreement under presupposed conditions, or negotiation of common ground. This state-of-the-art survey proposes a new model of modality, drawing on data from a variety of Germanic and Slavic languages to find out what is cross-linguistically universal about modality, and to argue that it is a constitutive part of human cognition. werner abraham is Professor Emeritus in Linguistics and Mediaeval Studies at the Rijksuniversiteit of Groningen, the Netherlands, and Honorary Professor at the University of Vienna, Austria; he is also still active at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. He is author of more than 350 articles, 5 monographs, and 35 book collections.

cambridge studies in linguistics General editors: p . a u s t i n , j . b r es na n , b. c om r i e , s . cr a i n, w . dr e s s le r, c. j . e w en , r . l a s s , d . li g h t f o o t, k . ri c e, i . ro b er t s , s. r o m a i ne , n . v. sm i t h

Modality in Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics

In this series 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134.

135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152.

d av id adg e r, da ni el harbo ur and laur el j. watkins : Mirrors and Microparameters: Phrase Structure beyond Free Word Order ni in a nin g zha ng: Coordination in Syntax nei l s mi th: Acquiring Phonology ni na to pintz i: Onsets: Suprasegmental and Prosodic Behaviour cedric boeckx, norbert hornstei n and ja iro n unes: Control as Movement m ic h a e l is r ael: The Grammar of Polarity: Pragmatics, Sensitivity, and the Logic of Scales m . r it a m an zin i and leonardo m. savoi a: Grammatical Categories: Variation in Romance Languages barbar a cit ko: Symmetry in Syntax: Merge, Move and Labels rachel walker: Vowel Patterns in Language mary dalr ymple and ir ina n ik ola eva : Objects and Information Structure jerrold m. sadock: The Modular Architecture of Grammar dunstan brown and andrew hi ppi sley : Network Morphology: A Defaultsbased Theory of Word Structure bet telou los, cor rien bl om , geert booi j, mari on ele nbaas and a ns v an ke me na de: Morphosyntactic Change: A Comparative Study of Particles and Prefixes ste ph en crai n: The Emergence of Meaning hu bert hai de r: Symmetry Breaking in Syntax jose´ a. camacho: Null Subjects gregory stump and raphael a. fin kel: Morphological Typology: From Word to Paradigm bru ce tesar : Output-Driven Phonology: Theory and Learning asier a lca´ z ar and mario s altarelli : The Syntax of Imperatives misha becke r: The Acquisition of Syntactic Structure: Animacy and Thematic Alignment marti na wilt schko : The Universal Structure of Categories: Towards a Formal Typology f ah ad ra shed a l- mut ai ri: The Minimalist Program: The Nature and Plausibility of Chomsky’s Biolinguistics cedric boeckx: Elementary Syntactic Structures: Prospects of a Feature-Free Syntax p ho evo s p an agi ot idi s: Categorial Features: A Generative Theory of Word Class Categories m ark b ake r: Case: Its Principles and Its Parameters w m. g. be nnett: The Phonology of Consonants: Dissimilation, Harmony and Correspondence a ndre a s im s: Inflectional Defectiveness gregory stump: Inflectional Paradigms: Content and Form at the SyntaxMorphology Interface rochell e li eber : English Nouns: The Ecology of Nominalization joh n b owers: Deriving Syntactic Relations ana tere sa pe´ rez-le roux , mi hael a p irvulescu and yves robe rge: Direct Objects and Language Acquisition

153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165.

matt hew baerman , du nstan b rown and greville g. c orbet t: Morphological Complexity marc el den di kken: Dependency and Directionality lauri e baue r: Compounds and Compounding klau s j . kohler: Communicative Functions and Linguistic Forms in Speech Interaction kurt goblir sch: Gemination, Lenition, and Vowel Lengthening: On the History of Quantity in Germanic a ndr ew ra df ord : Colloquial English: Structure and Variation m ar i a p oli n s k y: Heritage Languages and Their Speakers egbert for tuin and ge tty ge erdi nk-verkoren : Universal Semantic Syntax: A Semiotactic Approach a ndr ew ra df ord : Relative Clauses: Structure and Variation in Everyday English john h. eslin g, scott r. moi si k, alli son b enner and lise cr evi erbu chman: Voice Quality: The Laryngeal Articulator Model j a son ro thma n, j org e gon za´ l ez al onso and elo i p uig - ma yenc o: Third Language Acquisition and Linguistic Transfer i rin a a. ni ko laev a and andrew spenc er: Mixed Categories: The Morphosyntax of Noun Modification werne r abraham : Modality in Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics Earlier issues not listed are also available

M O D A L I T Y IN S Y N TA X , SEMANTICS, AND P R A G M ATI C S V OL UM E 1 65

WERNER ABRAHAM University of Groningen

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107021228 DOI: 10.1017/9781139108676 © Werner Abraham 2020 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2020 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-107-02122-8 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

To the memory of my wife, Gerda Abraham, 1941–2020

Contents

List of Tables Preface Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations and Special Symbols

Page

Introduction i m o d e s of m o da l i t y 1

Pragmatics: Modality and Speaker Orientation 1.1 1.2 1.3

1.4 1.5

1.6 1.7 1.8

The Human as an Animal Catoptricum Modality, Deixis, and Orientation in Displaced Worlds Simple and Double Displacement as Basic Building Blocks of Modality 1.3.1 Cognitive and Linguistic Perspectivization: The Viewpoint Constellation 1.3.2 Simple and Double Displacement 1.3.3 Viewpoint vs. Displacement: Two Different Frameworks? Modal Verbs and Modal (Discourse) Particles: Their Derived Double-Displacement Status The Fundamental Pragmatic Nature of Modality 1.5.1 Modality, Displacement, and Theory of Mind 1.5.2 Displacement of the Origo 1.5.3 ATMM and Double Displacement 1.5.4 Modality and the Grammatical Category of Person 1.5.5 Modality and the Development of Theory of Mind 1.5.6 Lexical Deixis vs. Grammatical Deixis Modality and Certainty Modality and the Different Qualities of Double Displacement Wrap-Up: Subjectivity Warranting Certainty?

xvii xxi xxiv xxv 1 11 13 13 15 18 18 21 23 24 27 27 27 37 41 43 44 45 48 51 ix

x Contents 1.9 1.10

2

(Inter)Subjectification and Foreign Consciousness Alignment 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

3

Different Types of Long-Term Memory and the Coding of Different Grammars of the Possible Summary and Outlook: The Linguistic Basis of a Non-naive Realism

Modality and Others’ Minds Theory of Mind and Foreign Consciousness Alignment Foreign Consciousness Alignment on Modal Particles, Modal Root, and Epistemic Verbs Intersubjectification and Foreign Consciousness Alignment on Hidden Modality

57

60 60 61 65 69

Modality as Distance: From Aspect to Modality

72

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6

72 72 74 78 81 84 85 86 89 89 93

3.7

3.8

Methodological Caveat Once Again: What Modality Is About Brief Exposition of Von Wright’s Modal Logic Graded Modality (Relative Modality) Concepts and Terminologies The Modal Verb in a Special Class of Verbs 3.6.1 Modalization in the Modalized V-Complex 3.6.2 Modality and Future Topic Time Aspectual Selection Restriction on MV-Modality 3.7.1 The Contextual Perfective-Imperfective Choice 3.7.2 MVs as Prototypical Non-Progressives 3.7.3 The Aspect-Modality Link in Languages without Modal Verbs 3.7.4 On the Covert Link between Imperfectivity and Epistemicity Memory Affinities of Modalization

ii verbal modality 4

54

The Syntax–Semantic–Pragmatic Interface of Modal Verbs 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5

Root Modality vs. Epistemic Modality Sentential Readings under Negation Modal Verbs, Aspect, and Negation in English The Scope Differential The Logical and Syntactic Relations between Negation and Modality

94 99 102

10 5

107 107 109 111 112 114

Contents 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9

Scalar Relations: Scope Reach and Negation The Practical Usage of the Scope of Negation Are Epistemics Different from Evidentials? The Evidential and Epistemic Differential: Constraining Criteria 4.10 Criteria of Person Origo 4.10.1 Grammar vs. Lexicon: Modal Verbs vs. Modality Adverbials 4.10.2 The Source Evidence Differential: Person Shift in Epistemicity 4.11 Summary: Epistemics, Evidentials, and Negation 4.12 Aspectual Contingency of the Root-Epistemic Distinction

