The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood 9780199591435, 0199591431

Table of contents :
Cover
Series
The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood
Copyright
Contents
The Contributors
1. Surveying Modality and Mood: An Introduction
2. The History of Modality and Mood
Part I The Semantics of Modality and Mood
3. Analyses of the Modal Meanings
4. Interactions between Modality and Other Semantic Categories
5. Analyses of the Semantics of Mood
Part II The Expression of Modality and Mood
6. The Expression of Non-​Epistemic Modal Categories
7. The Expression of Epistemic Modality
8. Sentence Types
9. The Linguistic Marking of (Ir)Realis and Subjunctive
10. The Linguistic Interaction of Mood with Modality and Other Categories
Part III Sketches of Modality and Mood Systems
11. Modality and Mood in Iroquoian
12. Modality and Mood in Chadic
13. Modality and Mood in Sinitic
14. Modality and Mood in Oceanic
15. Modality and Mood in Standard Average European
Part IV Wider Perspectives on Modality and Mood
16. The Diachrony of Modality and Mood
17. Areality in Modality and Mood
18. Modality and Mood in First Language Acquisition
19. Modality and Mood in American Sign Language
Part V Theoretical Approaches
20. Modality and Mood in Formal Syntactic Approaches
21. Modality and Mood in Functional Linguistic Approaches
22. Modality and Mood in Cognitive Linguistics and Construction Grammars
23. Modality and Mood in Formal Semantics
References
Person index
Language index
Subject index

Citation preview

T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

M ODA L I T Y A N D  M O OD

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THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MODALITY AND MOOD Edited by Jan Nuyts and Johan van der Auwera

For a complete list of Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics please see pp. 621-622

The Oxford Handbook of

MODALITY AND MOOD Edited by

JAN NUYTS and

JOHAN VAN DER AUWERA

1

3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, nd education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © editorial matter and organization Jan Nuyts and Johan van der Auwera 2016 © the chapters their several contributors 2016 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2016 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: to come ISBN 978–​0–​19–​959143–​5 Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Contents

The Contributors 

ix

1. Surveying Modality and Mood: An Introduction  Jan Nuyts

1

2. The History of Modality and Mood  Johan van der Auwera and Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar

9

PA RT I T H E SE M A N T IC S OF M ODA L I T Y A N D M O OD 3. Analyses of the Modal Meanings  Jan Nuyts

31

4. Interactions between Modality and Other Semantic Categories  Mario Squartini

50

5. Analyses of the Semantics of Mood  Irina Nikolaeva

68

PA RT I I T H E E X P R E S SION OF M ODA L I T Y A N D M O OD 6. The Expression of Non-​Epistemic Modal Categories  Heiko Narrog

89

7. The Expression of Epistemic Modality  Kasper Boye

117

8. Sentence Types  Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

141

9. The Linguistic Marking of (Ir)Realis and Subjunctive  Caterina Mauri and Andrea Sansò

166

vi   Contents

10. The Linguistic Interaction of Mood with Modality and Other Categories  Andrej L. Malchukov and Viktor S. Xrakovskij

196

PA RT I I I SK E TC H E S OF M ODA L I T Y A N D M O OD SYS T E M S 11. Modality and Mood in Iroquoian  Marianne Mithun

223

12. Modality and Mood in Chadic  Zygmunt Frajzyngier

258

13. Modality and Mood in Sinitic  Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube

296

14. Modality and Mood in Oceanic  Frantisek Lichtenberk

330

15. Modality and Mood in Standard Average European  Daniël Van Olmen and Johan van der Auwera

362

PA RT I V W I DE R P E R SP E C T I V E S ON M ODA L I T Y A N D M O OD 16. The Diachrony of Modality and Mood  Debra Ziegeler

387

17. Areality in Modality and Mood  Björn Hansen and Umberto Ansaldo

406

18. Modality and Mood in First Language Acquisition  Maya Hickmann and Dominique Bassano

430

19. Modality and Mood in American Sign Language  Barbara Shaffer and Terry Janzen

448

Contents   vii

PA RT V T H E OR E T IC A L A P P ROAC H E S 20. Modality and Mood in Formal Syntactic Approaches  Katrin Axel-​Tober and Remus Gergel

473

21. Modality and Mood in Functional Linguistic Approaches  Karin Aijmer

495

22. Modality and Mood in Cognitive Linguistics and Construction Grammars  Ronny Boogaart and Egbert Fortuin

514

23. Modality and Mood in Formal Semantics  Magdalena Kaufmann and Stefan Kaufmann

535

References  Person index  Languages index  Subject index 

559 621 639 645

The Contributors

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Distinguished Professor, Australian Laureate Fellow, and Director of the Language and Culture Research Centre at James Cook University. She is a major authority on languages of the Arawak family, from northern Amazonia, and has written grammars of Bare (1995) and Warekena (1998), plus A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia (CUP, 2003), in addition to essays on various typological and areal features of South American languages and Papuan. Her other major publications include Evidentiality (OUP, 2004), Imperatives and Commands (OUP, 2010), Languages of the Amazon (OUP, 2012), The Art of Grammar (OUP, 2014), and How Gender Shapes the World (OUP, 2016). Karin Aijmer is Professor Emerita in English Linguistics at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research interests focus on pragmatics, discourse analysis, modality, corpus linguistics, and contrastive analysis. Her publications include Conversational Routines in English: Convention and Creativity (1996), English Discourse Particles: Evidence from a Corpus (2002), The Semantic Field of Modal Certainty: A Study of Adverbs in English (with co-​author) (2007), Pragmatics:  An Advanced Resource Book for Students (with co-​ authors) (2012), and Understanding Pragmatic Markers:  A  Variational Pragmatic Analysis (2013). She is co-​editor of Pragmatics of Society (2011) and of A Handbook of Corpus Pragmatics (2015). Umberto Ansaldo is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong. His interests include the study of East and Southeast Asian languages, contact linguistics, grammaticalization, and creolization theory. He is the author of Contact Languages: Ecology and Evolution in Asia (CUP, 2009), co-​author of Languages in Contact (CUP, 2016), and is currently working on a book on simplicity and complexity in isolating tonal languages. Katrin Axel-​Tober (PhD 2005) is Professor of German Linguistics at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Her research focuses on the synchronic and diachronic syntax of German. She has published the books Studies on Old High German Syntax: Left Sentence Periphery, Verb Placement and Verb-​Second (Benjamins, 2007)  and (Nicht-​)kanonische Nebensätze im Deutschen:  Synchrone und diachrone Aspekte (Walter de Gruyter, 2012) as well as several articles on sentence structure, complementizers, null subjects, and modal verbs. Dominique Bassano is Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in the laboratory ‘Structures Formelles du Langage’ (University of Paris 8). Her work is concerned with first language acquisition in children, focusing in particular

x   the Contributors on early development. She is interested in lexical development and the emergence of grammar, adopting a functionalist approach to language acquisition and using cross-​ linguistic comparisons as well as developmental dynamic system perspectives. Ronny Boogaart is Assistant Professor at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) of the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. His PhD research, conducted at the Free University in Amsterdam, dealt with the role of tense and aspect in discourse (Aspect and Temporal Ordering:  A  Contrastive Analysis of Dutch and English, 1999). His focus of attention, both then and now, is on the interplay of semantics and pragmatics in discourse interpretation. Taking a ‘constructionist’ view on grammar, he is currently concerned mainly with modal and conditional constructions. His publications include earlier handbook contributions on tense and aspect (with Theo Janssen, Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics) and on aspect and Aktionsart (Handbook of Morphology). He is editor in chief of the journal Nederlandse Taalkunde/​Dutch Linguistics. Kasper Boye (PhD 2006) is Associate Professor in the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen. He focuses on functional and cognitive linguistics, and his research interests include modality, grammaticalization, and complementation. His publications include Language Usage and Language Structure (edited with Elisabeth Engberg-​Pedersen; De Gruyter, 2010) and Epistemic Meaning: A Cross-​ Linguistic and Functional-​Cognitive Study (De Gruyter, 2012). Hilary Chappell is currently Chair Professor in Linguistic Typology of East Asian Languages at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, an appointment she took up in 2005. Since the 1990s, she has been engaged in opening up the new domain in Chinese linguistics of typology and the comparative grammatical description of Sinitic languages (or ‘Chinese dialects’), with the aim of gauging the extent of their diversity. More recently, she has also begun research on the diachronic syntax of Southern Min (Hokkien) with Alain Peyraube, using a corpus of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century materials compiled by Spanish missionaries. Egbert Fortuin is Associate Professor of Russian Linguistics at Leiden University, the Netherlands. His research focuses on the domain of semantics, pragmatics and syntax, with special reference to the Slavic languages. He has worked on various topics such as the imperative, modal constructions, degree expressions, verbal aspect, and word order. Zygmunt Frajzyngier is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. His main interests and areas in which he published books and scholarly papers include: foundations of syntax and semantics in cross-​linguistic perspective; typological explanations in grammar; grammaticalization; Chadic and Afroasiatic linguistics, and descriptive grammars and dictionaries of Chadic languages. He is the author, co-​author and editor of 23 books, and over 110 papers. Frajzyngier has been continually publishing in the field of grammaticalization for 30 years.

the Contributors   xi Remus Gergel is Professor of English linguistics at Saarland University, Germany, and has earned his doctorate from the University of Tübingen, Germany. He has conducted work as Research Fellow at the English Department in Tübingen and at the collaborative research centers 441 and 833 (both in Tübingen), as Post-​Doc Researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, as Temporary Professor at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and as Full Professor at the University of Graz, Austria. His current research includes issues of semantic change, modality, degree constructions, decomposition, contrastive studies, grammatical interfaces, and focus. Björn Hansen is Professor of Slavonic Linguistics at the University of Regensburg, Germany. His research interests are lexical semantics, syntax, and language contact. He has worked on the semantics and syntax of modal constructions from a typological perspective, with special reference to the Slavonic languages (Russian, Polish, and Serbian/​Croatian). Together with Ferdinand de Haan he edited the book Modals in the Languages of Europe (Mouton, 2009). Maya Hickmann is Research Director at the Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and is presently co-​ Director of the Laboratoire Structures Formelles du Langage (CNRS & University of Paris 8). She studies language acquisition within a cross-​linguistic perspective, particularly the role of structural and functional determinants, the impact of typological and cognitive constraints, and the relationship between language and cognition. She is Chief Editor of the journal LIA (John Benjamins) dedicated to language acquisition. Terry Janzen is Professor and Department Head in the Department of Linguistics, University of Manitoba, Canada. He has research interests in cognitive and functional aspects of ASL discourse structure, in particular on information structure and complex verb constructions that include perspective-​taking. He also researches grammaticalization in signed languages and intersubjectivity in language use, especially in interpreted interactions. Magdalena Kaufmann is Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut. She graduated from the University of Frankfurt with a doctoral dissertation on imperative clauses (published in Springer’s SLAP series, 2012) and has since been working on various aspects of clause types and their relation to modality as well as various semantic and pragmatic aspects of attitude ascriptions. Stefan Kaufmann is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut. He works on various topics in semantics and pragmatics, including conditionals and modality, tense and aspect, discourse particles, and probabilistic approaches in natural language semantics and pragmatics. He also has active research interests in computational linguistics, especially in the extraction of semantic information from large text corpora. †Frantisek

Lichtenberk was Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Auckland until his death in 2015. His research focused on Oceanic languages (descriptive, historical-​comparative, and typological) and he carried out fieldwork in Papua

xii   the Contributors New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. His publications include A Grammar of Manam, A Dictionary of Toqabaqita (Solomon Islands), and A Grammar of Toqabaqita. Andrej L. Malchukov is Senior Researcher at the St Petersburg Institute for Linguistic Research (Russian Academy of Sciences) and is currently affiliated to the University of Mainz. Apart from descriptive work on Siberian (in particular, Tungusic) languages, his main research interests lie in the domain of language typology. He has published extensively on issues of morphosyntactic typology; in particular, he is the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Case (with Andrew Spencer; OUP, 2009), Studies in Ditransitive Constructions: a Comparative Handbook (with Bernard Comrie and Martin Haspelmath; Mouton de Gruyter, 2010), Competing Motivations in Grammar and Usage (with Brian MacWhinney and Edith Moravcsik; OUP, 2014), and Valency Classes in the World’s Languages (with Bernard Comrie; 2 vols., Mouton de Gruyter, 2015). Caterina Mauri is Assistant Professor at the University of Pavia. She received the Joseph Greenberg Award in 2009 for the best PhD thesis in linguistic typology, an area which remains at the centre of her research interests. She mainly works on connectives, modality, and the construction of categories in discourse. Besides typology, she is also interested in semantic change and grammaticalization processes, and in the cross-​linguistic coding of pragmatic phenomena. Her publications include Coordination Relations in Europe and Beyond (Mouton de Gruyter, 2008) and several papers in international journals such as Linguistics, Studies in Language, Journal of Pragmatics, and Language Sciences. Marianne Mithun is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests include morphology, syntax, discourse, and their interaction; contact; language change; typology; documentation; languages indigenous to North America, particularly Mohawk, Cayuga, and Tuscarora (Iroquoian), Central Pomo, Central Alaskan Yup’ik, Navajo, Barbareño Chumash, and Lakhota; and Kapampangan, Selayarese, Hiligaynon, and Waray (Austronesian). Heiko Narrog is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies of Tohoku University. He holds two PhDs in Linguistics in Germany and Japan, and his publications include Modality in Japanese: The Layered Structure of the Clause and Hierarchies of Functional Categories (Benjamins, 2009), Modality, Subjectivity, and Semantic Change: A Cross-​Linguistic Perspective (OUP, 2012), and The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization (OUP, 2011) and The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis (2nd edn; OUP, 2015), both co-​edited with Bernd Heine. Irina Nikolaeva is Professor of Linguistics at SOAS (University of London). She has studied in Moscow and San Diego and received a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Leiden in 1998. Her interests lie in the field of linguistic typology, lexicalist theories of grammar, and documentation and description of endangered languages. She has published several books on Uralic, Altaic, and Palaeosiberian languages based on extensive

the Contributors   xiii fieldwork, as well as books on syntax, semantics, information structure, and historical-​ comparative linguistics. Jan Nuyts (PhD 1988) is Professor in the Linguistics Department of the University of Antwerp, Belgium. His main research interests are in cognitive-​functional semantics and syntax. His focus of attention is on the analysis of modality and related semantic categories and their linguistic expression, and its implications for our understanding of the cognitive structure of language and the relations between language and conceptualization/​thought. This also explains his long-​standing concern with Cognitive Linguistics and its relations to Functional Linguistics. His publications include the books Aspects of a Cognitive-​Pragmatic Theory of Language (Benjamins, 1992) and Epistemic Modality, Language and Conceptualization: A Cognitive-​Pragmatic Perspective (Benjamins, 2001). Alain Peyraube is currently Directeur de Recherche Emerite at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, Paris, France) and Chair Professor of Chinese Linguistics at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). His main research interests concern Chinese diachronic syntax and semantics, typology of East Asian languages, and the origin and evolution of languages. His most recent research has examined the mechanisms and the motivations of syntactic and semantic change in Chinese from the period of the first recorded inscriptions (fourteenth century bc) to the modern period (eighteenth century). Andrea Sansò (PhD, University of Pavia, 2002)  is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Insubria (Como, Italy). His main research interests are in language typology and historical linguistics, with special focus on voice constructions (passives, impersonals, antipassives) across languages and in diachrony. He has guest-​edited a special issue of Language Sciences on the cross-​linguistic relevance of the notion of (ir) realis together with Caterina Mauri (2012). Barbara Shaffer is Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics, Signed Language Interpreting Program at the University of New Mexico. Dr Shaffer’s research interests include the grammaticalization of signed languages, modality and mood in signed language, evidentiality and stance markers in ASL, intersubjectivity in discourse, and intersubjectivity in interpreted interactions. Mario Squartini (PhD, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, 1995) is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Turin. His research interests concentrate on grammatical marking of tense, aspect, and modality, especially focusing on complex semantic boundaries (aspect and Aktionsart, epistemic modality and evidentiality, evidentiality and mirativity). He wrote a book on aspectual matters, Verbal Periphrases in Romance: Aspect, Actionality and Grammaticalization (Mouton de Gruyter, 1998). As to evidentiality, he published articles in Studies in Language, Lingua, Linguistics, and Journal of Pragmatics and edited a special issue of the Italian Journal of Linguistics (Evidentiality between Lexicon and Grammar, 2007).

xiv   the Contributors Johan van der Auwera is Professor of General and English Linguistics at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. His student and postdoc days were spent in Antwerp, Berkeley, Stockholm, Hannover, and Nijmegen and visiting appointments took him to Paris, Princeton, Gothenburg, Hong Kong, Kyoto, and Bangkok. His current research focuses on grammatical semantics and typology (including areal typology and dialectology), with special reference to mood, modality, negation, indefinites, and impersonals. He is the editor in chief of the journal Linguistics. Daniël Van Olmen is Lecturer in Linguistics at Lancaster University. His doctoral dissertation at the University of Antwerp was a functional, corpus-​based analysis of the imperative in English and Dutch. His current research interests include tense, mood, modality, impersonal pronouns, pragmatic markers, and grammaticalization. Viktor S. Xrakovskij is Chair of the Department of Linguistic Typology at the Institute for Linguistic Research in St Petersburg (Russian Academy of Sciences) and a leader of St Petersburg Typology Group. He is the author of over 250 academic contributions dealing with various aspects of linguistic typology, as well as with Russian studies and Arabic/​Semitic studies. He has edited volumes on the typology of diathesis, reflexives, iteratives and verbal plurality, imperatives, conditionals, concessive constructions, and relative tense constructions. Many of his more recent typological volumes are also available in English translations (at Lincom), including the Typology of Iterative Constructions (1997), Typology of Imperative Constructions (2001), Typology of Conditional Constructions (2005), and Typology of Concessive Constructions (2012). Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar is Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Córdoba, Spain. His student and postdoc days were spent at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at UNAM/​Colegio de México, and visiting appointments took him to Montevideo, Berlin, Leipzig, Sofia, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, and Forlì. His current research focuses on the history, historiography, and epistemology of linguistics. Debra Ziegeler is Professor of English Linguistics at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3. General areas of her research interest include the cognitive semantics and grammaticalization of modality, Gricean pragmatics, and construction-​based approaches, though she has also been repeatedly compelled to return to the study of counterfactual modality and proximative adverbs for over 15  years. Publications include the books Hypothetical Modality:  Grammaticalisation in an L2 Dialect (Benjamins, 2000), Interfaces with English Aspect (Benjamins, 2006) and just released, Converging Grammars: Constructions in Singapore English (Mouton, 2015). † 

Frantisek Lichtenberk (1945–2015) In the course of the preparation of this volume for print, we received the unexpected and tragic news that Frank Lichtenberk, author of Chapter 14, has passed away. It is with great sadness that we publish his contribution to this volume knowing it is one of his very last scientific articles.

Chapter 1

Survey ing moda l i t y and mo od An introduction Jan Nuyts

1.1  Topic of the volume1 “Modality” and “mood” are both very prominent notions in linguistic analysis, concerning central and highly sophisticated domains of the linguistic system. They are moreover, at least in part, intimately interrelated: witness the fact that both concepts are often mentioned in the same breath. In spite of this, however, the status of both notions is actually quite different. First, the position of both has changed considerably through history (cf. Chapter 2). Mood is the older term, and in earlier stages of grammatical description and analysis it is by far the most prevalent one. But modality, although a fairly young notion in linguistic history, has entirely taken over and has become the absolutely dominant concept in the last several decades. Second, while the “referent” of the term modality has essentially been fairly stable in its relatively brief history, covering semantic domains such as abilities/​needs, potentials/​inevitabilities, deontics, and epistemics (which does not mean the notion is beyond controversy though—​see further below in this section), the term mood has come to be used to refer to a number of quite diverging linguistic phenomena. These include at least the following three as the most prominent (see also Chapter 2): (i) the domain 1 

I would like to thank Johan van der Auwera for his participation in setting up the global concept of this handbook, and for his help in reading and offering feedback on the chapters (whence his name on the cover). I would also like to thank the authors of the chapters for accepting to contribute their expertise, within the fairly strong confines imposed by the principles adopted in this volume (see section 1.2), and for enduring three rounds of editorial comments and feedback.

2   Jan Nuyts of grammatical coding of modal (and related) meanings on the verb (cf. the classical notion of “tense–​aspect–​mood marking”, in which the term is used this way); (ii) the domain of basic sentence types and the illocutionary categories expressed by them (this is, e.g., the way the term is generally used in systemic linguistics—​cf. Halliday 1994); and (iii) the domain of indicative vs subjunctive or realis vs irrealis coding and its semantics (whereby the former pair, which involves a grammatical category on the verb, is fairly closely related to the first concept of mood mentioned, but the latter pair, though semantically closely related to the former, is much less so). The polysemous nature of the term mood, and the terminological confusion this potentially creates, may explain at least in part its waning popularity in present day linguistics, and may be the reason why many recent studies on the linguistic domains covered by it do not even use the term, or at least not systematically so. The linguistic issues covered by the terms modality and, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent, mood figure prominently among the research concerns of grammarians, semanticists, and pragmaticians in many different branches of linguistics:  in typological studies (e.g. Palmer 1986, 2001; Bybee et al. 1994; van der Auwera and Plungian 1998; Aikhenvald 2010; Mauri and Sansò eds. 2012) as well as in-​depth studies focusing on individual languages or taking a comparative perspective (e.g. Palmer 1979; Coates 1983; Öhlschläger 1989; Diewald 1999; Nuyts 2001a; Narrog 2009a); in synchronic work (cf. most of the preceding references) as well as in diachronic investigations (e.g. Traugott 1989; Fritz and Gloning eds. 1997; Krug 2000; Byloo and Nuyts 2014); in grammatical analysis (cf. the preceding references) as well as in discourse studies (e.g. Biber and Finegan 1989; Kärkkäinen 2003); in (predominantly) empirical studies (cf. most of the preceding references) as well as in more theoretical or conceptual ones, from different perspectives (e.g. Lyons 1977; Kratzer 1978; Nuyts 2005; Portner 2009). Furthermore, it is not only linguists, but also philosophers, logicians, and psychologists who have taken an interest in issues of modality and mood (von Wright 1951; Austin 1962; Searle 1969; Davidson 1984; Stephany 1986; Dummett 1993b; Hickmann et al. 1993; Bucciarelli and Johnson-​Laird 2005). In spite of these intensive research concerns, however, the linguistic domains at stake remain among the most intriguing and puzzling ones in the field. That is precisely, of course, why they continue to fascinate many and why they enjoy continuing popularity. But it also signals that they often concern very “slippery” phenomena that are hard to grasp. Hence they remain subject to substantial controversy, disputes ranging from the precise definition and delimitation of the complex semantic dimensions they cover to the question of which (systems of) linguistic devices are used in languages to express them and how these and their sometimes highly remarkable linguistic properties should be analyzed. The aim of the present handbook, then, is to offer a cohesive, in-​depth and comprehensive state of the art survey of the linguistic domains at stake, covering in a representative and neutral way the many facets of the phenomena involved, and giving pride of place to the full range of methodological and theoretical approaches adopted towards them.

Surveying modality and mood    3 One may actually wonder why the very divergent domains covered by the two terms should be handled together in one volume. It is, of course, no accident that the notions of modality and mood are traditionally close associates (cf. their occurring together in the title of one of the “classics” in the field, viz. Palmer 1986, 2001), and that the term mood in particular is in use for the three domains indicated above. The first domain covered by the term mood in our list fully overlaps with part of what is covered by the concept of modality (viz. the grammatical expression of the latter) anyway. But even apart from that, the relevant domains are in part closely interrelated, the borders between them are far from sharp, and expressive devices for them interact in complicated ways (cf. e.g. the complex relations between deontic modality and directive illocutionary functions and corresponding sentence types such as the imperative, or between epistemic modality and interrogatives, or between epistemic modality and hypotheticality and (ir)reality). Hence their joint—​even if distinct—​treatment in this volume. There are, of course, numerous other linguistic domains with which the dimensions covered by the terms mood and modality are closely related and/​or closely interact, including, most prominently, evidentiality, negation, time, and aspect—​in fact, these relations also receive ample attention in this volume, even if the categories as such do not figure as focal topics in themselves.

1.2  Basic concept of the volume In order for it to serve as an easily accessible reference work for the field, a few conceptual, terminological, and practical decisions and choices had to be made in composing the volume. Here is a brief overview of the most important ones.

1.2.1 Terminological conventions To ensure clarity for the reader, it is important to achieve, as much as possible, terminological and conceptual cohesion and transparency in the use of scientific notions throughout the volume. Also, since higher specificity in the definition and application of a term correlates with clearer identifiability of what is being referred to, narrow characterizations and uses of notions are to be preferred over wide ones whenever feasible. This concerns, first, the use of the general labels of modality and mood. As mentioned, the precise definition of these notions is disputed in the literature. Therefore, a purely “pragmatic” choice has been made for a particular preferential use of them in the individual chapters. Thus, although the scope of the notion of modality ranges considerably in the literature, in this volume it is preferentially used to refer exclusively, and narrowly, to the traditional central semantic domains of what are often called “dynamic modality”, “deontic modality”, and “epistemic modality” (but there are other terms in use for

4   Jan Nuyts these same domains, cf. e.g. the notion of “root modality”; see Chapter 3). As mentioned, the volume also pays ample attention to notions closely related to and/​or at the borders of the central modal categories, such as evidentiality, negation, or future time (see below)—​but these are preferentially not called modal (as is sometimes done in the literature, at least for some of them), but are referred to with their own specific terms. The use of the notion of mood is delimited for the purpose of the volume as well. Since the domain of grammatical coding on the verb of modal (and related) meanings—​the first major traditional use of the notion mentioned in section 1.1—​is factually already covered by the notion of modality as just defined (see also section 1.2.2 below), this domain is preferentially referred to by means of the term modality, not mood. The use of the term mood in this volume is thus, in principle, confined to the two other main domains traditionally covered by the term (cf. section 1.1), viz. basic sentence types corresponding to illocutionary functions, and indicative/​subjunctive and (ir)realis. The authors of the chapters were asked to follow these terminological conventions as far as possible, and also to be as precise as possible when referring to phenomena within the domains covered by these labels, that is, to use specific denominations (for different subtypes of modality and of mood, or also of related dimensions) rather than general labels whenever applicable. And in doing the latter, they were asked to use as far as possible traditional/​familiar labels, as surveyed in the chapters in part I of the volume (Chapters 3, 4 and 5), or, when there is a need to use different terms, to be very explicit about their definition, and to relate them as clearly as possible to the more traditional notions.

1.2.2 A broad concept of the linguistic expression of semantic dimensions The volume deals with both the semantics and the linguistic expression of modality and mood types. When considering expression, grammatical devices (mainly inflection and auxiliaries) have received disproportionally more attention in the literature than lexical devices (such as adverbs and adjectives, or full verbs). There may be different reasons for this, ranging from the practical—​such as the fact that grammatical systems of markers are often more clearly confined and identifiable than lexical systems in languages—​to the principled—​such as the fairly widespread view that grammatical expressions of the categories at stake are more central than lexical ones in the linguistic system and hence are more significant for understanding the categories as such. Given the survey character of this volume, it does not take issue with these matters—​particularly not with the latter, principled, issue. The Handbook adopts a non-​exclusionary concept regarding the treatment of the expressive devices: in principle, all types are handled on an equal basis, hence authors were explicitly asked to survey whatever is known not only about grammatical devices, but also about lexical ones.

Surveying modality and mood    5 Of course, the fact that grammatical devices have received disproportionally more attention in the literature is nevertheless, inevitably, reflected in the chapters: in the large majority of them the discussion of grammatical forms takes up most space by far, and some chapters even exclusively focus on grammatical devices.

1.2.3 Wide coverage of languages Modality and mood are part of the linguistic system of languages all over the world, and even if investigations into these systems in the well-​studied Western European languages absolutely prevail, these notions have received considerable attention in studies on a wide range of typologically very diverse languages. A representative handbook needs also to cover the latter, and to represent what is known about the typological diversity (and universality) present in the modality and mood systems across the globe. Therefore, although research on the European languages inevitably predominates in the majority of the chapters, special attention is paid to offering pride of place to typological work in the volume. This is done in part by asking all authors, but especially the authors of chapters dealing with the “phenomenology” of modality and mood (parts I and II; see section 1.3), and most particularly those surveying the linguistic expression aspect of these dimensions (part II), to give adequate attention to research on all (types of) languages. And it is also done, in part, by including in the volume a separate set of chapters (gathered in part III) focusing on the peculiarities of the modality and mood systems in a number of typologically very divergent groups of languages from different continents.

1.2.4 Division of labor between chapters In order to achieve a good coverage of the many different issues and perspectives on the fields of modality and mood, the volume has been conceived as a coherent set of interrelated chapters, rather than a collection of independent articles. The table of contents has been configured such that the different contributions each cover a specific and more or less clearly delimited subtopic of the global subject matter of modality and mood, and so that together they offer a more or less representative overview of the entire domain (see section 1.3). Hence each chapter in principle occupies a specific “niche” in the volume, and the authors of the chapters were invited because of their specific expertise in that niche. They were also asked to focus exclusively on the dedicated subtopic of the chapter, and, if it was found necessary to touch upon matters which actually belong in the realm of another chapter, to do this preferentially by reference to that other chapter, rather than by duplicating the information. Since the borderlines between the subject matters of individual chapters are sometimes far from sharp, some amount of overlap between chapters is, of course, inevitable—​but in general it is reduced to a minimum.

6   Jan Nuyts The relatively strong interdependence between at least some of the chapters of course requires a good interlinking between them, hence close attention has been paid to cross-​ referencing wherever it is relevant.

1.2.5 Neutral character In line with the general purpose of the volume as a neutral reference work, all chapters are meant to be “objective” surveys of their subject matter, conceived and formulated as theory-​neutrally as possible, and presenting an open perspective on all major views and approaches in the field. An exception are, to some extent, the chapters in the “theoretical” part V (see section 1.3), which all focus on the way modality and mood are handled in specific theoretical paradigms. But even then, these chapters are intended to aim for maximal neutrality and representativity within their theoretical perspective, and to offer pride of place to the full range of alternative views within that perspective. Authors of chapters were thus asked not to write a research paper, and to refrain from launching their own strictly personal views of the matter or even to only represent their own perspective on it. It is of course an illusion to believe one can be entirely neutral in the presentation of a subject matter in which one is an expert. So some personal bias is inevitable—​but authors were asked to make a conscious effort to reduce this to a minimum.

1.3  Overview of the volume Given the importance of the historical roots of the notions of modality and mood for understanding their current use, the introductory part of the volume features, as a complement to the present overview chapter, a second, historical chapter (Chapter 2), by Johan van der Auwera and Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar, which sketches the origins of and developments in the use of and research on the two core notions, from antiquity up to today. The main body of the volume is then divided in five major parts, each dealing with a cluster of facets of the domains of modality and (types of) mood. Parts I and II deal with the “phenomenology” of these domains. They have a complex semantics, and they also sometimes feature very sophisticated systems of expressive devices with often remarkable morphosyntactic properties. Part I focuses on the semantic aspect, part II on the expression aspect. Since modality and the two types of mood are fairly different, even if interrelated, domains, they are handled separately in the chapters in these parts. Semantic part I features three chapters. In Chapter 3, Jan Nuyts provides an overview of the semantic and pragmatic aspects of modality, surveying how the notion has been defined, what semantic subcategories have been distinguished and how different

Surveying modality and mood    7 terminological traditions relate, and which semantic characteristics have been ascribed to modality in general and to the different subtypes in particular. Chapter 4, by Mario Squartini, sketches the relations between modality and a number of “neighboring” semantic notions, such as evidentiality, and surveys what is known about the interactions with semantic notions that are at least intertwined with modality, such as time marking, aspect, and negation. And Chapter 5 by Irina Nikolaeva surveys the semantic and pragmatic aspects of the two mood categories: the first part of the chapter addresses the issue of the illocutionary categories (or speech act types) associated with the system of “sentence types” in languages (e.g. the declarative vs interrogative mood); the second part focuses on the semantics of the distinction between realis, irrealis and potentialis marking, and similar categories, such as indicative vs subjunctive. Since there is much more research to be reported on the systems of expressive devices of modality and mood, part II offers a more finely divided set of chapters. Also, as indicated in section 1.2, special attention is paid in these chapters to the typological diversity and systematicity in the expression of modality and mood in the languages of the world. Chapters 6 and 7 provide overviews of the expression of modal categories, grammatically (through inflection, auxiliaries, and other grammatical means) and lexically (through adverbials, adjectives, main verbs, nouns, etc.). It is known that expression typically differs most drastically between epistemic modality, on the one hand, and the other types of modality, on the other hand, whence two separate chapters for these two (clusters of) meanings: Chapter 6, by Heiko Narrog, focuses on the expression of non-​ epistemic modal categories, and Chapter 7, by Kasper Boye, focuses on the expression of epistemic modality. The two types of mood have separate chapters as well:  Chapter 8 by Alexandra Aikhenvald provides a detailed overview of how sentence types are realized in the languages of the world, Chapter 9 by Caterina Mauri and Andrea Sansò does the same for indicative vs subjunctive and (ir)realis marking. The last chapter in part II (Chapter 10), by Andrej Malchukov and Viktor Xrakovskij, offers a selective survey of the interaction of linguistic expressions of the two types of mood with expressions of modality and of other related categories such as time, aspect, and negation, focusing on the issue of how these interactions relate to the semantic properties of the categories involved. Matters of meaning and of form in the domains of modality and mood are, of course, not always easily or sharply delimited, hence, although the chapters in parts I and II primarily focus on the semantic vs the “structural” dimensions of the categories, respectively, there is inevitably some overlap between chapters on corresponding dimensions in the two parts: “structural” chapters also touch upon matters of semantics, and vice versa. From part III onwards modality and the two types of mood (both the semantics and the expression) are handled together in the chapters—​but authors were asked to make sure the three categories were clearly identifiable, hence in principle they receive (more or less) distinct consideration in them. In most cases, the chapters pay far more attention to modality than to mood, corresponding to the fact that the former has been studied

8   Jan Nuyts much more intensively in the last several decades. Some chapters barely touch on mood, or are only concerned with one of the two mood categories (sentence types or (ir)realis). Part III offers a series of more or less detailed sketches of (aspects of) the modality and mood systems (grammatical and lexical) in a number of typologically very different language groups, from different continents. Together, they offer an overview of the significant cross-​linguistic variation existing in these systems. Chapter 11, by Marianne Mithun, focuses on Iroquian; Chapter 12, by Zygmunt Frajzyngier, deals with Chadic; in Chapter 13, Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube handle Sinitic; Chapter 14, by Frantisek Lichtenberk, is concerned with Oceanic; and Chapter 15, by Daniel Van Olmen and Johan van der Auwera, finally, deals with the Standard Average European “Sprachbund” (i.e. English, French, German, etc.), the best described set of languages in the world. Each chapter in this part is inevitably selective in its coverage, both in terms of the linguistic phenomena considered and in terms of their focus on specific languages within their group. Part IV then offers a series of chapters surveying “wider perspectives” on modality and mood and their expression. Chapter 16, by Debra Ziegeler, deals with what is known about the diachronic evolution of these categories and their linguistic markers. Modality—​to a greater extent—​and mood—​to a lesser extent—​have played an important role in grammaticalization theory and, by extension, also in diachronic linguistics as a whole. This chapter documents this role. In Chapter 17, Björn Hansen and Umberto Ansaldo look at how areality plays a role in the constitution of modality and mood systems in languages. It is known that modal notions (but, again, less so moods) and their expression strategies can be borrowed and calqued and that they help define Sprachbünde (“linguistic areas”). This chapter surveys language contact aspects of modality and mood in Europe (complementary to its treatment in Chapter 15), and to a lesser extent also in mainland Southeast Asia. Chapter 18 by Maya Hickmann and Dominique Bassano deals with what has been written about first language acquisition of modal categories and, again to a much lesser extent, mood categories. And Chapter 19, by Barbara Shaffer and Terry Janzen, focuses on the expression of modality and mood categories in sign language, focusing especially on American Sign Language. The chapters in part V, finally, all focus on how different theoretical perspectives on language deal with modality and mood. The treatment of these categories varies from one theory to the next, and the chapters in this part each present the view from a particular theoretical approach or set of theoretically comparable approaches. Thus, Chapter 20, by Katrin Axel-​Tober and Remus Gergel, surveys the literature adopting a formal syntactic approach, with its major focus on the generative tradition. Chapter 21, by Karin Aijmer, offers the perspective of functional linguistics, paying attention to a number of alternative approaches within this “paradigm”. Chapter 22, by Ronny Boogaart and Egbert Fortuin, looks at what different strands within cognitive linguistics and construction grammar have to say about modality and mood. And Chapter 23, by Magdalena Kaufmann and Stefan Kaufmann, finally, handles the formal semantic perspective on these categories.