5

116 118 119 121 122 122 125 127 128

The Perspectival Specifics of Verb Modality in German

132

5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

132 134 136 137 137 138 138 140 145 146 147 148 149 149

5.6

6

xi

The General Characteristics of Modal Verbs? Modal Verbs under Negation: Fundamentals Negation Contexts in Verbal Modality Marked Scoping: The Not-Only Cases in Verbal Modality Morphosyntax 5.5.1 First Status Complements 5.5.2 Compactness – ‘Strong Coherence’ 5.5.3 Compactness: Right-Branching vs. Left-Branching 5.5.4 The Infinitivus-Pro-Participio Effect (Ersatzinfinitiv) 5.5.5 IPP-Effects and the Status 1 vs. Status 3 Difference 5.5.6 Inflective Morphology 5.5.7 Syntax-Semantics 5.5.7.1 Covert Subject PRO 5.5.7.2 Extraction from the V-Cluster 5.5.7.3 Control Constructions Mapping Full (Infinitival) CPs – Disallowing MVs 5.5.7.4 Raising Constructions Mapping Theta-less MVClusters – Allowing MVs 5.5.7.5 Scope Relations What Do ECM-Verbs and Modal Verbs Have in Common? 5.6.1 ECM-Verbs and Modal Verbs 5.6.2 The Constraints at a Glance 5.6.3 Final Remarks on MV-Syntax in German and Other Languages

The Syntax of Modal Verbs in German, Dutch, and English 6.1 6.2

Again: What Are Modal Verbs across Languages? The Major Distributional Differences

150 150 151 152 152 153 156

157 157 158

xii

Contents 6.3 6.4

6.5 6.6

6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10

7

Syntactic Reflexes of the Root-Epistemic Distinction in German and Dutch Deontic Modal Verbs, Full Verb Status, and Finite Auxiliaries 6.4.1 The Event Structure of Modal Verbs 6.4.1.1 Inchoativity as the Central Aspectual Property of DMV On the Volatility of the Aspect-Modality Relation The Deeper Interaction between Aspect, or Aktionsart, and Modality 6.6.1 Aspect Determines the Semantics of Aktionsart 6.6.2 The Principled Link between Modality and Aspect 6.6.3 The Aspect-Modality Correlations in Languages without Modal Verbs 6.6.3.1 Typological Sources 6.6.3.2 Slavic Correspondents of German of Voluntative Modality: Wollen ‘Will’ 6.6.3.3 Slavic Correspondents of German of Weak Deontic Modality: Sollen ‘Shall’ 6.6.3.4 Slavic Correspondents of German Possibility: Können ‘Can’ 6.6.3.5 Slavic Correspondents of German Strong Deontic Modality: Müssen ‘Must’ 6.6.3.6 Slavic Correspondents of German Voluntative Modality: Mögen ‘May’ 6.6.3.7 Slavic Correspondents of German of Permissive Modality: Dürfen ‘May, Be Allowed To’ 6.6.3.8 On the Interdependence of the Thematic Properties of Modal Verbs and the Root-Epistemic Distinction Comparative Syntax Wrap-Up Modal Interpretation by Phase Properties of Modal Verbs: The Main Criteria 6.10.1 Word Order 6.10.2 Scope 6.10.3 Modals Yield Asymmetric Predicates

162 165 165 165 168 171 171 172 175 175 175 176 176 176 177

177

179 181 183 184 185 185 185 186

Modal Verb Semantics

188

7.1 7.2

188 197

Origo Perspectives of Modal Verbs and Their Complexes Conceptualizations: ‘Viewing Distance’

Contents 7.3 7.4

Imperfectivity Does Not Always Link with Epistemicity The Copula as a Complement

iii adverbial modality 8

Modal Particles: The Enigmatic Category 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7

9

Modal Particles as an Illocutionarily Distinct Type of Discourse Marker Modality in the Narrow Sense MP-Source Categories and Their Underspecified MP-Results Modal Particles as Free Grammatical Morphemes in German and in Other Languages Word Order Options for Modal Particles under Finiteness and Non-finiteness Serialization Options and Constraints between Modal Particles Conclusion

The Attitudinal Force of Modal Particles 9.1 9.2

Strong Modality and Truth Valuability The Category of German Modal Particle – and Its Merging Property 9.3 What Is Topic Reference of Modal Particles? 9.4 Modal Particles in Independent Sentences 9.5 Modal Particles in Dependent Sentences 9.6 MP-Selection: Speech Act Prerequisites 9.7 External Syntax of Adverbial and Other Dependents: Force as an Extension of CP 9.8 Autonomous or Inherited Force? 9.9 Phase and Edge Conditions: Clausal Dependency and Root Qualities 9.10 How Do Dependent Clauses Receive Force Potential? 9.11 Speaker Deixis and the Subjunctive: Liberalizing the Left Periphery 9.12 The Special Architecture of the Force Phase: Phase Motivation 9.13 The Internal Phase Architecture 9.13.1 Intact vs. Defective Left Phase Edges 9.13.2 Quote Prosody and the Factive/Non-factive Distinction 9.13.3 Bridge Test 9.14 Autonomous Speaker-Deixis Potential on Non-factive Complements

xiii 200 207

211 213 213 221 224 228 232 233 237

238 238 240 241 244 245 247 250 252 255 258 262 264 264 266 267 267 268

xiv Contents 9.14.1 9.14.2

9.15 9.16 9.17 9.18 9.19

10

Modal Particles between Context, Conversation, and Convention 10.1 10.2 10.3

10.4

10.5

10.6 10.7

11

The Speaker-Deixis Potential No Speaker-Deixis Potential on Factive Complements 9.14.3 No Speaker-Deixis Potential for Temporal-Locative Adverbial Clauses 9.14.4 The Speaker-Deixis Potential for ‘Logical’ Adverbial Clauses 9.14.5 Adnominal Dependency: Restrictive vs. Non-Restrictive Relative Clauses Phase-Anchoring Speaker Deixis What Makes Non-factive Predicates Structurally Stronger than Factive Ones? Speaker Deixis: Edge Features Interim Summary MP-Selection and Felicity Prerequisites 9.19.1 Felicity Conditions 9.19.2 The Source–Target Relation of MPs and Their Stressed Variants 9.19.3 Root Non-finites and MP-Selection 9.19.4 Relative MP Order

Modal Particles and Conventional Implicatures? From MP-Lexical to Attitudinal MP-Status How Does Mirativity Come About? 10.3.1 Mirativity under Accent-Free Focus 10.3.2 VF, MP, and Mirative Unexpectedness On the Specific Relation between Verum Focus, Sentence Type, and MP-Selection 10.4.1 Verum Focus – Distributed on GrammaticalFunctional Components 10.4.2 Focused MPs: The MP/MP-Focus Differential The Mirative Import Due to Unexpected Emphasis and Modal Particles 10.5.1 Formal Assumptions 10.5.2 Mirative Import Specified by MP-Source Legacy Modal Particles as Grammatical Functions Modal Particles and Grammaticalization

268 269 269 270 270 271 274 275 276 276 277 282 284 286

290 290 290 292 293 296 298 299 301 303 303 304 305 307

Modal Particles outside of Finiteness

311

11.1

311

Modal Particles at the Word Level

Contents 11.1.1 11.1.2 11.1.3 11.1.4

The Phenomenon The Attribute-DP Restriction for DP-Internal MPs Expressive Content MP-in-DP and Intersectivity of the Attributive Adjectival 11.1.5 Epistemic Force Scope in DP 11.1.6 Time Reference vs. Tense Inside DP 11.1.7 Wrap-Up 11.1.8 MP-Attraction to Wh-Pronominals Root Non-finites and the Selection of Modal Particles 11.2.1 Root Non-finites 11.2.2 Conclusion: MP and Finiteness Once Again 11.3.1 Thoughts Do Not Simply Travel from Speaker to Addressee 11.3.2 Derivation: From Surface to Covert Scope Position

11.2

11.3

311 312 314 316 317 318 320 320 322 323 325 327 327 328

c o ve r t m o d al i t y

331

Covert Patterns of Modality

333

iv 12

xv

12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4

12.5 12.6

12.7

Phenomena: Modality behind the Scenes Forms of Covert Modality Modality Covertly Coded by Phrasal Prepositional Infinitives: Foundational Issues The Phrasal Prepositional Status of Infinitivals Eliciting Modal Denotations 12.4.1 Subject Relative Infinitive: Illustrations 12.4.2 Object Relative Infinitive 12.4.3 Subject Relative Infinitive: The Structure 12.4.4 Subject Relative Purpose Infinitive after Directional 12.4.5 Subject Raising Infinitival Subject Raising Infinitive on iV Object Infinitive – Decausative iV 12.6.1 Covert Modality in Subject Infinitive – Unaccusative Verbs 12.6.2 Covert Modality in Infinitival DP Relatives 12.6.3 Covert Modality in Infinitival (Object-)DP Relatives Overt Modal Form, but No Modal Meaning 12.7.1 Inverse Environments 12.7.2 Anaphoricity and Modality (Deontic-Root/ Epistemic Modal Verbs)

333 334 338 347 347 352 354 354 355 355 357 358 359 361 362 362 363

xvi Contents 12.8 12.9 12.10 12.11 12.12 12.13 12.14 12.15 12.16 12.17

Covert Modal Logic: The Root Alternatives and Epistemicity The Root Modalities on the Gerund: Zu(m) + Infinitive Transitivity-Intransitivity What Is behind Covert Modality and Its Epistemicity Gap? Perfective Aspect and Tense Covert Modality and Diathesis Necessity on Haben/Have + Zu/To + V Summary: Covert vs. Overt Modality Form and Morphologically Explicit Modality Early On: HAVE/BE(+DP) + Zu-Infinitive Conclusion

Bibliography Index

364 365 367 367 368 369 371 374 377 378

381 416

Tables

1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1

2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1

5.2 5.3

The distinctive origo features of ATMM Page Relative source and speaker assessment triggered by epistemic modal verbs Three sources of evidence in epistemic modal verbs in German Mood-Modality differential distinguishing tense, subjunctive, and modal verbs (based on von Wright 1976; Portner 2007; Rothstein and Thieroff 2010) Mood-Modality differential distinguishing evidentiality, modal particles, and speech acts Source of assessment and speaker’s assessment (see Chapter 1, §§1.2 and 1.3) Von Wright’s modal logic – conceptual definitions The paradigm of eight German modal verbs (extended beyond Kratzer’s analytic modality components) Complex predication in German: distribution of prepositional ZU and future Aux werden Aspect-modality corollary in the Book of Psalms: German vs. Slavic Person origo differential Three sources of evidence in epistemic modal verbs Locutionary, propositional, and illocutionary subjects as sources of evidence Modal force and modal base in relation to aspectual contexts MVs in MStG distributed over negation types (wide vs. narrow scope expressed by word order between Neg and MV; German has left-directed government) Classifying criteria uniting MVs and ECM-verbs The idiosyncratic properties in the MV paradigm of German

35 42 52

62 62 69 74 77 86 95 125 126 126 130

137 153 155

xvii

xviii 6.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 9.1 9.2 9.3

9.4 9.5 10.1 12.1 12.2

12.3

12.4

List of Tables The fine-grained interaction of aspect, time reference, and the two modalities Verbal finiteness and nominal definiteness corollaries Origo displacement and nominal definiteness corollaries Verbal nominals and parthood (eventive) gender alignment Origo displacement and nominal definiteness corollaries (cf. Tables 7.1–7.2) Corollary of the morphological components for the four languages, English, Russian, German, and Dutch Tense-aspect-predicate status corollary of the complemental adjective and the copula Tense-aspect-predicate status corollary of the complemental V and the copula Tense-aspect-predicate status corollary of copula and the complemental present participle Topological sentence field: distinguishing modal particles from pronouns and definite DPs Clausal fields and sentence types structurally Searle’s decomposition of speech acts into more basic components: Illocutionary Point, Mode of Achievement, Propositional Content, Preparatory Conditions, and Sincerity Conditions Felicity conditions for speech acts: four types of exclamatives Distribution of MPs across sentence types (expanded beyond Thurmair 1989: 49) Processes and indicators of grammaticalization based on Lehmann (1985) Valence-theta role-aspect corollary Covert modality in the adjunct-object complement infinitive embedded by factive know/wissen: ‘Tim knows [PRO how * (to) solve the problem]’ ≈ should-Deontic, could-Possible/Able. Covert modality in object relative infinitive constructions: ‘Jane found [a book [PRO to draw cartoons in]] for Sara = J. found a book for Sara one could/should draw cartoons’ – should-Deontic, could-Poss/Able Covert modality in subject relative infinitive/SRI: ‘[The man [PRO to fix the sink]] is here’ ‒ should-Deontic, can/couldPossible/Able

173 192 195 196 197 204 208 209 209 242 246

278 280 281 308 343

350

353

354

List of Tables 12.5

12.6

12.7

12.8

12.9 12.10

12.11

12.12

12.13

Covert modality in Subject relative purpose infinitive after directional: ‘Sue went to Torino ‒ [PRO to buy a violin]’ ≈ should-Deontic, could-Possible/Able Covert modality in subject infinitival: ‘Bill has to reach Philadelphia before noon’ ≈ should-Deontic, could-Possible/ Able Covert modality in subject raising iV-infinitival: ‘William is to leave tomorrow ≠ To leave/ Leaving tomorrow has been commissioned = Will is scheduled/supposed to/should leave tomorrow’ ≈ should-Deontic, (*)could-be Possible/be Able Covert modality in object infinitive – decausV (decausative iV): The stomach is (/has) to emptyuV / to be emptiediV ➔ intransitive predicate ≈ should-Deontic,*could-Possible/ Able Covert modality in subject infinitive – unaccusative verb/eV Covert modality in infinitival (subject-)DP relatives (see also Table 12.3 above): ‘[Dp the man [Rel PRO to fix the sink]] ≡ the man who is to fix the sink’ ≈ should-Deontic, can/couldPossible/Able Modality in infinitival (object-)DP relatives (IOR): infinitival DP-relatives vs. German attributive present participles (56b) or prepositional gerundials (56c) (regiolectal, dialectal): ‘[Dp the booki [Rel PROi to read ei]] ≡ [Dp the booki [Rel PROi to be read]]’ – non-finite: deontic should Covert modality triggered by (in)definites across single clauses: ‘Du musst ein Buch kaufen. Es soll/mussDMV/*EMV intellektuell sein’ … [−definite] ➔ DMV/*EMV; ‘Du musst das Buch kaufen. Es soll/muss*DMV/EMV intellektuell sein’ … [+definite]➔ *DMV/EMV Origo and ordering corollary covering the phenomena of overt and covert modality

xix

355

356

357

358 358

360

362

364 376

Preface

What do we mean when we utter something like If only we could know what he is up to!? Clearly, we do not only send a message or ask an addressee a question. What is more relevant, we express our failure to know and, at the same time, the wish to get to know the propositional content What is he up to? Perhaps even more important for the hearer at site is that much depends on the speaker’s knowledge of the propositional content of the direct question, i.e. the communicative common ground between speaker and hearer and what the implied strategy could be that both speaker and hearer pursue in order to understand each other. The conditional conjunction if and the connected irrealis could in our example signal not propositional but attitudinal conditions, i.e. wishful contingency. Several modes of encoding contribute to such modalities of expression: word order (particularly in languages with verb-second (V2) and verb-final (Vfinal) word order, such as German and Dutch), subordinating conjunctions, sentences which are subordinated in the first place but nevertheless occur autonomously (i.e. as main, independent clauses), and attitudinal discourse adverbs (‘modal particles’), which, far beyond lexical adverbials of modality, allow the producing and, at least partially, the receiving communicative partner to presuppose full agreement, partial agreement under presupposed conditions, or negotiation of the common ground. Grammatical modality is the functional category, which is acquired later than all other functional categories. Thus, it is necessarily dependent upon, and colored by, the language-specific architecture of the early acquired functional categories such as aspect, tense, and mood, whose semantics serve as elementary building blocks for the construction of the exceptionally complex functional category of modality. Beside pointing out the cross-linguistic diversity of modality, the main aim will be to provide a unified picture of modality that explains the driving force (or illocutionary force) creating different crosslinguistic patterns of modality. The very search for the deeper sources of modality reveals that the linguistic architecture of modality largely depends