Chapter 2

The history of modalit y a nd  mo od Johan van der Auwera and Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar

2.1 Introduction1 Charleston (1941) is a study of the verb in early eighteenth century English and a survey of the grammatical description of that period. Its very last sentence, quoted with approval by Michael (1970: 434), says that “the treatment of moods by these grammarians of the 17th and 18th century shows a confusion and hesitancy which is still to be observed to​day among modern grammarians”. If one extends the perspective to the entire tradition of the grammarians’ uses of mood concepts, from antiquity to the modern age, and further extends it to include modality concepts (which are historically much rarer), the impression is the same. There have been thousands of grammatical discussions of mood and modality and though some linguists are self-​assured and clear, the field as a whole cannot be said to have come to grips with these notions. This avowal has a negative and a positive side. The negative side is obvious: it is sad that after more than 2000 years our discipline has not reached a better understanding of what is fundamental to modality and mood. On the positive side, one gets the feeling that the subject matter of modality and mood is a fascinatingly difficult one and also that one can still learn from past scholarship. In this chapter we trace the history of mood and modality in some detail. The overview is restricted to Western linguistics, with its roots in Greek and Latin antiquity (cp. also Kürschner 1987; Malter 2004; Załęska 2004).2 We deal with both the semantic and 1  Thanks are due to Aikaterini Chatzopoulou (Chicago), Lars Larm (Lund), and Vladimir Plungian (Moscow). 2  For an overview of other traditions and interactions with the Western traditions, see Larm (2006, 2009), Narrog (2009b), and Masuoka (2009) for Japanese, and Li (2004: 106–​109) for Chinese.

10    Johan van der Auwera AND Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar the formal dimensions of these notions, though we focus on the semantics, and we also show how some of the issues treated in older traditions remain relevant today. Section 2.3 deals with mood and section 2.4 with modality. Section 2.5 comments on the present-​ day use of these notions. But first, we briefly deal with the etymology of the terms “mood” and “modality”. Note that this chapter, unlike most others in this volume, is more about mood than about modality—​contrary to the current situation, for most of the historical periods treated here mood is the prominent notion.

2.2  Terminology and etymology The English word “mood” has an interesting etymology. There is the Germanic sense of “frame of mind, disposition”, as in to be in a good mood. Next to “mood” there is also a Latin-​and French-​based word “mode”. The “mode” sense can be paraphrased as “manner”. The origin is Latin modus ‘measure, manner’, and it entered English in late Middle English, either directly or via French mode. It is the English “mode” word that most directly relates to grammar, as the relevant grammatical distinction typically concerns “manners” or forms of the verb. Yet “mood” came to be associated with grammar too. Using “mood” for grammatical “mode”, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes, was “perhaps reinforced by association” with the Germanic “mental state” sense, since some central modes of the verb are the indicative, the imperative, and the optative and these have long been related to mental states such knowing, wanting, and wishing (see 2.3.2). That is one reason why “mood” acquired a linguistic sense. Another reason is simply that the Middle English spelling moode can be seen as the ancestor of both modern “mood” and “mode”. Thus the oldest attestation in the OED for the linguistic sense of both “mood” and “mode” is the same: “A verbe [… ] is declined wyth moode and tyme wyth oute case” (OED, lemma mood & lemma mode). Having two terms for one phenomenon, one Germanic and the other Romance, is typical for English.3 In current French there is now just mode, though earlier there was also moeuf, also deriving from modus. Modo, again deriving from Latin modus, is used in Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. Germanic languages such as German, Norwegian, and Swedish use the Latin word modus, and if there is a second term, it tends to be a word that means “manner” (Dutch, e.g., prefers wijs/​wijze, a general “manner” word). In the Middle Ages scholars used modus in more than one sense, and one of them was the sense that we now associate with “modality”. Since Greek antiquity there was a strong philosophical, logical, and also theological interest in the concepts of necessity and possibility, and at least since the eleventh century characterizing a proposition as either necessary or possible was said to characterize its modus. 3 

An unsuccessful proposal to have a term based on Greek was made by Hare (1970: 21) with tropic.

The history of modality and mood    11 The modern term “modality” derives from the postclassical Latin word modalitas. This Latin term was very rare. In the Library of Latin texts—​A (a 63 million words corpus of 3,200 Latin texts from antiquity to the twentieth century) the nominative singular modalitas has only six attestations, all in texts of the thirteenth-​century Catalan philosopher Raimundus Lullus. The term modality entered English from French modalité. In the earliest citation in the OED (dating 1545) it has the general meaning “those aspects of a thing which relate to its mode”. Its current linguistic use is recent; the earliest attestation is from 1907. But the linguistic sense immediately relates to logical and philosophical uses, which concern the qualification of a proposition as necessary or possible. For these senses the earliest OED entry dates from 1628. Interestingly, whereas in Germanic and Romance the term “modality” is clearly related to the term “mood”, in some languages the equivalents of these two terms are unrelated, with the “mood” term being the oldest one. Thus Russian and Greek have, respectively, naklonenie and enklisi (lit. ‘inclination’, see 2.3.2) for “mood”, but for “modality” they use modal’nost’ and tropikotita (lit. ‘tropicality’, based on trópos, which was the classical Greek source for one of the Latin modus senses—​see 2.3.4).

2.3  Mood and mode 2.3.1 Quintilian’s modus The first occurrence of a “mood/​mode” etymon in the linguistic sense is commonly traced back (e.g. Wackernagel 1926: 210) to the first century ad and the first of the 12 books of the Institutio oratoria ‘Institute of oratory’, written by the Roman rhetorician Quintilian. In the relevant passage Quintilian discussed grammatical mistakes and he noted that speakers are particularly prone to make errors with respect to verbal categories. One of these categories is the modus. About substitution, that is when one word is used instead of another, there is no dispute. It is an error which we may detect in connexion with all the parts of speech, but most frequently in the verb, because it has greater variety than any other: consequently in connexion with the verb we get solecisms of gender, tense, person and mood [modos] (or “states” [status] or “qualities” [qualitates] if you prefer either of these terms), be these types of error six in number, as some assert, or eight as is insisted by others (for the number of the forms of solecism will depend on the number of subdivisions which you assign to the parts of speech of which we have just spoken). (Quintilian, website accessed November 14, 2011, Latin terms added from original)

Interestingly, Quintilian did not tell us here—​or anywhere else in his Institutio oratoria—​ what a mood is. He did supply two synonyms for modus, viz. status and qualitas, both of

12    Johan van der Auwera AND Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar which did not have the same lasting success as modus, and he also made clear that there was a controversy about how many moods there are: some would accept six and others eight. As in grammar in general, Latin grammars were based on Greek grammars. And so modus, status, and qualitas are translations of Greek. This takes us to Alexandria’s second century bc, its grammarian Dionysius Thrax, and to the Greek word for mood, viz. enklísis.

2.3.2 The Greek grammarians Dionysius Thrax, Protagoras, and Apollonius Dyscolus Dionysius Thrax is credited with having written the first grammar in the modern sense that survives to this day, the Techné grammatiké ‘Art of grammar’. It is a grammar of Greek. Chapter 13 is about the morphology of the verb and it says that The verb has eight types of attributes: mood [enklísis], state, species, shape, number, person, tense, and conjugation. There are five moods—​ defining [oristiké], imperative [prostaktiké], optative [euktiké], subjunctive [upotaktiké], and infinitive [aparénfatos]. (Kemp 1986:  354, Greek terms added from original)

Here too there was no definition of mood, but there is at least a classification, and the number of moods was not the six or eight alluded to by Quintilian, but five. For some specialists the Dionysian listing is the oldest extant listing of moods in the Western tradition. But others go back further, be it in an indirect way. In the third century bc Diogenes Laertius wrote Bioi kai gnōmai tōn en philosofia eudokimēsantōn ‘Lives and opinions of eminent philosophers’ (see Diogenes Laertius, translation Hicks 1950). In book 9, 54, he wrote about the fifth century bc presocratic philosopher Protagoras that [h]‌e was the first to mark off the parts of discourse into four, namely wish, question, answer, command. Others divide into seven parts, narration, question, answer, command, rehearsal, wish, summoning: these he called the basic forms of speech. (Diogenes Laertius, translation Hicks 1950: II, 467).

In a footnote the translator Hicks claims that these four notions correspond roughly to the optative, the indicative and the imperative (with the indicative corresponding to two of the Greek terms), and Allan (2001: 343) equates them with optative-​subjunctive, interrogative, indicative, and imperative. If one compares the classifications by Dionysius Thrax and Protagoras, one notices an overlap (Table 2.1). But the overlap is by no means complete. None of the Greek terms are the same, and in the English translations only the imperative is exactly parallel.

The history of modality and mood    13 Table 2.1 Protagoras and Dionysius Thrax on mood Protagoras Hicks (1950) erōtēsis apokrisis

indicative

Allan (2001)

Dionysius Thrax Kemp (1986)

interrogative indicative

euchōlē

optative

optative-​subjunctive

entolē

imperative

imperative

defining

oristiké

optative

euktiké

subjunctive

upotaktiké

imperative

prostaktiké

infinitive

aparénfatos

Whether or not Protagoras and Dionysius Thrax were discussing the same thing is a matter of debate. The translator of Diogenes Laertius, Hicks, for instance, as well as the philosopher Allan and the linguistic historiographer Schmitter (2000: 358), would give positive answers. But Robins (1997), also a linguistic historiographer, would disagree. He mentioned both classifications and whereas he considered Dionysius Thrax to have contributed to our understanding of mood (Robins 1997:  44–​ 45), when he discussesed Protagoras, he avoided the term “mood”: “Protagoras [… ] sets out the different types of sentence in which a general semantic function was associated with a certain grammatical structure, e.g. wish, question, statement, and command” (Robins 1997:  32). For the French specialist Lallot (1989: 162), Protagoras did not deal with mode verbal either, but with sentence types, a phenomenon also referred to with modalité d’énonciation. The fact that Dionysius used the term enklísis also suggests that it was something other than Protagoras’ “part of discourse”, for enklísis was essentially a term in the domain of morphology. It meant “flection” or “derivation” and referred to a formation that is different from the basic form of a category, as Lallot (1989: 162) made clear, and he further pointed out that some early Greek grammarians considered moods as counterparts to what cases are for nouns. For the philosopher Nuchelmans (1973: 30), too, Protagoras was not dealing with moods but with the fundamental “kinds of speech”, which were to become an issue in a tradition of rhetoric, developed by Aristotle and his Peripatetic followers and by Stoic philosophers and rhetoricians. But then, paradoxically, Quintilian, who was responsible for the term modus, was a rhetorician, too: rhetoricians were supposed to be dealing with kinds of speech, but for mood he did not focus on speech. Probably, as Nuchelmans (1973: 102) and earlier also Koppin (1877: 11) concluded, the classification of mood was “at least partially inspired” by the classification of kinds of speech (see also Schmitter 2000: 358–​359). Interestingly, this relation and tension was present in later accounts too (see Kahn 2004: 250–​251 for the thirteenth century). And even today: it is no coincidence that

14    Johan van der Auwera AND Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar when König and Siemund (2007: 280–​2 81) discuss the typology of basic sentence types they draw attention to the ambivalent character of the imperative: Another common difficulty with the view of a paradigmatic opposition between the three basic sentence types under discussion [declarative, interrogative, imperative] is the fact that the imperative is often expressed by a specific inflectional form even in languages which do not distinguish the two other types by morphological means. In such languages the imperative is often analysed as being one option in a system of “mood”, which also includes the categories “indicative”, “subjunctive”, “conditional”, “optative” and perhaps others [… ]. (König and Siemund 2007: 280–​281)

It is also the imperative that was common to both Protagoras’ and Dionysius’ classifications. Note also that as a description of basic sentence types the Protagorean description is fairly good. It is very close to modern classifications (such as König and Siemund 2007). The Dionysian classification is more problematic, however, the main problem being the inclusion of the infinitive, which is nowadays no longer considered to be a category of mood. It is, of course, true that the infinitive is a form of the verb, in other words, a manner or mode of the verb. Dionysius did not tell us whether this mode was to be associated with any semantics. So perhaps mode/​mood functioned as a wastebasket category and to the extent that the infinitive does not concern more specific categories such as person or tense, it was possible to accommodate it within a vague category of mood. For a first account of what the mood categories have in common meaningwise, studies of the history of linguistics take us three to four centuries further (second century ad), still in Alexandria, to another founding father of Western linguistics, viz. Apollonius Dyscolus and his Peri syntaxeōs ‘About the construction’ (Lallot 1997). In this elaborate treatise Apollonius treated enklísis as diathesis tes psukhes ‘diathesis/​disposition of the mind’ or ‘mental disposition’ (book I §51, book III §§55, 59). What exactly this meant is not clear (cp. Mazhuga 2014). For Lallot (1997: vol. 2, 37) enklísis was to be understood as “modality”, but this is not too helpful, for what exactly is meant by modality here? What does seem clear is that the meaning or use of enklísis was related to the mental state of a person, who is, at least typically, the speaker. Lallot (1989: 162, 1997: vol. 2, 186) called this the “psychological” interpretation of the term enklísis and he quoted the Byzantine commentator Choeroboscos (who worked between the sixth and tenth centuries), who made the psychological interpretation explicit: “enklísis, that is the preference of the mind, that is to say that to which the mind inclines, in other terms, that to which it leans” (Lallot 1997: vol. 2, 186–​187; translation ours). This interpretation, sometimes also expressed in terms of “acts” (Lallot 1997: vol. 1, 23), takes the mood idea back to Protagoras. But the connection with form was present as well: according to the specialists enklísis still also referred to the “configuration of sound which conventionally expresses such an inclination or attitude” (Nuchelmans 1973: 101; see also Lallot 1997: vol. 2, 186).

The history of modality and mood    15 Apollonius accepted the five Dionysian moods and also the terminology, and for some of the moods he made clear what the mind is disposed to: with the indicative (oristiké or apofantikē) one indicates, with the optative (eutike) one expresses a wish and with the imperative (oristiké) one orders (Lallot 1997: vol. 1, 23). These are indeed the three moods for which it was relatively easy to characterize the disposition of the mind. The infinitive and the subjunctive were more problematic, both from a semantic and a formal point of view. The infinitive was considered neutral or unmarked both with respect to expressing any particular disposition of the mind and having formal marking. Dionysius therefore treated it as the most general, basic mood, as its Greek name made clear (aparemphaton ‘which expresses nothing more’), much like the nominative would be the basic case (Lallot 1989: 163). The problems with the subjunctive were different and they were again both semantic and formal. As to the semantics, according to Apollonius the subjunctive expressed doubt (Lallot 1997: vol. 1: 247), but this is not always the case, for Greek uses the subjunctive for a first person plural exhortative. As to the form, different from the other moods, the subjunctive was claimed to need the subordinating conjunction ean ‘if ’, a property which the very term “subjunctive” or, clearer perhaps, “subordinative” refers to. This is strange for two reasons. First, mood was no longer only defined in terms of the form of the verb only. Second, the exhortative use just referred to does not involve the conjunction ean, or any other conjunction, for that matter. Interestingly, Dionysius did provide an analysis of the first person exhortative uses of the subjunctive. It was called a “suggestive” use, and the latter was treated as a suppletive form of the imperative (Lallot 1990, 1997: vol. 2, 220) and we thus see Dionysius dealing with an issue that is still controversial today (cp. van der Auwera et al. 2003). The very issue of whether mood should be defined formally only in terms of verbal morphology is a modern one too. In a recent survey of mood in the languages of Europe (Rothstein and Thieroff eds. 2010) the introductory chapter defines mood as a morphological category of the verb (Thieroff 2010: 3), but the author admits that “certain particles [… ] may contribute to a (morphological) mood category” (Thieroff 2010: 3) and he cannot prevent the authors of the Danish chapter (Christensen and Heltoft 2010: 98) from claiming that in this language word order distinctions have replaced verbal morphology and “are best analyzed as mood systems themselves” (see also Van Olmen 2012).

2.3.3 Greek categories applied to Latin: Priscian So much for the earliest work on mood, all of which concerned Greek. In the history of Western linguistics this Greek tradition was applied to Latin. This created a specific problem for the analysis of mood, viz. one concerning the optative. We will illustrate this with one of the most influential Roman grammarians, Priscian, who worked in Constantinople in the sixth century and whose most important work is Institutiones grammaticae ‘Grammatical foundations’ (see Baratin et  al. eds. 2009). For Priscian, the semantic view of moods was that of Appolonius: moods were the diversae inclinationes animi, varios eios affectus demonstrantes ‘the different inclinations of the mind,

16    Johan van der Auwera AND Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar demonstrating its various affections’ (Calboli 2009: 317), a definition referring to both meaning and form. And like Appolonius and Dionysius before him, he accepted five moods, viz, the indicative (indicativus, also called definitivus), the imperative (imperativus), the optative (optativus), the subjunctive (subjunctivus), and the infinitive (infinitivus). The problem of the infinitive and the subjunctive was the same as for Appolonius, but now there was also the problem of the optative. While in Greek the optative is a distinctive verbal paradigm, in Latin it is at best just a use of the subjunctive. One could reproach Priscian for having pushed Latin into the mould of Greek (Robins 1997: 73) and for having laid the foundations for a “pedagogical disaster” (Hudson 2014: 240), yet if pride of place is to go to meaning, then attributing a separate mood to the expression of wish is defendable. Furthermore, as mentioned before, the psychological perspective easily takes us back to the Protagorean kinds of speech, and why shouldn’t the expression of wish be allowed as a “kind of speech”? But then, why should one stop at five moods? Indeed, various ancient grammarians did not stop at five, though not always for semantic reasons. Sometimes an impersonal mood was allowed (Michael 1970: 115) and Nuchelmans (1973: 129) mentioned the fourth-​century Marius Victorinus, who accepted ten moods: indicative, imperative, promissive, optative, conjunctive, concessive, infinitive, impersonal, gerund, and hortatory. Nuchelmans (1973: 130) further pointed out that the interrogative was occasionally included, and also the participle, and sometimes a distinction was made between what were called the “conjunctive” and the “subjunctive”.

2.3.4 The Middle Ages and the appearance of different notions of “mood” Throughout the Middle Ages European scholars wrote grammars of Latin and Greek and, from the twelfth century on when the work of Aristotle became better known and universities developed, a lot of attention went to what could be called the “philosophy of grammar”, a general account of how language relates to mind and reality. This theory was termed “Speculative Grammar”, a combination of Greek and Latin grammar and the Catholic interpretation of Aristotle called “Scholasticism”. With respect to modus as used for “imperative mood” and the like, there was little originality: the medieval scholars essentially followed the classical authors, especially Priscian and Donatus. However, interestingly, in Speculative Grammar the term modus appeared with a new sense, best translated with the English word “mode”. The properties of things are their “modes”; there are modes of their existence, of the mind understanding them, and of the language signifying them. The notion of mode was so important that Speculative Grammarians were also known as modistae or “modists”. In that period, there were three more uses of the term modus, all found in the field of logic. First, in the study of syllogisms, one sense of modus referred to the characterization of the premises and the conclusion as universal or particular and as positive or

The history of modality and mood    17 negative. The example in (1) is such a syllogism, i.e. a valid modus or way of reasoning with, in this case, positive universal quantifiers. (1) All animals are mortal. All cats are animals. Therefore all cats are mortal. Second, in propositional logic, modus also referred to the structure of argumentation, as seen in calling the argument in (2) a modus (ponendo) ponens argument. (2) If it is raining, then the streets get wet. It is raining. Therefore the streets get wet. Third, the term modus more or less referred to what we would now call “modality” and what translates the Greek trópos. The term was used this way in commentaries on Aristotle ([von] Prantl 1855: 654) and it was attested in Boethius (sixth century; [von] Prantl 1855: 695). A proposition was said to have a propositional content (dictum) such as, for example, that it is raining and of this dictum one can say that it is necessary, possible, impossible, or contingent. These characterizations—​and sometimes also the ones with the predicates “true” and “false”—​were called modi and when there was such a modus, then the whole proposition was modalis (Bocheński 1961: 182; Spruyt 1994). This multifunctionality of uses of the term modus is not too surprising, for modus basically just means “manner”. But the multifunctionality is also confusing or, if one takes a positive view, thought provoking. In what follows we will see that scholars confused or attempted to integrate—​depending on one’s point of view—​modus as in the modus of the imperative and modus as in the characterization of a proposition as necessary.

2.3.5 Mood concepts for and in vernaculars When humanist scholars turned their attention to the vernacular languages, the antique authors remained important, in part because the humanists usually still also worked on Latin and Greek. A good illustration is the Spanish grammarian Elio Antonio de Nebrija (Zamorano Aguilar 2001). He was the author of the first Spanish grammar, the Gramática de la lengua castellana ‘Grammar of the Castilian language’ (1492), but this work was preceded by a grammar of Latin (Introductiones Latinae ‘Latin introductions’, 1481). In both grammars, the discussion of mood was based on Priscian. Thus the general notion of mood was defined as a category of the verb, with reference to demonstrating, ordering, and wishing. And the listing, as also the one for Spanish, had the five most commonly distinguished moods, i.e., indicative, imperative, optative, subjunctive, and

18    Johan van der Auwera AND Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar infinitive. The old problems of the infinitive and of distinguishing the subjunctive and the optative remained. And sometimes, even when the grammarian only used the classical five moods, new problems appeared. Thus the first grammarians of German who wrote in German accepted the five moods, including a subjunctive, but the forms listed were actually German indicatives, not Konjunktiv forms (Jellinek 1914: 313). The reason was, as Jellinek pointed out, that the subjunctive was defined as whatever verb form follows the equivalent of the Latin conjunction cum ‘when’. In German they took wann to be the equivalent of cum but wann is followed by an indicative. Sixteenth-​century grammarians of French using the five classical moods had a similar problem, this time with the conditionnel. It related to what is not real, a bit like the subjunctive, but the subjunctive-​like mode at their disposal was the optative, and that notion did not help much to characterize the conditionnel (Donzé 1967: 113). As in the classical sources, there were grammarians who distinguished more than five moods. In England, for example, the Latinists Thomas Linacre and John Colet added a non-​classical mood, the potential mood, an addition that was to be followed by later grammarians, both of Latin and of English (see Michael 1970:  424; Vorlat 1975:  329; Padley 1976: 49). An interesting genre is the grammar of Latin or Greek written in the vernacular. Its interest lies in the fact that grammarians often took an implicit or explicit contrastive perspective, trying to provide equivalents in the vernacular. In that context, more particularly in the famous English grammar of Latin known as “Lily’s Grammar”, a notion of “sign” appeared (Gwosdek ed. 2013: 170). A sign of a mood was a formal marking of the mood other than the morphology of the verb. Of course, accepting markers other than verbal morphology was classical practice. For Greek the conjunctive needed the marker ean ‘if ’, the Latin conjunctive and optative were often defined with respect to the conjunction cum ‘when’ and utinam ‘if only’, respectively, but we now see the appearance of other such signs. Thus to was considered the sign of the English infinitive, for the optative we had the signs would God, I pray God, and God graunt, and for the newly added potential Lily’s grammar mentioned the signs can, could, might, should, and ought, i.e., verbs or auxiliaries which we would now call “modal” (Blach ed. 1909: 87; Vorlat 1975: 330). We find them also in the Latin grammar De institutione grammatica libri tres ‘About the grammatical foundation three books’ (1572), written by the Portuguese Jesuit Manuel Álvares (see Schäfer 1993). This grammar also accepted a potential mood, probably due to Linacre (Schäfer 1993: 291). Though the Alvares grammar was written in Latin, the author used paraphrases in Portuguese, and for the potential he glossed them with the verbs dever ‘must’ and poder ‘may, can’. We find the modal verbs in the grammars of the vernaculars, too. In the wake of the Lily grammar of Latin, William Turner wrote a grammar of English (A short grammar for the English tongue, 1710; see Vorlat 1975: 336), in which he accepted the potential and said that “[t]‌he Potential Mood signifieth a power, duty or desire, and hath one of those signs, may, can, might, whould, should, could or ought” (Vorlat 1975: 336). In the wake of the Latin grammar of Latin by Álvares, Bento Pereira wrote a Latin grammar of Portuguese (Ars grammatica pro lingua Lusitania addiscenda ‘The art of grammar for the learning of the Lusitanian language’, 1672; see Schäfer 1993) and for the potential he said that it is expressed by the verb poder (Schäfer 1993: 301).

The history of modality and mood    19 The acceptance of a potential mood and of verbs as signs of this mood is an indication that the Priscian tradition was gradually losing importance. In a survey of 223 grammars of English that were published between 1586 and 1801 and discussed mood, Michael (1970: 434) distinguished between no fewer than 23 different types of accounts and 19 of the grammars denied English to have any moods at all. Thus 1710 saw a grammarian called James Greenwood declaring that “[i]‌n English there are no Moods, because the Verb has no Diversity of Endings” (Michael 1970: 426). Interestingly, the reluctance to honor the small degree of morphological diversity of English with a mood system was connected, by a certain James Pickbourn, to the richness of its auxiliaries, so that the acceptance of no moods comes very close to an acceptance of an abundance of moods: “The English language may be said [… ] to have as many modes as it has auxiliary verbs: for the compound expressions which they help to form, point out those modifications and circumstances of actions which in other languages are conveyed by modes” (Michael 1970: 427). The mood descriptions of Latin and Greek also allowed unorthodox treatments. Even Latin, with its verbal morphology, was declared to have no moods, as in the Scholae in liberales artes ‘Schools in the liberal arts’ (1559) by the French grammarian Petrus Ramus or Pierre de la Ramée (Vorlat 1975: 330–​332; Padley 1976: 89–​90). The reason was that the Priscian inclination of the mind was taken to be a matter of the sentence as a whole—​a return, it would seem, to the sentential perspective of Protagoras, except that this perspective was not allowed to avail itself of the term modus. Nor are the Latin verbal distinctions traditionally called “imperative”, “conjunctive”, and “indicative”: Ramus forced them into his tense category. A modern view was presented by Gerard Johannes Vossius in his De arte grammatica ‘About the art of grammar’ (1635; Padley 1976): Latin would only have an imperative, a subjunctive, and an indicative. The optative was banned because it could not be defined in terms of verbal morphology, and the infinitive was not really a mood either, or at best only in a “secondary sense”, for it accepted the mood of its “verb accompaniment”—​a view Vossius took from the earlier Julius Caesar Scaliger (Padley 1976: 69, 128).

2.3.6 Universal grammar In 1660 Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot published, so it is assumed, the Grammaire générale et raisonnée, often referred to as the “Port-​Royal” grammar, named after schools with the same name (see Arnauld and Lancelot 1969). Arnauld and Lancelot attempted to describe what is universal to human language and how this universality derives from the nature of the human mind. This was a new genre, but it was based on the grammars that the authors knew best, i.e. those of Latin and Greek and of the Western European vernaculars, especially, in the case of the Port Royal grammar, French. Not surprisingly, therefore, the theory of mood was very much in line with the language-​specific grammars and the classifications that had come down from antiquity. It so happens that the Port-​Royal grammar dismissed the infinitive, but the acceptance of the infinitive as a separate mode had been discussed

20    Johan van der Auwera AND Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar in language-​specific grammars as well (see also Leclerc 2002). An interesting universal grammar, one among many, was the Hermes by James Harris (1751; see Harris 1993). It illustrated a theory of mood that was more in line with the Protagorean approach in that the interrogative was included as a mood (Harris 1993: 143). Harris was also special for associating moods with text types (Haßler and Neis 2009: 1254). The indicative would be the mode of science, for instance, and his “requisitive” (essentially the imperative) would be the mode of legislature. The interest in universal grammar also led grammarians to devise universal languages. One of these grammarians was bishop John Wilkins, the author of An essay towards a real character and a philosophical language (Wilkins 1668). Like the descriptive Port Royal grammarians before them, these grammarians started from the languages they knew. Thus Wilkins’ system was essentially based on the grammar of Latin (Padley 1976: 208), but interestingly, as a speaker of a language with little verbal morphology and a perspicuous system of modal verbs, his mood theory owed more to English than to Latin. Moods were said to be either primary or secondary. The Primary Modes are called by Grammarians, Indicative and Imperative. [… ] /​ The Secondary Modes [… ] make the Sentence to be (as Logicians call it) a Modal Proposition. This happens when the Matter in discourse namely, the being, doing or suffering of a thing, is considered not simply by it self, but gradually in its causes from which it proceeds either Contingently or Necessarily. Then a thing seems to be left as Contingent, when the speaker expresses only the Possibility of it, or his Liberty of it. 1. The Possibility of a thing, depends on the power of its cause, and be expressed Absolute CAN, when by the Particle   Conditional COULD. 2. The Liberty of a thing, depends upon a freedom from all Obstacles either within or Absolute without, and is usually expressed in our Language, when by the Conditional MAY Particle MIGHT Then a thing seems to be of Necessity, when the speaker expresseth the resolution of his own will, or some other obligation from without. Absolute WILL 3. The Inclination of the will is expressed, if by the Particles Conditional WOULD. 4. The Necessity of a thing, from some external obligation, whether Natural or Moral Absolute by the particle MUST, ought, shall, which we call duty, is expressed, if Conditional MUST, ought, should. (Wilkins 1668: 315, see also Vorlat 1975: 332–​333)

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The history of modality and mood    21 The passage is quoted at length for several reasons. First, it illustrates the continuing attractiveness of including the analysis of modal verbs under the heading of “mood”, which goes back at least a century, with Lily’s grammar allowing modal verbs to be “signs” of mood. This was to remain a feature of English grammar writing until well into the twentieth century, with e.g. Sweet’s [A] New English grammar (1891: 420–​482) considering the modal auxiliaries as “periphrastic moods” or Zandvoort’s [A] Handbook of English grammar (1950: 102–​105) calling auxiliaries “modal” if their meaning comes close to that treated under “verbal mood”. Second, what is also interesting in Wilkins (1668) is that the modal verbs were not merely listed as additional means of expressing mood, but were considered potentially equivalent to the mood of verbal inflection: “As for that other use of the Imperative Mode, when it signifies Permission; this may be sufficiently expressed by the Secondary Mode of Liberty. You may do it” (Wilkins 1668: 316, see also Vorlat 1975: 332). Third, the account of the modal verbs was explicitly linked up with the logicians’ ideas of necessity and possibility, i.e., the logician’s sense of modus, the modern sense of modality. In the twentieth century the linguist Palmer (1986, 2001) did the same thing (see section 2.3.8). Fourth, it offered a fairly modern sketch of the meanings of the English modal verbs. And fifth, it can be noted that Wilkins only used “mode”, not “mood”. The two terms remain in use today, with “mood” now taking the upper hand. But this is recent. Bloomfield (1933) and Hockett (1958), for instance, only used “mode”, not “mood”.

2.3.7 Kant While Wilkins implicitly had modality under the rubric of mood, the opposite ordering can also be found, in part as a result of the increasing importance of the notion of “modality” within logic and philosophy. This is largely due to Immanuel Kant and his Kritik der reinen Vernuft ‘Critique of pure reason’ (1781; see Kant 1934). Here Kant used the term Modalität for the modus sense that refers to the necessity and possibility of propositions (Pape 1966: 14–​15), i.e. to the Boethian sense. The way he did this is considered to be philosophically innovative, even “Copernican” (Poser 1981: 195). What matters for us is that Kant considered modality to be one of the four classes of categories of human judgment, next to quantity, quality, and relation, each comprising three categories.4 In the case of modality they were the problematical, the assertorical, and the apodeictical: Problematical judgments are those in which the affirmation or negation is accepted as merely possible (ad libitum). In the assertorical, we regard the proposition as real (true): in the apodeictical, we look on it as necessary. (Kant 1934: 76) 4 The

most influential application of Kant’s categories to twentieth-​century linguistics is the set of Grice’s (1975) four maxims. Grice kept the labels “quantity”, “quality”, and “relation”, but he replaced “modality” with “manner”, thereby also returning to the original sense of modus. In French, however, Grice’s “manner” is sometimes translated as modalité, competing with manière (e.g. Day 2008: 85).