xxi

xxii

Preface

on the development of the category of person. The category of person is defined as a shifter (in the Jakobsonian sense). Its reference shifts with the origo of the speaker. At this point, pragmatics comes into the picture. It is of central importance to understand how shifters serve as building blocks for functional categories. Functional categories involve double displacement and the splitting up of the speaker into multiple personalities or viewpoints. As a consequence, one central aim will be to give evidence of, and theoretical support for, the hypothesis that the development of the Theory of Mind (ToM) in acquisition (and, presumably, also of evolution) depends largely on the development of functional categories, especially that of modality (as has been proposed and supported by Papafragou 2002 and Papafragou et al. 2007) – and not vice versa, i.e. that the cognition of complex modality arises out of the developing ToM (this being the majority position in the field). What is of central importance from a pragmatic point of view is that modality constitutes the highest linguistic achievement in the creation of different viewpoints (or perspectives, as we also say). The entirety of modality in itself, of course, comprises a range of different means to express illocutionary force, among which modal verbs, modal particles (common to all of Germanic – except for English – and Slavic), and modal adverbials. In order to understand, what is common to them, what separates them, and what lies behind them, the syntax of modality will finally be investigated thoroughly. The different layers of modality or illocutionary force are defined by the structural web of syntax which specifies the function (semantics and pragmatics) of different linguistic techniques of modality. An essential outcome of the syntax part will be that lexical modality is not on a par with grammatical modality. Another investigative aim will be to expand the syntactic operator of illocutionary force into suboperators and to specify and define them in syntactic terms. This pathway also implies that modality is excluded from syntactic domains where illocutionary force is inactive, such as in (a major subset of) dependent clauses, insofar as they do not allow for Force autonomy (partly truth assessment, partly felicity conditions). The module division, as sketched above, does not reflect the sequence of topics treated in the main chapters of the present book. I have taken great pains to spell out the common structure of the four grammatical modules, aspect, tense, mood, and modality, and the perspective under which the common structure is achieved. The polyvalent semantics of aspect form the building block of modal functions. Aspect, tense, and mood cannot be listed as separate modules. They are linked in terms of stacked inclusion (part-whole, or mereological) relations. They are different categories of the same functional domain, the so-called ATM(M)-complex. The most

Preface

xxiii

basic category is aspect, structured binarily between the features of inner and outer perspective [±perfective], tense between past and future, mood between [±realis], and modality between [±speaker’s certainty]. The feature sets linking the four modules are the deictic categories of speaker distance. Aspect encodes spatial distance, tense encodes temporal distance, mood allows the speaker to view distant (possible) worlds as being encoded by irrealis and optative moods; and, finally, epistemic and evidential modality signal that the speaker distances him- or herself from the positive truth value of the proposition, which means that the speaker as a person does not take responsibility for the certainty of the information given. Here the grammatical category of person (±distant from the origo) comes into the picture. All in all, we can say that aspect, tense, mood, and modality are linked by processes of reinterpretation of the feature [±distance]. The path of reinterpretation correlates with the path of grammaticalization: aspect > tense > mood > modality, which is well documented in the literature. Different degrees of distance lie between the four modules sketched – the remotest, and least overtly visible, distance lying between aspect and epistemic/evidential modality, while the closest separates aspect and tense (past vs. present ongoing). The external, distance motivated, relation between these sets is that modality includes the feature characteristics of the other three modules in a hierarchical setting: the features of modality contain those of mood, mood contains those of tense, tense those of aspect, and aspect is the most basic one. This new view on the hierarchy of categorial relations explains insights into the solid empirical evidence of links between the modalities of root and epistemics, on the one hand, and aspectual perfectivity and imperfectivity, on the other. This comes most clearly to the fore in languages that have to express modalities in forms of aspect. Russian is the model for this link in the book at hand. All of this motivates the general claim made in this book that the semantics, pragmatics, and syntax of modality converge, thus allowing for a universally valid explanation of modality as a constitutive part of human cognition and also human language. I know from my own experience that books like this one will be read in parts. A look into the table of contents will help detect certain subtopics that interest the reader more than others. The individual chapters of the present book were written with that in mind. They can be read individually without getting lost by the absence of the horizons drawn in previous chapters. I have also taken great care to insert cross-references to other pertinent chapters for additional illustration and for exegesis. Needless to say, what may sometimes appear to be the duplication of information is planned to help the reader.

Acknowledgments

This book should have appeared under the co-authorship of Elisabeth Leiss. As comes to the fore clearly from her books (Leiss 2002, 2010b), she was my spiritus rector in many questions dealt with here. The pitiless loads of teaching and administration in German academia have kept her from actively writing her chapters and subchapters. Nevertheless, peers familiar with our doubly authored publications will be able to track down her fundamental ideas and give her the academic credit she deserves. Elisabeth Leiss’ inspirational contribution to this book emanates from the entries in the bibliography of this book, in particular our co-authored publications. It is no less than fair to mention that the contents of the present book arose from the attempts that were published as tryouts for the present comprehensive issue. I acknowledge gratefully the space offered for this long-term strategy by the following publishing houses: John Benjamins-Amsterdam, Walter de Gruyter-Berlin, Wiley-London, Cambridge Scholars-Newcastle upon Tyne, Helmut Buske-Hamburg.

xxiv

Abbreviations and Special Symbols

Abbreviations (Used in the Running Text and the Glosses) ABIL Acc ACI Addr Adj.Poss AG AgrP AH AMH Aor AspP ASS ATMM/E Aux BG C CA CDC CEM CF CG CI CL

ability accusative case accusativus cum infinitivo verbs (verba dicendi et sentiendi: sehen, fühlen, hören, lassen, etc.) addressee possessive adjective agent (theta role=semantic case) agreement phrase auxiliary hypothesis aspect-modality hypothesis aorist aspect phrase assertion, assertive aspect (A), tense (T), mood (M) and epistemic and evidential modality (M/E) auxiliary Burzio’s Generalization context state contrastive accent core dependent clause classical extensional mereology contrastive focus common ground conventional implicature clitic

xxv

xxvi List of Abbreviations and Special Symbols Comp COMPL ConF Cop CoV CP CV Dat DD DECL DEONT decausV def DefF DirD DM(s) DMV DO DP EeA ec ECM EIQ EMPH EMV ENHG EpAdvP EPM Er EUH eV evAdv EvidV EvidMV EvP Ex/Excl

complementizer (V2 in German or embedding conjunction) completive contrastive focus copula control verb complementizer phrase (entire autonomous clause) verbal complement dative case double displacement declarative deontic (modal of obligation) decausative verb definite default focus direct discourse discourse marker(s) deontic (root) reading of modal verb direct object determiner phrase epistemic (-reading) external argument (subject) empty category exceptional case marking verbs (= ACI) embedded infinitival question emphasis epistemic reading of modal verb Early New High German (1350–1550) epistemic adverbial phrase emphatic polarity marker erotetic (echo) question epistemic universal hypothesis unaccusative (ergative) verb evidential adverb evidential verb evidential (reading of) modal verb event passive exclamative

List of Abbreviations and Special Symbols xxvii EXPL

F FCA

FID FIN ForceP FocP Fut Gen HAB iA IllocP ILP IMP Imperf Ind indef INF Infl Instr IO IOR IP IPP iPRED IS (I)S ITAP iV KLP leMF LF L-marking

expletive (dummy element filling a syntactic position without structural status; cf. German Es wird versucht zu lachen ‘it. EXPL is attempted to smile’ feminine gender Foreign Consciousness Alignment (≅Theory of Mind; Others’ Minds Alignment; reminiscent of Carnap’s Fremdbewusstsein ‘foreign/others’ consciousness’) free-indirect discourse finality function (where predicative conjugational form of a main clause goes) Force phrase focus particle (German also Gradpartikel) Future (tense) Genitive habitual, habituality internal argument (direct object) illocutionary phrase individual-level predicate imperative imperfective aspect indicative indefinite infinitive inflection Instrumental case indirect object infinitival (object-)DP relative inflection phrase Infinitivus pro participio (German Ersatzinfinitiv ‘substitute infinitive’) intransitive predicate information structure/structural (Inter)Subjectification Intersubjective truth assessment presupposition intransitive verb Kimian state level predicate left middle field (German clause topology) Logical Form lexical theta-marking

xxviii List of Abbreviations and Special Symbols M MF MoepAdv MP MPaP MPD MPP MV N n.a. NEC NEG NegP NEUT NFGEH Nom NPI nrRC O OCS OV p, p P PAT PDC PF PreF Perf PG PIC Pl PoF PolP Poss PP PPA PPP

masculine gender middle field (German sentence topology) PreF (between TP and vP) hosting midsentence topics and topic-about modal epistemic adverb modal particle modal particle in appositives (non-restrictives) parameter MP-declarative modal particle phrase modal verb noun not applicable necessary negation negation phrase neuter gender non-finiteness gap for EMV hypothesis nominative negative polarity item non-restrictive relative clause Obligatory, ethically necessary/obligatory Old Church Slavonic object before verb (left-directional valence) proposition (content of a sentence) preposition patient (theta role = semantic case) peripheral dependent clause phonetic form prefield (SpecCP) perfective aspect prepositional gerund (German zum+infinitive) Processing Instruction Condition plural postfield (of the German clause structure, below VP hosting topics in echoed function) polarity phrase possible prepositional phrase perfect participle active perfect participle passive

List of Abbreviations and Special Symbols PRED Pres Ptcp Pret Pro PRO Pron PstPtcp Ptcp Q QE QUD REQU RES RHMF RI riMF S SA SAH Sg SID SLP SMP SMV SoG Sp SpDeix StP SUBJ T THMF ToM TP tPRED tV V-final/VL

xxix

predicate, predication present participle preterit invisible (‘small’) pronominal position pronominal determiner phrase (DP) without phonological content pronoun past participle participle quantification quotative evidential question under discussion request resultative rhematic middle field (= right middle field in German sentence topology) root infinitive (nicht stehen bleiben! not-stop) right middle field (German topology) sentence speech act operator speech act hypothesis singular standard indirect discourse stage level predicate strong MP status semi-modal verb South German (Oberdeutsch) speaker speaker deixis state (adjectival) passive subject tense thematic middle field (= left middle field in German sentence topology) Theory of Mind (also Foreign Consciousness Alignment/FCA and Others’ Minds Alignment) tense phrase transitive predicate transitive verb verb in sentence-final position

xxx List of Abbreviations and Special Symbols VF VO WMP WP

verum focus verb before object (right-directional valence) weak MP status (MP in the narrow sense) Wackernagel position (for subject and object clitics as in Wird=a=n treffen? ‘will=he=him meet’ and Er wird=s machen ‘he will=(i)t do’)

Special Symbols df=/df = ¬or ~ ∨ & or ∧ → or ⇒ □ P/◊ ∀u ∃v ≤ ∈ # ≡ Θ

for ‘is defined as’ for ‘propositional negation’ for ‘either-or’ for ‘and’ for ‘follows from’, ‘implies’ for ‘necessary/obligatory’ for possibility for ‘valid for all instances of u’ for ‘there is at least one instance of v’ for ‘smaller than or equal with’ for ‘is part of’ for exceptional (marked) contexts semantically equivalent theta (thematic) role

Abbreviations of Language Names ENHG GOT MHG MStE MStG NL OCS OE OHG PO RU SC SG

Early New High German (‘Frühneuhochdeutsch’) Gothic Middle High German (1150–1350) Modern Standard English Modern Standard German Netherlands/Dutch Old Church Slavonic Old English (750–1150) Old High German (750–1150) Polish Russian Scandinavian South German (‘Oberdeutsch’)

Introduction

This introduces the reader, in brief and succinct terms, to the pillars of the edifice of thought that this book rests on. Aspect-Tense-Mood, and Modality: The Hierarchical Interrelation The general goal of this book-length discussion is to find a common umbrella term and notion for the four major verbal grammatical categories, aspect, tense, mood, and modality. The plan behind this set of four categories is to show that they are hierarchically interrelated, with modality forming the most complex bundle of features, and aspect the least complex, although still sharing with the rest the smallest subset of criterial features. Distance as a Unifying Criterion It was Bühler’s (1934, 2011) fundamental origo insight that formed the basis of the ensuing discussion. Language has a central point of orientation, the origo (Latin for ‘source’). The critical property interrelating the categories in the hierarchical module system is distance. It is spatial distance on aspect (inner vs. outer aspect), temporal distance on tense (distance in relation to the speaker’s origo), distance of accessible worlds on mood, and distance of speaker’s certainty on modality. Aspect as a Modality Trigger In certain languages without paradigms of modal verbs, such as the Slavic languages, aspectual contexts trigger modal readings in clear distributions between root and epistemic modality. This confirms earlier conclusions drawn from German, Dutch, and English, where such interdependences could be found and where rich paradigms of bifunctional (root as well as homonymic epistemic) modal verbs exist. 1

2 Introduction Modal (Discourse) Particles as Manipulators of Common Ground The fact that modal particles (MPs) are highly sensitive to speech act contexts, but are not themselves speech act inducive, provides a new grammatical role for common ground management in discourse and dialogical contexts. This is due to an operator in its own right, i.e. common ground management second in scope reach on the proposition only to the speaker deixis (SpDeix) operator, which is assumed to cover speech act force and other illocutionary potentials. Overall, the contribution of the modal operators is both semantic (in Giannakidou’s terms: nonveridical modal base, distance) and pragmatic in the sense of presuppositional, or in indicating what can be added or not to the common ground. In addition private origos, as proposed in Giannakidou and Mari (2016), must also be allowed as an option. The pragmatic manipulation of common ground and origos is not specific to MPs but also characterizes other ‘mood morphemes’. Verum Focus and Modal Particles: Which Is Illocutionarily Stronger? Which Has Wider Scope? Given certain obvious interlocutionary links between VERUM/FALSUM accent and MP-selection, it is surprising that VERUM accent and stressed MPs such as DOCH (SCHON, JA) are not on a par with respect to confirmation or refusal/ denial of the utterance. The specific interplay of speech act and common ground (CG) in German is difficult to express in English. [MP = modal particle/CG operator, SA = speech act operator, > = scopes over] Scope relations (1) Aber er hat dochMP DOCHSA nichts getan. SACOUNTER CLAIM > MP-CG > not(p) but he has mp though nothing done ‘But he thenMP has NOTSA done anything.’ (2)

??

Aber er hat es doch DOCH NICHT getan. NOT(SA) > MP-CG > p but he has it mp though not done ‘But he has nevertheless NOT done it.’

(3) Aber er hat es doch DOCH (nicht) getan. but he has it mp though (not) done

SACOUNTER CLAIM > MP-CG > not(p)

(4) Aber HAT er denn doch DOCH nichts getan? SAQUEST > VERUM/MP-CG > not(p) but has he then mp though nothing done ‘But has he then nevertheless NOT done anything?’ (5) Aber HAT er es denn doch DOCH getan? SAQUEST > VERUM/MP-CG > p but has he it then mp though done ‘But HAS he then done it nevertheless?’

Introduction 3 The most convincing evidence for verum focus (VF) extending the highest scope over the entire sentence comes from the activation of the MP vielleicht (literally ‘much-easy’) going back to the adverbial meaning ‘perhaps’. (6)

(7)

a. Der hat VIELLEICHT eine Ahnung. he has perhaps a clue ‘He may have a clue.’ b. Der HAT vielleicht eine Ahnung. he has perhaps a clue ‘He does not have the slightest clue.’

– no VF, literally ‘perhaps’ – VF, strong confirmation of p

a. *#Was hat der SCHON für eine Ahnung – no VF – meaningless or # as FocP what has he already for a clue intended: ‘What kind of a clue does he have already?’ b. Was HAT der schon für eine Ahnung. – VF ‘Whatever clue he may have.’

In line with the legacy hypothesis for the grammaticalization of MP-lexemes, in (6b) with the MP, there should be some semantic remnant in consonance with the adverbial meaning of the MP. However, the MP-modalized sentence provides the very opposite. It pitch-stresses the meaning of p despite the shadow left over from the lexical source adverbial may-be. Quite strikingly, VF in (6b) expresses just the opposite of (6a) in terms of truth. However, the comparable structural pattern in (7a) provides no meaning at all. The question operator and the focus particle (FocP) SCHON clash irreparably, while (7b) with VF allows for the repair necessary to bring to the fore the wh-exclamative speech act. In VF +Schon, the narrow fulfillment of the FocP schon is brought to bear under the scope of the VF-question. Overall, the illocutionary force of VF suspends that of the MP vielleicht in (6b). VF has the strongest illocutionary, i.e. SpDeix potential. Modal Particles and Thetic Clauses A specific conclusion has been drawn from the fact that true thetic sentences disallow MP-selection – for the very reason just mentioned: There is no Topic (-about) structure activated for theticity (most prominently represented by presentative Es-sentences, There is/are clauses; see Abraham 2019). I have argued in several places and contexts in this book that, if MP-selection is possible, it makes an utterance illocutionarily ‘autonomous’. No doubt, however, thetic sentences are autonomous despite their radical deselection of MP-illocution and a CG. It seems that the concept of illocutionary autonomy may have to be contingent upon the lack of activation of the CG operator. This type of autonomy would include propositional

4 Introduction status. One may thus say that MP-selection implies sentential autonomy except for theticity. The latter receives its autonomous force not via an illocutionary mechanics, but through the CG-mechanics. Thetics lacking illocutionary potential are perfect sentences based on an empty CG. Given that thetics lack question and imperative status, their Force provides no speech act operators. In terms of the Prague School and valency, thetics are just comments with Topic left unrealized: TOPIC(__) & COMMENT(p). What is understood as a sentence without any precontext (such as a stage instruction, inception to jokes and riddles, out-of-theblue exclamatives) makes it an exponent of an empty CG. By contrast, categoricals go beyond thetics in that they include the highest illocutionary potential, i.e. speech act potential, which makes utterances out of propositions. Based on speech act status, categorical utterances are autonomous, whereas thetics have an empty CG without speech act force beyond definitions and analytic statements. MPs Negotiating the Common Ground (CG) The following example illustrates what is at stake. Is the declarative speech act in the scope of CG? Alternatively, is it the case that speech acts scope out the CGs? (8)

Dad wants to find out: Who has done it, Kai or Momo? (Shin Tanaka, p.c.) After questioning his kids carefully, he takes the decision saying either (8a) or (8b): a. Kai-wa warui. As for Kai, he has done it. (Maybe that Momo has done it, too. Kai-wa is nasty We shall have to see whether this is the case – the case is still negotiable). b. Kai-ga warui Kai is the nasty one, only he. There need not be any further Kai-ga is nasty negotiation of the case.