22    Johan van der Auwera AND Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar Some grammarians took the three-​division of modality to be the basis for understanding Dionysian mood. Thus, starting from the thesis that the laws of language correspond to those of thought, J. G. Hasse appears to have claimed in 1792 (Versuch einer griechischen und lateinischen Grammatologie ‘Attempt at a Greek and Latin grammar’) that the three types of modality are reflected in the three moods: reality is expressed by the indicative, possibility by the conjunctive, and necessity by the imperative (Koppin 1877: 14; Hale 1906: 194). The general idea of explaining mood in terms of modality had various supporters and versions, and was applied to both classical languages and German (see Naumann 1986: 307–​311) and probably other languages. At the very beginning of the twentieth century the modality-​based approach to mood was strongly condemned by the classical scholar William Gardner Hale (1906; see also Kluyver 1911). He characterized the entire nineteenth-​century scholarship of mood as one of unscientific “metaphysical syntax”, a view quoted with approval by Jespersen (1924:  319). In his own work (esp. Jespersen 1909–​49), Jespersen essentially treated mood as a morphological category of the verb, with meanings that are not defined in terms of modality and with no desire to include the modality of what we call “modal auxiliaries”. He did, of course, discuss English verbs such as must and may. First, they were treated in the chapter on tense (vol. 4, 5–​16), because some of the modal auxiliaries were old preterit presents, i.e., verbs with preterit morphology but with present meaning. And second, they were also discussed in the sections on verb complementation, more particularly, the ones dealing with the infinitival objects (vol. 5, 170–​185). In Jespersen (1924), the theoretical underpinning of the grammar, the approach was similar: there was no place for “modality”, only for “mood”, though interestingly, Jespersen did admit to discussing a second notion of mood, viz., what he (1924: 319–​321) called “notional mood”, and he listed no fewer than 20 such notional moods, expressible by “verbal moods and auxiliaries of various languages”. Here we find he must be rich as an illustration of “necessitative” mood and you may go if you like as an example of “permissive” mood. So must and may entered the discussion of mood, but only through a backdoor, for Jespersen (1924: 320, 321) added that he “cannot, however, attach any great importance” to his listing of notional moods, for “[t]‌here are many ‘moods’ if one leaves the safe ground of verbal forms actually found in a language”.

2.3.8 Enter “irrealis” A special development was the appearance of the term “irrealis”. In current work it stands in opposition to “realis”, but the term “irrealis” probably arose as a member of a set of three terms, with “potentialis” as the third term, with particular relevance to the study of conditional sentences. The term “potentialis” is relatively old: we have seen the sixteenth-​century grammarians Linacre, Colet, and Álvares (see section 2.3.5) adding a potential mood to the list of classical moods. The term “irrealis” is a non-​classical Latin adjective that is totally absent from the Library of Latin Texts—​A. Possibly through Sapir (1992: 186–​187; originally published in 1930), the term “irrealis”

The history of modality and mood    23 emancipated itself into a general term—​and a noun—​for what is not real (Latin realis, medieval Latin, but initially also without the linguistic sense)—​or “not factual” or “not veridical”, often also including what is potential. This usage gained prominence in the last quarter of the twentieth century (cp. the comments by Bybee et al. 1994: 236). Symptomatic of its rise is that Palmer (2001) had a chapter on “Realis and irrealis”, while Palmer (1986) did not. The main attraction, it seems, is that it allows one to conceive of mood as having just two categories, viz. realis vs irrealis, instead of e.g. the five from antiquity.

2.3.9 Conclusion The history of “mood” concepts is confusing. There are at least three important notions. One is the Protagorean notion: it deals with sentence or speech act types. Related, yet different, is the Dionysian notion: it typically, but not necessarily deals with an “inclination of the mind” as it is marked on the verb. A third notion, related but again different, is the Boethian notion, which refers to the characterization of a proposition in terms of, most prominently, necessity and possibility. Part of the confusion is also due to the interference of the term “modality”, to which we now turn.

2.4 Modality 2.4.1 Modality, but without the term “modality” We have already mentioned that Kant used the dormant term “modality” in an influential way. However, the conceptual issues of what is arguably the core of modality, viz., the distinction between necessity and possibility, occupied scholars since Greek antiquity and were especially prominent in Aristotle (Seel 1982). A central idea in this tradition, of interest for linguistics, is the “square of oppositions”. In essence it goes back to Aristotle too (De interpretatione 6–​7, 17b 17–​26) but Apuleius of Madaura in the second century before our era might have given its first diagrammatic representation (see Londey and Johanson 1987). The categorization of the square is held to be true for various sets of categories. The most important application is probably quantification, with notions such as “all” and “some”, but we will deal here only with modality. Figure 2.1 shows the classical version of the “modal square”. The square has a left side, which is positive, and a right one, which is negative. The positive side has an “A” at the top and an “I” at the bottom, referring to the bold face letters in the word affirmo (Latin for ‘I affirm’). The right side has an “E” and an “O”, referring to the bold faced letters in nego (Latin for ‘I deny’). The top values imply the ones at the bottom. Thus if something is necessary, it is also possible. The values that are diagonally opposed to one another are contradictory: they cannot hold true or false together.

24    Johan van der Auwera AND Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar Necessary

Impossible

A

Contrariety

E

Implication

Contradiction

Implication

I

Subcontrariety

O

Possible

Not Necessary

Figure 2.1  The Aristotelian square for modality

Thus a proposition cannot be both necessary and not necessary and it is impossible for something to be neither necessary nor not necessary. The relation between A and E is one of contrariety, which means that an A proposition and an E proposition cannot be true together. When something is necessary, it cannot also be the case that it is impossible. The A and E propositions can both be false though: it is perfectly fine for something to be neither necessary nor impossible and, in that case, one would say that it is possible. The relation between I and O, finally, has been called “subcontrariety”. The idea is that I and O cannot be false together, but that they can be true together. This is not self-​ evident and it has caused problems, apparently as early as for Aristotle (Horn 1990: 454), but the details need not concern us here. Issues relating to the Aristotelian square have been discussed by logicians and philosophers until today, but linguists have also joined the discussion, see e.g. Horn (1990). This means that the conceptual analysis that is embodied in the square is deemed applicable to natural language, which is not surprising, for the logicians and philosophers start from natural language, too, some more explicitly than others—​see Uckelman (2008: 390–​391) for some notes on a thirteenth-​century dispute as to whether modus involved adjectives, adverbs, or both. But either way, for a linguist, too, necessity will imply possibility. Nowadays, pride of place goes to verbs as the exponents of modality, and here too, the linguist will readily agree that there is a sense in which must entails may. Note that the representation with the square focuses on the interaction of modality and negation. Figure 2.1 highlights the effect of external negation, with negation scoping over modality—​with not scoping over necessary in O, and im-​scoping over possible in E. Figure 2.2 is a version that adds labels highlighting internal negation (necessary not, possible not). This kind of interaction has engaged linguists too. Palmer (1979: 7–​8), for instance, in the first of a few ground breaking studies of English modality, analyzed (3) as the expression of “possible not” and (4) of “not necessary” and found their equivalence to be explained by logic.

The history of modality and mood    25 Impossible Necessary not

Necessary

A

Contrariety

E

Implication

Contradiction

Implication

I

Subcontrariety

O

Possible

Not Necessary Possible not

Figure 2.2  The Aristotelian square for modality, highlighting internal negation

 (3)  He may not be working in his study. (4)  He need not be working in his study.

Or consider the relation between possible and impossible. They are contradictory. Thus one would expect that not impossible is the same as possible. Linguists have worked on this expectation and one might conclude that possible and not impossible are indeed equivalent on a semantic level, but not on a pragmatic level, see Horn (1991).

2.4.2 Kant, von Wright, and Palmer With Kant the term “modality” gained some frequency, and it replaced the Boethian sense of “mood”, primarily in philosophy and logic, but also in linguistics, especially but not exclusively in the German tradition. Thus, since at least the end of the nineteenth century, Dutch grammarians used a notion of modality (modaliteit) in the modern sense (e.g. Kluyver 1911; Van Wijk 1931: 143–​155 [originally published in 1906]), and one of them, Den Hertog (1973: 116 [original from 1892]), explicitly attributed the term to Kant. Interestingly, there was no clear or strong Kantian effect on English grammar writing: as already mentioned, Jespersen (1909–​49, 1924) had no need for the term “modality”. In early twentieth-​century English linguistics the term “modality” was not totally absent, however. An interesting use is found in Sapir (1921). He used “modality”, but only in the sense of “mood” (Sapir 1921: 87–​88, 108). Another example is the grammar by Zandvoort. It had a section “Mood and modality” (Zandvoort 1950: 102–​105). Most of it concerned mood in the traditional sense (indicative, subjunctive,… ), but he used “modal” when a preterit or an auxiliary has a meaning that comes close to one treated under “mood”. The adjective “modal” was explicitly related to “mode”, which was treated as a synonym of “mood”. Lyons

26    Johan van der Auwera AND Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar (1968: 307–​309) was written in the same spirit. “Mood” was his general term, “modality” did occur, but seemingly only for stylistic variation (cf. Hermerén 1978: 10). The Lyons case is interesting. Less than 10 years later, in his other major textbook, Lyons (1977) spent a chapter on both “modality” and “mood”, with 60 pages for modality, illustrated primarily by modal auxiliaries, beating the 50 pages for mood, primarily dealing with speech acts. It was in this period that modality became important in English linguistics. Lyons was not the only linguist to effectuate this change. Major players were Leech (1969 and following), Halliday (1970a and following), Palmer (1979 and following), and Coates (1983). Each of these authors discussed English auxiliaries such as must and may in terms of a notion of modality. The contrast with e.g. Lebrun (1965) could not be stronger: this was a semantic corpus-​based study of may and can, in which the author related his results to the relevant literature, and the book did not contain a single occurrence of the term “modality”. An important catalyst of change was Palmer (1979), and, interestingly, here we again witness linguistics turning to logic and philosophy. This time the source of inspiration was not Kant, but von Wright (1951), which Palmer (1979: 2) considered a “pioneering work on modal logic”. Palmer finds von Wright’s work of great interest, not so much for the technical details of modal logic, but for the distinctions made between types of “modality”. Von Wright had four types: alethic, epistemic, deontic, and existential. The details do not matter here, but two of the four notions—​“epistemic modality” and “deontic modality”—​are now generally accepted as relevant linguistic categories. Interestingly also, von Wright used the term “modality”, but he interchanged it with “mode”, in the Boethian sense of Latin modus. In Palmer, however, only von Wright’s “modality” was used, for he needed “mood” for something else—​the Protagoras–​Dionysius sense of  “mood”. At the time when use of the term “modality” was increasing in England, American writers, somewhat independently, started using the term as well, with, e.g., Fillmore (1972: 23) bipartitioning the sentence into a proposition and modality—​in an extremely wide sense “including such modalities on the sentence-​as-​a-​whole as negation, tense, mood and aspect”—​and with generative grammarians discussing where the locus of the various types of modals in successive formal modals of grammar would be. It so happens that in English the modal auxiliaries are a particularly thorny subject, both formally—​they are special verbs—​and semantically—​they are highly polyfunctional. And since Anglocentric linguistics dominated the world, the term “modality” was heading for global usage. And, of course, in some cases, the use of “modality” coming from Anglocentric linguistics reinforced the use in another vernacular, such as German or Dutch. To some extent, this happened for French too. Brunot (1922) employed a wide sense of modality (modalité), encompassing both mood (mode) and modal auxiliaries (called auxiliaires de modes). But what was more influential is probably the bipartition of the clause, a little like the theory of Fillmore, proposed by Bally (1965: 36–​38, 45–​46, 216–​218), who availed himself of the dictum vs modus terminology, but who also had a use for modalité and mode, each with a meaning different from modus. The Bally approach was influential in France and beyond, in Russia (through the work of Vinogradov; V. Plungian p.c.) and even as far as in Japan (Larm 2006: 66–​68). But in current Japan, like everywhere else, it is the English language way of doing grammar and

The history of modality and mood    27 adopting terminology that is exerting its influence. All of these factors conspire to making “modality” a prominent term in today’s grammar and semantics.

2.5  Modality and mood today, and in this volume What we see in the history of Western linguistics, simplifying somewhat, is the rise of “modality” at the expense of “mood”. Right now, at the beginning of the twenty-​first century, the notion of modality is used widely and in many different ways (see Chapter 3). Its prominence is due at least to Palmer, von Wright, and to Kant’s 1781 work, and it essentially goes back to and replaces the Boethian notion of “mood”. “Modality” also assails the Protagorean notion of “mood”, referring to sentence types and/​or speech acts, either to replace it or to include it as one dimension of modality. The first line of thought, that of modality replacing Protagorean mood, typical for nineteenth-​century Kant, inspired linguistics but it was not taken up. The second line of thought, with modality including Protagorian mood, is found in current research (e.g. Portner 2009: 6, 258–​263), but it is not a mainstream idea. However, Protagorean “mood”, as an independent notion, is still very much alive (see e.g. Stenius 1967; Lyons 1968: 308; Lewis 1970; Kürschner 1987), and this is also the perspective taken in this volume. In addition, this volume also uses the notion of “mood” in a second way, viz. to refer to these aspects of meaning that are treated under labels such as “subjunctive”, “conjunctive”, and also—​as a newcomer—​“irrealis”. This usage is in line with a good part of current practice and it goes back to the Dionysian concept of “mood”. But there is a lot of divergence and confusion here. The meaning associated with a notion such as “subjunctive” is typically registered in the morphology of the verb. As a result, many linguists take this link to be definitional and they consider “mood” as meaning that has to be expressed through verbal inflection, or as the verbal inflection that expresses this meaning. In the latter case “mood” becomes a formal category which relates to “modality” in the way that “tense” relates to “time” (see e.g. Eisenberg 1986: 98; Palmer 1986: 21–​23, 33; 2001: 4; Bybee et al. 1994: 181). This brief overview by no means covers all current uses of the term “mood” and “modality”. Bhat (1999), for example, uses “mood” for what most contemporary linguists call “modality” and, in his approach, a traditional “mood” category of the imperative is not taken as a category of “mood”, but as a “speech act” category. For Hengeveld (2004) mood is a formal category only (not restricted to morphology) corresponding to the semantic categories of modality and illocution. Given the confusing history of the last 2,000 years, today’s lack of terminological agreement is not surprising and, sadly, the relief of “mood” in some of its uses by “modality” did not bring about the desirable terminological clarity. This implies that no modern user of the terms “mood” and “modality” can take the terms for granted and that one should always explain what one means.

Pa rt  I

T H E SE M A N T IC S OF M ODA L I T Y A N D  M O OD

Chapter 3

Analyses of t h e modal m e a ni ng s Jan Nuyts

3.1 Introduction1 This chapter provides a survey of recent and current views on the semantic analysis of the notion of modality. It adopts a narrow perspective on the category: the relationship with neighboring semantic categories (such as evidentiality) will be handled in Chapter 4.2 Moreover, the focus in this chapter will be on traditional views in linguistics, broadly defined:  philosophical, logical, and formal semantic approaches, as well as analyses of modal notions in specific theoretical paradigms in linguistics, will be discussed in Chapters 20–​23, although it will sometimes be inevitable to touch upon elements of the latter in the present chapter as well.

1  This research was supported by an IAP VI project (P6/​44) funded by the Department for Science Policy of the Belgian Federal Government, by a research project (G.0443.07) funded by FWO-​Flanders, and by a research project (LP) funded by the Research Council (BOF) of the University of Antwerp. This chapter draws heavily on Nuyts (2006): it includes a strongly reworked, expanded and updated version of parts of the latter article. Given my long-​standing concern with the subject matter of modality, I have developed my own views on the notion (see e.g. Nuyts 2001a, 2005; Nuyts et al. 2010). For the sake of the present chapter, however, I will distance myself from my own position and adopt a neutral perspective on the field, treating my own analysis as just one among many others. 2 Some authors use the term “mood” as a (partial) synonym for the notion of modality—​ but they then typically use it to refer exclusively to the grammatical coding of modality on the verb (see Chapter 2). To the extent that the present chapter touches upon the issue of the expression of modality (as such, this is the province of Chapters 6 and 7), however, it adopts this volume’s broad perspective on the matter (i.e. no limitation to grammatical expressions). Moreover, even when referring to the grammatical expression of modality, the term “mood” is avoided in order not to cause confusion with the use of this notion adopted in the present volume, viz. to refer to the domains of sentence types and illocutionary functions on the one hand, and of (ir)realis and related categories on the other hand (see Chapter 5).

32   Jan Nuyts This chapter is organized as follows. Section 3.2 sketches the problems encountered in the field in attempting to define the notion of modality. Section 3.3 surveys the most important types of modal categories that have been introduced in the literature, and presents different views on how they may be organized. Section 3.4 looks at types of criteria that have been put forward to motivate the “cover category” of modality. Section 3.5, finally, briefly introduces a few features and properties often put forward as characteristic of (some of) the modal categories: subjectivity vs objectivity, performativity vs descriptivity, informational status, and issues of scope.

3.2  Defining modality The notion of “modality” has been used in different ways in the literature. First of all, one needs to distinguish between a broad and a narrow definition. Occasionally, “modality” is used in a very broad sense, viz. to refer to any kind of speaker modification of a state of affairs, even including dimensions such as tense and aspect. This use is most common in philosophy (see Perkins 1983: 6, Palmer 1986: 9 for references), but it occasionally also occurs in linguistics (e.g. Ransom 1977, 1986; Dietrich 1992—​see Narrog 2005a for more references). So used, the term is synonymous with what others call “tense-​aspect-​modality” (TAM) categories (e.g. Bybee et al. 1994; Givón 2001), or “qualifications” of states of affairs (cf. Nuyts 2001a, 2005), and these are the terms that will be used in this chapter to refer to this wider domain. Specifically, I will use the latter term (“qualificational categories”) to refer to the semantic dimensions involved (time, aspect, (types of) modality, etc.), and the former (“TAM markers”) to refer to the linguistic devices used for expressing these semantic dimensions. The notion of “modality” in focus in the present volume, hence in the present chapter, is the more common, narrow one (although there is no unanimity on how narrow “narrow” should be, as this chapter will demonstrate): it refers to one semantic subfield of the wider domain of qualificational categories, which stands next to domains such as time and aspect. This characterization remains “negative” and highly unspecific, of course. And that is no accident: it reflects the fact that the domain of modality turns out to be very hard to define in simple, positive terms. Thus, while Palmer (2001: 1) optimistically posits that “it has come to be recognized in recent years that modality is a valid cross-​language grammatical category that can be the subject of a typological [and no doubt any other kind of—​JN] study” (which, in Palmer’s view, makes modality comparable to the categories of tense and aspect), Bybee et al. (1994: 176), in a more skeptical note, observe that “it may be impossible to come up with a succinct characterization of the notional domain of modality”. The latter consideration certainly reflects better the actual reality encountered in the literature (cf. also Narrog 2005a, 2005b), and in this regards modality is quite unlike categories such as time and (types of) aspect, which, in spite of disputes over them, can be defined in (fairly) straightforward and coherent semantic terms.

Analyses of the modal meanings    33 Thus, while modality is sometimes (especially in the more logically oriented literature) defined, in very general terms, as the domain of (expressions of) possibility and necessity (e.g. van der Auwera 1996; not all researchers will accept this definition however—​see section 3.4), when it comes to a more detailed characterization authors are fairly systematically forced to revert to the listing of a set of more specific notions, each of which is defined separately, and which may be taken to share certain features motivating their grouping together under the label “modality” (such as the fact that they feature possibility and necessity as values; cf. section 3.4), but which differ in many other respects. In this perspective, the notion of modality may better be viewed as a “supercategory” (Nuyts 2005, 2006), which is more loosely structured—​and which in fact probably belongs at a higher level of abstraction—​than categories such as time and (types of) aspect.3 There is, however, also no unanimity among scholars in terms of how the set of modal categories should be characterized, neither in terms of its outer borders—​i.e., which semantic notions or dimensions do and which do not belong to it (cf. e.g. the disputes over the status of evidentiality, of “directive” notions, or of volition and intention)—​ nor in terms of its internal organization—​i.e., which modal categories should be distinguished precisely, how should they be defined, and what are the exact boundaries between them. We will address this matter in section 3.3: 3.3.1 introduces the three traditional core modal notions, viz. dynamic, deontic, and epistemic modality, plus a few less common and/​or more controversial modal categories, and 3.3.2 surveys a number of alternative divisions of the field of modality.

3.3  Types of modality 3.3.1 “Basic” modal categories: Dynamic, deontic, epistemic, and more As indicated in the introduction, there is no unanimity among scholars regarding what the list of categories to be called “modal” should look like, but in one version of it—​one of the most “traditional” ones—​it comprises three basic semantic dimensions or concepts: dynamic, deontic, and epistemic. There are disputes even over the definition and the precise delimitation of these three, though. Let us first have a look at these.

3 

Many authors will agree that there are at least two fairly different types of aspect, viz. “phasal aspect” (the state of deployment of the state of affairs: ingressive, progressive, egressive, etc.) and “quantitative aspect” (the frequency of the state of affairs: semelfactive, habitual, generic, etc.). Still, many will also agree that all types of aspect together can be defined as an indication of the (internal or external) temporal constituency of a state of affairs.

34   Jan Nuyts

Dynamic modality The first category has received different labels in the literature, including “dynamic modality” (Palmer 1979, 1983, 2001; Perkins 1983; Nuyts 2005, 2006; Narrog 2009a), “facultative modality” (Goossens 1985), and “inherent modality” (Hengeveld 1988). The first term is most frequent and will also be adopted here. In the most narrow definition (e.g. Goossens 1985), dynamic modality is characterized as an ascription of the capacity or ability to the first-​argument (or controlling) participant (usually the agent participant) of the verb to realize or effectuate the state of affairs expressed in the clause.4 This is illustrated in (1). (1) a. He can stand on his head without using his hands. b. The only person able to do this is John. As Palmer (1979: 91) has observed already, however, the category shouldn’t be limited to “ability”, but must be assumed to also include indications of a need of/​necessity for the first-​argument participant, as in (2). (2) a. I must find something to eat or I’ll starve. b. I had to snatch a cookie, I couldn’t resist the temptation. Coates (1983), among what she calls the “root modal uses” of the modals (see 3.3.2 on the notion of root modality), does not distinguish (what we call, in our present terminology) a dynamic use of must next to a deontic one, although she does make such a distinction (between ability/​possibility and permission) in can. Yet the meaning of must in (2a) (and (4a) below) cannot be grasped under the label of “moral necessity”—​only a characterization as “inherent need” seems appropriate. Another distinction that needs to be made within the category of dynamic modality is that between abilities or needs which are fully inherent to the first-​argument participant—​ henceforth “participant-​ inherent” dynamic modality—​ and potentials or necessities for that first-​argument participant which are determined by the external circumstances (and which may thus be beyond the control) of that participant—​ henceforth “participant-​imposed” dynamic modality. In the examples given so far (in (1) and (3)), the preferred reading is participant-​inherent: they refer to properties which are exclusively due to the first-​argument participant. In examples (3) and (4), however, 4  Goossens’ (1985) definition actually refers to the subject of the clause, but the first argument is the more appropriate anchor point given the situation in passives: in the garage can be opened electronically not the grammatical subject but the implied first-​argument participant has the ability to do so. Although “ability” may not be the most appropriate term here, “possibility” would be better—​in fact, passives generally invite a “participant-​imposed” rather than a “participant-​inherent” dynamic reading (see below). Also observe that John is able to open the garage is fine, but the garage is able to be opened is not. This raises questions regarding the role of syntactic structure in determining variants of the dynamic modal meaning, a matter which is in need of further investigation.

Analyses of the modal meanings    35 the property is conditioned by external factors, explicitly mentioned in the utterance, as in (3a) and (4a), or implicit in the situation described in the utterance as in (3b) and (4b). (As the examples in (1) through (4) demonstrate, most dynamic modal expression forms can be used for indicating both participant-​inherent and participant-​imposed properties.) (3) a. The garage is free so you can park your car there. b. I’ll be able to help you in a few minutes. (4) a. To get into the garden you must pass through the patio. b. I’ll come down for dinner soon, darling, but I need to finish this letter first. More controversial is the status of what will henceforth be called “situational modality”. This still involves possibilities/​ potentials and necessities/​ inevitabilities (abilities and needs would be entirely inappropriate terms though), but then not related to any participant in the state of affairs in particular, but inherent in the state of affairs described in the clause as a whole. The clearest instances of this appear in expressions in which there is no participant involved at all, as in (5), but it can also appear with inanimate first-​argument participants, as in (6), and even with animate (including human) first-​argument participants, as in (7). (5) a. It can rain here every day in winter. b. It has to snow here at least once in winter. (6) a. All ships can sink. b. The driver was so drunk that this car accident had to happen. (7) a. John cannot be the murderer, he was with friends in Paris at the time. b. John has to be the murderer, there was nobody else in the house. This meaning type is clearly different from epistemic modality, as it does not involve an estimation of the likelihood that the state of affairs will occur or has occurred (cf. also that one can perfectly say it can rain here every day in winter, and today it probably will again, combining a situational modal and an epistemic modal qualification of one and the same state of affairs in two successive clauses without sounding tautological). But whether this means it can be considered a subtype of dynamic modality is a matter of dispute: it is in the analysis of Nuyts (2005, 2006), but it is not in van der Auwera and Plungian’s (1998) (see 3.3.2).5

5 This

situational meaning (variant) undoubtedly constitutes a diachronic step from the central dynamic modal meanings to the epistemic modal meaning, though (cf. Nuyts 2007; Byloo and Nuyts 2014).

36   Jan Nuyts

Deontic modality The definition of “deontic modality” has been subject to some debate lately. Traditionally, it is defined in terms of the notions of “permission” and “obligation” (and related notions such as interdiction, advice, etc.; cf. e.g. Lyons 1977: 823–​831; Kratzer 1978: 111; Palmer 1986:  96–​97; van der Auwera and Plungian 1998; Verstraete 2005a; Bucciarelli and Johnson-​Laird 2005; Narrog 2009a). A characterization in these terms does not capture expressions such as those in (8), however, although these would seem to fit under the common-​sense label of “deontics” (cf. Nuyts 2005, 2006; Van linden and Verstraete 2011).6 (8) a. We cannot fire him just like that, he’s been our best employee for years. b. This initiative by the federal government is highly deplorable. c. We applaud this local community initiative. So the traditional definition is at least too narrow. In more general terms, then, deontic modality may be defined as an indication of the degree of moral desirability of the state of affairs expressed in the utterance, typically but not necessarily on behalf of the speaker (speakers can report on others’ deontic assessments—​see the discussion of performativity vs descriptivity in section 3.5)—​the examples in (8) are straightforward illustrations.7 The concept of “morality” in this definition should be taken widely: it involves “societal norms” as well as personal “ethical” criteria of the person responsible for the deontic assessment—​cf. the fact that moral assessments may vary radically between individuals. In this definition, this category may be taken to involve a gradual scale (cf. also the notion of “degree” in the definition), at least going from absolute moral necessity via degrees of desirability to moral acceptability, and if one assumes that the category also includes a dimension of polarity, further on to the “negative” values of undesirability and absolute moral unacceptability. This is unlike dynamic modality (and situational modality, if one considers this a distinct category), which is (or are) binary. Not everybody subscribes to this scalar view, however: especially in logic, there is a strong trend to analyze all modal categories—​hence also deontic modality—​in terms of discrete values (usually only possibility and necessity; but see Chapter 23), and to consider negation a separate operator interacting with the modal operator (cf. e.g. Kratzer 1978).8 6 This traditional definition is no doubt due to the fact that permission and obligation are prominently present among the meanings of the modal auxiliaries in many languages. Still, (8a) illustrates that even the modals feature uses which must be called deontic yet which do not fit under the umbrella of labels such as permission, obligation, and related ones (it is not difficult to find comparable examples with must, e.g.—​cf. also Nuyts et al. 2010). 7  Van linden and Verstraete’s (2011) definition of deontic modality is actually narrower and only covers expressions with a potential state of affairs, such as (8a), but excludes expressions with a factual state of affairs such as (8b–​c) (the latter are not modal at all for these authors). 8  In the traditional definition of deontic modality in terms of permission, obligation, interdiction, etc., the category cannot even be scalar, as these notions do not just differ in terms of degree—​see Verstraete (2005a).

Analyses of the modal meanings    37 The question is, then, how to classify expressions of permission and obligation (and related notions) for the first-​argument participant (usually the addressee)9 to realize the state of affairs expressed in the utterance, of the kind in (9). (9) a. You may go now. b. I demand that you leave immediately. One possibility might be to consider them complex variants of deontic modality, which not only involve an assessment of the degree of moral acceptability of a state of affairs, but also a “translation” of this assessment into an intention to instigate or to (not) hinder another person (the first-​argument participant) to realize this state of affairs. Some authors have argued against this position, however (cf. Nuyts et al. 2010; Van linden and Verstraete 2011), among others on the basis of the argument that obligations and permissions can be inspired by elements other than deontic assessments. E.g., they can result from drawing consequences from possibilities or necessities inherent in situations (cf. “situational dynamic modality”)—​as when someone orders the people in a building to run out because there is a fire. These authors label these categories “directive” and consider them to be illocutionary, hence non-​modal, in nature. Another matter of dispute is the question whether the notions of “volition” and “intention”, as expressed in (10a) and (10b) respectively, should be considered deontic or not (volition has received much more attention than intention, though). (10) a. I want to hear the whole story. b. I will never do it again, I promise. Some authors do think so (e.g. Palmer 1986 tends in that direction regarding volition, and Palmer 2001 explicitly does so for “commissives”, a category very closely related to if not identical with intention), but others include them in the category of dynamic modality (e.g. Goossens 1983 and Palmer 2001 explicitly do so again regarding the notion of volition), and yet others simply exclude them from the set of modal categories (e.g. van der Auwera and Plungian 1998 explicitly do so with respect to the notion of volition; Nuyts et al. 2007, Nuyts 2008 do so for both notions). Conceptually, the notion of intention does show some relation to the concepts of obligation and permission: like the latter, it translates an assessment of some state of affairs in terms of its desirability or necessity into a (non-​verbal) action plan, but the difference is that it involves future actions of the assessor him/​herself (who usually figures as the first-​argument participant in the state of affairs). Volition, on the other hand, is less clearly related to permissions and obligations, but rather relates to the realm of desires. In both cases, the discussions boil down to the question whether “action plans” and desires still count as modal notions. 9 

Like in dynamic modality, definition in terms of the first-​argument participant is more appropriate than in terms of the subject of the clause, cf. R. Lakoff (1972).

38   Jan Nuyts

Epistemic modality The third traditional modal subcategory is “epistemic modality”. Its core definition is relatively non-​controversial: it involves an estimation, (again) typically but not necessarily by the speaker, of the chances or the likelihood that the state of affairs expressed in the clause applies in the world—​(11) offers some illustrations. (11)  a. The door bell rings, that may well be the postman.   b. That’s probably the postman bringing today’s newspaper. Like deontic modality, epistemic modality may be considered a matter of degree, i.e., as involving a scale, at least going from absolute certainty via probability to fairly neutral possibility that the state of affairs is real, and if one moreover assumes that the category also involves polarity, the scale even continues, on the negative side, via improbability of the state of affairs to absolute certainty that it is not real. This scalar view is (in some version) probably quite non-​controversial in functional linguistics (see e.g. Nuyts 2001a), but, as mentioned for deontic modality, especially in formal semantic approaches (cf. e.g. Kratzer 1978; but see van der Auwera and Plungian 1998 for a comparable position in linguistics)10 there is a strong trend to consider it a matter of discrete categories (possibility and necessity; but see Chapter 23 on more differentiated views in formal semantics), with negation functioning as a separate operator. A notion which also briefly needs mentioning here is that of “alethic modality”. In modal logic (in which the notion was introduced first; von Wright 1951) and in formal semantic approaches to modality (cf. also Lyons 1977: 791 and passim; Palmer 1979: 2–​3, 1986: 10–​11), this notion is closely related to yet distinct from epistemic modality: alethic modality concerns the necessary or contingent truth of propositions (i.e. “modes of truth”), whereas epistemic modality concerns the state of a proposition in terms of knowledge and belief (i.e. “modes of knowing”). In linguistic semantic analyses of modality the notion is hardly ever used, however. Maybe this is a terminological matter: the distinction between alethic and epistemic modality shows some similarity to the distinction between objective and subjective epistemic modality often made in linguistic semantics (on the possible link between these distinctions, see Lyons 1977; on the objective/​subjective distinction, see section 3.5); and it is also not difficult to see a certain similarity to the distinction between epistemic modality and “situational (dynamic) modality”. But the notion has also explicitly been rejected by some linguists, e.g. by Palmer (1986: 11), who states that “there is no distinction between […. ] what is logically true and what the speaker believes, as a matter of fact, to be true”, and that “there is no formal grammatical distinction in English, and, perhaps, in no other language either, between alethic and epistemic modality”.

10  Van

der Auwera and Plungian (1998: 82–​83) admit that one could make further distinctions, but they do not actually do so in their analyses.

Analyses of the modal meanings    39 There is hardly any analysis of modality which does not, in one way or another (possibly hidden behind other “flags”—​see also 3.3.2), feature the three modal categories discussed above. We may discern yet a fourth modal category, which is, however, signaled only sporadically in the literature.

Boulomaic modality/​attitude “Boulomaic modality/​attitude” (see Kratzer 1978; Hengeveld 1989; Nuyts 2005; Nuyts 2001a calls it “emotional attitude”) concerns an indication of the degree of the speaker’s (or someone else’s) liking or disliking (affectively) of the state of affairs, of the kind expressed in the examples in (12).11 (12)  a.  He has won the game. Great!  b.  Unfortunately I can’t come to your party tomorrow.  c.  I am glad the academic year is over again. The reason why this category is not systematically part of the discussion of modal notions is unclear. Maybe not everyone would consider it a modal category. Or maybe it has simply escaped wider attention so far, possibly as a result of the fact that this meaning is not very prominent (though not absent—​see Kratzer 1978; Nuyts et al. 2010) in the modal auxiliaries in English or other West European languages (the semantics of the linguistic category of the modal auxiliaries in particular has heavily dominated the discussion of the semantics of modality as a whole). There are, however, plenty of lexical (verbal, adverbial, adjectival) expressions with this kind of meaning in these languages. Moreover, the category has properties which make it quite comparable to uncontroversially modal notions. E.g., like deontic and epistemic modality, this is a category which can be analyzed (depending on one’s perspective; see the discussion of deontic and epistemic modality above) as being scalar, with a positive and a negative pole. And like deontic and epistemic modality, the category can be called “attitudinal” (an element which some would consider a criterion to group these meanings together—​see section 3.4). It may actually not always be easy to draw a sharp borderline between this category and deontic modality (in fact, many expressions—​including (un)fortunately, e.g.—​can be used for either category)—​ but still, (dis)liking something is not the same thing as (dis)approving of something. Two other notions which are sometimes considered part of modality are “evidentiality” and “mood” (in the present volume’s definition of this category—​see section 3.1). Especially the position of the former is hotly debated. Some authors include evidentiality in the category of epistemic modality (e.g. Bybee 1985a; Palmer 1986), some closely associate evidentiality with epistemic modality by adjoining them under one modal “supercategory” (cf. Hengeveld’s 1989 “epistemological modality”; Palmer’s 2001 11  This notion of boulomaic modality should not be confused with the notion of “bouletic modality” often used in formal semantics (cf. Chapter  23)—​the latter is equivalent to what is called volition elsewhere (and above). See also Chapter 6 on this matter of terminology.

40   Jan Nuyts “propositional modality”), others see them as two related but separate categories (e.g. Narrog 2005a, who considers evidentiality a modal category next to epistemic modality; or Nuyts 2005, who considers them both “attitudinal”, see section 3.4), yet others simply exclude evidentials from the set of modal categories (e.g. Anderson 1986; Bybee et al. 1994; Aikhenvald 2004; de Haan 2006). Some authors differentiate between different subtypes of evidentiality: inference is often considered to be much more closely related to epistemic modality than hearsay, for example (cf. e.g. Palmer 2001; Nuyts 2005), and van der Auwera and Plungian (1998) even include inference in epistemic modality but exclude the other evidential categories entirely from the modal categories. Mood is much less often considered part of modality—​among the authors who do are Bybee et al. (1994) and Palmer (2001). The notions of evidentiality and of mood will be handled elaborately in Chapters 4 and 5, respectively.

3.3.2 Other views of the organization of the domain of modality Several scholars have proposed different ways of organizing the conceptual space occupied by (some of) the semantic notions mentioned in 3.3.1—​i.e., they have put forward a different system of modal subcategories, in order to emphasize certain semantic relations among the categories and/​or as a result of a different perspective on the issue (especially: a focus on properties of the linguistic forms expressing modal categories). In most or all of these, the notion of epistemic modality remains untouched, but the reorganization occurs in the categories of dynamic and deontic modality. Some of the most important alternative proposals are the following.

3.3.2.1 Van der Auwera and Plungian (1998) As indicated in 3.1, van der Auwera and Plungian (1998) do not consider situational modality to belong to the dynamic modal meanings. They call this category “participant-​external modality”, as opposed to “participant-​internal modality” covering the participant-​inherent and participant-​imposed dynamic modal categories as defined above. Moreover, they assume a very close relationship between participant-​external modality and deontic modality: they consider deontic modality (defined in the traditional way in terms of permissions and obligations) to be a special case of participant-​ external modality, the difference being that in the latter the possibility or necessity is purely inherent in the physical circumstances of the state of affairs, whereas in the former they are imposed by a person (the speaker or someone else) or an institution. (A comparable position is taken in Goossens 1983, 1999.) In other words, in this view the dividing criterion for the categories is whether there is an ascription of a property to the first-​argument participant or not. For those who include situational modality in dynamic modality and separate it from deontic modality, however, the dividing criterion is whether the category concerns a feature entirely inherent in (some participant in)

Analyses of the modal meanings    41 the state of affairs, or whether it concerns one morally imposed by a subject outside the state of affairs (typically but not necessarily the speaker). (See also section 3.4.)

3.3.2.2 Root modality vs epistemic modality A more drastic reorganization (at least in most cases) concerns the notion of “root modality”, which, especially in the Anglo-​American literature, is very frequently used as the only counterpart for the notion of epistemic modality. This notion is sometimes explicitly related to deontic modality, among others by Steele (1975a), Talmy (1988), and Sweetser (1990), but at least Sweetser’s and probably also Talmy’s actual use of it turns out to be wider, also including (at least part of) dynamic modality. And Hofmann (1976) and Coates (1983), for example, even explicitly use it as a cover term for deontic and dynamic modality. In the same vein, Palmer (2001) covers deontic and dynamic modality under the label of “event modality” (as opposed to “propositional modality”, covering epistemic modality and evidentiality).

3.3.2.3 Narrog (2005b) While basically accepting the traditional categories of dynamic, deontic, and epistemic modality (and also including evidentiality), Narrog (2005b) essentially also proposes a bipartition among them, yet along different lines than the “root vs epistemic” division. On the one hand he distinguishes “volitive modality”, as modality involving an element of “will” or force towards the realization of the state of affairs—​this category covers deontic modality (in the traditional definition as involving permissions and obligations) and volition. And on the other hand there is “non-​volitive modality”, in which there is no such element of will or force—​this category covers dynamic and epistemic modality and evidentiality. Each category in this bipartition is moreover crosscut by a distinction between speaker-​oriented modality and event-​oriented modality, a division which in Narrog’s analysis cannot be tied up with specific modal subcategories, however.

3.3.2.4 Bybee and colleagues Yet another classification is that of Bybee and colleagues (cf. Bybee 1985a; Bybee et al. 1994; Bybee and Fleischman 1995). They do carve up the non-​epistemic modal space, yet probably mainly as a result of the fact that, unlike most of the authors mentioned above, they also draw in mood categories (see 3.3.1). Next to epistemic modality, they distinguish between “agent-​oriented modality” and “speaker-​oriented modality”. The former covers any meanings which “predicate conditions on an agent [i.e. the first-​argument participant in our earlier terminology—​JN] with regard to the completion of an action referred to by the main predicate, e.g. obligation, desire, ability, permission and root possibility” (Bybee and Fleischman 1995:  6). “Speaker-​ oriented modality” covers “markers of directives, such as imperatives, optatives or permissives, which represent speech acts through which a speaker attempts to move an addressee to action” (Bybee and Fleischman 1995: 6). If one does consider the latter moods to be part of deontic modality (as Bybee and colleagues do), then this classification crosscuts the category of deontic modality, grouping part of it with the dynamic modal meanings as defined

42   Jan Nuyts above (including “situational modality”) and classifying part of it in a separate category. But if one excludes mood categories from the domain of (deontic) modality (as many other scholars do), then the category of “agent-​oriented modality” is basically identical to the category of “root modality” (and the category of “speaker-​oriented modality” is not a modal category anymore). Next to the above, Bybee et al. (1994) also distinguish a category of “subordinating modality”, which is basically a “formal” category covering modalities (or moods) in subordinated clauses.

3.4  Dimensions relating modal categories The question is what are the criteria for uniting some or all of the categories mentioned in section 3.3 under the umbrella of the supercategory of “modality”? Several elements have been brought up (explicitly or implicitly) in the literature. Differences in opinion about these may be co-​responsible for some of the differences in views about how to organize the modal domain as sketched in section 3.3. By and large, two types of criteria can be discerned: a “formal” one, viz. the fact that (several of) these meanings are expressed by the grammatical category of the modal auxiliaries in many languages; and (various) semantic criteria, referring to meaning properties shared by the different modal categories.

3.4.1 The semantics of the modal auxiliaries Probably the most important criterion for most functionalist linguists to group the different modal meanings together is the fact that there exists a significant cross-​linguistic trend for languages to have a category of grammatical expression forms, usually called the “modal” auxiliaries, which expresses the set of meanings introduced in section 3.3. The significance of this observation is further increased by the fact that there also turns out to exist a cross-​linguistically applicable systematic developmental relationship between these meanings in these forms: they evolve along a quite fixed path from dynamic to deontic and to epistemic. This path applies in diachrony (cf. e.g. Goossens 1982; Shepherd 1982; Bybee and Pagliuca 1985; Traugott 2006—​see Chapter 16),12 and 12  As

for diachrony, the standard view used to be that the path is linear from dynamic via deontic to epistemic, but there are reasons to question the universality of this strictly linear view, since there are quite a few attested instances with a parallel (though not necessarily temporally simultaneous) development of meanings from dynamic into deontic and from dynamic into epistemic (see Bybee 1988, Bybee et al. 1994 on may; Goossens 1999 on must; Nuyts 2001a: 232–​233, 2007 on Dutch kunnen ‘can, may’). Van der Auwera and Plungian (1998) even question whether there is ever any diachronic link from deontic to epistemic.

Analyses of the modal meanings    43 it also applies in ontogenesis (cf. Stephany 1986, 1993; Shepherd 1993; Choi 2006—​see Chapter 18). This factor is specifically tied to the system of modal auxiliaries, of course: alternative modal expressions (adverbs, adjectives, verbs—​see Chapters 6 and 7) do not usually feature the same range of meanings as the modal auxiliaries, nor does the meaning development typical of the modal auxiliaries apply in the same way to these other expressive devices. On the other hand, the fact that the system of the modal auxiliaries is used as the criterion for “modality-​hood” may explain at least in part why meanings such as evidentiality and boulomaic attitude are so often excluded from the modal categories, since these are only minimally present in the system of auxiliaries.

3.4.2 Shared semantic characteristics Authors also often motivate the grouping of semantic categories as “modal” with reference to some fundamental semantic property or characteristic which they all share. There are a few different (but not necessarily always mutually exclusive) formulations of what this shared property might involve. The most commonly cited feature, often associated with scholars analyzing these domains in terms of discrete, binary values (i.e. especially, but not exclusively, formal semantic approaches—​see sections 3.2 and 3.3), is that all the modal categories can be characterized in terms of the notions of “possibility” and “necessity” (cf. e.g. Kratzer 1978; van der Auwera 1996; van der Auwera and Plungian 1998). For scholars accepting a scalar view of (some of—​see below) these categories, this boils down to the assumption that all categories involved have at least a (very) strong and a (very) weak value.13 According to this principle, at least boulomaic attitude and inferential evidentiality could also classify as modal categories.14 For volition, however, the situation is less clear (can one desire something very strongly vs very weakly?), and intention, and also hearsay evidentiality (e.g.), would have to be excluded (they do not have strong and weak values). If one would want to use as a criterion the issue whether the category is scalar, however, the situation would be slightly different: the same semantic categories would be covered except for dynamic modality (including situational modality), which is not scalar but just binary (ability/​potential and need/​necessity are the only values). Another, quite different, element often mentioned as the shared semantic characteristic of (at least some of) the modal subtypes is that they may all count as “attitudinal” categories (see e.g. Lyons 1977; Palmer 1986; Bybee et al. 1994—​cf. Narrog 2005a, 2005b 13 

This factor may of course help to explain the diachronic and developmental relations between these meanings. 14  This is true if the concept of “modality” is formulated in terms of having at least a strong and a weak value—​using the notions of “possibility” and “necessity” to name the weak and strong poles of boulomaic modality is fairly difficult.

44   Jan Nuyts for critical reflection on at least some of the definitions along these lines). In one formulation of this criterion (cf. Nuyts 2005), this refers to the fact that these categories involve a marking of the extent to which the assessor can commit him/​herself to the state of affairs, each in terms of a different dimension.15 Among the major traditional modal categories (cf. 3.3.1), this definition covers deontic modality (the extent of the assessor’s moral commitment) and epistemic modality (the extent of the assessor’s existential commitment). But it excludes dynamic modality (including situational modality: when a speaker states that “it can rain here in summer”, i.e., that there is a potential for rain, (s)he is describing facts, but not expressing a degree of commitment to the state of affairs).16 On the other hand, it includes boulomaic attitude (the extent of affective commitment), and even inferential evidentiality (the extent to which the assessor has confidence in, hence can be committed to, the existence of the state of affairs given what (s)he knows).17 There are yet other, less frequently quoted criteria in the literature. Thus, some scholars (e.g. Kratzer 1978; Perkins 1983) characterize the modalities as resulting from relating a state of affairs to specific domains of knowledge (“Redehintergründe”, as Kratzer calls them):  (in Perkins’ terms) about natural laws (dynamic modality), about social rules and conventions (deontic modality), or about rational principles (epistemic modality). Narrog (2005a, 2005b) characterizes the modal categories as all concerning the factual status of the state of affairs, specifically as marking the state of affairs as undetermined in terms of its factuality. Finally, Talmy (1988) has argued that one can describe each of the modal categories in terms of “force-​dynamics” (see also Sweetser 1990).

3.5  Features and properties of modal categories In the literature on modality there is frequent reference to a few features or dimensions which appear to be characteristic for (some of) the modal categories, and which may account for properties of, or differences in the nature of, individual usages of modal expressions.

15 This

characterization does not apply to categories such as time (and space) and types of aspect:  these cannot be said to explicate a commitment to a state of affairs; they merely “situate” the state of affairs in the world (time and quantitative aspect) or specify the internal constitution of a state of affairs (phasal aspect). 16  Nuyts (2005) even argues that dynamic modality is a type of quantitative aspect. 17 The definition in terms of “the extent” of the assessor’s commitment strongly suggests that this characterization is coextensive with that in terms of scalarity (if one accepts it—​see above). If so, the fact that hearsay evidentiality does not have the latter property suggests that it would not fit the “attitudinal” category either.

Analyses of the modal meanings    45

3.5.1 Subjectivity vs objectivity or intersubjectivity A dimension often invoked in some form is the distinction between “subjective” and “objective” modal categories—​ see e.g. Lyons (1977); Coates (1983); Palmer (1986); Verstraete (2001). This dimension is most often associated with epistemic modality, but it has also been considered relevant for deontic modality (e.g. by Lyons 1977). (It has never been associated with dynamic modality though.) Most authors use the notions “subjective” and “objective” in an intuitive way, without formally defining them (see also Verstraete 2001 for a critical review), but Lyons (1977: 797–​802) does offer a characterization. In his terms, objective epistemic modality expresses an objectively measurable chance that the state of affairs under consideration is true or not, while subjective epistemic modality involves a purely subjective guess regarding its truth. Thus, when uttering a sentence like (13), (13)   Alfred may be unmarried. the speaker can either indicate that (s)he is simply uncertain about the (hypothetical) fact that Alfred is unmarried—​i.e. subjective modality—​or (s)he may mean to indicate that there is a mathematically computable chance that Alfred is unmarried, for example because (s)he (the speaker) knows that Alfred belongs to a community of ninety people, of which there are thirty unmarried, hence there is one chance in three that he is unmarried—​i.e. objective modality. Some authors consider this distinction to involve two different semantic categories of (epistemic and/​or deontic) modality (e.g. Hengeveld 1988; and probably also Lyons 1977); other authors are less clear as to the status of this dimension. Most or all authors do attempt to relate this dimension to different (grammatical properties of) linguistic expression types of (especially epistemic) modality (i.e., they assume that certain form types express objective modality and others express subjective modality), but there is no unanimity among them about which meaning–​form correlations actually hold (witness the quite different analysis of the status of the modal auxiliaries in Lyons 1977, Palmer 1979, and Coates 1983, or of modal expressions more in general in, e.g., Perkins 1983, Kiefer 1984, Watts 1984, and Hengeveld 1988). Subjectivity vs objectivity as defined by Lyons refers to a difference in the quality of the evidence leading to a modal judgment by an assessor. Another distinction (possibly but not necessarily a competitor for Lyons’ notion),18 which has been labeled “subjectivity vs intersubjectivity”, refers to a difference in who is responsible for the modal judgment (cf. Nuyts 1992, 2001a: 33–​39, 2001b, 2012): a subjective modal evaluation is (one which is presented as being) strictly the issuer’s own responsibility, an intersubjective one is (one which is presented as being) shared by a wider group of people, possibly including the hearer (but also including the issuer him/​herself).19 In other words, this 18 It

is imaginable that both notions could be relevant for characterizing modal uses, alongside each other. 19 Intersubjectivity should thus not be confused with descriptivity in modal categories (see section 3.5.2).

46   Jan Nuyts category serves the interactive purpose to indicate whether the modal judgment is common ground between the speaker and the hearer and/​or others or not. This dimension has been argued (Nuyts 2005) to be relevant for all “attitudinal” (see section 3.4) modal categories (i.e., excluding dynamic modality, but including inferential evidentiality and boulomaic attitude), though not necessarily in all expressive devices for these categories (the expression of the category largely depends on the possibility of coding the issuer of the evaluation—​cf. Nuyts 2001b)—​as illustrated for deontic modality in (14). a. I really deplore this attitude of yours. (14) b. Your attitude is really unacceptable. c. Unfortunately he’s done it again.

= subjective = intersubjective = neutral

Since it is shared by several modal categories, this dimension is considered to be an independent semantic category (even if one which preferentially combines with modal categories), akin to other categories proposed in the literature, such as DeLancey’s (1997) “mirativity” or Slobin and Aksu’s (1982; Aksu-​Koç and Slobin 1986) “prepared vs. unprepared minds” (see e.g. DeLancey 1986, Nichols 1986, Woodbury 1986, Lee 1993, Choi 1995 for other related categories—​cf. Nuyts 2001b, 2012). There is an intricate and not always obvious relationship between the notion of subjectivity in modal categories and notions of subjectivity used in other domains of analysis in the linguistic literature. This includes the concept of subjectivity vs objectivity figuring in the analysis of the process of subjectification in diachronic change (cf. e.g. Traugott 1989, 1995, 2006, 2010; Traugott and Dasher 2002: 19–​24), which concerns the extent to which a semantic element reflects the speaker’s personal position (his/​her attitudes and beliefs) relative to the “objective world” (the more it does, the more subjective it is; see also Chapter 16 on this). Epistemic modality counts as a prime example of a strongly subjective meaning, in this sense (Traugott 1989). And there is also the notion of subjectivity as defined by Langacker (1990, 1999a), which concerns one way in which speakers can construe a conceptualization in alternative ways, and which refers more particularly to the extent to which the conceptualizer/​speaker is explicitly present in the conceptualization/​presentation of a concept (the more explicit, the more subjective the construal of the concept; see also Chapter 22 on this notion). (Cf. also the contributions in Stein and Wright eds. 1995, or López-​Couso 2010, Narrog 2012a, on these different notions of subjectivity.) There seems to be a growing consensus in the literature that these different notions of subjectivity refer to different phenomena, even if they may coincide in the analysis of specific linguistic dimensions, including, notably, of categories such as deontic and epistemic modality (see Nuyts 2012).

3.5.2 Performativity vs descriptivity Another feature sometimes associated with the modal categories (again, typically, the “attitudinal” ones) pertains to the issue of the speaker’s commitment to the evaluation,

Analyses of the modal meanings    47 i.e. the issue of “performative” versus “descriptive” modal expressions (cf. Nuyts 2001a: 39–​41). A performative expression marks a modal assessment maintained by the speaker him/​herself at the moment of speech—​i.e., the speaker is committed to it. In a descriptive use, the speaker is only reporting on an assessment regarding a state of affairs held by someone else, or by him/​herself but at some point in time other than the moment of speech (usually sometime in the past), or (s)he is only mentioning an assessment as a hypothetical possibility (e.g. in a question, or in a conditional clause), without any (indication of) commitment to that assessment on his/​her own part at the time of speech.20 Expression of this dimension—​specifically, of a descriptive evaluation—​ is again argued to be dependent on the possibility to code the issuer (cf. Nuyts 2001a) and or to alter the tense marking on the modal expression—​as illustrated for epistemic modality in (15). (15) a. I think they’ve forgotten about this meeting. b. John rather thinks that they are delayed.

= performative = descriptive

3.5.3 Informational status It has been observed by several authors (e.g. Steele 1975b; Plank 1981; Nuyts and Vonk 1999; Nuyts 2000, 2001a) that epistemic modality, at least, typically has a special status in terms of the information structure of an utterance, in the sense that focalization of it is a very exceptional and marked situation (which probably only occurs in situations of contrast). (This does not mean that epistemic modality may not have effects on the informational status of other elements in an utterance, however—​see Lahousse 2010.) To what extent these observations also apply to other modal categories is not clear from the literature, but that qualificational dimensions quite in general (i.e. beyond the modal categories) often have a special informational status has been observed elsewhere in the literature as well (cf. Langacker 1974; Lötscher 1985; Chafe 1994).

3.5.4 Scope The matter of the semantic scope of qualificational dimensions, including the modal ones, and its effects on the grammatical behavior of the expressions of these dimensions, has received considerable attention in the literature (e.g. Foley and Van Valin 1984; Bybee 1985a; Hengeveld 1989; Dik 1997; Nuyts 2001a, 2009; Van Valin 2005; Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008; Narrog 2009a). The grammatical dimensions of the issue will be handled in detail in Chapters 6, 7, and 10, its treatment in specific theoretical approaches 20 

This notion should not be confused with the notion of performativity common in speech act theory (cf. e.g. Austin 1962; Searle 1989), even though there are some relations (see Nuyts et al. 2010).

48   Jan Nuyts will be addressed among others in Chapters 20 and 21. Suffice it here to briefly address the semantic aspects of the matter. In general terms, the semantic scope of a qualificational category is the range of semantic elements in a clause which are, or can be, affected by it.21 Different qualificational dimensions have a different scope. This can be illustrated with ­example (16). (16) Regrettably, he started smoking again last week. This utterance features a deontic qualification in regrettably, a temporal one in last week, a quantitative or frequency aspectual one (“iterativity”) in again, and a phasal aspectual one (“inchoativity”) in started (see footnote 3 on these two aspectual categories). Clearly, the deontic assessment concerns “him starting to smoke again last week”, i.e. the state of affairs plus the temporal and the two aspectual qualifications. But the deontic assessment is itself not affected by the temporal and aspectual ones (it is not situated last week, e.g., but valid at speech time). The temporal qualification marks when “he started to smoke again”, i.e. the state of affairs plus the two aspectual qualifications, but the latter do not affect the temporal situation (e.g. the situation “last week” is not iterated). Finally, the repetition concerns “him starting to smoke”, but the phase indication does not qualify the frequency marking. Hence there appears to be a scope hierarchy among these qualificational dimensions, as follows: deontic modality > time > quantitative aspect > phasal aspect > state of affairs. A category has scope over dimensions to its right, but not over those to its left. These and other scope relations between specific qualificational dimensions turn out to be fairly stable, across individual co-​occurrence instances in any language, and across languages. This, then, has resulted in a number of—​often quite divergent—​proposals in the literature for a general hierarchical ordering of all qualificational categories (see Chapters 20 and 21). In these hierarchies, the categories of epistemic and deontic modality typically figure very high, i.e., they are generally acknowledged to have very wide scope, and to affect most non-​modal qualificational dimensions, including time and types of aspect. But dynamic modality is typically situated much lower in the hierarchy, in the vicinity of the aspectual categories and certainly below time (cf. the fact that ability is affected by time, but not vice versa, in an example such as last week I was so sick that I couldn’t even eat a slice of bread). This goes to illustrate again the point raised earlier in this chapter that the different modal subcategories have different semantic properties in quite a number of respects, hence that the category of modality is internally less coherent than categories such as time or aspect.

21 The

actual scope of a qualificational dimension may differ depending on the informational organization of the utterance in which it appears, in view of the actual discourse context: usually, only focal information is affected. The following presentation concerns the question which other semantic elements in the utterance can maximally be within the scope of the qualificational categories at stake, i.e., what may be called the “potential maximal scope” of a category.

Analyses of the modal meanings    49

3.6 Conclusion This chapter has offered a cursory overview of how the semantic properties of the category of modality have been handled in the linguistic literature. Views diverge on nearly every aspect of its analysis: which modal subcategories should be distinguished, how they semantically relate and diverge, what motivates their unification in the overall concept of modality, and what features and properties they, and the category of modality as a whole, have.

Chapter 4

Interactions bet we e n modalit y and ot h e r semantic cat e g ori e s Mario Squartini

4.1 Introduction Modality is a very broad category (“a supercategory”, according to Nuyts 2005, 2006: 2). It is also an “exceptionally complex” one (Abraham and Leiss 2012: 1), in the sense that it encompasses a semantically diverse set of functions, which have been categorized in terms of different dimensions (cf. Chapter 3), including the logically grounded opposition between possibility and necessity (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998), the semantic concept of non-​factuality (Kiefer 1987, 1997; Narrog 2005a; Declerck 2011) as well as the more general and pragmatically based notion of the “speaker’s attitudes” (Palmer 1986; Nuyts 2005). As a result of this heterogeneity, there is a wide range of views on the relations and interactions between modality and other linguistic categories, such as time/​tense and aspect, evidentiality, and negation. This chapter will discuss these interactions from a semantic perspective, and the aim is to show how alternative views on them correlate with differences in the definition of modality. The relations between modality and some of these other categories have not only been envisaged as functional interactions of independent notions, but have also been interpreted more radically as semantic overlaps in which intercategory boundaries fade. Recently, especially the boundaries between modality and evidentiality have been at stake, and this has indirectly contributed to the upsurge of interest in evidentiality outside the “exotic” areas to which it was originally confined (Boas 1911: 43). A few decades ago, however, a comparable discussion focused on the boundaries between modality and the linguistic expression of time—​witness Lyons’ (1977: 820) statement that “tense is a kind of modality”. The hypothesis of a cognitive relation between temporal reference and modality has been revitalized in recent approaches (see especially the works

modality and other semantic categories    51 collected in Patard and Brisard eds. 2011, but also Gosselin 2005) in which the speaker’s epistemic commitment participates in “grounding” (Langacker 1991) a proposition to the situation of speech. In sections 4.2.1 and 4.3, I will scrutinize this special relationship between modality on the one hand, and (respectively) time/​tense and evidentiality on the other hand, analyzing the conceptual motivations for assuming a semantic overlap between them, and presenting some cross-​linguistically recurrent empirical correlations on which the theoretical discussions have been based. Although modality and aspect are more clearly distinct, they also show recurrent (and often underestimated—​see Abraham and Leiss 2008; Boogaart and Trnavac 2011) interactions, which will be addressed in section 4.2.2. Moreover, tense and aspect are so closely intertwined that some grammatical markers can only be defined as simultaneously temporal and aspectual (“tense-​aspect grams” in Dahl ed. 2000), making it difficult to disentangle tense from aspect in their relations to modality. Such complexities have become more apparent since the neat semantic distinction between tense and aspect systematically emphasized in typological studies (Comrie 1976, 1985) has increasingly been questioned in general semantic accounts (Klein 1994) in which aspectual distinctions are interpreted and formalized by means of temporal relations. All these conceptual and formal connections between categories are terminologically highlighted by collating the initials T(ense) and A(spect) with the initial M in the acronym TAM (or TMA), where M originally stood for Mood (see e.g. Dahl 1985: 1) but is nowadays also interpreted as Modality (see e.g. Brisard and Patard 2011: 1; see Chapter 2 on the historical origins of these terms). With the inclusion of (E)videntiality the latest version of this acronym (TAME) effectively depicts most of the current discussion, in which an intercategory cluster is acknowledged but at the same time functional autonomy is given to each initial. As will already be clear from the above, the controversies over the boundaries of modality predominantly concern grammatical phenomena rather than lexical items. While nobody seems to question the temporal nature of the adverbs tomorrow or soon, inflectional futures and modals pose more problems in disentangling tense and modality. Similarly, the boundary between evidentiality and epistemic modality does not appear controversial if one contrasts evidential adverbs such as allegedly and reportedly (Chafe 1986; Ramat 1996) with epistemic adverbs referring to different degrees of certainty such as perhaps, possibly, or probably. But the distinction becomes more debatable when grammatical markers are taken into account. This explains why, in describing the interplay of modality with other categories in this chapter, greater attention will be paid to grammatical phenomena. However, the diachronic dynamicization triggered by grammaticalization studies has highlighted the role of lexical items as antecedents of grammatical phenomena (cf. Chapter 16). This perspective has emphasized the connections between modality and its temporal antecedents (Bybee et  al. 1994) as well as the interactions between epistemic modality and evidentiality in semi-​grammatical forms (see especially Cornillie 2007; Diewald and Smirnova 2010). Moreover, recent synchronic studies on evidentiality have developed an integrated account (see Boye and Harder 2009 and the articles collected in Squartini ed. 2007, Diewald and Smirnova eds. 2010, and Abraham

52   Mario Squartini and Leiss 2012) in which a rigid bifurcation between grammar and lexicon has been questioned (Pietrandrea 2007), both from a cognitive point of view (Ekberg and Paradis eds. 2009) and from a discourse perspective (Cornillie and Pietrandrea eds. 2012). Polarity is another domain which potentially interacts with modality, especially if one considers that in some accounts the very definition of modality is based on a negative term (non-​factuality). As will be shown in section 4.4, the foundational notions of possibility and necessity are also connected to negation because of their logical “interdefinability” by means of negative operators in the various reappraisals of the Aristotelian Square of Oppositions (Horn 1989; van der Auwera 1996, 2001a).

4.2  Modality as a TAM category As already mentioned in Chapter 3, the term “modality” has occasionally been used in a rather broad sense as a cover label to include time/​tense and aspect. Even though this “broad definition” is rather unusual in recent linguistic studies and is therefore not the one adopted in this volume, it underscores the functional relationship between modality and tense and aspect. Ultimately, they share the same basic semantic status, for the three categories participate in the speaker’s qualification of a given state of affairs (Nuyts 2005). Their relationship, however, is also demonstrated by the fact that they share expressive devices (especially grammatical means such as inflectional markers, auxiliaries, particles), which in some cases neutralize the semantic distinctions between the three categories.

4.2.1 Modality and tense As the linguistic coding of the cognitive notion of time (Comrie 1985), tense locates states of affairs on the time axis, in the past, present, or future. Apart from an “absolute” (i.e. purely deictic) reference to the speaker’s utterance time, a temporal location can also be “relative” to a vantage point not coinciding with the speech time. While, for instance, futures indicate deictic posteriority with respect to the speech time (John will leave tomorrow), with a future in the past posteriority is calculated with respect to a past vantage point (John said that he would leave on the following day). Defined as an objective location on the time axis, tense appears independent from modality, but how appropriate this conclusion is ultimately depends on the perspective adopted in defining modality. If modality is considered as the expression of personal attitudes (cf. Chapter 3), objective temporal locations cannot be confused with modality. But, if modal attitudes contribute to the construal of “grounding predications” (in Langacker’s 1991 terms), modal markers and tenses belong to the same cognitive dimension and may directly interact (Patard and Brisard eds 2011). Moreover, if modality is connected to the distinction between possibility and necessity (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998) or is

modality and other semantic categories    53 primarily based on the notion of non-​factuality (Narrog 2005a), the encroachment on the domain of tense becomes inevitable. This is especially apparent with future temporal reference. What is deictically located in the future has not yet occurred and can therefore only pertain to the realm of possibility. Similarly, the notion of non-​factuality provides a link to futurity. If non-​factuality is intended as indeterminacy with respect to the factual status of a state of affairs (Kiefer 1987: 90, 1997: 243; Narrog 2005a), the future appears to be non-​factual by definition, thus suggesting a special modal status of futurity as opposed to present and past situations, whose factuality can be confirmed by the speaker. Nonetheless, the factual status of past situations has been empirically questioned due to cross-​linguistically robust correlations between past tense and non-​factual or “hypothetical” modality (James 1982). This has fuelled the debate on the relationship between tense and modality, eventually providing evidence for an integrated reappraisal of the two categories. The empirical arguments supporting a special relationship between tense and modality will be summarized in the following subsections, with separate treatment of the relationship with future (section 4.2.1.1) and past time (section 4.2.1.2).

4.2.1.1 Modality and futurity In a sense, the discussion surrounding the non-​factual nature of futurity has often been considered too “philosophical” to be taken into account by linguists. What counts more from a linguistic perspective is that “we do talk about the future, and there may be different grounds for doing so” (Dahl 2000: 310). Among these “different grounds” Dahl attributes a main role to the expression of two conceptual dimensions, prediction and intention, whose associations to future markers have also been confirmed by some diachronic tendencies extensively studied by Bybee et al. (1994). Since they are connected to the expression of epistemic possibility and involve scalarity in the sense of degrees of certainty, future predictions can be considered as inherently epistemic. This is particularly apparent if one considers Nuyts’ (2001a, 2006; cf. Chapter 3) definition of epistemic modality as “an estimation of the likelihood that the state of affairs expressed in the clause applies in the world”. When referring to the future, this kind of “estimation” can be considered a “prediction”. From an empirical point of view, the correlation between futurity and epistemic modality is confirmed by future forms that also function as epistemic markers with non-​futural temporal reference. This is the case of the English future will, which in (1) expresses a modal conjecture with present temporal reference. (1) Someone is knocking at the door. That will be John. (Nuyts 2006: 6) This type of coexistence of future reference and modality in one and the same form is attested in other languages of Europe such as German (Mortelmans et al. 2009: 31) and Romance languages (Fleischman 1982), but it is additionally supported by rich cross-​linguistic studies into similar phenomena in other linguistic areas of the world (Bybee et al. 1994). Considering that in some of these languages the present tense is an unmarked form which also has future temporal reference, it can be concluded that in

54   Mario Squartini these cases temporal distinctions are neutralized and the future can be interpreted as a predictive or conjectural (i.e. modal) marker. As to intention-​based futures, their connections to modality are less straightforward, especially because the interpretation of intention (and volition) as modal is rather controversial (cf. Chapter 3). However, Bybee et al. (1994) conclude that intentions can be considered as intermediate diachronic stages in grammaticalization paths towards futurity, which can have their starting point not only in a volitional predicate (e.g. English will) but also in a proper deontic modal expressing predestination and obligation (e.g. English shall, originally “owe”, cf. Traugott 1989). Nonetheless, assuming that both prediction-​and intention-​based futures are somehow connected to modality does not necessarily imply that futurity is intrinsically modal. Consider the behavior of languages such as Southern Agaw, a Cushitic language which has two future markers, expressing different degrees of epistemic commitment, one of them described as a marker of certainty (Bybee et al. 1994: 248; de Haan 2006: 50). An objection to this could be that the speaker’s subjective certainty might still be considered as a modal meaning expressing epistemic necessity (or, in a scalar view of epistemicity, as the highest degree of subjective commitment to the factuality of a future state of affairs). However, future temporal reference can also refer to a much more objective or “intersubjective” (Nuyts 2001b; cf. Chapter 3) certainty, as in the case of “scheduling” contexts ([according to the time table] the train leaves tomorrow at noon, cf. Dahl 2000). Significantly, none the languages of Europe taken into account in Dahl’s sample requires a future-​tense marker in scheduling contexts: they all prefer the present, as does English. Wider-​ranging typological studies also demonstrate that this kind of “expected future” (Bybee et al. 1994) is very rarely expressed by future tenses. According to these tendencies, languages seem to be sensitive to the distinction between more subjectively based attitudes (epistemically scaled predictions and subjective intentions), in which futures may be used, as opposed to more objectively planned situations, where present tenses are preferred. As with other interactions, the question whether one assigns modal status to these different functions of futurity ultimately depends on one’s definition of modality. As mentioned above, a definition based on subjective attitudes tends to exclude objective planning. However, apart from the general question concerning the ultimate interpretation of the future as modal or temporal, robust cross-​linguistic evidence uncontroversially shows that futurity and modality intertwine.