(8b) signals that any further plea from either child is superfluous. Dad has spoken and decided. There is no more room for negotiating the common ground in this triangular communication. In contrast, with (8a) dad leaves open his final decision, as he has not gathered sufficient arguments and facts about the case. Both (8a) and (8b) are declaratives, but each CG is decidable independently. On including the logical notions of thetics vs. categoricals in the discussion of modality at the hands of the dialogical MPs, the part of verbal modality has been blended out entirely. This was for a good reason. Theticity, as much as semantic analyticity and non-topicality at bottom, has nothing of particular interest to add. The activation of MVs, in whichever of the polysemous options

Introduction 5 (DMV = deontic (root) modal verbs, EMV = epistemic modal verbs, or evMV = evidential modal verbs), is not contingent upon questions of topicality, but it is contingent upon aspect, Aktionsart, and tense. Interconnections between Aspect, Definiteness, and Modality The validity of the present view about the intricate link between aspect and modality has been questioned occasionally in peer reactions in the years accompanying the preparation of the topics of the present book. The criticism seemed not only to jeopardize our concept of modality and its heterocategorical bases (verbal perfectivity and referential definiteness eliciting root modality against imperfectivity and indefiniteness triggering epistemic modality) but also to target the hypothesis that verbal non-finiteness excludes modal epistemics (‘No epistemic modal verb reading under verbal non-finiteness’). Apart from the principled propensity of peers to search for exceptions to the generalizations of others, however, there seems to be a more deeply qualified reason for such a misunderstanding and misrepresentation. In essence, the misunderstanding relates to the claim that the category of nominal articles is intimately related to the category of verbal aspect and, consequently, expressions of definiteness are functions of the same kind. In terms of Kabakčiev (1984a,b, mainly on Bulgarian) and Leiss (2000b, on the history of German), the definite and the indefinite article cooperate on a function related to perfectivity and imperfectivity. The Bulgarian linguist Kabakčiev (1984a,b) even goes so far as to emphasize that the function of article paradigms (definite vs. indefinite) is to activate aspectual effects on the predication rather than safeguarding the traditional Western line, i.e. distinguishing topic vs. non-topic/new by way of nominal reference. Leiss (2000b) took over this argumentative line to explain how, in the history of Germanic and German, in particular, the original (Gothic, Old High German, Early Middle High German) aspect systematics thinned out to give way to the rise of articles (definite vs. indefinite). This development in the younger periods of German (from AD 750 onwards) lies before us like an open book. Verbal aspect and referentiality in the category of determiners are exchangeable. The development from one to the other rises prominently with the need for an accompanying narrativity in its various forms and with the demise of case paradigms. Paradigmatic case in combination with aspect can take over tasks of nominal referentiality. The fact that under wide scope of negation, this link between case+aspect with nominal reference is suspended seems to provide solid support for the Kabakčiev–Kotin–Leiss line of argumentation. That the aspect-modality relations invoked here have been found to

6 Introduction be suspended under negation – a fact that has been overlooked in many a counter presentation on Slavic and Germanic – deserves special attention. Overt vs. Covert Modality Covert modality expressed by the construal BE/HAVE TO + V resides in the first place in the lexical projectivity (st, as in OBLIGATOR/ ENABLER: OBLIGATE/ENABLE(z,x,t)[V(x,y,t≤)]. This is mirrored by the inchoative, perfective status of the MVs as original preterit presents and the aspectual prefix Gothic -ga and its correspondents (modern German V-particles: cf. EINschlafen vs. schlafen ‘insleep/fall asleep’ vs. ‘sleep’) in modern German and in Slavic perfective morphology. We concluded that BE/HAVE TO + V reflects a decomposed state of MV with respect to projectivity (>). What is overt is modal specificity activated by the five different MVs and projectivity of BE/HAVE TO in the form of the lexical preposition TO. By contrast, what is covert is projectivity at the hands of MVs and the aspectually triggered modal component (in Slavic and Gothic), while it is visible with BE/HAVE TO. MVs bring in more variety in terms of modality through the lexical source meaning of the five German MVs (müssen, sollen, dürfen, mögen, können), whereas BE/HAVE TO lack source lexicality. As regards epistemic modality, the lexical projective component in BE/HAVE TO is too strong to allow for the required origo relation of simultaneity, s=t, while, within the MV setup, s=t can regularly be achieved, as the projective component is grammatical rather than lexical.

Introduction 7 The fact that finiteness is indispensable for modal epistemicity strongly invites the conclusion that tensing works on the lexical sources of MVs. By contrast, the fact that modality stays manifest with the non-finite use of MVs allows us to conclude that the ordering and circumstantial contingencies of MVs derive from their lexical sources reflecting ‘dues, debt’, ‘ability, potentiality’, ‘toll’, ‘knowing’, and ‘satisfaction’. This lexical translucency inherited by MVs both in their root and in their epistemic mappings characterizes the Germanic MVs. We concluded that it is these lexical differences that separate both root and the epistemic MV on the basis of Kratzer’s ordering and circumstantial criteria. They operate on the origo commonality, which bisects the class of modal verbs to yield DMV and EMV. Language and Human Cognition The entire discussion of modality sketches the relationship between language and human cognition. As I see it, the results open windows for future research, such as on the modality of pronouns, the modality or non-modality of impersonal constructions, and other domains of modality that are less well studied. Viewing these additional domains intends to promote the idea that modality is pervasive in language to an extent hitherto unappreciated and unexplored. Modality, in its widest sense as perspectivity resolvable from linguistic forms, is to be detected nearly everywhere in any sentence. Yet, let us not be deceived. Today’s much conjured concept of human cognition, which is often granted priority over, and independence from, language, unfolds only from linguistic expression. To the extent that modality emerges from human perspectivization and that it embraces perspectival alternatives, as it will be shown it does, cognition is not before language. Language is not the printout of cognition, of thought, but it IS language in the most irreversible relative sense possible. Language imprints structure in the form of mental representations onto the human brain, thus transferring an animal brain into the human mind (Bickerton 1990, 2012; Leiss 2009a, 2012b, 2014). The End of the Line: Epistemology and Language Criticism Any linguistic discussion like the present book has to find itself a position between the epistemological Nominalist view and the Realist view. According to the Nominalist view, reality embraces the totality of ‘individuals’, enumerable as individual items. The world is the totality of individual items. This is the view most commonly taken by linguists working in formal semantics today.

8 Introduction Grammatical categories, however, including the grammatical category of number, always represent a paradigm, i.e. a choice of perspectives on the world. This also applies also to the category of number. There are, for example, countable and non-countable nouns, such as German der Kristall ‘theMASC crystal’ [+countable] and das Kristall ‘(theNEUTR) crystal’ [−countable]. Countable nouns can be used in the plural, while uncountable nouns cannot. They are mass nouns without plural forms. From this, Realism draws the conclusion that there are no individuals in reality, but only individualizations, i.e. perspectivizations enacted by the viewer. From this, it follows that perspectives are types of meaning (in Modistic terminology modi significandi), but not the meaning itself. The chosen perspective does not map reality itself, but the location of the viewer (observer). This location can be chosen independently of any specific viewer. This is the mechanism that grammatical categories generally pursue in complex ways. The distinction between mapping reality as against perspectivizing the world corresponds to the linguistic distinction between meaning (German Bedeutung = mental representation (classification)) and signification (Bezeichnung = reference/denotation)1. Meanings reside in the mental lexicon, whereas significations, or denotations, are generated by grammatical techniques in terms of specific sets of features in a grammatical context (case, number, aspect, tense, mood [for accessible worlds], and, last but not least, modality [for speaker’s certainty]). So it is a matrix of features that defines meaning. Grammatical categories add coordinates (space, time, possible worlds [mood]), and indices of certainty (modality) to meanings (lexical items), thus transforming them into items that refer (Bezeichnungen). However, grammar comes about only in phrase and sentence structure. It is not until chunking (merge) has taken place, to yield phrases and sentences, that meaning is transformed to signification. Thus, grammar does not encode the world. What, instead, it encodes is the perspective every individual speaker 1

The exact meaning of the terms meaning (German Bedeutung) and signification (German Bezeichnung) is far from clear in the literature if not irritatingly, and infelicitously for the inexperienced reader, confusing. Thought and Referent (as introduced by Ogden and Richards 1923) seem to get us the closest to the conceptual opposition that the dealings in the present book are based on (see Leiss 2010b, 2018). As discussed in detail early on in this book, the gist of the opposition is that Bedeutung refers to classifications of sets of semantic features stored in the mental lexicon and constantly redefined in the daily linguistic negotiations between the speakers of a language. Bezeichnung, on the other hand, is the use of items of Bedeutung in grammatical contexts, allowing for specific subjective uses of meaning to be understood referentially by other subjective users of the same language. It should be clear, at this point, that I shy away from other terminologies (using terms such as designation, denotation, connotation, significant, signifié). Frege distinguished Bedeutung and Sinn in a decidedly different context, although basing the opposition on coordinates of time and space. Consider his distinction of Abendstern ‘evening star’ and Morgenstern ‘morning star’ as the viewer’s time-and-space-dependent realizations of the same celestial body, Venus.

Introduction 9 adopts on the world (or his subjective world(s)). Perspectives are points of view on the world, not the world itself. Once a speaker codes his perspective by using grammar, the location of the speaker can be identified by the hearer. This, in short, is the position of Realism, already adopted very explicitly by the mediaeval scholastic language philosophers, the Modists (Modistae). Once the hearer has reconstructed the location of the speaker by grammatical means, such as by means of aspect or tense, he will get to know the coordinates of the item under discussion. At this historical point, the power of grammar was defined, and the distinction of meaning (without coordinates of time and location) and significance (with coordinates specifying its actual use) became possible. Meanings are generated by the lexicon. Significance comes to the fore not until grammatical categories are applied in structured sentences. In this way, the function of the lexicon and that of grammar were clearly kept apart and defined as separable. According to Leiss’ history of the philosophy of language (Leiss 2010b, forthcoming), this metaknowledge came to be completely lost in the centuries subsequent to the mediaeval Modists and up till today. There is felicitous agreement with recent work by others. It seems that the present stance on grammar not encoding the world is in harmony with the concept of subjective (non)veridicality, which Giannakidou has pushed for mood and modality. The only case where actual truth matters for grammar is with epistemic attitudes like know, which select the indicative mood and behave like unembedded, unmodalized contexts. In any other case, even with so-called factive predicates, the presupposition is of subjective veridicality. Subjective veridicality is truth with regard to an individual anchor, i.e. in an epistemic or doxastic (or, memory, perception, fiction space) where the anchor is fully committed to the truth of p, with entire disregard for actual truth. Giannakidou argues emphatically that this is the precondition for mood in Greek and Romance languages, and a precondition for assertion, a reformulation of the classical ‘realis’, which is in fact a subjective realis. This idea is very close to what the present discussion has argued for. If there can be a joint conclusion, it would have to be that the grammatical logical form does not access the world directly but only a subjective representation of it. Note that this conclusion challenges the old idea of meaning as being a relation between the world and the linguistic form. It is not. It will be highlighted in this book repeatedly in the chapters and text portions on perspectivization and mental displacement. Meaning is a relation between linguistic form and the linguistic representation of the world (Leiss 2009b, 2012b, 2014; implied, to the best of my insight, in Giannakidou’s concept of subjective veridicality; see Giannakidou and Mari 2016, 2018c).

I

Modes of Modality

1 Pragmatics: Modality and Speaker Orientation

1.1

The Human as an Animal Catoptricum When grown up, we are the way we are just because we are (also) catoptric animals and have developed a double ability to look at ourselves (insofar as it is possible) and the others in both our and their perceptive reality and catoptric1 virtuality. (Eco 1986: 207)

In the history of language philosophy, the metaphor of language as a mirror of reality has a long tradition. Accordingly, language, thought, and world are linked in an iconic (imaging) relationship. As a system of signs standing for something else, language, on its different levels of representation, is the mirror image of the real world. Beyond this relationship of language–thought–world, the concept of the mirror is present in a very concrete sense also in the process of signification to the extent that the realization of one’s own mirror image is presupposed for identifying one’s own subject as well as the constitution of semiotic consciousness. In this sense, the human is not only an animal semioticum, but also an animal catoptricum (Eco 1986: 207) excelling in the capacity of perceiving himor herself as well as others in their perceptive reality and, beyond that, in their reflected virtuality. Cognition-psychological studies tell us that this process of knowledge acquisition embraces several stages. Mirror Principle: Deictic Origo Binding and Category Splits Deixis is pointing at something. It is the function of grammatical deixis to locate the position of the viewer. Consider (1). The source (origo: speaker’s Here-and-Now) of deixis has to be identified. For each grammatical category, the place has to be identified from which reference is signaled. The place has to be reconstructed from which reference is taken up. We are not enabled to 1

Catoptrics (from Greek κάτοπτρον/kátoptron ‘mirror‘) is the study of the reflection of light through the mirror.

13

14 Pragmatics: Modality and Speaker Orientation identify and refer to the extralinguistic context independent of the Here-andNow until the morphological markers of the grammatical categories are encoded (Leiss 1992: 7; Zeman 2017b: 98). Consider the following example illustrating the split of the Ego/I. (1)

Ich sollte den Artikel fertigschreiben. I should the paper finish

There are two readings of (1). See (2a, b). (2)

a. ‘I am obliged to finish the paper.’ (→ realization of the event lies in the future and is therefore uncertain) b. ‘It happened in due course that I finished the paper.’ (→ realization of the event also lies in the future but it is certain that it happened)

While the referential distinction between the two individual Ego/I dimensions is maintained, the split is based on the resolution of ‘awareness’ about the knowledge of the speakers. At the same time, example (2b) shows that the perspectives linked to the different Ego/I dimensions must be compatible with each other. Following Evans (2005: 104), one would have to speak of a metaperspective (Evans’ “X with respect to perspective 2, which is considered from perspective 1”) in which two different awareness contents are integrated (also see Zeman 2017b modeling the binary relation as a process of triangulation). See (3). (3)

(ii)

(i) knows and asserts speakeri

knows and asserts

states that sourcei

states of affairs

(adapted from Zeman 2017a)

The dependency hierarchy in (1) reflected in (3) arises not only from the speaker knowledge qua thought content, but also from the relative structural embedding of the discourse roles in (1). This is demonstrated by the exemplary use of the preterit sollte ‘should’ importing what is termed ‘fate future’ (German Schicksalsfutur; see Abraham 2014b). Example (1) is ambiguous allowing for the two different readings in (2a, b). The interpretation rests on how the perspective starting point (‘source’) is then anchored. Given the discourse configuration, in which the current speaker is the illocutionary subject, (2a) signifies the obligation that the paper be finished. The realization of the event is thus uncertain, i.e. it remains open as to whether the paper will be completed. In contrast, given a narrative context where the narrator has

1.2 Modality, Deixis, and Orientation in Displaced Worlds

15

discourse sovereignty over the respective progress of the story, a high degree of certainty is attributed to the realization of the event. The storyteller Ego/I ‘knows’ more than the propositional subject I. This shows that the hierarchical viewpoint (‘source’) relationship is not necessarily linked to contents of mental awareness but is constituted by the functional discourse role. 1.2