4.2.1.2 Past tense: temporal distance and “modal” inactuality Additional evidence showing a relation between tense and modality is provided by languages in which the form indicating relative posteriority with respect to a vantage point located in the past (future in the past) also occurs as a modal form. This is what happens in English, where the future in the past (2) and the conditional (3) are expressed by the same form, which, etymologically, is a past tense: (2) John said that he would arrive at 7 o’clock. (3) If I did it, I would be mad.

modality and other semantic categories    55 Like the modal future discussed above, the use of a future of the past as a conditional also occurs in other languages of Europe: according to Thieroff (2010: 13), European languages can be divided into two major subtypes depending on the coexistence vs separation of modal and temporal values in the conditional. This fact reinforces the connection between modality and future temporal reference discussed in the previous section, showing that it also extends to a relative tense such as the future in the past. The conditional in (3) also shows that there is a connection between past tenses and the modal meaning of non-​factuality: it refers to a present situation which is modally characterized as non-​factual. As mentioned above, the English conditional is etymologically a past form, which, like the other modals could, should, and might (Bybee 1995), has gradually reduced its temporal meaning and developed a function as a non-​factuality marker. Apart from the modals, which have virtually lost their temporal meanings (Bybee 1995: 504; Traugott 2006: 126), the functional overlap of past reference and non-​factual meaning (“modal-​past”, cf. Palmer 2001: 13–​14, 203–​221) synchronically also applies to English simple pasts, as did in the conditional clause in (3) demonstrates. On the basis of this kind of data, it has been suggested that the relationship between modality and tense should be rearranged by postulating a more general grammatical category, variously dubbed “dissociative” (Steele 1975c), “inactuality” (Coseriu 1976:  169), “distance” (Fleischman 1989; Thieroff 1994:  4–​5), or “virtuality” (Brisard 2010), which encompasses modal non-​factuality (typically represented by conditional clauses) and temporal remoteness (past). Analyzing the relationship between inactuality and modality, Bybee (1995) has offered empirical arguments for the assumption that it is not the temporal meaning in itself that triggers the non-​factual function. The past meaning must be complemented by other elements, such as the modal verb or the conditional marker if in (3). This shows that temporality and modality interact to produce the modal meaning of non-​factuality, and therefore the latter cannot be exclusively attributed to the past tense. Thus, according to Bybee (1995), tense and modality are independent categories which can cluster together in preferential combinations, such as the association of past tense and non-​ factual modality. The notion of distance or inactuality and its debated interpretation as an overlap area between tense and modality now permits us to move out of the exclusive domain of tense to include aspect in the multifarious picture of the interactions of TAM categories. Since Coseriu (1976) and Fleischman (1989, 1995), the Romance imperfect has assumed a prominent role among the verb forms expressing inactuality or distance. Its “inactual” meaning derives from a cluster of elements, including not only past tense and modal non-​factuality, but also imperfective aspect (see next section).

4.2.2 Modality and aspect Unlike tense, which locates states of affairs on the time axis, aspect describes what they look like. There is a basic distinction between ongoing, uncompleted situations (imperfective

56   Mario Squartini aspect) and completed situations (perfective aspect). Aspect has been conceived as an external “viewpoint” (Smith 1991), which interacts with quantificational specifications (habituality, genericity) and inherent actional properties of predicates (stativity, durativity, telicity). Having nothing to do with modal dimensions such as possibility vs necessity, the speaker’s attitudes and non-​ factuality, aspect cannot be confused with modality, nor can its textual dimension in narratives (foregrounding perfectives as opposed to backgrounding imperfectives) be equated to the more general pragmatic functions of modality in interactive discourse (Bybee and Fleischman 1995: 8). This explains why the relationship between aspect and modality has traditionally been considered marginal (Palmer 1986: 209). Aspect is used rather as an area where one diverts those modal functions otherwise incompatible with current semantic definitions of modality, as is the case with Nuyts’ (2005) aspectual interpretation of dynamic modality via genericity (cf. also Ziegeler 2003a, 2006a, 2008a on the diachronic relevance of this connection). Nonetheless, viewpoint aspect involves a “speaker-​based choice” (Smith 1991: 6–​8), which, ultimately, can be formalized as a “temporal” relationship (Klein 1994) between the whole amount of time covered by the situation and the portion of time the speaker is actually talking about (“Topic Time” in Klein’s terminology). Through different aspectual choices the speaker can therefore represent the same situation in different ways by focusing on its different phases, some of which may be more directly compatible with a modal interpretation. In this respect, Abraham and Leiss (2008: 13) and Leiss (2008: 17) emphasize the contrast between (4) and (5). In (4) the progressive imperfective marker, which focuses on internal phases of the situation, triggers an epistemic reading of the modal must, while the unmarked infinitive in (5), where the situation is viewed as bounded, contributes to a deontic interpretation of the same modal. (4) He must be leaving now. (5) He must leave now. However, deontic modality and progressive marking are not always incompatible (you must be sitting there when I get back; cf. Frajzyngier et al. 2008: 94), and the correlation between perfectivity and deontic modality that Abraham and Leiss (2008: 13) hypothesize on the basis of (5) might rather be attributed to an interaction of modality with tense (Narrog 2008: 285–​291). Deontics (typically those performatively used as directives) refer to a state of affairs that does not exist at the present time and are therefore considered future-​oriented (Bybee et al. 1994: 185; Ziegeler 2006a). Since futurity correlates with perfective aspect (cf. the future interpretation of Slavic perfectives, Narrog 2008: 290), an indirect relationship between perfectivity and deontic modality via futurity might be posited (Narrog 2008: 285–​291). As is apparent from this discussion, tense tends to be ubiquitous in the interactions with modality, making it more complex to disentangle the role of aspect. As already mentioned, another example of the combined effect of tense and aspect is represented by the behavior of the Romance imperfect. It not only features a double temporal value

modality and other semantic categories    57 (it is a past as well as a future in the past) and imperfective aspect, but it also occurs as a modal form expressing counterfactuality (cf. the Italian imperfect in conditional protases and apodoses: se eravamo a casa, adesso prendevamo il tè ‘if we were at home, we would be having tea now’) as well as other types of inactuality (e.g. in pre-​ludic rule negotiations in children’s make-​believe games, Fleischman 1995:  525–​526; or in narrative fictionality, Bazzanella 1990, Fleischman 1995). Interestingly, the English auxiliary would shows a comparable cluster of tense, modality, and aspect (Fleischman 1995). Apart from expressing temporality (future in the past) and non-​factual modality (cf. (2)–​(3) above), would has also developed an aspectual function as a marker of unbounded habituality (he would play golf every day when he lived in Chicago, Aronson 1977: 15; cf. also Lazard 1975). These TAM clusters generally confirm Bybee’s (1995) proposal that non-​factual meaning is not triggered by the past tense alone, but requires another element, in this case the imperfective aspect. What remains to be explained is why non-​factuality converges with imperfective aspect. According to Fleischman (1995) this correlation is related to the textual function of imperfective aspect as a backgrounding strategy, which might reduce assertiveness and factuality. In emphasizing the role of textual strategies, Fleischman (1995) indirectly confirms the difficulties of pinning down a semantic property which can explain the cross-​ linguistically stable interactions between aspect and modality. An explanation may be brought closer by elaborating on the interpretation of aspect as a semantic strategy focalizing on different phases of the situation. Consider the diachronic evolution from resultative perfects to inferentials, documented in Georgian and some Balkan languages (Comrie 1976: 108–​110; Lindstedt 2000a: 374–​378; Friedman 2000; Tatevosov 2001): the resultative meaning of the perfect involves an indication of the consequence of an implicit earlier event, and the latter provides the semantic link to inferentiality, which indicates that knowledge of an event is not direct but is derived from indirect evidence. Similarly, a perfect is characterized by focusing on the consequences of an event rather than on the event itself. This discussion leads us to another interpretative problem, however. As will be apparent in section 4.3, the interpretation of inferences as belonging to epistemic modality is debatable and the emergence of inferentials from resultative perfects would more appropriately be considered an interaction between aspect and evidentiality. This is confirmed by the existence for the same perfect markers of a “reportative” meaning (see also Wiemer 2010) indicating that the information was acquired through secondhand hearsay, which, as will be shown in section 4.3, is also a typical evidential function.

4.3  Modality and evidentiality As discussed in section 4.2.1, some cross-​linguistically recurrent correlations between tense and modality can be attributed to the fact that the reliability of a state of affairs is

58   Mario Squartini skewed by its temporal location, future situations being intrinsically less reliable than present and past situations. Apart from temporal location, however, epistemic certainty is also influenced by the process through which the information contained in the utterance has been acquired. If the speaker has personally witnessed a state of affairs, as in (6), the reliability of the information is inherently higher than when the speaker only expresses indirect knowledge, as in (7): (6) I saw John playing soccer. (7) Apparently, John has played soccer. The lexical contrast between the verb of direct perception see and the adverb expressing indirect knowledge apparently (Chafe 1986; Ramat 1996) belongs to the linguistic category that, since Jakobson (1957), has been dubbed “evidentiality”. This category refers to the “evidence” the speaker has for what (s)he says, or, in the traditional definition, it involves an indication of the source of the information (Boas 1938: 133; Aikhenvald 2004). More generally, however, evidentiality covers the “epistemological” process (Chafe and Nichols eds. 1986; Hengeveld 1989) through which a given piece of information has been acquired. On this basis, various “types of evidence” (Willett 1988) or “modes of knowing” (Chafe 1986: 263; Botne 1997: 524) are distinguished, also including mental reasoning (e.g. inductive inferences and deductive assumptions). Given the differences in reliability related to the distinction between direct and indirect sources, it is not surprising that the boundary between evidentiality and modality has been debated. There is a contrast between a “narrow” (cf. Willett 1988: 54; Dendale and Tasmowski 2001: 342) definition of evidentiality, restricted to the source of evidence (de Haan 1999; Aikhenvald 2004), and a broad interpretation which includes the degree of certainty (Chafe and Nichols eds. 1986; Mithun 1986:  90; Papafragou 2000a:  121; Rooryck 2001: 125; Ifantidou 2001: 5–​8; Mushin 2001). Undoubtedly, the “strength of evidence” (Willett 1988) and the scalar “degree of certainty” (Givón 1982) are closely connected and can be accommodated as parallel dimensions within the same general semantic map (Anderson 1986; Boye 2010c). Because of these close ties, evidentiality will be discussed in more detail than tense and aspect. We will focus on both its grammatical and its lexical forms (section 4.3.1), and this will provide an adequate background for discussing the boundaries between modality and evidentiality (sections 4.3.2–​4.3.3).

4.3.1 Lexical and grammatical evidentiality In the English examples in (6)–​(7) above, the evidential meaning is expressed lexically, while in many of the world’s languages evidentiality can also be coded by means of a set of obligatory grammatical markers distinguishing various evidential sources. Since the first descriptions of evidential systems in Native American languages (Boas 1911,

modality and other semantic categories    59 1938), what has mostly attracted attention, as an “exotic” feature totally unknown in the languages of Europe, is that even sources based on direct perception can be expressed grammatically. Thus, the distinction between visual and auditory perceptions, which is expressed lexically in English (see vs hear, cf. Chafe 1986; Whitt 2009), must instead be marked by grammatical verb affixes in Tariana, an Arawak language spoken in Brazilian Amazon (Aikhenvald 2004: 1–​3). Tariana contrasts an affix expressing visual perception, which is used in the context represented by the English example in (6), and a different affix described as “non-​visual sensory” (Aikhenvald 2004: 2, 168–​173), which covers any sensory experience other than visual (typically hearing or smelling, but also tasting and feeling, the latter including physical and emotional states as well, cf. Aikhenvald 2004: 168–​169). In addition to visual and sensory non-​visual evidence, different affixes are used to express indirect modes of knowing, including inferences, assumptions, and hearsay. In Tariana (Aikhenvald 2003c, 2004: 2–​3, 174–​176) the inferential marker is used whenever the speaker has sufficient external sensory (especially visible) evidence to infer a given state of affairs (e.g. from missing football boots one can infer that a football match took place recently). This type of inference based on external sensory evidence (“circumstantial inferences” in Anderson 1986) can be contrasted with what Aikhenvald, following Barnes (1984: 257–​258), calls assumptions (“generic inferences” in Anderson’s 1986 terminology), in which the source of the information is the speaker’s own reasoning supported by common sense or general knowledge of the world. Tariana also has a special marker for this function, which is used whenever there is insufficient external evidence to derive a circumstantial inference but sufficient knowledge to make an assumption. For instance, given the general knowledge that someone regularly plays football on Sundays, one can assume that this also occurred on a particular Sunday (Aikhenvald 2004: 2–​3, 175). Extensive cross-​linguistic research on evidentiality (major references are Chafe and Nichols eds. 1986; Palmer 1986, 2001; Willett 1988; Guentchéva ed. 1996; Johanson and Utas eds. 2000; Plungian 2001, 2010: 19–23; Aikhenvald 2004; de Haan 2005a, 2005b; Guentchéva and Landaburu eds. 2007) has shown that the set of evidential affixes used in Tariana, as well as their counterparts in Tuyuca (Barnes 1984), can be considered among the most complex evidential grammatical systems so far known. In this respect, Tariana and Tuyuca are indisputable representatives of “pure” (Palmer 1986) evidential systems, giving them the status of a special linguistic type as is also apparent in the terminology used by van der Auwera and Ammann (2005c: 307), who describe similar cases as “evidential-​ prominent languages”. The encoding of evidentiality in other languages of the world varies in the number of functions that are formally distinguished and, to some extent, in the semantic definition of each of the major functions. For instance, in reporting what someone else said, a subtler distinction can be made between a generic hearsay marker reporting information without specifying the source and a quotative marker explicitly stating the source (Palmer 2001: 40–42; Aikhenvald 2004: 50–​51, 57–​58, 177–​178, 185–​186). Another variable feature can be found in the relationship between evidentiality and “mirative” markers, with which the speaker indicates that the information contained in the utterance is new or presumed to be unexpected to the addressee. Since some

60   Mario Squartini languages combine evidential and mirative meanings in the same markers, the independence of evidentiality and mirativity has been discussed frequently (DeLancey 1997, 2001; Lazard 1999; Aikhenvald 2004), thereby also underlining mirativity’s connections to modality (Plungian 2001: 355). Despite these different subdivisions and extensions, evidential sources can mainly be reduced to a binary distinction between direct (firsthand) and indirect (non-​firsthand) knowledge (Willett 1988; Aikhenvald 2004; de Haan 2005a; Boye 2010c), also represented in the contrast between the English examples in (6)–​(7) above. The primary role of this opposition is confirmed by the empirical observation that in several languages only indirect knowledge is grammatically marked (Johanson and Utas eds. 2000), but a similar behavior also characterizes lexical expressions of evidentiality, which often neutralize the distinction between inferences and hearsay in one “indirective” marker (cf. the Italian adverbial construction a quanto pare “apparently” as well as other examples from the languages of Europe mentioned by Wiemer 2010). These findings have resulted in proposals for special terms only covering indirect evidential sources (typically inferences and hearsay, but also including mirativity): “indirective” (Johanson 2000), “non-​ confirmative” (Friedman 2000), and the French term médiatif  ‘mediated, i.e., not based on direct experience’ (Guentchéva ed. 1996; Lazard 2000). Since they mark information intrinsically less reliable than direct knowledge, indirect evidentials have attracted particular attention in the debate on the relationship between evidentiality and modality. Thus, scholars who stress the independency of modality and evidentiality (a position most explicitly represented by de Haan 1999 and Aikhenvald 2003b, 2004) typically elaborate arguments against assuming an overlap of evidentiality and epistemic modality in indirect evidentials. Aikhenvald (2004) observes that, despite the fact that they involve reduced reliability, only in some of the world’s languages markers of indirect evidentiality develop what she calls “epistemic overtones” indicating different degrees of certainty. According to Aikhenvald, this demonstrates that epistemic modality does not necessarily converge with indirect evidentiality. Neither are epistemic overtones exclusively attached to indirect evidentials. As Aikhenvald points out, direct evidentials may also develop epistemic overtones of certainty, as is the case in Tariana, where, through a visual evidential, “the speaker takes full responsibility for the statement” (Aikhenvald 2004: 170). According to Aikhenvald, the independence of evidentiality and modality is also confirmed by the fact that grammatical markers of evidentiality may co-​occur with modal markers expressing the “conditional, dubitative, probabilitative”, which, as she concludes, “is a strong argument against grouping evidentiality under the umbrella term of modality, or referring to it as epistemic” (Aikhenvald 2004: 257). This last quote from Aikhenvald (2004: 257) also demonstrates that there are in fact two separate though intertwined issues concerning the relationship between evidentiality and modality. On the one hand, there is the very general problem of “grouping evidentiality within the umbrella term of modality”; on the other hand, there is the more specific issue of disentangling evidentiality and epistemic modality. The coexistence of these two different problems is confirmed by Palmer’s (1986, 2001) analysis.

modality and other semantic categories    61 Assuming that evidentiality fits under the general umbrella of the same modal domain (he calls it “epistemic modality” in 1986, but he switches to the more general term “propositional modality” in 2001) has not prevented him from treating “evidentials” and “epistemic judgements” as two separate subsystems, which show partial semantic overlaps in the functional area of epistemic reasoning (Palmer 2001: 8–​9, 29–​30, 2003: 8). Unlike Palmer, van der Auwera and Plungian (1998) consider evidentiality as not belonging to modality, but, like Palmer (2001), they do recognize that inferentiality should be classified as a functional area in which epistemic modality and evidentiality overlap. These two different issues, then, will be analyzed separately: section 4.3.2 is devoted to the question whether evidentiality should ultimately be considered modal, and section 4.3.3 treats the more specific issue of disentangling evidentiality and epistemic modality.

4.3.2 Is evidentiality modal? As several authors have pointed out (Frawley 1992; de Haan 2001b, 2005c; Haßler 2010), evidentiality is a deictic category anchored to the speaker’s perceptual and cognitive self which interacts with external sources. This deictic connection to the speaker’s subjectivity inevitably encroaches on “attitudinal” (cf. Chapter 3) definitions of modality. Thus, it is to be expected that those who consider modality as the expression of the speaker’s attitudes (Bybee 1985a; Palmer 1986, 2001; Nuyts 2001a, 2005) will consistently include evidentiality within modality, either by considering it as a subpart of epistemic modality (Palmer 1986), or by more loosely adjoining the two categories, while still interpreting them both as modal (Palmer 2001; Nuyts 2001a, 2005; Boye 2012). In opposition to these “holistic” views, in which the whole set of evidential functions belongs to modality, a different stance is taken by those who only attribute a modal status to single evidential functions. This “selective” view is explicitly represented by Narrog (2009a: 8), who, as a direct result of his definition of modality, defines indirect evidentials as modal but declares direct evidentials as non-​modal in nature. The notion of non-​factuality is assumed to be modality’s main concept in Narrog (2005a, 2009a), and hence direct evidentials, based on direct perception, are too factual to be considered modal. Indirect evidentials, which are intrinsically less reliable, include a lower degree of commitment to the factuality of the situation and can therefore be considered genuinely modal. Other “selective” views include the option of pinning down the modal meaning of single functions within indirect evidentiality. This is what is proposed by Nuyts (cf. Chapter 3), who distinguishes between modal vs non-​modal indirect evidentials on the basis of the possibility of interpreting them as scalar, where scalarity is a relevant feature of his “neo-​attitudinal” definition of modality (cf. Chapter 3). In this perspective inferential reasoning, which is compatible with different degrees of modal commitment and therefore intrinsically scalar, is straightforwardly modal, while hearsay is not modal because it does not involve scalarity.

62   Mario Squartini The selective treatment of inferentials as opposed to hearsay demonstrates how the general question concerning the modal nature of evidentiality can be linked to the more specific issue of disentangling evidentiality and epistemic modality. Not surprisingly, inferentials are the linking element. As already mentioned in section 4.3.1, they can be considered equally epistemic, in that inferences are intrinsically less reliable than direct perceptions, and evidential since inferential reasoning is typically based on external indirect sources. Their primary role with respect to evidentiality’s debated boundaries will also be confirmed by the discussion in section 4.3.3. Nonetheless, the interplay of evidentiality and modality seems to go beyond epistemic judgments: it also involves the notion of hypothetical non-​factuality (e.g. the creation of possible worlds), which, in principle, should not be confused with epistemic modality (Hengeveld 2004: 1197). This is suggested by the semantic evolution to hearsay markers of forms having a prototypical non-​factual function (e.g. the Romance Conditional, cf. Dendale 1993; Guentchéva 1994). The opposite tendency (from evidentiality to non-​factuality) also occurs, as in the case of the American Spanish hearsay particle dizque (lit. ‘say that’), which has not only acquired epistemic overtones of a “lack of responsibility for the truth of the propositional content” (Olbertz 2007: 156) but can also refer to fictitious worlds (Olbertz 2007: 161–​162; see also Travis 2006; Squartini 2009).

4.3.3 Evidentiality and epistemic modality If one considers carefully the range of meanings that can be found in a prototypical “evidential-​prominent language” such as Tariana (section 4.3.1), the problem of disentangling evidential and epistemic functions is immediately apparent. As can be expected from the fact that they intrinsically mark reduced reliability, indirect evidentials expressing inferences, assumptions, and hearsay are particularly complex. In this respect, Aikhenvald observes that, even though epistemic overtones may be associated with these functions, their core meaning is only based on the evidential source of the information. What is in fact problematic is, however, the very core meaning of some of these functions, especially inferences and assumptions. The crucial issue is that the same meanings are traditionally classified as epistemic in the descriptive traditions of many European languages. Note that Tariana inferentials could be rendered by the English “epistemic” modal must, while the Tariana assumptive marker corresponds to the Italian “epistemic” future. As a consequence of these interpretative problems, the same function might be interpreted differently depending on the grammatical system being described. This is particularly apparent in Palmer’s (1986, 2001) analysis of inferentials. When languages such as English and German are under discussion, inferentials are described as “(deductive) epistemic judgements” (Palmer 1986: 57–​60; 2001: 8–​9, 15). If, on the other hand, the relevant language systematically codifies evidential functions (e.g. Tuyuca), Palmer (1986:  69–​70) considers inferences as an evidential function. Even though Palmer (1986, 2001) and Aikhenvald (2004) generally diverge in their interpretations

modality and other semantic categories    63 of the boundaries between evidentiality and modality, they, ironically, agree on this specific point. In commenting on the inferential meaning of the English modal must, Aikhenvald (2004: 150) observes that the mere fact “[t]‌hat a modal verb can express inference does not mean that it is an evidential”. Palmer (1986: 70) is less radical but comes very close when he observes that wondering whether English must is an evidential or an epistemic marker is a “futile exercise”. In his view, what counts more is that English is an epistemic-​prominent language, which automatically makes must an epistemic marker. More drastically, Aikhenvald (2004: 7) and de Haan (2006: 58–​59) clarify that equating Tuyuca inferentials with the English modal must is a fallacy due to English translations of Tuyuca examples. As explicitly stated by Aikhenvald (2004: 7), the fact that English must translates a Tuyuca inferential marker simply implies that evidentials “are translated into European languages with epistemic markers”. As opposed to a rigid confrontation between evidential-​and epistemic-​prominent languages, several studies have adopted a more “liberal approach” (van der Auwera and Ammann 2005c:  307)  either by recognizing epistemic functions in evidential-​ prominent languages (van der Auwera and Ammann 2005c: 307) or by highlighting the role of evidentiality in epistemic-​prominent languages. In this perspective, well-​ described European languages (especially Germanic and Romance languages, but also Baltic and Slavic, cf. Wiemer 2005, 2007; and even Latin, cf. Cuzzolin 2010) have been reappraised in an attempt to draw a boundary between purely epistemic functions and semantic areas in which evidentiality also plays a role. As can be expected, the questions most frequently debated in these studies have affected the analysis of those semantic areas in which a functional overlap between epistemic modality and evidentiality has recurrently been recognized. Inferentials have been particularly scrutinized (Dendale 1994; Mortelmans 2000a; Squartini 2001, 2008; Pietrandrea 2005) by highlighting the controversial role played by evidentiality. Much less controversial has been the evidential reappraisal of forms covering the area of reportative evidentiality including hearsay and quotative (cf. Dendale 1993; Squartini 2001, 2004; and the extensive overview of the languages of Europe in Wiemer 2010). Since secondhand knowledge prominently refers to the notion of source and does not impinge on the domain of epistemic modality proper, the interpretation of reportative meaning as evidential can easily be accommodated within an epistemic-​prominent system. This is explicit in Palmer (1986: 68–​70, 2001: 9), who admits the status of German as a “mixed language” in which epistemic forms coexist with evidential (reportative) markers (the modals sollen, wollen, and the quotative subjunctive). Significantly, also de Haan (2001a, 2005a: 314, 2005b: 319, 2006: 58), who refuses an evidential interpretation of the English inferential modal must, lists among evidentials the Dutch modal moeten, which is a general marker of indirectivity characterized by a cluster of inferential and reportative readings. Much less frequently discussed than inferentials and reportatives, but still problematic (Palmer 2001: 29–​30, 2003: 8; Plungian 2010: 46), is the evidential interpretation of what in Aikhenvald’s description of Tariana is presented as the expression of assumptions or generic inferences, in which the source of the information is the speaker’s own reasoning. As mentioned above, this function might be identical to that expressed by

64   Mario Squartini forms traditionally considered as prototypes of epistemic modality (e.g. the Romance future). Lacking an external source of evidence and being totally based on mental reasoning, assumptions are patently problematic as evidential modes of knowing and this produces additional discrepancies in the interpretation of this function in epistemic-​ prominent languages. While Dendale (2001), Pietrandrea (2005), and Dendale and Van Bogaert (2007) consider assumptions genuinely epistemic, Rocci (2000), Squartini (2001, 2008), and Giacalone Ramat and Topadze (2007) insist on the evidential nature of the assumptions expressed by the Romance future. According to Aikhenvald (2003b, 2004) the approach represented by these studies is flawed by not sufficiently taking into account the distinction between primary and secondary meanings of grammatical forms. In Aikhenvald’s view, this attitude misleadingly attributes a primary role to what in fact should only be considered “evidentiality strategies”, i.e., secondary pragmatic extensions of forms whose primary meaning is purely epistemic. However, even bona fide evidential markers do show “epistemic overtones” deriving from the element of reduced reliability inherent in indirect evidentials, which might blur the distinction between primary and secondary meanings. Eventually, such descriptive difficulties seem to support integrated models of evidentiality and epistemic modality, in which both categories interplay (Plungian 2001, 2010; Cornillie 2009) and intermingle in various degrees (Boye 2012). In this interpretation, one can also admit the existence not only of “mixed languages” (Palmer 1986) or “modalized evidential systems” (where evidentiality coexists with epistemic modality and mirativity; cf. Plungian 2001, 2010: 49), but also of mixed forms, which are both epistemic and evidential (Kronning 2003; Pietrandrea 2005). In principle, this would not be very different from what occurs with tense and aspect, which coexist with their own semantic features in one and the same form (e.g. the French passé simple, which is at same time past and perfective).

4.4  Modality and negation From a semantic point of view, negated situations correspond to non-​actual facts. This recalls the notion of non-​factuality (Kiefer 1987, 1997; Narrog 2005a, 2009a: 8–​9), which, as mentioned in section 4.2.1.2, can be extended to non-​actuality. Nonetheless, even those who base their definitions of modality on non-​factuality exclude negation from modality by observing that “negation does not mark a non-​fact but a negative fact” (Narrog 2009a: 9). Moreover, by merely stating the non-​occurrence of a state of affairs negation does not express a special attitude towards it, which contrasts with the “attitudinal” (cf. Chapter 3) nature of modal notions. To assume that modality and negation are independent notions is not tantamount to excluding that they can interact, which in fact is what one might expect from independent categories with some potential semantic overlap. The interaction is particularly apparent in the definition of counterfactuality, i.e. the fictitious creation of a possible world which does not correspond to the actual world and therefore is “contrary to fact” (I wish I had a car). Leaving aside the problem whether counterfactuality is asserted

modality and other semantic categories    65 or only pragmatically implicated by the linguistic structures which “convey” it (see, among others, Iatridou 2000), what is relevant here is that the semantic definition of counterfactuality can be derived from the interaction between epistemic modality and negative polarity (what is “contrary to fact” is a “non-​fact”). Along these lines, Saurí and Pustejovsky (2007) define the whole notion of “factuality” by relating polarity (negative vs positive) and epistemic modality. In their perspective, strong factual commitment and counterfactuality are the opposite poles of an epistemic continuum which admits different degrees of factuality (probability, possibility). Particularly relevant is also the role of negation in establishing the semantic relationship between the two notions which are traditionally considered as the building blocks of modality: possibility and necessity. By applying the Aristotelian Square of Oppositions (Horn 1989: 6–​21), possibility and necessity turn out to be logically “interdefinable” (van der Auwera 2001: 28) by means of negative operators with different scopes. Negation having narrow scope over the propositional content (“it is possible that not p”, “it is necessary that not p”) is logically equivalent to a formula in which negation takes wider scope (“it is not possible that p”, “it is not necessary that p”) and the modal meaning is inverted from possible to necessary and, vice versa, from necessary to possible (Palmer 2001: 90): (8) possible not = not necessary (e.g. Mary may not be at school.) (9) necessary not = not possible (e.g. Mary can’t be at school.) In the linguist’s perspective, these logical equivalences can be relevant as far as they provide insight on the grammatical and lexical distributions of modal markers across languages. The empirical issue is whether the logical formulas (8)–​(9) are linguistically exploited not only by having a form which covers meanings postulated as equivalent on a logical basis but also by having different linguistic forms for non-​equivalent meanings. In this respect, English epistemic modals may not and can’t provide evidence of a lexical distinction between “possible not” and “not possible”, which is consistent with the different formulas in (8)–​(9). In the deontic domain, lexical suppletion also applies to the complementary distribution of the English deontic modals need /​ must, whose alternation in negative sentences depends on the relative scope of negation with respect to the modals. If negation has wide scope (“not necessary”), the modal need occurs, as in (10), while “predicational negation” (Dik 1997: vol. 2, 177) corresponds to narrow scope (“necessary not”) and requires a different modal , as in (11): (10) John need not go to school. (11) John must not go to school. Similarly, the tendency to a complementary distribution of the German deontic modals müssen and dürfen in negative sentences lexicalizes the distinction between “not necessary” and “necessary not” (‘you need not’ is the preferred interpretation of German du musst nicht, while du darfst nicht only means ‘you cannot’). Nicht dürfen

66   Mario Squartini literally means “not possible”, which confirms the explicative power of the logical equivalence between “not possible” and “necessary not” (9), but its diachronic evolution from an original “not necessary” meaning (van der Auwera 2001a: 33, 39) also indicates that the logical semantics of the formulas, which in principle would prevent a connection between the non-​equivalent values “not necessary” and “necessary not”, might be influenced by pragmatic drifts based on Gricean implicatures (Horn 1989; van der Auwera 2001a). Being quantitatively more “informative” (Horn 1989:  261–​262), “necessary not” prevails over the “not necessary” reading in the pragmatic dynamics governing deontic utterances. However, the opposite tendency also applies. As noted by van der Auwera (2001a: 39), German nicht müssen is etymologically connected to a “necessary not” interpretation parallel to its English cognate must not, which contrasts to the current preferential reading of German nicht müssen as “not necessary”. These controversial results suggest that two different principles might be at work here: on the one hand, non-​interdefinable meanings tend to be kept separated (e.g. “not necessary” vs “necessary not”), but on the other hand, pragmatic “informativity” makes some readings more resilient than others. German nicht müssen positively responds to the general semantic principle which requires specialization in one of the two meanings, even though the “not necessary” reading expressed by nicht müssen is pragmatically less salient. On the contrary, nicht dürfen positively responds to both principles by specializing in the reading which is also more salient (“necessary not”). As extensively demonstrated by Palmer (1995), de Haan (1997), and van der Auwera (2001a), the linguistic coding of these notional distinctions is characterized by a varied typology, in which the English and German strategy of adopting different modals (Modal Suppletion Strategy in de Haan 1997) is not the norm (van der Auwera 2001a: 36). Especially in expressing the notional meaning “not necessary” /​“necessary not” (cf. (10)–​(11)) there are languages, such as Russian or Italian, in which a difference in scope is iconically rendered by placing negation in different structural positions (Negation Placement Strategy). In Italian, a higher structural position, as in (12), is ambiguous between the two readings, while a lower position, as in (13), unambiguously triggers an interpretation with narrow scope of negation (“there is obligation not to”): (12)  Italian Gianni Gianni

non not

deve must

andare go

a to

scuola. school

‘G. need /​must not go to school.’ (13)  Italian Gianni Gianni

deve must

non not

‘G. must not go to school.’

andare go

a to

scuola. school

modality and other semantic categories    67 The scopal ambiguity of (12), in which the same syntactic order neutralizes the semantic distinction between “not necessary” and “necessary not”, contradicts again the logical formulas in (8)–​(9), which would, in principle, require a distinction between non-​interdefinable meanings. But, as noted above, “the modal field is at the mercy of Gricean dynamics” (van der Auwera 2001a: 32), which explains why the more informative “necessary not” reading “usurps the form more naturally associated” with a “not necessary” reading (Palmer 2001: 98). As is especially apparent from the Italian examples (12)–​(13), these interactions between modality and negation significantly encroach on the syntactic level and should therefore be considered as typical syntax-​semantics interfaces. Similarly “interfacial” is the interaction of negation with the morphosyntactic nature of mood, which seems to encroach directly onto the domain of negation, as indicated by the recurrent interactions between irrealis markers and negation (Chafe 1995: 355). Yet, the irregular and unpredictable distribution of these interactions confirms (Mithun 1995:  383–​384; de Haan 2006: 52) the independent status of negation and mood (cf. Chapter 10).

4.5 Conclusion As this chapter may have shown, the multifaceted definitions and uncertain boundaries of modality have fostered the debate on the connections to neighboring TAME categories, especially to tense and evidentiality. In particular, it has been shown that comprehensive definitions of modality centered on the speaker’s attitudes can be more easily extended to include evidential sources and possibly other dimensions such as the degree of expectedness of the information (mirativity) and various interpersonal stances between the speaker and the addressee (see also the recent discussion on the cognitive basis of the interaction between epistemic modality, evidentiality, and person in Abraham and Leiss 2012). But also more restricted definitions of modality (involving non-​factuality or degrees of possibility) can be connected to “inactual” uses of tenses and naturally encroach on the domain of indirective evidentiality. Apart from semantic interactions, the heterogeneous nature of modality is also responsible for its multilayered influence at different structural levels of the clause, in which modality syntactically interacts with the other TAME categories and negation. Since these interactions crucially depend on theoretical assumptions with respect to hierarchical layering (see also Chapter 3), their formal and functional interpretations will be presented among others in Chapters 20 and 21.