Modality, Deixis, and Orientation in Displaced Worlds

Pragmatic competence consists in anchoring our mental representations of reality in context. As mental representations pertain to form, whereas reality is made of real substance, our mental representations are reduced models of the world. Mental representations are simplified categorizations that are not able to refer per se. Pragmatic competence consists in relating mental representations to the context. It is important to keep in mind that mental representations are categorizations devoid of any time-space-person coordinates. In other words, mental representations, such as phonemes or lexemes, do not refer to existing entities in the world. They categorize reality, which means that they reduce the complexity of perceived items, i.e. the possible infinite sensory input, to finite classes or categories and their build in terms of features. We know that instinct does the same. It reduces potential infiniteness of sensory input by providing innate models of categorization. Is pragmatic competence then instinctive in nature in the first place? In order to define pragmatic competence, we have to understand the difference between instinct-driven categorization by animals and language-driven humanspecific categorization. Instinct is a quite reliable and robust means of orientation in the world and of categorization of the world. In contrast to instinct, humanspecific categorizations are highly adaptive in nature. Instinct is directly innate, whereas processes of human categorizations are not directly innate, but constructions of the human mind. Nevertheless, it is commonly held that the tool that creates adaptive categorization systems in the Homo sapiens mind is innate. In other words, the pragmatic sections of this book are based on the axiomatics of Universal Grammar, albeit of Universal Grammar in a non-Cartesian format (see Leiss 2009a/2012b; Hinzen 2014a,b; Hinzen and Sheehan 2014). Universal Grammar (UG) cannot be reduced to the Chomskyan and to the Cartesian or Port-Royal approach to UG. Following Leiss (2009/2012a), the present basic UG approach is that of Sebastian Shaumyan (1987, 2006), Roman Jakobson (1957/ 1971), the Modist Universal Grammar of late Mediaeval Europe, and the universal dependency syntax of Lucien Tesnière (1959/1965). As to the universal pragmatic component, the present approach is largely indebted to Charles S. Peirce

16 Pragmatics: Modality and Speaker Orientation (1982) as well as to Karl Bühler (1934/1982; 1934/2011). See, above all, Leiss (2009a, and second edition thereof in 2012a). As soon as we understand that instinct is replaced in the sapiens mind by a more adaptive system of orientation in the world, we are in a position to explain why systems of lexical semantics as well as phoneme systems differ from language to language, while nevertheless displaying architectures built by the same universal principles. In sum, language provides the human species with a universal tool that filters the input in an adaptive way. As a consequence, we hold, in sharp contrast to Steven Pinker, that language is not an instinct. Quite in contrast and what is more, language is defined as a universal tool that is able to overwrite instinct. Let us come back to the definition of pragmatic competence. Pragmatics has to bridge the functional abyss between human-specific mental representations and the instinct-driven categorization of animals. Animals remain rooted in the world when communicating, which is because they remain in the prison of here, now, and me. This natural origo (in the sense of Bühler 1934/1982; 1934/2011) adds space-time-person indexes per se, which, however, remain reduced to the present context and which can be shared with other members of the species. In contrast to this, the linguistic animal, which we are, is able to overcome the natural viewpoint (origo) and to anchor it in distant places (by aspect), distant times (by tense), distant worlds (by mood), and in distant modes of security as to truth veridicality (by modality). Mood arises when we recategorize the world in variable ways, with the advantage that we are able to construe possible worlds (moods such as irrealis and optative), but with the disadvantage that we can never be sure that our constructions of distant worlds are completely reliable. The tool of modality helps us out of this dilemma. Modality is a tool kit that is specialized for the evaluation of certainty, or uncertainty, of information provided by the propositional part of a sentence. Overall, modality helps us as a compass of orientation in displaced worlds. As human categorizations are neither mainly instinct-driven nor essentially reduced to the here/now/me, the linguistic animal that we are needs bridges between the factual origo and displaced possible worlds in order to be able to refer to, and to anchor, mental representations in the world. This anchor is reference, especially higher order reference created by linguistic tools, as pointed out before: aspect (reference to distant spaces), tense (reference to distant times), mood (reference to possible worlds), and modality (reference to secure, or less secure, mental representations of the world in one’s own mind as well as in others’ minds). The universal linguistic tool that liberates the human species from the immediate context (origo) involves complex displacement techniques. These

1.2 Modality, Deixis, and Orientation in Displaced Worlds

17

techniques are linguistic in nature and not of some general cognitive quality. Leiss (2012a) goes with Bickerton (1990, 2012) in assuming that the so-called general cognitive faculties are reducible to those faculties that we share with the animal brain. In contrast to the animal brain, however, the mind of the human species can be defined as consisting of an animal brain plus additional analytic techniques. These analytic and feature-based techniques optimize the animal brain and transform it into the human mind. These techniques are grammatical techniques involving syntax and grammatical semantics. The latter cannot be reduced to formal semantics alone but involves the classical inventory of grammatical categories. With respect to modality, the involved grammatical categories are aspect, tense, mood, as well as all modes of modalities that elaborate further these basic building blocks. Reference to the displaced world enables the human mind to establish reference to displaced minds, better known under the label of others’ minds or the faculty of Theory of Mind. In order to understand this process, we have to delve deeply into the nature of the aspect-tense-mood (-epistemic modality) (ATM(E)) architecture of the proposition.2 A thorough understanding of the ATM-architecture is a prerequisite to understanding the illocutionary function of the sentence, which consists to a large degree of different modes of modalities. At the very core of ATM, as well as of human-specific pragmatic competence, we find deixis. Deixis is involved in, and operates under, the condition that two members of a species share the same context. Deixis begins already with eye contact and, consequently, with shared attention to some part of the surrounding context. This kind of ‘pointing with the eye’ is present in a large range of animals, such as in birds and in some domesticated mammals. What is special in humans and protohumans is that they begin to point with their hands, whereby one hand is specialized in pointing. The non-deictic hand, by contrast, remains animal-like, to put it somewhat provocatively. The intricate relationship between handedness and the evolution of language has been thoroughly studied by the epochal work of Leroi-Gourhan (1964–1965, 1987). The specialized deictic hand creates shared focus markers in shared contexts. This is the foundation of communication and of mind sharing. Animals without the tool of language do not share their minds when communicating offline, i.e. beyond the immediate context. They instead share instinct. 2

ATME = aspect, tense, mood, epistemic modality. These categories are ordered with hierarchically growing complexity. This is the reason that ATM rather than the more familiar abbreviation, TMA, has been chosen.

18 Pragmatics: Modality and Speaker Orientation In human communication, speaker deixis comes in various forms of complexity. To cope with this complexity, we have to distinguish between techniques of simple speaker deixis and double speaker deixis. Emphasis will be put on the claim that these different techniques of simple and double deixis enable us to encode different modes of displacement in modality, the first being simple displacement, the second double displacement. With respect to Hockett’s design feature of language, the feature of displacement is defined as the ability of a sign to refer to objects remote in space and time (Hockett and Altmann 1968; Nöth 2000: 155f.). It is still a matter of controversy as to whether the faculty of displacement can really be attributed to humans only. For instance, in the pertinent literature we find reports of spatial displacement in the honeybee and spatial as well as temporal displacement in trained apes. The decision whether displacement is a faculty unique to the human species depends on our ability to distinguish between two qualities of displacement techniques: simple displacement and double displacement. 1.3

Simple and Double Displacement as Basic Building Blocks of Modality

Displacement (Leiss 1992; see German Versetzung, as used in Zeman 2017) refers to concepts of shifting (Jakobson 1957/1971; Diewald 1999), which can be captured under the heading of perspectivization. The latter concept has been developed by cognitive psychologists (among them notably Perner 1991) and linguists interested in narrative structures (Eckardt 2012, 2014; Zeman 2017 referring to Dancygier 2012a,b,c). It seems appropriate to insert general remarks on perspectivization before we return to linguistic displacement in the framework of modality. 1.3.1

Cognitive and Linguistic Perspectivization: The Viewpoint Constellation In a wide sense of the term, grammar is genuinely perspectival in that every grammatical paradigm offers a choice of alternatives. All grammatical phenomena are linked to perspectivization insofar as they are based on the speaker’s deictic origo that determines the ‘view’ on the verbal event situation. In cognitive linguistics, this is captured in the premise that “inherent in every usage event is a presupposed viewing arrangement, pertaining to the relationship between the conceptualizers and the situation being viewed” (Langacker 2002: 16). It follows from this that grammatical

1.3 Simple and Double Displacement

19

(unlike lexical) markers do not indicate a simple viewpoint, but rather a viewpoint constellation (see Verhagen 2005; Dancygier and Sweetser 2012; see Zeman 2016, 2017 for illustrations). Let us illustrate this by taking a look at the category of tense. Consider (4) below. The temporal perspectivization thus refers to the relation between primary and secondary reference points and, hence, a multiperspectival constellation between viewpoints of different qualities. As such, it requires a three-point description, as reflected in the ternary system of Reichenbach (1948) that models tenses as relations between the time of event and the time of speech as perspectivized by a third reference point (see in detail Zeman 2013, 2016; see also Evans 2005 with respect to the multiperspectivity of complex tenses in typology). (4)

Biphasic structure of a (present) modal verb in its standard root meaning: notice the three deictic anchor points, ts, te1 and te2 (corresponding roughly to Reichenbach’s (1948) ). [t=time line, ts=speech act time, te=event time, tr=reference time] Consider a modal expression like He must come with the obligation lying on the subject at speech act time, ts, from which the event proceeds onwards (te1