Chapter 5

Analyses of t h e Sem antics of Mo od Irina Nikolaeva

5.1 Introduction The meaning categories associated with grammatical moods and non-​inflectional means which express the same semantic contrasts are sometimes referred to as “notional moods” (e.g. Portner 1999, 2011). The aim of the present chapter is to provide an overview of the meanings of the most important notional moods from a theory-​neutral perspective and in rather informal terms. Notional moods are sometimes understood as the semantic side of the opposition among clause types. These are sentence types (or “sentential/​sentence moods”, “sentential forces”), i.e. form types at sentence level related to speech act categories. Linguists who use the term “mood” in this way are e.g. Wilson and Sperber (1988), Reis (1999, 2003), Lohnstein (2001), and Narrog (2005b), among many others. The most important sentence moods are discussed in section 5.2. In other literature prototypical mood systems are binary and reflect the contrast between realis and irrealis (Palmer 2001: 1–​3) or indicative and subjunctive; these notions are dealt with in section 5.3. Section 5.4 concludes the paper.

5.2 Sentence moods Sentence mood is a conventional device indicating which direct illocutionary act type is being performed. The contribution of mood to sentence meaning is to be distinguished from the illocutionary force with which the sentence is uttered: the force is a speech act, that is, a feature of a token utterance, whereas the mood is a grammatical property of the sentence. Although nearly any illocutionary act may be performed indirectly via a

Analyses of the Semantics of Mood    69 sentence in any mood (see Chapter 8), there is a conventionalized connection between the mood type and the typical force it conveys: declaratives are prototypical assertions, imperatives are especially suited for issuing directives, interrogatives are best for asking questions, and exclamatives and optatives usually perform expressives.

5.2.1 Declarative Palmer (1986: 26–​28) suggested that all languages have a clear way of indicating that the speaker is making a statement which (s)he believes to be true. Such statements are usually expressed by the declarative grammatical structure and the respective mood is called either “declarative” or “indicative” (although the latter term is often reserved for the form of the verb). The declarative mood is often taken to represent a grammaticalized expression of the assertive speech act (Brandt et al. 1992; Dummett 1993a; Platzack and Rosengren 1997). Two criteria appear to be necessary and perhaps sufficient for the successful definition of a speech act: the preparatory condition and the illocutionary intention (Allan 1986, 1994). Roughly speaking, in assertions the speaker’s illocutionary intention is that the addressee recognizes the utterance as the reason for the speaker to believe it. The preparatory condition is that the speaker believes the statement is true, or at least presents herself linguistically as having a belief that it is true (Tsohatzidis 1994: 223). This latter proviso is necessary because “belief ” here relates to a mental representation of the proposition in the minds of the interlocutors at the time of the utterance, rather than an actual belief in its veracity (cf. Farkas 1992: 81; Lambrecht 1994: 44–​45). One consequence of the truth-​related meaning of declaratives is that prototypical declaratives are compatible with epistemic elements, which signal the degree of the speaker’s commitment to the truth, as well as with evidentials, which indicate how speakers have obtained information needed for making an assertion. Such markers normally occur only in declarative clauses (König and Siemund 2007) and in some languages all declarative clauses must bear evidentials: for instance, in Tuyuca there is no formally unmarked declarative, and all evidential categories belong to a single formal system (Barnes 1984). Another important aspect of declaratives is that their meaning is pragmatically structured. Since the work of Stalnaker (1974, 1978), assertions are treated in terms of an idealized model of a conversation, the Common Ground, which represents the set of propositions mutually assumed (presupposed) by the participants in a conversation. By making an assertion, the speaker provides the addressee with new propositional information and instructs the latter to update her belief set. Declaratives then are conventionally used to add the proposition they denote to the Common Ground, although they may also have a presuppositional component. In spite of the close connection between the declarative mood and the illocutionary force of assertion, these are not identical. A declarative main clause does not necessarily result in assertoric force; it can express most of the speech acts distinguished in Searle’s (1969) typology such as commissives (I will never again forget your birthday), directives

70   Irina Nikolaeva (you know what you have to do), expressives (I am sorry), and declarations (you are guilty). Declaratives thus fulfil a large range of non-​assertive functions and there is very little evidence, if any, that languages have formal devices to distinguish assertive and non-​assertive uses of declaratives (Sadock and Zwicky 1985: 158; Palmer 1986: 169). As a result, some authors see the relationship between the declarative mood and the assertive force as problematic (e.g. Davidson 1979/​2001; Recanati 1987). Alternative analyses make no direct reference to force in order to explain the semantic contrast between declaratives and non-​declarative moods. For instance, Huntley (1984) argues that the crucial notion is commitment: declaratives express a commitment as to whether the situation obtained, obtains, or will obtain, whereas non-​declaratives represent it merely envisaged as a possibility. So declaratives are indexically anchored to the real world in terms of the temporal placing of the event: they make a statement about a certain time span and therefore anchor it by identifying a point on the timeline at which the respective proposition turns out to be true. It comes as no surprise, then, that in many languages, such as e.g. Hungarian or Russian, only declaratives demonstrate tense distinctions, but even if tense is expressed in other moods the tense system tends to be reduced, as, for instance, in Latin. The indexical reference which situates the event in a certain temporal interval makes declaratives suitable for various types of performatives and for questioning, although questions are usually analyzed as a subclass of directives (see the next subsection). Other authors explain declaratives not in terms of their actual force but in terms of their potential force. Van der Schaar (2007) refers to the meaning of the declarative mood as “the assertion-​candidate”. This concept is more complex than assertion because it additionally involves a reference to the cognitive notion of knowledge: it is what can potentially be asserted, i.e. what one must know in order to be entitled to produce an assertion. The assertion candidate has no force as such; it turns into an assertion product only when it is uttered with assertive force, but under some conditions the declarative may be uttered with a different force. A conceptually similar analysis within Relevance Theory has been offered by Jary (2011), who suggests that declaratives can either result in assertoric commitments or not, depending on contextual considerations. A proposition added to the context counts as relevant in that context if it plays a direct role in the derivation of contextual effects by bringing about non-​trivial implications. What distinguishes the declarative from the other moods is the potential to express a proposition which is relevant in its own right in a context and thereby makes a direct contribution to the contextual relevance of the utterance. The speaker exploits this feature of declaratives in order to present the proposition in a factual context, that is, a context in which its assumptions are accepted as beliefs. For example, the declarative it’s raining presents the proposition as worthy of adoption as a basic belief that should form part of the addressee’s representation of the world. However, assertoric force only follows if the utterance is open to the demands for justification and can be accepted or rejected by the addressee (judged as true or false). If the utterance itself counts as sufficient grounds for accepting the expressed proposition, the question of truth or falsity does not arise and there is no assertion, as is the case in explicit performatives and promises. This explains the

Analyses of the Semantics of Mood    71 assertoric potential of the declarative mood without predicting that all uses of declaratives are assertoric.

5.2.2 Interrogative The meaning of interrogatives is a very complex area with no shortage of theoretical positions. A detailed discussion is outside the scope of this paper, which only presents the basic concepts found in the existing literature, while more technical overviews can be found in Higginbotham (1996), Groenendijk and Stokhof (1997), and Hagstrom (2003). The denotations of interrogatives are questions. In Searle’s (1969) speech act theory questions are a complex act: they are derived from requests (directives) by adding the requirement that the propositional content must represent a future speech act of the addressee to the speaker. The illocutionary intention is that the speaker intends the utterance to be taken as asking the addressee for information. The preparatory condition is that the speaker believes the addressee can respond appropriately to what she is asked. The cooperative response from the addressee is the production of a verbal answer. Questions are sometimes said to share their relation to reality with assertions. As noticed in Brandt et al. (1992: 51), assertions and questions are the only two speech acts where the direction of fit is word-​to-​world, i.e. words are “adapted” to the relevant part of the world at the moment of the utterance formulation. All other speech acts represent either a world-​to-​word direction or a combination of both, or have no direction at all. But questions are associated, although indirectly, with an asserted proposition because, under normal communicative circumstances, they presuppose a true assertive answer and in this sense specify the form that an answer will take, picking out a set of propositions that bear some relation to the answer. This entails that questions are temporally anchored, just like assertions: they fix the time for which the assertion has to be made because the event is existentially bound and located on some point of the temporal axis (Klein 1994: 216; Platzack and Rosengren 1997: 188). So it is not surprising that in many languages questions are encoded by the declarative format. Yet, some languages, e.g. Greenlandic Eskimo (Sadock 1984; Sadock and Zwicky 1985) and Jaqaru (Hardman 1986: 129–​130), exhibit inflectionally distinct interrogatives which are used exclusively or predominantly for questions, and in other languages, e.g. Hixkaryana (Derbyshire 1979), questions are expressed by the grammatical mood that also indicates uncertainty, doubt, or the like, i.e. by such categories as the ignorative or dubitative. This shows the intrinsic relation between interrogatives and epistemic uncertainty and suggests that the semantics of questions involves much more than positive assertions. Indeed, questions differ from statements in an important way: a statement may be true or false but a question is never either. These basic intuitions about questions have been reflected in various semantic analyses. Hamblin (1958, 1973) was first to suggest that the semantic value of the interrogative is an exhaustive set of mutually exclusive possible answers, that is, a set of propositions.

72   Irina Nikolaeva For example, a simple yes/​no-​interrogative like (1a) divides the possible worlds into two exhaustive and mutually exclusive compartments, as in (1b), where that-​clauses refer to propositions. In any given possible world exactly one of the two propositions is true. (1) a. Did John leave? b. {that John left, that John did not leave} Wh-​questions like (2a) denote a set of propositions, e.g. as in (2b), where who is replaced by the names of individuals: (2) a. Who left? b. {that John left, that Peter left…., that Mary left} This idea was further developed by Karttunen (1977), who argued that there were some advantages to letting interrogatives denote the set of true answers instead. In another widely popular view, interrogatives denote an exhaustive partition of a logical space of possibilities, that is, a partition of the class of mutually exclusive possible answers to the question (Higginbotham and May 1981; Higginbotham 1996; Groenendijk and Stokhof 1997). Answering a question then involves indicating which cell in the partition contains the actual world. Thus, who left? divides the possible worlds into (for example) four cells, defined by the propositions “that John (and only John) left”, “that Peter (and only Peter) left”, “that Mary (and only Mary) left”, and “that no one left”. In this system if one knows who left, one knows for each person whether that person left or not, so one important notion in partition theory is entailment between questions defined in terms of partitions of a set of possible worlds: the question who left? entails the question did John leave?, and John left counts as an answer to both. In both these views, knowing the meaning of a question is equivalent to knowing the conditions under which it is answered (sometimes termed “the answerhood conditions”), just as the content of a proposition is known when the conditions under which it is true are known (truth conditions). A question then picks out a set of propositions and “sets up a choice-​situation between a set of propositions, namely, those propositions that count as answers to it” (Hamblin 1973: 48). However, interrogatives are not reductively analyzed in terms of their logical answers; instead some approaches put more emphasis on how they relate to information and discourse coherence. For instance, Roberts (1996, 2004, and other work) explored similarities between the sets of alternatives involved in questions and their answers, on the one hand, and the sets of alternatives evoked by the information structure notion of focus. Ginzburg and Sag (2001) and later Ginzburg (2010) explicitly argued against the conventional view that the meaning of questions is the set of exhaustive answers, on the grounds that this approach ignores contextual factors which play an important role in the notions of exhaustiveness and aboutness underlying speakers’ intuitions about the coherence of replies. They argue that the full characterization of questions is contextually determined:  the set of answer(s) might

Analyses of the Semantics of Mood    73 vary with the context, so that the possible notions of answerhood are much more complex than previously thought.

5.2.3 Imperative Unless other factors override, the imperative mood is prototypically used to convey directive force, whereas a directive act is defined by speech act theory as an attempt to get the hearer to perform some action. Roughly speaking, this means that the speaker intends the addressee to take the utterance as a reason to perform X, whereas the preparatory condition is that the speaker believes that the addressee can do X. The cooperative response from the addressee would be the doing of X (Allan 1994). So a prototypical imperative places the addressee under an obligation, while what exactly counts as “obligation” is not relevant for understanding the semantic properties of the imperative itself. Various analyses of imperative semantics have been proposed in the literature. According to one line of research, imperatives denote propositions, even though such propositions are unanchored in terms of indexical reference to the actual world and are presented as a mere possibility. Their fundamental meaning may be represented using roughly the same tools as for ordinary declarative sentences but with the addition of a higher-​level modal component (see e.g. Huntley 1984, Davies 1986, and Hamblin 1987 for an early criticism of this view). More recently Schwager (2007) and Kaufmann (2012) suggested that the directive force of an imperative is to be represented by adding a modal proposition should to the Common Ground. Unlike descriptively used modals, the imperative should always lacks phonological content and is associated with a set of presuppositions which ensure that it only has a performative use. This still entails that the meaning of an imperative is the same as the meaning of a should-​sentence when the latter is used performatively. This position is strengthened by the fact that across languages deontic grammatical moods may have performative usages. For instance, the debitive mood in Hixkaryana has two meanings in the second person (see Ninan 2005 for an analysis of this phenomenon): (3)  Hixkaryana (Derbyshire 1979: 142) Fumasa Fumasa

hona to

mɨtehe go.2SG

ha DEB

awanaworo. tomorrow

(i) ‘You must go to Fumasa tomorrow.’  (ii)  ‘Go to Fumasa tomorrow.’ This parallels the behavior of deontic modal verbs in English and other languages, which describe an obligation of the addressee but can also be used perfomatively to establish such an obligation.

74   Irina Nikolaeva However, there has been much discussion on the relation between moods expressing speech causation (e.g. imperatives and various types of hortatives), on the one hand, and the deontic expressions of obligations, on the other. Platzack and Rosengren (1997: 189) make a semantico-​pragmatic distinction between the stating of a norm and the setting of a norm. With respect to the second-​person addressee, this difference is apparent in the following examples: (4) a. You should visit your mother. b. Visit your mother! Example (4a) states the existence of necessity for the denoted event. In Platzack and Rosengren’s (1997) analysis, it is existentially bound and assertive, i.e. the modal operator is within the scope of the existential operator. In contrast, (4b) does not state necessity; it conveys the speaker’s inducement rather than a judgment about a state of affairs. So necessity is directly projected into the actual world and is therefore not existentially bound, which ensures that imperatives do not have a descriptive function. In a similar vein, Han (2000) argues that imperatives and deontic modals are alike in that they both have deontic force, i.e. convey as an essential part of their meaning that an obligation or a permission to bring about the relevant state of affairs is issued by the speaker. However, they differ in the way in which the deontic force is contributed. Imperatives are performative in nature: obligation or permission issued by the speaker is an essential part of their meaning, which cannot be contradicted or cancelled. In deontic modals the existence of an obligation or permission in the real world is part of the assertion; the obligation can come from other sources besides the speaker (e.g. a person not present in the discourse or even abstract objects such as the law), and can be used on non-​second persons (as in he should visit his mother). Han implements this idea by associating the imperative with an operator whose content is split into two features, [irrealis] and [directive]. The irrealis feature is shared with deontic modals, but the directive is understood as an instruction to the addressee to update/​change her Plan Set and is absent in deontic modals. This entails that the modal force contributed by the imperative cannot be negated: it always scopes over negation. In contrast, deontic moods contribute an assertion that there is an obligation, permission, or wish which can be negated. Another difference is that, unlike imperatives, deontic modals are true if there is indeed an obligation or a wish in the current world, and false if there is no such obligation or wish. They can therefore express the degree of commitment to the truth by means of sentential adverbials that qualify the deontic force, cf. perhaps you should visit your mother vs *perhaps visit your mother! When deontic modals are used as directives, they should be analyzed in speech act terms (cf. Nuyts et al. 2010). This discussion entails that the imperative meaning must be represented using more complex semantic tools. Following the insights of Hausser (1980), Han (2000), and Roberts (2004), Portner (2005, 2007) suggested that imperatives are associated with a discourse object representing a set of imperative denotations. Sentences are assigned a force not through a force marker or illocutionary operator, but pragmatically, via

Analyses of the Semantics of Mood    75 the fact that their denotations match one of the relevant sets. Parallel to assertions, which add propositions to the Common Ground, and questions, which add question denotations to the Question Set, imperatives make additions to the addressee’s To-​Do List, which represents the addressee’s intentions and is roughly similar to Han’s Plan Set. Imperatives do not denote propositions, but properties that can only be true of the addressee. They receive the directive force because their semantic type, property, matches the type of object in the To-​Do List. An essentially similar analysis can be found in Starr (2010). As is well known, imperatives express not only commands, but also other types of mands:  requests, demands, recommendations, advice, and permissions (Schmerling 1982; Davies 1986; Han 2000; Portner 2007). They can also convey other meanings, such as threats, good wishes (get well), audienceless requests (please don’t rain), and “predetermined cases” (please don’t have made things worse) (Wilson and Sperber 1988). In some languages these are rendered by non-​imperative grammatical moods; for instance, the admonitive in Classical Nahuatl (Andrews 2003) and Mongsen Ao (Coupe 2007) conveys warnings, and the promissive in Korean expresses promises (Pak et al. 2007). But such moods are not very common, while the range of speech act types realized by imperatives is rather homogeneous across languages. The question is then how imperatives come to convey various illocutionary forces. In Portner’s model, various semantic subtypes of imperatives (requests, permissions, etc.) have to do with the pragmatic or sociolinguistic basis for the speaker’s intention, but all share the directive force. In a radically different semantic approach the imperative mood is considered inherently ambiguous with respect to force. Wilson and Sperber (1988) do not generally analyze mood as a conventional indicator of force, but argue that moods have some intrinsic semantic content. The semantic properties of imperatives are characterizable in terms of a complex propositional attitude which consists of two more elementary attitudes: the belief that a certain state of affairs is potential (achievable) and the belief that it is desirable. This content interacts with contextual assumptions to yield the whole range of imperative meanings. For example, if the hearer is manifestly in a position to bring about the state of affairs, the utterance will have the force of a request, command, order, or plea. These subcategories are distinguished from each other by assumptions about the social and physical relations between the speaker and the addressee, and about the degree of desirability of the state of affairs described. Good wishes fall into the same broad category as requests, but require two additional assumptions: first, the speaker believes that neither she nor the addressee is in a position to bring about the described state of affairs, and second, she regards this state of affairs as beneficial to the addressee. Audienceless and predetermined cases are also types of wish, though here the assumption is that the relevant state of affairs will be beneficial to the speaker, and there need be no addressee present at all. Another point of debate is the nature of the imperative subject, the question which is relevant for the analysis of imperative semantics and the very definition of the imperative mood. In some analyses, e.g. Xrakovskij (ed. 2001), person is irrelevant: the core meaning of the imperative is speech causation irrespective of who is the performer

76   Irina Nikolaeva of the prescribed action. This approach does not maintain the distinction between speech acts and sentence moods and, as a result, between direct and indirect speech acts. Even declarative statements used indirectly for the purpose of causation, such as e.g. you may go out, are analyzed as some kind of imperative (Birjulin and Xrakovskij 2001: 6). Most other researchers agree that true imperatives are second person (Palmer 1986; Bybee et al. 1994; Potsdam 1998). But the grammatical restriction of the imperative subject to second person observed in many languages may be independent of the properties of the directive speech act (Zanuttini et al. 2012). This is supported by languages such as the Indo-​Aryan language Bhojpuri, which has a full agreement paradigm in the imperative. Example (5) illustrates the third person: (5)  Bhojpuri (Zanuttini et al. 2012: 1255) Tebulwa: table.NOM

sa:ph clean.NOM

rahe! be.IMP.3SG

‘The table be clean!’ Crucially, such examples are directive: in (5) it is the addressee who is to make it the case that a proposition “that the table is clean” comes out as true, although the addressee has no grammatical link to the sentence subject (table). Languages like English and German allow second-​and third-​person imperative subjects, but it may well be the case that in non-​second-​person imperatives the appeal is still directed at the addressee, even though it is more complex (e.g. the addressee is imagined to be present). Potsdam (1998: 210–​218) argues that in the English third-​person imperative nobody leave the hall, sergeant! the addressee (sergeant) must stand in a control relationship over the subject participant (nobody) in a certain (social, political, economic, discourse, etc.) domain. Third-​person subjects are infelicitous where the control relationship does not hold, cf. #John, someone wash the dishes! So there is still a connection between the imperative subject and the addressee: either the addressee corresponds to the subject participant or she is expected to control the subject participant. In this, imperatives are to be distinguished from hortatives. The term “hortative” embraces “true” first-​person hortatives, third-​person jussives, and second-​person hortatives, which are usually perceived as more polite or remote future imperatives conveying the illocutionary meaning of inducement or a mild suggestion (van der Auwera, Dobrushina and Goussev 2005). Imperatives and hortatives have a common meaning component, namely, the reference to the future event as induced by the speaker, but hortatives are not prototypically associated with the directive force: they are closer to expressives and are often loaded with additional emotional content. If, in Sadock’s (1994) terminology, imperatives emphasize the effective, social aspect of speech, hortatives rather express an affective aspect primarily used to display the speaker’s feelings. Unlike in prototypical imperatives, in hortatives the person expected to carry out the action is not necessarily a participant of the speech situation, therefore the

Analyses of the Semantics of Mood    77 speaker does not control the situation in the same way as she controls it when the inducement is directed towards the addressee. Since hortatives are not primarily directive, they display fewer agentivity restrictions than imperatives and lack an element of appeal to the addressee, although in some cases they can solicit the addressee’s agreement (e.g. let me think). As a result, languages often grammaticalize the clause type distinction between imperatives and hortatives. Although in some languages a morphologically homogeneous verbal paradigm is used for speech causation in all persons (van der Auwera et al. 2003), in many languages there are good formal reasons to keep imperatives and hortatives apart. For example, in a number of African languages (Dimmendaal 1983; Carlson 1992; Givón 2001: vol. 2, 315–​316) one can find morphologically distinct second-​person imperatives and a full hortative paradigm. In Birjulin and Xrakovskij’s (2001) account these hortative forms are still imperative, but given that a semantic difference is involved, such forms are better thought of as a different mood.

5.2.4 Optative and exclamative Exclamatives and optatives are particularly suited for expressives, because they are not used to perform speech acts with a direction of fit. Boisvert and Ludwig (2006) argue that the meaning of expressives may be captured by using sincerity conditions rather than felicity conditions: an expressive is sincere if the speaker has the psychological state she represents herself as having by producing the utterance. For example, the exclamation wow! is sincere only if the speaker is surprised at the time of the utterance and insincere otherwise. Optatives are usually said to express a wish or hope that situation p exists, where “p” corresponds to its propositional content. The respective speech act can roughly be defined as follows: the speaker believes it appropriate to express a wish that situation p takes place and intends the utterance to be taken as expressing her wish that it takes place (Allan 1994: 2541). However, Boisvert and Ludwig (2006) show that something extra is required because, for example, simply wishing or hoping to be rich would not license saying would that I were rich, which can be successfully uttered only when the speaker is not rich. They suggest that optatives express the speaker’s regret that not-​p. This semantic component of optatives distinguishes them from exclamatives, which may be used to express a variety of attitudes, including regret, and also from imperatives. Another difference between optatives and imperatives is the lack of control over the action characteristic of the optative. According to Dobrushina et al. (2005), “[b]‌oth the imperative and the optative refer to a wish of the speaker. With the optative, the state of affairs wished for is typically outside the sphere of influence of the speaker […. ]. With an imperative, however, the speaker launches an appeal to the hearer to fulfil the wish”. It should be noted that optatives stand very close to hortatives, so that some scholars do not distinguish between these categories (cf. Ammann and van der Auwera 2004:  295; van der Auwera, Dobrushina and Goussev 2005) and they often receive

78   Irina Nikolaeva identical grammatical expression, as e.g. in Modern Greek (Anderson 2001). However, Palmer (2001:  81)  insists on a distinct usage of these terms; and indeed some languages, such as, for instance, Tsakhur (Kibrik ed. 1999), grammaticalize the distinction between hortatives and wishes by morphological means. The semantic distinction between optatives and hortatives has been conceptualized differently by different authors. According to Wilson and Sperber (1988), while both hortatives and optatives involve beliefs about desirability, only the former involve beliefs about potentiality: one can wish for, but not exhort someone to bring about states of affairs that one knows to be unachievable. That is, unlike hortatives, optatives are either realizable or non-​realizable (cf. Palmer 1986: 116–​118). This explains the temporal difference: only optatives can express wishes for something in the past, cf. oh, if only I had been born 200 years ago! and *may you have been born 200 years ago! In other words, hortatives are future-​oriented, just like imperatives, while true optatives can be present, future, or past. An additional requirement is that in optatives the speaker has no reason to believe that in the real world the situation p takes place at the time of speaking, while for hortatives this preparatory condition is irrelevant. Dobrushina (2011) makes an important semantic distinction within the optative domain. She shows that optatives are split into two semantic zones, which she terms “performative” and “desiderative” optatives. Although in the typological literature and grammars these two semantic types are usually referred to by identical names, in some Caucasian languages they seem to be almost unrelated categories—​see the following contrast: (6)  Kumyk (Dobrushina 2011: 103, 104) a. Sen you.SG

süjün-​gür. be.glad-​PERF.OPT

‘May you live merrily!’ b. Sen you.SG

onu 3SG

al-​ɣaj take-​DES.OPT

e-​di-​ŋ. AUX-​PST-​2SG

‘You’d better take him with you.’ The strong optative emphasizes the fulfilment of the wish. Along with the imperative, it is an attempt to make the wish come true. But unlike the imperative, the strong optative launches an appeal not to the addressee but to superficial powers (with a blessing or curse). The semantic closeness of the strong optative and the imperative gives rise to frequent combinations of the strong optative and the jussive in the same form. The weak optative denotes a wish about a hypothetical or counterfactual situation which is favorable or desirable for the speaker or the speaker’s dream, and is not used to bless or curse or in other kinds of ritual formulae. Weak optative constructions serve to express an emotional attitude of the speaker towards a situation which is far from realization, without relying on the assumption of the power of one’s words. Therefore, the categories most closely related to weak

Analyses of the Semantics of Mood    79 optatives are those which evaluate the situation as unreal such as the conditional, subjunctive, or irrealis. Turning now to exclamatives, most existing accounts are based on two assumptions going back to Elliott (1974) and Grimshaw (1979): that exclamatives represent the object exclaimed as having an extreme degree along a certain scale, and that they presuppose their contents in the factivity sense. According to Portner and Zanuttini (2000) and Zanuttini and Portner (2000, 2003), exclamatives denote a set of alternative propositions and presuppose the difference between a previously defined domain and a widened domain which consists of extreme cases on some scale. Michaelis and Lambrecht (1996) and Michaelis (2001), working within the Construction Grammar framework, propose the abstract Exclamative Construction with the following semantic features:  presupposed open proposition (with a degree as the variable), expression of commitment to a particular scalar extent, expression of affective stance toward the scalar extent, person deixis, and the identifiability of the referent of whom the scalar property is predicated. Their further claim is that the form of exclamatives across languages is motivated by the semantico-​pragmatic properties of this construction. For instance, exclamatives often involve question words, cf. how much he spent! and how much did he spend?, because both questions and exclamatives presuppose a proposition in which an element encoded by the question word is represented as a variable, in this case “he spent X amount”. One difficulty for this approach is that it excludes non-​degree exclamatives such as (7). (7) French a. Comment! how ‘What?!’ b. Si if

elle she

est be.3SG

  là! there

‘Is she there!’ The wh-​word is missing here and it is difficult to see what notion of degree is involved because the described events are not gradable. In many languages degree exclamatives have the same grammatical expression as non-​degree exclamatives, which suggests that a notion more general than “scalarity” is wanted. Many exclamatives lack clearly identifiable propositional content altogether, e.g. (7a), so that a semantics similar to that of questions cannot serve as a general feature of the exclamative mood (Boisvert and Ludwig 2006). Merin and Nikolaeva (2008) explicitly argue against the presuppositional account and propose that the right category to employ for characterizing the relevant act-​feature of exclamatives is non-​assertoricity rather than presupposition. This has a morphosyntactic corollary:  exclamatives frequently employ non-​finite forms and deverbal

80   Irina Nikolaeva nominalizations, i.e. cross-​linguistically they tend to be expressed by constructions whose primary function is to make reference to an event rather than to assert that an event is taking place or has done so. Merin and Nikolaeva (2008) propose that exclamatives express substantial deviations from the speaker’s expectation occasioned by an entity or eventuality. In uttering an exclamative, the speaker is reacting to a cause and aiming to cause the addressee to react in sympathy rather than accept an argument. Thus, unlike assertions or mands, they do not perform a juridically social act aimed at transforming a context of joint commitments and are not subject to a requirement of backing by reason-​providing incentives.

5.3  Realis vs irrealis The terms “realis” and “irrealis” may apply to grammatical moods or be used as notional categories. In this latter usage they refer to two opposite values of a functional domain referred to as “reality status” and characterized in terms of actualization vs non-​ actualization of a given state of affairs. Reality status is distinct from modality, although both domains may be realized by the same formal system. Reality status has to do with “the grammaticalized expression of location in either the real or some unreal world” (Elliott 2000: 67). This expression varies from language to language both in terms of the formal means and in terms of obligatoriness. The category of realis is typically associated with factual statements and positive beliefs; a proposition is said to be realis when it asserts that a state of affairs is an “actualized and certain fact of reality” (Elliott 2000: 66). In contrast, irrealis implies that a state of affairs “belongs to the realm of the imagined or hypothetical, and as such it constitutes a potential or possible event but it is not an observable fact of reality” (Elliott 2000: 67). This conceptual distinction is clearly seen, for instance, in the Australian language Nyulnyulan as analyzed by McGregor and Wagner (2006), who proposed that it encapsulates a grammatical contrast between real and unreal situations. The irrealis encodes a single core meaning, namely, the construal by the speaker of a situation as unreal, either in the actual world or some possible world. The additional meaning of potentiality is not a semantic invariant associated with the category itself, but is accounted for by pragmatic inferences arising from the relevant speech act. For Elliott, the common semantic core of irrealis is that “irrealis events or states are perceived as being located in an alternative hypothetical or imagined world, but not the real world” (2000: 81). This seems to be the position shared by a number of other typologically oriented studies which argued for the theoretical relevance of this notion (e.g. Givón 1995: 168; Mithun 1995; Palmer 2001). However, many authors doubt the typological validity of the realis/​irrealis distinction and the notion of “reality status” as an independent grammatical category (Bybee et al. 1994: 238; Bybee 1998; de Haan 2012; Cristofaro 2012; Mauri and Sansò 2012a; among others). The criticism mostly relates to two issues.

Analyses of the Semantics of Mood    81 First, although many languages draw a binary distinction between two types of mood-​related expressions, researchers working on individual languages have argued that the reality status as such does not necessarily lie in its core: the meaning of irrealis appears to be more complex than that which is defined by the simple notion of the unrealized state of affairs. Thus, Verstraete (2005b) shows that composite irrealis in several non-​Pama-​Nyungan languages of Australia covers the uses that include potential actualizations (epistemic, deontic, and desiderative-​intentional meanings) and non-​actualizations (counterfactual and negative constructions, i.e. the realm of the unrealized). These two components of meaning are recurrent across the range of uses of the irrealis mood in many languages. In Verstraete’s analysis they are grouped together within one category because there is a general semantic association between them: expressions of (past) potentiality trigger the implicature that the described event did not take place. This means that the core of the irrealis category is potentiality rather than “reality status” per se, but under certain conditions the basic semantics of potential actualization is extended into the domain of non-​actualization (counterfactuality). Sun (2007) argues that in the Tibeto-​Burman language rGyalrong, irrealis weakens epistemic certainty in comparison to realis, but this produces different semantic effects in different syntactic contexts. For example, both regular interrogatives and the future tense are categorized as realis in this language, but future irrealis questions indicate the speaker’s uncertainty as to which one of a number of alternatives will be realized. While simple imperatives denote an action that is to be carried out in the speaker’s presence, this is not the case when the imperative combines with the irrealis marker. Consider the contrast in (8): (8)  rGyalrong (Sun 2007: 810) a. Mə-​nə-​tə-​vɐr. NEG-​IMP-​2-​be.afraid ‘Don’t be afraid!’ b. ɐ-​mə-​nə-​tə-​vɐr. iRR-​NEG-​IMP-​2-​be.afraid ‘Don’t be afraid (when I am not with you)!’ The contribution of the irrealis in (8b) is not meant to indicate that the imperative action will not take place; it rather expresses the speaker’s expectation that she will not be present when this action is completed and therefore encodes epistemic uncertainty rather than the unrealized state of affairs. Second, it is a well-​known fact that proposition types marked as realis in one language may be marked as irrealis in another (Palmer 1986 and subsequent literature), so it remains unclear if the realis/​irrealis opposition can be defined in terms of one universally applicable notional feature.

82   Irina Nikolaeva Bugenhagen (1993: 35) explicitly points out that no two languages “exhibit a completely identical range of uses for their irrealis forms”. To cite just a few examples, in Manam the “definite irrealis” serves to encode future, possibility, commands, permission, negative purpose, counterfactual conditions, habituality, unfulfilled wishes, and complements of volitional and ability verbs (Lichtenberk 1983: 187–​189). In Nanti the irrealis is used for future, conditional, imperative, counterfactual statements, and negation (Michael 2007). In Maung (Capell and Hinch 1970) it renders potential situations, negation, hypothetical situations, and positive commands. Surprisingly, negative commands are marked as realis. The fact that the content of irrealis is not comparable from language to language has led some linguists to doubt that reality status is a coherent homogenous cross-​ linguistic category. According to Bybee et al. (1994: 236–​240) and Bybee (1998), only those categories that are grouped in the same way by most languages have mental reality, while categories that are not notionally coherent are some kind of epiphenomena. Since languages make no consistent binary distinction between realized and unrealized states of affairs, the reality status cannot be a linguistic category in its own right. The notion of an unrealized state of affairs only plays a role in the diachronic processes that lead to the extension of individual constructions from one context to another, but does not appear to form a natural class that is part of a speaker’s linguistic knowledge at the synchronic level. This is also the basic conclusion of Exter (2012), whereas Cristofaro (2012) suggests that speakers may know the contexts in which irrealis occurs without making further generalizations about the properties that these contexts share, and therefore the notion of the unrealized state of affairs has no mental reality. Other authors, e.g. Foley and Van Valin (1984), Van Valin and LaPolla (1997: 40–​42), Elliott (2000), and Pietrandrea (2012: 186), view reality status as a binary cross-​linguistic category, but the meaning relation that exists between its manifestations across languages can be modelled in many different ways. Mithun (1995), for instance, suggested that the category of irrealis enters scope relations with other notional categories. This explains language-​specific patterns of multifunctionality:  if irrealis scopes over e.g. negation, negated states of affairs are encoded as irrealis, but if the scope relationship is reversed (that is, negation scopes over irrealis), negation is outside the domain where irrealis operates and is treated as realis. De Haan (2012) provides a more detailed discussion of the various implementations of this idea, but the point is that the reality status is treated as a full-​fledged category on a par with e.g. tense or aspect, and its “irrealis” value interacts with other categories on a language-​particular basis to yield different semantic effects. According to Givón (1994: 323–​325) and Bybee (1998), the cross-​linguistic differences in the content of the irrealis are due to the diversity of its diachronic sources, but still identify it as a cross-​linguistically valid “meta-​category”. Givón argues for a prototype approach which assumes core instances, where the languages are largely in agreement, and peripheral areas, where they show a variety of patterns (for a similar understanding see Bugenhagen 1993; Mithun 1995; Elliott 2000; Palmer 2001: 188–​191). According

Analyses of the Semantics of Mood    83 to Plungian (2005: 138), prototypical irrealis meanings are contrafactual, optative, conjunctive, intentional, volitional, probabilitive, and durative. These categories are marked as irrealis in all languages that make a relevant distinction while, for example, the future or negation are peripheral instances of the prototype and can be encoded either as realis or irrealis, depending on the language. The prototype approach provides a useful representation of typological variation but does not model individual grammars, where the realis/​irrealis opposition is usually quite discrete. While formulating the universal definition of this opposition might turn out to be impossible, it could perhaps be conceptualized as a spectrum encompassing language-​particular categories which only show partial resemblance to one another. This idea is especially popular in the analysis of the subjunctive. As discussed in Chapter 9 of this volume, the subjunctive shares its functional core with the irrealis as both tend to encode non-​factuality: if the indicative describes real situations that occur in the actual world and portrays them as actualized and knowable through direct perception, the subjunctive is typically used for unreal, hypothetical events located within the realm of thought (i.e. in some non-​actual world) and knowable only through the imagination (Lyons 1977: 794; Chung and Timberlake 1985: 241; Mithun 1995: 368; Palmer 2001: 1). It is therefore fair to say that within the indicative–​subjunctive opposition the indicative is the form expressing the realis contexts while the subjunctive is the form expressing the irrealis contexts (Farkas 1985; Bošković 1997, among others), and that the irrealis and the subjunctive can be analyzed using the same semantic framework (Portner 2011: 1264). Like the irrealis, the subjunctive does not appear to show any cross-​linguistic consistency in terms of the meanings it can express, but a recurring intuition about the subjunctive in complementation is that it is selected by a class of predicates that share a particular semantic characteristic and is therefore licensed by the properties of the embedding context (the higher verb). This raises the question of providing a uniform characterization of the group of verbs that select the subjunctive. One approach relies on the analogy between the verbs which embed indicatives and the independent realis assertions, on the one hand, and the verbs that select subjunctives and the non-​ embedded irrealis, on the other hand. However, an account based on the unrealized nature of the state of affairs would be untenable for embedded subjunctives: some verbs that denote imagined situations such as dream or imagine tend to combine with indicative complements across languages. The grammatical patterns involving subjunctive marking appear to be based on other notions such as intentionality, the degree of commitment (Farkas 1992), or veridicality (Giannakidou 1995, 1998, 2009, and other work). In Modern Greek, for instance, if a propositional attitude verb expresses a commitment to the truth of the complement, it will be veridical and select the indicative, but if there is no commitment on the part of at least one epistemic agent (the speaker or the subject participant of the main verb), the verb will be non-​ veridical and select the subjunctive. Typical examples of such verbs are volitionals (thelo ‘to want’), directives (dhiatazo ‘to order’), modals (prepi ‘must’), permissives (epitrepo ‘to allow’), negatives (apofevgho ‘to avoid’), and verbs of fear (fovame ‘to be

84   Irina Nikolaeva afraid’). This connects subjunctive-​embedding verbs to irrealis assertions, which are known to express no commitment to the truth in the real world (cf. Portner 2011). Other studies have argued that the semantic contribution of the subjunctive consists in the weakening of the modal force, although the manifestation of these semantics depends on the syntactic environment. For instance, according to Matthewson (2010), the unembedded subjunctive in the Salishan language St’át’imcets is meant to turn assertions into wishes, imperative commands into polite requests, and questions into statements of uncertainty or wondering. A number of scholars proposed that although mood in this sense is a binary category and its representation is arguably part of speakers’ mental grammar, the subjunctive is in fact a semantic default that has no semantics or has a vacuous semantics. This idea was explored by Portner (1997) and Marques (2009), who claim that the subjunctive in Romance languages occurs in contexts that do not lead to the selection of the indicative. Schlenker (2003, 2005) argues with a focus on French that the subjunctive must be used just in case its competitors (imperative or infinitive) cause a semantic failure. In a similar manner Siegel (2009) proposed that factive emotive predicates select the subjunctive in Balkan and Romance languages because the indicative, with its assumption of a speaker’s commitment to the truth, is ruled out by pragmatic constraints on the redundant repetition of the factive presupposition. So the indicative is actually a marked mood, even though it is considered to be the mood of main assertions and non-​modalized (or less modalized) embedded clauses, cf. the analysis of Tundra Yukaghir realis in Matić and Nikolaeva (2014). This approach has raised empirical objections because subjunctives do appear to have a semantic impact. To cite just one example, consider (9): (9)  French (Quer ed. 2009: 1781) a. J’admets I.admit

que that

vous you

avez have.IND.2PL

raison. reason

ayez have.SUBJ.2PL

raison. reason

‘I admit that you are right.’ b. J’admets I.admit

que that

vous you

‘I admit that you are right.’ Example (9b) has a concessive nuance conceding that the proposition under discussion (“that you are right”) can be incorporated into the Common Ground, whereas (9a) simply asserts the content of the concession. The study of such subtle mood alternations may turn out to be especially fruitful when contextual assumptions are taken into account. It may well be the case that, as argued by Quer (1997, 1998, 2001), mood conveys information about the model in which the proposition is evaluated depending on different aspects of discourse and context change, but this suggests that both the realis/​indicative and the irrealis/​subjunctive provide a contribution to meaning.

Analyses of the Semantics of Mood    85

5.4 Conclusion Although notional moods have been analyzed in many different ways, most existing accounts rely on the assumption that they are associated with a set of semantic properties that are necessary and sufficient to describe the identity and function of the category and ultimately make cross-​linguistic comparison possible. That is, the semantic structure of a clause is somehow marked for mood, even if its determination does not necessarily depend on the syntactic presence of one relevant element, as it is often assumed in the “syntactocentric” frameworks (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997: 8). However, the idea that mood may depend on a set of contextual effects which arise from different sources and provide non-​conceptual input to the pragmatic process of utterance interpretation is becoming increasingly popular. It remains to be seen how such proposals can apply to mood distinctions in a wide variety of languages and what bearing they may have on the nature of cross-​linguistic categories, but, whatever theoretical perspective one adopts, a study of interpretive effects brought about by the use of moods is a fundamental step towards an understanding of the interaction between semantics and pragmatics.

Abbreviations AUX auxiliary DEB debitive DES desiderative IMP imperative IND indicative NEG negation NOM nominative OPT optative PERF performative PL plural PST past SG singular SUBJ subjunctive

Pa rt  I I

T H E E X P R E S SION OF M ODA L I T Y A N D  M O OD

Chapter 6

The Expres si on of N on-​e pistem i c Moda l Categori e s Heiko Narrog

6.1 Introduction This chapter provides an overview of the expression of non-​epistemic modalities. “Non-​ epistemic” modality is used here to refer to the traditional “dynamic” and “deontic” modalities, as introduced in Chapter 3, and additionally “boulomaic” modality, which is treated as the poor cousin in the description of modality in prominent European languages, but which is cross-​linguistically important (cf. also Chapter 3). Deontic and dynamic in the traditional sense can be considered as supercategories. Deontic subsumes at least deontic (pertaining to rules and obligations), teleological (pertaining to goals), and bouletic (pertaining to what is desired) modalities. Dynamic subsumes participant-​internal (pertaining to someone’s dispositions), quantificational (pertaining to situations), and circumstantial (pertaining to circumstances) modalities on the other. Boulomaic modality (“want”-​type modality) pertains to intentions (cf. also Fintel 2006; Portner 2009: ch. 4; Narrog 2012b: ch. 2.1.2 for finer distinctions; the present usage of the term is somewhat different from that in Chapter 3). As has been often noted in the literature, the term “deontic” is commonly used ambiguously between its original sense as pertaining to the social rules and obligations, and in a broad sense referring to other loosely related modalities, such as teleological and bouletic ones, as well. In contrast, alethic (logical) and evidential modalities are not included here, since they are more closely associated with epistemic than with deontic or dynamic modality, to the extent that they are considered as modal at all (evidentiality; see Chapter 4). The chapter is organized as follows: section 6.2 introduces the types of expression for non-​epistemic modality, explicit and implicit. Section 6.3 deals with deviations from the

90   Heiko Narrog one-​meaning–​one-​form relationship in the expression of non-​epistemic modality, section 6.4 with biases in the expression of possibility and necessity, section 6.5 with morphosyntactic properties of the expression of non-​epistemic modality, and section 6.6 with the expression of non-​epistemic modality in discourse. In line with the other chapters in this part of the handbook, the orientation is typological. The generalizations presented here are based on a sample of 200 languages (cf. Narrog 2010a, b). However, due to differences in the quality of the descriptions, and therefore limited comparability of data, and due to limitations in the author’s own analysis, systematic statistical data will not be provided here. Examples from English and Japanese are constructed unless indicated otherwise, while examples from other languages are cited from descriptive grammars.

6.2  Morphosyntactic types of non-​epistemic modal expressions Palmer (2001: ch. 1.2.1) introduced a distinction between mood and modal system to characterize the expression of modal notions typologically. “Mood” refers to a highly grammaticalized paradigm of inflections expressing realis and irrealis, while “modal system” refers to a relatively looser set of grammatical and lexical means for the expression of a broad range of modal notions. Both can coexist in a language. Thus, according to Palmer (2001: 4), German has both mood (indicative, subjunctive) and a modal system with modal verbs. However, in the case of deontic and dynamic modalities, this typology is practically moot. In modern linguistic terminology deontic and dynamic modalities are systematically distinguished from “moods” that express related notions, such as the hortative or the imperative. Deontic and dynamic modalities are typically non-​performative (i.e. not qualifying a proposition with respect to the current speech situation including speaker and hearer; cf. Narrog 2012b: 42), and are typically expressed by formal means that correspond to a low degree of grammaticalization. In contrast, semantically related moods are typically performative and are typically expressed by highly grammaticalized formal means. Consequently, the explicit expression of deontic and dynamic modalities is practically by definition associated with Palmer’s “modal systems”. There are cases, however, in which deontic and dynamic modalities do indeed seem to be indirectly expressed through mood, and they will be dealt with in the section on “implicit” expression (6.2.2).

6.2.1 Explicit expression Explicit expressions have a construction with a lexical or grammatical morpheme that signals the modality overtly at their center. This morpheme (or morpheme sequence)

The Expression of Non-epistemic Modal Categories    91 is labeled as “pivot” here. The following subsections are ordered according to these pivots of the modal construction, in order of the frequency with which these pivots are encountered cross-​linguistically.

6.2.1.1 Verbs and verbal auxiliaries The expression of deontic and dynamic modalities through modal verbs is typical for English and other Germanic and Indo-​European languages, and is also very common cross-​linguistically. Whether such verbs are classified as “auxiliaries” or as merely “lexical” is disputed even in very well-​studied languages such as German and Dutch, and thus largely depends on the description and the theory applied. Therefore, we simply assume here that we are dealing with verbs that are more or less advanced on a continuum between lexical and grammatical status. Additionally, as is well established from the study of modality in European languages, one can generally take for granted that, in a particular language, expressions of non-​epistemic modalities are more on the lexical end of the lexical-​grammatical continuum than expressions of epistemic modality (cf. Hansen and de Haan’s 2009 survey of grammaticalization of modal verbs in European languages). On the basis of these premises, “lexical” vs “grammatical” or “verb” vs “auxiliary” are not used as fundamental distinctions for the organization of this section. Example (1) shows the obligation auxiliary verb pe in Kashmiri, which is derived from a lexical verb meaning ‘fall’. (1)  Kashmiri (Wali and Koul 1997: 241) Me I.​dat

peyi have.​fut

paga:h tomorrow

dili Delhi

gatsh-​un. go-​inf

‘I will have to/​must go to Delhi tomorrow.’ Often, the verbs providing the lexical source for the modal expression have a rather general meaning. The cross-​linguistic “hit list” is led by verbs denoting knowledge and usually expressing an ability (15 items in my 200-​languages database), followed by “get”-​verbs, which are often used both deontically and dynamically (12 items), “come”-​verbs, which are mostly dynamic (9 items), “want”-​verbs, which are mainly deontic (8 items), and “become/​happen/​emerge”-​verbs, which are systematically dynamic (7 items). The predicate of the complement is often expressed as an infinitive (cf. (1)), participle, or verbal noun, thus undergoing some degree of nominalization. In languages with serial verb constructions, the modal verb may be labeled as a serial verb.

6.2.1.2 Adjectives and adjectival auxiliaries Adjectives are almost as common as verbs in expressing deontic and dynamic modalities cross-​linguistically, if we include verbs expressing adjectival notions in languages which lack, or only have a very small number of, adjectives. Again, these items are more

92   Heiko Narrog or less grammaticalized, and are sometimes characterized as “auxiliaries”. The Yapese adjective yog ‘be enough; be possible’ in (2) is an example. (2)  Yapese (Jensen 1977: 223; glosses added) Raa fut

yog be.possible

room prep.​2s.pss

ea cnn

bineey. this

‘You can do this.’ (lit. ‘This will be possible for you.’) There are two particularly common lexical sources for the pivot in an adjectival construction, both covering both deontic and dynamic notions, namely lexemes expressing the evaluative notion of “good” (17 items in my sample) and lexemes for “be enough/​sufficient” (8 items). As for the complement, the same tendencies as in 6.2.1.1 hold.

6.2.1.3 Affixes With considerable distance to verbs and adjectives we find prefixes and suffixes as the next common expression type. The “impersonal obligation” suffix -​ko in Teribe in (3) may serve as an example. (3)  Teribe (Quesada 2000: 81) Llë what

e dem

shäria-​ko do-​obl.ips

llëme. neg

‘There is nothing to do.’ Sometimes, a combination of affixes conspires to express a non-​epistemic modality, as in Waiwai, where obligation is expressed by an adverbialized verb stem (ti-​+verb stem+-​ po) which takes a further affix -​re optionally followed by a copula or a perception verb (cf. Hawkins 1998: 65). It goes without saying that affixes as the expression of non-​epistemic modality are more likely if the language has a rich verbal morphology and is agglutinating to some degree. Furthermore, the count for modal expression through affixes would rise considerably if elements of word formation such as English -​able/​-​ible were also included. However, in this chapter, the interest is in elements operating on the clause, rather than the word or phrase level. Markers of non-​epistemic modalities are rarely classified as “inflections”. An exception is the Kayardild potential final inflection -​Thu(ru)/​-​nangkuru, which signifies notions such as expectation/​futurity, prescription, desire, ability, and inability (cf. Evans 1995:  259). In cases such as this, the question of category labeling is also involved, because in corresponding descriptions of other Australian grammars, the same kind of morpheme is usually classified as a “mood”.

6.2.1.4 Nouns According to the available descriptions, nouns as the pivot for non-​epistemic modal constructions are comparatively rare. This relative scarcity may of course

The Expression of Non-epistemic Modal Categories    93 be an artifact of description by scholars in whose mother tongue nouns do not play a conspicuous role in modal expressions. More detailed investigations may lead to higher numbers. In any case, I found them in only 11 languages. They may express notions such as “duty” or “necessity”, as the Finnish noun pakko ‘compulsion’ in (4) does: (4)  Finnish (Sulkala and Karjalainen 1992: 318) Sinun you.​gen

on be.​(3s)

pakko compulsion

tulla. come.​1inf

‘You have to come.’ (lit. ‘Yours is the compulsion to come.’) The proposition is to some degree nominalized, just as in the case of the verbal constructions, and additionally, the obligation or ability is often expressed as a possession of the target of the modality, as in example (4).

6.2.1.5 Adverbs and particles Adverbs and particles are also rather rare as the primary expression of deontic and dynamic modalities. This may be one of the biggest formal distinctions to epistemic modality. Nevertheless, there are such cases, as the deontic necessitive adverb lupang in Kambera in (5), and the impossibility particle -​sia in Kwaio, which demands the additional presence of a negative marker, in (6): (5)  Kambera (Klamer 1998: 121) Lupang must

lí-​ya go.along-​3s.acc

na art

anda road

na art

ma-​hàmu. rms-​be.good

‘He must go along the road that is good.’ (6)  Kwaio (Keesing 1985: 128) Ngai fpr.(3s)

sia neg

leka go

mona neg

a-​i. loc-​PrS

‘She can’t go there.’ Particles are also sometimes found in combination with directive and subjunctive moods, where they mitigate or strengthen the illocutionary force of the sentence, but this cannot be considered as a direct expression of non-​epistemic modality in a narrow sense.

6.2.1.6 Other constructions Besides the constructions introduced above, which are characterized by a central morpheme, occasionally there are also constructions which are still “explicit” in relying on the presence of specific morphemes, but where the construction as such is more salient than any single part of it. For example, in Japanese and some other East Asian languages,

94   Heiko Narrog deontic notions are often expressed through conditional constructions such as the one in (7), with an evaluative apodosis. In the case of this example, the sentence ends on the verb nar-​‘become’, which is used evaluatively only in its negation nar-​ana-​ ‘to not become, be impossible’. (7)  Japanese (cf. Narrog 2009: 203) Honyaku~si.te mora.u koto=kara hazime-​na.kute=wa translation~​do.​ger receive.​nps thing=​abl begin-​neg.​ger=​top nar-​ana-​kat.ta. become-​neg-​vbz.pst ‘We had to start from getting this translated first.’ (lit. ‘If we had not started from getting this translated, it would not have become.’) While the evaluative verb is certainly salient in this construction, both the concrete form of the conditional and of the verb are to some extent exchangeable without significant change of meaning. For example, -​na.kute=wa can be replaced by -​na.kereba or -​na.i=to, two alternative negated conditional forms, and nar-​ana- through ik-​e-​na-​ ‘cannot go’ or dame ‘bad’ without significant change of meaning or function. In this manner, the construction as such is more important than its parts. There are also the “modal infinitives” in Indo-​European languages and similar constructions in other languages which rely on the presence of a copula and an infinitive or other partially nominalized clause, as the English modal infinitive in (8): (8)  This problem is not to be taken lightly. Modal infinitives have both necessity and possibility readings, the latter especially with negation. The borderline to “implicit” constructions becomes thin here. Let us now turn to clearly “implicit” modal constructions.

6.2.2 Implicit expression In many languages, deontic and dynamic modalities have no dedicated expression. Or even if they do, there are cases in which modality is implied by constructions or markers that primarily serve the expression of other categories. In these cases one can speak of “implicit” or “covert” modality.

6.2.2.1 Mood for modality In some areas of the world, as in Australia and the Pacific, languages often have no direct expression of deontic and dynamic modalities at all, while they have richly developed mood paradigms. Scholars of these languages sometimes indicate that moods may be functional equivalents to modality. Specifically, hortatives or imperatives may express

The Expression of Non-epistemic Modal Categories    95 deontic necessities, and potential or irrealis moods circumstantial or participant-​ internal possibility. For example, in Alamblak (Papua), the hortative with a third-​person subject may indicate an obligation, as in (9). (9) Alamblak (Bruce 1984: 137) (Rër) nuat (he)   sago.patty

a-​ya-​r-​t. hrt-​eat-​3sm-​3sf

‘He should eat the sago patty!’ However, as the punctuation of this example in translation indicates, these moods usually remain performative, and are therefore qualitatively different from non-​epistemic modalities as understood as the main topic of this chapter.

6.2.2.2 Voice for modality In many languages, even such which have otherwise rich means for the expression of non-​epistemic modalities, voice constructions regularly imply non-​epistemic modal meanings. In a wide-​ranging linguistic study, Narrog (2010a) showed that especially passive voice and middle voice, typically spontaneous “non-​control” voice, are prone to preemption for the expression of participant-​internal and circumstantial possibility, as is the case with the Udihe imperfective agentless passive in (10): (10)  Udihe (Nikolaeva and Tolskaya 2001: 578) Suese-​we axe-​acc

e-​u-​ji neg-​pas-​prp

aisi-​gi. mend-​rep

‘You can’t mend this axe.’ In some languages, such as Indonesian (ter-​) and Japanese (-​(r)-​are-​), the erstwhile voice construction has clearly emancipated itself to a modal construction. In such cases, the expression is already “explicit” rather than “implicit”.

6.2.2.3 Possession for modality Also relatively common, (erstwhile) possessive constructions are preempted for the expression of modality, especially deontic necessity. While this is “explicit” in well-​ known cases such as English ought to (< ‘owe’), have to (< ‘have’) or German gehören (< ‘belong to’), in some languages the expression is implicit, as in the Rapanui construction in (11). (11)  Rapanui (Du Feu 1996: 164) A pss

Nua Nua

te spe

runu collect

i rlt

te spe

pipi. shells

‘Nua had to collect the shells.’ (lit. ‘Nua’s collecting of the shells.’)

96   Heiko Narrog The clause as a whole is nominalized and the obligee is expressed as a possessor. Despite the implicit nature of the modality, according to the language description, this is a regular expression of obligation in Rapanui. Similar implicitly modal possessive constructions are described in Narrog (2010a).

6.2.2.4 Aspect for modality In some languages, aspectual marking may have a modal meaning. This phenomenon does not seem to be very frequent, though. Most commonly, a “habitual” or a “stative” morpheme may express ability or circumstantial possibility. Imonda (Papuan), for example, has a “plural” marker -​uõl that marks habituality and ability in the verbal domain, as in (12). (12)  Imonda (Seiler 1985: 178) Õh-​nèi px-​src

tì tree

ka 1

së neg

fulhõ-​uõl climb-​pl

fe-​f-​me. do-​prs-​neg

‘I am not able/​do not know how to climb this tree.’ A related phenomenon can be observed in the well-​known European languages, where, in contrast to Imonda above, habituality is commonly expressed by the aspectually unmarked verb. Thus, the expression of modality is even more “covert”. The following is an example from French: (13)  French (Le Querler 1996: 22; glosses added) Ce that

type-​là, guy

il he

te you

peint paint

un a

tableau painting

en in

une one

heure. hour

‘That guy, he paints/​can paint you a picture in one hour.’ According to Le Querler, (13) is practically an equivalent of a sentence with pouvoir (an equivalent of can). English, of course, also has such cases (e.g. do you speak French?), but the conditions for their usage seem to vary slightly across languages. Relatedly, covert modality is also found in several types of non-​finite clauses in Indo-​ European languages, such as the following wh-​infinitival complement in (14) (Bhatt 2006: 2).1 (14) Tim knows how to solve the problem. ‘Tim knows how one/​he could/​should solve the problem.’ The proposition in the infinitive is non-​factual, and therefore modal. Leiss (2002) and Abraham (2008) have proposed that the modal interpretation of such infinitivals 1 

Note that unlike in Bhatt (2006) sentences marked overtly by have to or be to are not considered as “covert” here, and were treated in the preceding section.

The Expression of Non-epistemic Modal Categories    97 depends on the aspectuality of the complement (in this case a perfective infinitive triggering non-​epistemic readings). Note that, as Bhatt’s paraphrase shows, and in accord with its status as an implicature, the actual modal reading, whether deontic or dynamic, is vague. Phenomena where modality is associated with aspectuality have increasingly attracted interest in the past years (cf. the paper collections by Abraham and Leiss eds. 2008, eds. 2012; see also Chapter 4).

6.2.2.5 Other constructions According to the author’s data, other implicitly modal constructions are basically language-​individual. They include cleft-​like constructions (Somali, Ewe), causative (Marathi), word order (Babungo), and benefactive constructions, as in (15) (Hua): (15)  Hua (Haiman 1980: 326) Fu-​mo pig-​pt

etmahu-​’Ka generous-​2s.ant

p-​mi-​di’-​hi’ them-​give-​inf-​ben

ne-​e. be-​3.​fin.a

‘You must give them pork generously.’ (lit. ‘It is for you giving them pork generously.’)

6.3  Many forms for one meaning, and many meanings for one form in the expression of non-​epistemic modality 6.3.1 Mapping of one to many While there are languages which according to their descriptions have very few or even no dedicated expressions for non-​epistemic modality, in others such expressions abound, leading to a multitude of many grammatical or lexical markers that carve up a limited semantic area into very specific domains or even seem to be interchangeable in many contexts. This is especially true for languages of Europe, and of South and Southeast Asia. Thus, Marathi, according to the description by Pandharipande (1997), has at least five constructions indicating ability. One of them stands for “learned ability”, one for “internal ability”, one for “ability after effort”, but the meanings carried by the other two are not so clear. The same language has also four “debitive” constructions. Such “florescence” of expression, if it occurs, normally occurs in the areas of participant-​ internal and related possibilities, and with various shades of obligation. Thus Kashmiri (Wali and Koul 1997:  240–​242) has five constructions for obligation, among which two are labeled as “moral obligation”, one of them being usually negated, and one that expresses the “ultimate degree of obligation”.

98   Heiko Narrog

6.3.2 Mapping of many to one Polysemy, not only between non-​epistemic and epistemic modalities, but also among non-​epistemic modalities, is an outstanding feature of modal verbs in the Germanic languages. Consider the following simple sentences in (16) and (17): (16)  She can take a car. (17)  You must help me. Depending on context, or the “conversational background” in Kratzer’s (1981) terms, can in (16) can at least receive a participant-​internal (“because she finally learned how to drive”) or a circumstantial (“because the roads are finally ice-​free”) or a deontic possibility (“because I allow her to do so”) reading. Likewise, must in (17) can at least indicate deontic necessity (“because I have authority over you”), or teleological necessity (“in order to achieve your own goals”), or boulomaic necessity (“because I really want you to do that”). Polysemy between non-​epistemic modalities such as the one demonstrated above is quite common in those languages which have grammaticalized means for the expression of these modalities. But this polysemy, and the expression of specific non-​epistemic modal meanings, is not evenly distributed. There is a tendency for the following meanings to cluster:

(i) participant-​internal and circumstantial possibility, additionally extending to deontic possibility; (ii) deontic necessity with other non-​epistemic necessities such as teleological and bouletic necessity; (iii) boulomaic with deontic necessity, that is, the expression of (typically speaker’s) volition, i.e. a “want”-​type of modality, with the expression of obligation. The first two meaning clusters are especially common. Ignoring here the possibility of polysemy with epistemic meaning, one could label them as “can” and “must”-​clusters, respectively. The third one could be labeled as the “shall”-​cluster. The recurring emergence of these clusters can be adduced to pragmatic reasons. Deontic modality, especially deontic necessity, expresses an imposition and thus calls for indirect expression as a politeness strategy. Non-​deontic necessities and boulomaic modality provide such a strategy, thus leading to polysemy. This is also the reason why purely non-​deontic necessity markers are relatively rare. Even if necessity markers and constructions are characterized descriptively as typically non-​deontic (e.g. English have to and have got to), they almost inevitably also acquire deontic meaning in the context of usage (cf. Collins 2009: 60, 69). Furthermore, it should be noted that participant-​ internal necessity is not a common member of the second cluster, simply because the expression of participant-​internal necessity as such is relatively rare. Lastly, polysemy across possibility and necessity is not very common, save under negation. Nevertheless,

The Expression of Non-epistemic Modal Categories    99 there are occasionally markers which can indicate both an ability and an obligation. “Get”-​verbs in Southeast Asian languages are the most salient proponents of this type. Polysemy with epistemic modality has been studied more intensively than the polysemies mentioned above. It is common in English and in Europe in general, but not necessarily cross-​linguistically. In the data available to this author, 38 out of about 774 non-​epistemic markers and constructions in 200 languages have clearly epistemic uses. Even if this number considerably increases with more detailed language description at hand, it is still far from being a majority pattern. In Bybee et al.’s (1994) typological study of modality, only in 5 out of 78 languages of the sample a marker polysemous between obligation (deontic) on the one hand and probability or certainty (epistemic) on the other hand was found. Van der Auwera and Ammann with Kindt (2005: 247, 256) suggest that modal polyfunctionality is typical for “Standard Average European” as opposed to other language areas (see also Chapter 15). However, a relatively high rate of non-​epistemic/​epistemic polysemy is suggested in van der Auwera and Ammann (2005b). While this type of polysemy may be limited cross-​linguistically, because of its salience in the Germanic languages many of the issues in the linguistic study of modality have arisen out of the problem of disambiguation of epistemic/​non-​epistemic polysemous modal markers.

6.4  Biases in the expression of non-​ epistemic possibility vs necessity 6.4.1 Biases with respect to negation The negation of possibility is used and lexicalized clearly more frequently than other negations. Horn (1989: 260), for example, claimed that, in contrast to the negation of necessity, “[i]‌n general, we find that any language containing a lexicalization of ¬□ also contains a lexicalization of ¬◊, but not vice versa”. Van der Auwera (2001a), confirming that lexicalizations of negated possibility and necessity in general are far more common than the lexicalization of the reverse scope relationship, even ascribes a “central cognitive status” to expressions of negated possibility (p. 44). In the data of the author of this chapter, 52 out of 417 non-​epistemic possibility expressions are dedicated to the expression of negated possibility, but only 12 out of 339 non-​epistemic necessity expressions are dedicated to the expression of negated necessity. Furthermore, Narrog (2009a: ch. 20) showed in a corpus study of Japanese that the combination of markers of dynamic possibility with negation is more frequent than any other combination of modality with another functional category in this language. Furthermore, as in the case of tense, the expression of the combination of modality with negation is rife with suppletion, such as needn’t in English as the external negation of must. Palmer (1995, 1997), and especially de Haan (1997) are in-​depth studies on these issues from a cross-​linguistic perspective.

100   Heiko Narrog

6.4.2 The expression of degrees of non-​epistemic modality In the study of modality in European languages, necessity and possibility are sometimes framed in terms of “strong” versus “weak” modality. However, usually it is more than just two degrees that are distinguished on a scale of strength, since at least one medium degree can be added. A certain modal marker, then, typically expresses a certain degree of modality. This leads to scales associated with specific modal expressions, such as “high” (e.g. must), “median” (e.g. will, should), and “low” (e.g. can, may) (Halliday 2004:  116, 148–​149). Wärnsby (2006:  33)  proposed a specific “deontic scale” organized from “obligation” to “recommendation” to “permission” for Swedish and English, reflecting the speaker’s gradually decreasing authority. Narrog (2009a: 90), based on Moriyama (2000), presented a five-​degree scale of deontic modality from “inevitability” to “permission/​exemption”, whereby again each degree is expressed by different modal markers in Japanese. Some authors also suggest a cline or continuum between such degrees (cf. Nuyts 2006: 5). If the focus is on necessity vs possibility, the expression of different degrees of modality appears to be limited to the area of necessity. Thus, there are numerous grammatical descriptions of languages also outside of Europe using labels such as “strong” and “weak” obligation, but “strong” and “weak” ability or “strong” and “weak” permission are generally not found.

6.4.3 Other tendencies and biases Some salient cross-​linguistic biases in the expression of non-​epistemic possibility and necessity were already mentioned in sections 6.2 and 6.3. •​ Possession structures are preempted for the expression of necessity while voice-​ derived structures are preempted for the expression of possibility (cf. 2.2.2 and 2.2.3). • Participant-​internal possibility (ability) is a cross-​linguistically common expression type, while participant-​internal necessity is rare (cf. 3.2). •​ The semantic core of necessity markers is often deontic while that of possibility markers is typically non-​deontic (i.e. circumstantial or participant-​internal; cf. 3.2). One can finally add the following: •​ The dedicated expression of boulomaic modality is typically limited to necessity. The author is not aware of a single grammatical description of a marker dedicated to the expression of boulomaic possibility, although theoretically there is nothing to preclude that. •​ The reverse holds for quantificational modality, the expression of which is typically limited to possibility.

The Expression of Non-epistemic Modal Categories    101

6.5  Morphosyntactic properties and effects of the expression of non-​epistemic modality 6.5.1 Non-​canonical case marking The expression of non-​epistemic modality (unlike that of epistemic modality) sometimes triggers changes in clause structure, in particular change in case marking, or even deletion, of specific arguments. In addition to the voice-​like structures (cf. 2.2.2) and possession-​like structures (cf. 2.2.3), we also find non-​canonical case marking of core arguments related to neither of them. These are in particular dative-​subject constructions, which are common in South Asia, and impersonal constructions, which are widespread cross-​linguistically. An example of a dative-​ subject construction can be found in (1) above, while (2) and (3) are impersonal constructions. In (2), the agent is marked as a prepositional object and in (3) not at all. Agents marked with adpositions or with a general object marker are common in these constructions.2

6.5.2 Ordering with respect to other modal and non-​modal categories This section discusses issues concerning the status of non-​epistemic modal expressions relative to expressions of other categories in the clause. Starting out with an overview of overall tendencies, salient characteristics of the interaction with the expression of negation, tense, and of other modal categories are shortly introduced.

6.5.2.1 Overall tendencies The issue of ordering of modal expressions with respect to other modal expressions and to other grammatical categories is primarily of interest because it is related to an important issue in overall sentence structure, namely that of the scope of grammatical categories. The following example from Japanese demonstrates how a non-​epistemic modal expression may be ordered with respect to markers of other categories. Note that the elements in the square brackets in the glosses are the actual morphemes, while the category labels in round brackets following it indicate the functional (semantic) category expressed by the concatenation of these morphemes.

2  Cf.

also Hansen and de Haan (2009: 527–​530) for a short survey of “downgraded” subjects in the modal constructions of European languages.

102   Heiko Narrog (18) Japanese Kai=wa mat.te i-​na.kereba nar-​ana-​kat.ta=daroo=ne. pn=​top wait.​[ger be](prg)-[neg.con become-​neg](nec)-​vbz.​pst=​epi=​ill ‘Kai surely had to be waiting.’ In (18), a deontic construction, consisting of a conditional and the evaluative apodosis on nar-​ana-​ ‘not become’, follows progressive aspect, but precedes tense. This in turn is followed by an epistemic marker and an illocutionary modification marker, which has no direct equivalent in English and is therefore not rendered in the translation. Japanese is a head-​final language; in the overwhelming majority of cases the order of elements also iconically reflects their mutual scope (cf. Narrog 2010c). In this case, the illocutionary modification marker scopes over the epistemic modality, which in turn scopes over tense, which scopes over the deontic (or teleological) necessity, which scopes over the progressive aspect. There are currently two types of resources relating to the question or ordering, namely cross-​linguistically oriented theoretical literature and descriptions and studies of individual languages. With respect to theoretically oriented literature, especially the research tradition of Functional (Discourse) Grammar (F(D)G) (e.g. Hengeveld 1989, 2004; Anstey 2002) on the one hand, and Cartography of Syntactic Structures (Cinque 1999, 2001, 2006) on the other, have actively pursued this issue (see also Chapters 20 and 21). However, so far there has been no systematic cross-​linguistic study. The fact that grammatical descriptions of individual languages usually do not provide systematic information on this issue is a major hurdle. Divergences in category labels for non-​ epistemic modalities are another. Nevertheless, the presumptive order of non-​epistemic modal expressions in relation to the expression of other categories in these two frameworks can be summarized as below. First, (18) and (19) present the orderings consecutively proposed in F(D)G. For reasons of space, only a few representative non-​modal categories are provided besides the modal ones. The ordering is head-​final. Categories divided by a comma have the same scope and thus potentially the same position while hyphens indicate order. Non-​ epistemic modal categories are italicized. Concrete examples are not given here but in the following more specific subsections. (19) FG (classic): phasal aspect, predicate negation -​inherent modality, perfect, prospective -​tense, objective deontic modality, objective epistemic modality -​ subjective modality, evidential modality, proposition negation -​illocutionary force (cf. Anstey 2002: 3) (20)  FDG (current): phasal aspect -​narrow-​scope negation -​aspect, participant-​ oriented modality -​relative tense, event perception, event-​oriented modality, polarity -​absolute tense -​subjective modality, evidential modality (-​illocutionary force) (cf. Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008: ch. 3)

The Expression of Non-epistemic Modal Categories    103 Category labels have changed in this framework, but the overall ordering has not changed so much. Given for granted that “inherent” and “participant-​oriented” modality correspond to traditional “dynamic” modality, and “objective deontic” and “event-​oriented” modality to traditional “deontic” modality, dynamic modality is expected to scope over or be neutral with respect to aspect, and be in the scope of any kind of tense, while “deontic” modality is taken to scope over aspect, be neutral with respect to relative tense, but take scope under absolute tense. Since “subjective” modality largely corresponds to epistemic modality, we would expect all non-​epistemic modality to take scope under epistemic modality and evidentiality. However, this is a simplification. The term “subjective” modality is not necessarily limited to epistemic modality. Hengeveld (2004: 1196) makes clear that at least “volitive” modality (intentions and desires) can appear as far “outside” in the order as “subjective” epistemic modality. In Syntactic Cartography, the following ordering was proposed (again, only a small selection of particularly relevant categories is presented): (21) (phasal aspects) -​voice -​(other aspects) -​permission -​ ability -​ obligation -​ progressive aspect, durative -​volition -​habitual aspect -​tense(s) -​epistemic modality -​mood (cf. Cinque 2001: 47–​48) There are certain differences to F(D)G. Besides a particularly fine differentiation of categories, non-​epistemic modalities are generally hypothesized to occur more “inside” the chain (or “lower” on the hierarchy) of categories. Both F(D)G and Cartography have drawn on examples from a large number of language descriptions, which are not necessarily systematic, though. Furthermore, there is the problem of divergence between surface word order and scope, especially in the European languages. The best way to test the validity of these orderings is a systematic analysis of a single language that has rich and regular morphosyntactic expression of modal categories. So far, the most systematic studies that I am aware of are by Cinque (1999; Italian), Nuyts (2004; Dutch), and Narrog (2009a, 2010c; Japanese). The resulting hypothesis by Cinque has already been presented above. Nuyts (2004: 84, 100) comes to the following conclusion (some categories are left out): (22) qualificational aspect -​quantificational aspect -​tense -​deontic modality -​epistemic modality -​evidentiality Here, similar to F(D)G, deontic modality receives a relatively high ranking, following tense, but still preceding epistemic modality, while dynamic modality is left out. By far the most extensive data study comes from Japanese (Narrog 2009a, 2010c). In addition to the large quantity of data, this language has the advantage of possessing a rich morphology of verbal categories with a fairly regular order of morpheme concatenation. Also, in contrast to the European languages, Japanese has an array

104   Heiko Narrog of specialized evidential markers. An important finding that was not pointed out in previous studies, which were based on a far smaller material basis, is that the scope properties of categories when taking scope under other categories (“passive scope”) is not identical to the scope properties of the same categories taking scope over other categories (“active scope”). The following two orders were extracted from the data. Order (23) is by “passive” scope, while order (24) reflects “active” scope. (23) voice -​phasal aspect -​evidentiality 1 (predictive appearance) -​negation, dynamic modality -​ boulomaic modality, deontic modality -​evidentiality (present-​/p ​ ast-​oriented appearance), epistemic possibility -​evidentiality (reportive) -​tense, epistemic modality (speculative) -​mood, illocutionary force (24) voice -​ dynamic modality, boulomaic modality, phasal aspect -​deontic modality (1) (general necessity) -​evidentiality 1 (predictive appearance), deontic modality (2) (valuative obligation) -​negation, mood -​epistemic possibility, evidentiality (present-​/p ​ ast-​oriented appearance) -​evidentiality (reportive), epistemic modality (speculative), illocutionary force

The two orders indicate that non-​epistemic modal expressions in Japanese are located about in the middle of a chain of expressions of verbal categories with respect to passive scope, but lower when it comes to active scope. That is, the categories under which non-​epistemic modalities take scope are rather limited, but the categories they take scope over are even more limited. This contrasts with epistemic and evidential modalities, which both have a broader passive and active scope. The fact that the passive scope of non-​epistemic modalities is relatively low can be explained by descriptive (non-​ performative) uses, which are not available to many epistemic and evidential expressions, while the low active scope is due to the fact that categories such as tense and epistemic modality are pragmatically and semantically not compatible with a position before (inside) non-​epistemic modalities (see sections 6.5.2.2 and 6.5.2.4). Concrete orderings of elements and problems related to them are briefly discussed in the next subsections.

6.5.2.2 Ordering with respect to tense Ordering of non-​epistemic modal expressions with respect to tense may be the most complex of all issues discussed here. First, with respect to the possibility of modality following (i.e. taking scope over) tense, many researchers have observed that the complement of non-​epistemic modal markers is essentially future-​oriented (or “future-​ projecting”).3 Pragmatically speaking, actual obligations, abilities, volitions, etc. are fundamentally incompatible with past events. For example, it does not make sense to

3  Sherebkov (1967) was probably the first to have pointed this out. Several papers in Abraham and Leiss (eds. 2008) refer to this issue.

The Expression of Non-epistemic Modal Categories    105 oblige someone to do something before reference time, but only at a time beginning with, or later than, reference time. This future-​orientation is one of the most solid if not the most solid feature that non-​epistemic modal categories have in common.4 Therefore, non-​epistemic modal expressions normally cannot scope over explicit tense marking. They may have scope over perfect, though, in which case the future-​orientation is not affected, as can be seen in (25) (Collins 2009: 75): (25)  Non-​contributory means that you don’t need to have paid National Insurance contributions to qualify. There is one systematic exception to the future-​orientation of the complement, namely with counterfactual predications, as seen in (26) from Japanese and in its English translation. (26) Japanese Motto more

suugaku=o math=​acc

benkyoo~si.te study~​do.​ger

ok.u=beki=dat.ta. put.​nps=​deo=​cop.​pst

‘I should have studied more math.’ Beki and the English equivalent should could be interpreted as deontic or as teleological. The complement (‘study math’) refers to an event in the past. The modal expression takes scope over tense, since the judgment of obligation is bound to the time of utterance rather than the event time. The order of the modal and the tense expression are non-​ iconic in Japanese (head-​final, but tense follows modality), and iconic in the English translation (head-​initial, modality precedes tense). Generally speaking, in many languages, such as in English and Japanese above, counterfactuality, where non-​epistemic modality may scope over tense, is morphosyntactically not clearly and regularly marked and not systematically discernible from factual readings, where tense scopes over modality. However, the effect is mostly tied to past events, and to specific non-​epistemic modal expressions.5 Narrog (2009a: ch. 16.5) shows that in Japanese there are specific groups of deontic and boulomaic (but, in contrast to English, not dynamic) markers that

4  One

could consider participant-​internal possibility (ability) as a possible exception. For example, Harry can run 50 miles a day arguably expresses a habitual state. On the other hand, Harry runs 50 miles a day is not predicated as actual at the time of the speech event but as something that can be actualized at any point of time in the future. 5 Note that, although far more rarely, even in present-​ tense use, actuality (or counterfactuality) effects may arise. E.g. (i) (from Palmer 1987b: 122) for an actuality effect in the present, and (ii) for a counterfactuality effect with should in the present. (i)   By this means they are able to cut prices. (ii)  You should be here now. (talking to someone on the telephone) The conditions for such usage are not fully clarified yet.

106   Heiko Narrog are read as counterfactuals with past-​tense marking. The deontic ones are all mid-​scale, corresponding to English should and ought to. The boulomaic ones are also mid-​scale and can be rendered in English only with clear counterfactual (irrealis) marking in the complement, as in (26). (27) Japanese Motto more

haya-​ku early-​adv

ai-​ta-​kat.ta. meet-​bou-​vbz.pst

‘I wish I had met [her] earlier.’ Relatedly, in languages that have well-​developed mood but little or no direct expression of dynamic and deontic modality, it is common to find counterfactual or irrealis mood expressing counterfactual obligation, with the mood clearly scoping over the tense. In the following example from Alamblak, a head-​initial language, hortative mood is also involved, and both hortative and irrealis iconically precede past marking. (28)  Alamblak (Bruce 1984: 139) Yenr boy

a-​yakrmay-​r-​me-​r. hrt-​run.away-​irr-​r.pst-​3sm

‘The boy should have run away.’ The reverse case of tense taking scope over expressions of non-​epistemic modality is cross-​linguistically largely unproblematic. Non-​epistemic modality can in principle freely enter the scope of any tense. Obligations, permissions, abilities, etc. can hold in the present, may hold in the future, and may have held in the past. Example (1) involves a Kashmiri obligation marker preceding, and in the scope of, a future marker; (29) shows the same for past (cf. also Japanese examples (7) and (18)). (29)  Kashmiri (Wali and Koul 1997: 241) Timan they-​dat

p’o:-​s have.to-​pst.​1s

bi 1s

garɩ home

an-​un. bring-​inf

‘They had to bring me home.’ This is exactly the reverse situation from epistemic modal expressions (see Chapter 7), where the temporality of the complement is as a rule unconstrained, but predicating the modality itself in the future or past is usually problematic.

The Expression of Non-epistemic Modal Categories    107

6.5.2.3 Ordering between modal categories Non-​epistemic modal expressions generally can occur in one clause with epistemic ones. The overall tendency, which is reflected in all hypotheses about the order of categories, is that non-​epistemic modal expressions are in the scope of epistemic ones. Standard English does not allow for “double modals” but German does, in which case the epistemic verb inevitably precedes and scopes over the non-​epistemic one (cf. Abraham 2002), and some English dialects do, where the same happens (e.g. might should, might could in Butters 1973 and Nagle 2003). A  large-​scale corpus study on Japanese revealed that all epistemic markers in this language can follow and take scope over all dynamic, deontic, and boulomaic (plus even low-​level evidential) markers (Narrog 2009a: ch. 15.4); (18) above is an example. Co-​occurrence of expressions of two or more non-​epistemic modalities in one clause is rarer, and data are harder to come by. The aforementioned study on Japanese modal expressions revealed the following generalizations about the ordering possibilities among non-​epistemic modal expressions:  (i) Dynamic modal expressions do not take scope over expressions of any other modal category. This again shows their low position in clause structure. (ii) Boulomaic modal expressions can scope over both deontic and dynamic modal (and also low-​level evidential) expressions that are used descriptively, but these are rare events. (30) is an example where a boulomaic expression scopes over a dynamic one.   (30)   Japanese (Narrog 2009: 179) Kitinto properly

kik.u listen.​nps

koto=ga thing=​nom

deki.te be.able.​[ger

hosi.i. want.​nps](bou)

‘I want you to be able to listen properly.’ (iii) Likewise, deontic modal expressions can scope over both boulomaic and deontic modal expressions (and also low-​level evidential expressions) that are used descriptively, but these are rare events. (31) is an example where a deontic expression follows and takes scope over a dynamic one. (31)  Japanese (Narrog 2009: 181) Kairo=o circuit=​acc

yon.de read.​ger

deki-​na.kereba be.possible-​[neg.​con

rikai~s.uru understand~​do.​nps

koto=ga thing=​nom

nar-​ana.i. become-​neg](nec).​nps

‘Also, you must be able to read and understand [electrical] circuits.’

108   Heiko Narrog

6.5.2.4 Ordering with respect to negation Negation can appear both inside and outside the scope of non-​epistemic modalities, as demonstrated by the English sentences in (32) and (33). (32) a. I am not able to eat now. b. I am able to not eat for three days.

(NEG(DYN)) (DYN(NEG))

(33) a. You don’t have to follow the crowd. (NEG(DEO)) b. You must not succumb to the mermaids of temptation.   (DEO(NEG)) In the examples above, the order between the expressions of non-​epistemic modality and their actual scope coincide iconically. It would not be difficult to present similar examples from other languages. Now, it is widely known that, unlike in the examples given here, the order between modal expression and negator is not always indicative of the scope of negation (cf. Palmer 1995). Thus, while English must not (33) is interpreted as □¬p, the German cognate muss nicht or English need not are interpreted as ¬□p. In both cases, though, the interpretation of the scope of negation is unambiguous. De Haan (1997: ch. 3.7) argued that in contrast the cross-​linguistic expressions of the notion of should are “uniscopal” with respect to negation, that is, negation with scope over the modal and scope over the proposition are practically indistinguishable. Horn (1978: section 6.4) had already pointed out that with “mid-​scalar” mental activity and modal verbs, negation is often attracted to the matrix verb although it should logically belong to the complement, as there is no clear semantic opposition (contradiction) between negation on the matrix verb and negation in the complement.

6.5.3 Non-​epistemic modal expressions and clause type Constraints on the usage of non-​epistemic modal expressions in specific clause types are not as complex as those on epistemic modal expressions (see Chapter 7). As for main clauses, there are generally no restrictions on the use of non-​epistemic modal expressions in declaratives and interrogatives, while they are generally impossible in imperatives. This can be seen in English, where not only modal verbs, as in (34), but even more lexical modal expressions, as in (35), are problematic in imperatives. (34)  *Can/​*Must speak Arabic! (35)  ??Be able to/​*Have to speak Arabic! The same holds for Japanese, where a large-​scale corpus study did not produce a single instance of a modal marker inside an imperative clause (Narrog 2009a: 186), and cross-​ linguistic counterexamples are not known to me either. Thus, imperatives and non-​ epistemic modality seem to be fundamentally incompatible with each other. This may

The Expression of Non-epistemic Modal Categories    109 be primarily due to the lack of controllability of abilities, obligations, etc., and perhaps also to the aspectually stative nature of non-​epistemic modal predications (cf. Davies 1986: 13–​14 for the conditions of use for imperatives). The situation with respect to subordinate clauses is somewhat more complex. There can be restrictions in subordinate clauses that are tightly integrated into the main clause and are strongly reduced in their general ability to take independent TAM marking. In English, for example, as (36) demonstrates, tenseless clauses can accommodate semi-​ modals, but not modals. (36)  He claimed to be able to/​*can tell the score before any game. However, the reason for the incompatibility with this type of complement lies with tense, which modals express but semi-​modals do not bear, and not with the modal meaning, which is shared by both forms. The aforementioned large-​scale study on Modern Japanese revealed that the non-​ epistemic modal expressions under investigation could essentially be used in any subordinate clause investigated (complement, causal, concessive, conditional). However, only dynamic and not boulomaic and deontic modal markers could be used in the tightly integrated to-​“automatic” conditionals, as can be demonstrated by the following constructed example: (37) Japanese Arabu-​go=o Arabic-​language=​acc

hanas-​e.ru=to/​*hanas.[ana.kereba nar-​ana].i=to speak-​pot.​nps=​con/​speak.​[nec].​nps=​con

i.i=des.u=ne. good.​nps=​cop.​nps=​ill ‘It is good if [people] can/​*must speak Arabic.’ In order to have a deontic predication in the conditional, a looser constructed conditional on -​(r)eba or nara would have to be used. Furthermore, tightly integrated simultaneous clauses with -​nagara, which are unable to take an independent subject, are incompatible with any non-​epistemic (and epistemic) modal marker. Similar constraints are for example reported for West Greenlandic, where according to Fortescue (1984: 275–​276), tense and modal affixes are not found in participial mood clauses and in specific clause nominalizations. Göksel and Kerslake (2005: 308) state that in Turkish subordinate clauses only some necessity markers can be used but not others.

6.5.4 Modal concord Section 6.5.2.4 presented the issue of non-​epistemic modals of different categories appearing in one clause, and taking scope over each other. This section deals with cases

110   Heiko Narrog of co-​occurrence of modal elements of one category, called “modal concord”. With non-​ epistemic modality, this phenomenon is less common and salient than with epistemic modality. Three cases can be distinguished. In the first, an adverb reinforces the modal expression in the verbal complex, as in English collocations absolutely must or definitely should. Strictly speaking, the adverb in these collocations merely indicates a degree and is “modal” only in a wide sense (cf. Hoye 1997: 108, and elsewhere). Similar examples from cross-​linguistic descriptive grammars are not easy to come by, but in Japanese, for example, the same phenomenon is widespread. In addition to adverbs reinforcing deontic modality, there are also adverbs that specialize in reinforcing impossibility marked in the verbal complex, such as tootei in (38): (38) Japanese Zizitu=nara fact=​con

tootei impossible

ukeire-​rare-​na.i. accept-​pot-​neg.​nps

‘If [this] is true, I can absolutely not accept [it].’ In the second case, which is rare, two auxiliaries, or auxiliary-​like elements of the same modality co-​occur in one verbal complex. The author is not aware of such cases in the grammars of the well-​known European languages. Narrog (2009a: 178) presented a case of two dynamic modal markers in Japanese immediately following and reinforcing each other in conversation. This would be unacceptable in writing. It seems, though, that there is at least one language in which this is done systematically—​namely Begak, where the “default auxiliary” nong, which on its own already has a necessity reading, regularly co-​occurs with the necessity auxiliary səmbay in undergoer voice, as in (39): (39)  Begak (Goudswaard 2005: 314, 317) Təring bamboo

no yonder

səmbay nec

nong aux

(mo) (2s.gen)

m-​ə-​llay. dep-​boil.uv

‘The bamboo (shoots) must be boiled (by you).’ The last case is much more common. Certain non-​epistemic modal expressions may harmonize with, or even demand, a specific mood on the verb. This is even known from the modal verbs in older stages of English and German, in which subordinate clauses were often redundantly modalized by a co-​occuring modal verb and the subjunctive mood (cf. Lühr 1997 for German). In Mosetén, the necessity clitic -​wi’ is usually followed by the irrealis mood marker -​ra’, as in (40): (40)  Mosetén (Sakel 2004: 345) Ij-​a-​ti-​wi’-​ra kill-​vi-​1pl.sbj-​nec-​irr ‘We should kill a hen to eat.’

tyäe hen

‘shï jeb-​a-​k-​dye-​si’. eat-​vi-​mi-​ben-​lin.f

The Expression of Non-epistemic Modal Categories    111

6.6  The expression of non-​epistemic modality in specific speech acts While the previous section 6.5 primarily highlighted non-​performative properties of non-​epistemic modal expressions, non-​epistemic modal expressions can also be used to perform specific speech acts. Due to the nature of the topic, the focus here is on well-​described languages rather than a cross-​linguistic survey as in the preceding sections. First, it is fair to assume that basically all modal markers of obligation and permission can, if used under the right conditions, indicate commands and permissions, and related speech acts (cf. Wunderlich 1981: 19 for German; speaking of “Imperativersatz”). Some scholars writing on English suggest that a “performative” or “subjective” quality is confined only to specific modals (usually must and may; cf. e.g. Portner 2009: section 6.4.3.3), but it is not difficult to find performative examples of other modals and semi-​ modals of obligation and permission in English as well, such as should in (41) (from the BNC, as cited in Nagatomo 2009: 50). (41) You should give yourself a chance, you really should … Given the right conditions of use, the modal in such an utterance can be interpreted as expressing a command, or at least giving advice. Apart from these rather obvious cases of obligation and permission, we should also draw attention to rather unexpected uses of non-​epistemic modal expressions, as known from English, but also applicable to other languages. In a corpus study of English obligation markers, Myhill and Smith (1995) show that they often express a negative evaluation or affectedness on the part of either the subject or one of the speech participants. (42) is an example (lyrics by Bryan Adams). (42)  Why do you have to be so hard to love? Such usage does not appear to be directly performative, but aids in forming a specific type of illocution (in this case a complaint), and indicates negative affectedness, in this case on the part of the speaker. Another interesting usage is with first-​person subjects, in which case obligation markers rarely express “real-​life” obligations. Myhill and Smith (1995: 249–​251) suggest that they often serve to “mitigate inconvenience to the listener” (example (43) is cited from Myhill and Smith 1995: 251). (43)  Dan: Drink your beer. –​Chad: I gotta get my ass home. The necessity expressed by gotta in sentences such as (43) can, as Myhill and Smith (1995) write, “be easily vague or invented”, and is in fact used to mitigate a potential inconvenience. In a small investigation of the London-​Lund Corpus (Narrog

112   Heiko Narrog 2010b: section 6.4.2), it was shown that first-​person uses of must are actually far more frequent in spoken language than second-​or third-​person uses, and in a large number of cases (36 out of 130 first-​person examples) they are used with verbs of communication, such as I must say that and I must admit that. These are “pseudo-​necessities” which express an urge of the hearer that is potentially face-​threatening to one of the speech participants, and is therefore couched in terms of a necessity or obligation.6 Concerning the expression of permission, Narrog (2009a: 80) has pointed out that permission expressions in Japanese are surprisingly often used with the first person, and then they often express willingness instead of permission. Relatedly, it has been suggested that willingness is an implication of permission (according to Verstraete 2005 even a presupposition). This “non-​straightforward” usage of expressions of necessity and possibility is probably due to social constraints. The overt indication of authority of the hearer over the addressee is an imposition and potentially face-​threatening. The degree to which this is the case is also culture-​dependent. This is one of the factors leading to considerable cross-​cultural variation in the expression and use of deontic modalities. Myhill and Smith (1995), comparing English, Hopi, Chinese, and Biblical Hebrew, come to the conclusion that obligation expressions vary widely in their function cross-​linguistically, to the extent that it is even useless to try to identify core functions or construe an exhaustive list. Narrog (2010b) argues that in Japanese the avoidance of strong overt expressions for obligation and permission, especially directed towards the second person/​ addressee, is the major cause for the relative paucity of grammaticalizations in this area historically on the one hand, and for the relatively rich development of weaker expressions of “advice” on the other hand. So far, this section has been concerned with unexpected usages of deontic modal expressions. It may be even more surprising that dynamic modal expressions, despite usually being described as “non-​subjective” and “non-​performative”, to the extent of even being excluded from the study of modality altogether, are often involved in performing discourse functions as well. First, it is well known that dynamic modal expressions are often used in the formation of polite requests, as in (44) (Palmer 1990: 191).7 (44)  Could you tell me the name of the person concerned? 6  Similar usage of expressions of necessity and obligation can be found in Japanese (Narrog 2010b) and Chinese (Myhill and Smith 1995: 261). The “hedged performatives” discussed in a seminal paper by Fraser (1975) are of this type. The “hedging” is an effect of the addition of the modal verb. In the German research tradition, these are called “modalized speech acts”, and Gloning (1997) has provided a typology of the function of modal verbs in such speech acts. According to him, the most typical function in this context is politeness, followed by hedging. Wunderlich (1981: 23) has pointed out that while modal verbs usually render a proposition as non-​factual, in such “modalized speech acts” this seems not to be the case. However, this factuality may as well be an implicature rather than the meaning in such sentences. 7  Perkins (1983: ch. 10) offers an in-​depth discussion of politeness uses of modal markers in requests.

The Expression of Non-epistemic Modal Categories    113 Corresponding uses of dynamic modal expressions can be easily found outside Europe too. But there are other discourse functions as well. Guo (1995), in a study of the use of Chinese dynamic and epistemic modal néng in language acquisition, argued that this marker in the first place indicates a “challenge” to the addressee’s knowledge and is used to justify some other statement or action of the speaker, or to convince the addressee. In a systematic study of the German cognate of English can, können, Hindelang (2001) showed how können is involved in the formation of a large range of directive, commissive, representative, and other speech acts. (45) is a simple example of an offer, a commissive speech act, with can in English. (45) I can help you lose twenty pounds of stubborn body fat. Arguably this sentence performs a different speech act than if can were replaced by will or zero. In that case the utterance would become a promise or declaration. It is not quite clear whether can in such usage should be regarded as directly performative, but it certainly has an effect on the overall illocution. Finally, other discourse uses of English can have been found by Kjellmer (2003), who speaks of “dummy” can, which functions as a “shock absorber”, an “empathizer”, etc., mainly with verbs of perception and mental processes. (46) is a “shock absorber” example (Kjellmer 2003: 155). (46)  … I can confirm that he sleeps with a shotgun beside him on the couch where his patients come for analysis. According to Kjellmer, can in such usage mitigates “potentially shocking truths or unwelcome suggestions”. Overall, the study of the expression of non-​epistemic modality in discourse is still in its infancy. Semantic studies of modality tend to ignore use in actual discourse altogether, and discourse-​centered studies tend to reject semantic analyses as misleading. Balanced descriptions that take semantics and usage equally into account are still rare. Lastly, it should be mentioned here that the frequency and type of use of non-​ epistemic modal expressions depends on the type of discourse, including register and genre. This is shown among others by Biber et al. (1999: 487–​497) for Modern English and Gloning (2001) for older stages of German.

6.7 Conclusion This chapter dealt with the expression from non-​epistemic modalities from a cross-​ linguistic perspective. We looked at the morphosyntactic form of their expression, at

114   Heiko Narrog features of form–​meaning mapping, at certain biases in their expression, at scope and other behavioral properties, and finally at their expression in speech acts. Overall, the biggest difference to epistemic modalities may be their frequent non-​performative use that is accompanied by narrow scope properties, and a tendency to a lower degree of grammaticalization in the means of their expression. Furthermore, in contrast to epistemic modalities, the defining property of modality overall, non-​factuality, is backgrounded in favor of more concrete modal meanings. However, the semantics of non-​epistemic modalities was not the topic of this chapter and is discussed in more detail in Chapter 3.

Abbreviations Abbreviations in the glosses follow those in the sources, unless in a few cases where there was the opportunity to unify abbreviations across sources. 1, 2, 3

first, second, third person

A unmarked mood abl ablative ACC accusative adv adverbial ANT

anticipated subject

ART article AUX auxiliary BEN benefactive BOU

boulomaic modality

CNN connector con conditional cop copula DAT dative DEM demonstrative DEO

deontic modality

DEP dependent EPI

epistemic modality

F feminine FIN finite FPr

focal pronoun

The Expression of Non-epistemic Modal Categories    115 FUT future GEN genitive GER gerund HRT hortative ill

illocutionary modifier

IND indicative INF infinitive IRR irrealis LIN linker LOC locative M masculine MI middle voice NEC necessitive NEG negation NOM nominative NPS

non-​past

OBL obligation PAS passive PL plural PN personal name POT potential PREP preposition PRS present PRP

present participle

PrS

pronominal subject

PSS possessive pst past tense PT potential topic PX proximity REP repetitive RLT relator rmS

subject relative clause marker

R.PST remote past

116   Heiko Narrog S singular SBJ subject SPE specific SRC source TOP topic UV undergoer voice VI

verbal stem marker—​i

VBZ verbalization

Chapter 7

The expres si on of epistemic moda l i t y Kasper Boye

7.1 Introduction This chapter provides an overview of how epistemic modal meanings are expressed in the natural languages of the world. In line with this volume’s orientation, it assumes a standard narrow definition of epistemic modality as covering linguistic meanings that indicate degree of epistemic support for a proposition, or degree of confidence in a proposition (cf. closely related definitions in Bybee et al. 1994: 179; Coates 1983: 10; van der Auwera and Plungian 1998: 81; Palmer 2001: 8; see Chapter 3). On this definition, epistemic modality covers meanings that have been described in the literature in terms of notions like those in (1) (arranged along a scale which goes from high epistemic support for a proposition over neutral epistemic support to high epistemic support for the negative counterpart of a proposition; e.g. Hengeveld 1989: 138; Nuyts 2001a: 21–​22): (1) knowledge, certainty, epistemic necessity, probability, likelihood, uncertainty, epistemic possibility, doubt, unlikelihood, epistemic impossibility Section 7.2 is a survey of different types of epistemic modal expressions. Section 7.3 gives examples of morphosyntactic systems of epistemic modality. Section 7.4 discusses different types of combinations of epistemic modal expressions. Section 7.5 deals with scope properties and cross-​linguistic tendencies pertaining to the ordering of grammatical epistemic modal expressions relative to other kinds of grammatical expressions. Section 7.6, finally, is concerned with distributional characteristics of epistemic modal expressions in independent and dependent clauses.

118   Kasper Boye

7.2  Morphosyntactic types of epistemic modal expressions Without epistemic expressions, we would not be able to share communicatively our degree of confidence in propositions. We would not be able to distinguish between knowledge and belief, or between certain, uncertain, and possible facts. This would severely hamper our capability of adapting adequately to changes in the environment, and thus our chances of survival. The functional-​communicative importance of epistemic modality is reflected in the fact that epistemic modal notions are part of the limited set of what Slobin (1997) refers to as “grammaticizable notions”: as demonstrated in cross-​linguistic surveys (e.g. Palmer 1986, 2001; Bybee et al. 1994; Boye 2012), many languages have epistemic modal expressions that are grammatical. Moreover, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that all languages have lexical epistemic modal expressions at their disposal.

7.2.1 Lexical expressions In English and related languages, epistemic expressions are found among all three of the major lexical word classes: verbs, adjectives, and nouns, as well as among adverbs. Lexical epistemic modal verbs include know, believe, and doubt. They typically occur in constructions in which the proposition they evaluate is expressed in a complement clause, as in (2) and (3).1 (2) I doubt that chains will be necessary. (BNC: H97 1176) (3) Well, that wouldn’t altogether surprise me because I know you’re up to something, buying second-​hand clothes from those dotty old maids next door. (BNC: AT7 1917) Alternatively, the proposition may be represented anaphorically, as in (4) and (5), or it may be inferable from the context, as in (6), which would function as a comment on a previously asserted proposition. (4) I doubt that! (BNC: ANL 2006) (5) Again, I know this from my long experience of yoga. (BNC: ADP 1521) (6) I know. (BNC: JXT 590) 1  Data cited herein and marked with “BNC” has been extracted from the British National Corpus Online service, managed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. All rights in the texts cited are reserved.

The expression of epistemic modality    119 In a special kind of construction, an epistemic modal verb and its subject form a so-​ called “parenthetical”, which may occur medially or finally in another clause, which expresses the proposition evaluated.

(7) The point is I think that the argument from here can go two ways. (BNC: A6U 614)

(8) As to your other query, there is some confusion here I think. (BNC: FR9 1641) Distributionally and functionally, parentheticals behave much like sentence adverbials. Accordingly, they may develop into genuine adverbs (cf. Boye and Harder 2009 on evidential parentheticals). Alternatively, they may develop into grammatical expressions (Boye and Harder 2007, 2009; cf. e.g. Thompson and Mulac 1991; Brinton 1996; Thompson 2002; Van Bogaert 2010). Epistemic modal adjectives—​e.g. certain, probable, and possible—​are found in similar constructions when used predicatively. (9) I am certain that by now you will be able to see a significant improvement to your body. (BNC: C9Y 2213) (10) It is certain Farr-​Jones is already talking too fast for many in the game. (BNC: CB3 573) (11) Yes, I am certain of that. (BNC: H98 1997) (12) I am certain. (BNC: BMN 1880) When epistemic modal adverbs are used attributively, the proposition they evaluate epistemically is occasionally expressed by the head noun, as in (13), where probable evaluates a proposition which is first represented by fact and subsequently spelled out in a that-​clause. More often, however, the head noun only expresses part of the proposition. In (14), what is probable is not the candidate, but a proposition like: ‘Susanna Jennens will be a candidate’ (see section 7.6.1 on “coercion”). (13) Motive was undercut by the failure to steal anything and the probable fact that Joe Hill never met Mr. Morrison in his life. (Kenneth Lougee, Pie in the Sky, p. 66) (14) … the only probable candidate in the subscription lists is Susanna Jennens. (BNC: AN4 242) Examples of epistemic modal nouns are certainty, likelihood, and belief. Like epistemic modal verbs, they may occur in constructions in which the proposition they evaluate is expressed in a complement clause, as in (15) and (16). (15) There is little likelihood that cereals played a minor role in the economy. (BNC: CFK 273)

120   Kasper Boye (16) There has grown up a folk belief that recurrent thrush is completely untreatable. (BNC: ARH 868) Again, as with epistemic modal verbs, the proposition may alternatively be represented anaphorically, as in (17), or it may be inferable from the context, as in (18), which presupposes that it is known to the interlocutors what the likelihood discussed applies to. (17) To reduce the likelihood of this a large lexicon must be stored. (BNC: HGR 392) (18) Now it could be argued that this likelihood is so remote as not to be worthy of consideration. (BNC: HRJ 1080) It is a shared feature of lexical expressions like those discussed above that they can be used to convey an epistemic modal evaluation by the speaker, but they are also frequently used to convey an evaluation by someone other than the speaker (cf. the distinction between performative and descriptive uses in Chapter 3). In (2), for instance, doubt conveys an evaluation by the speaker, as indicated by the fact that the verb is constructed with a first-​person subject. In (19), however, doubt is used to convey an evaluation by someone other than the speaker, as indicated by the fact that the verb is constructed with a third-​person subject. (19) He doubts low level flying is to blame. (BNC: K1N 3709) Another noteworthy characteristic is that expressions like those discussed above often have non-​epistemic uses in addition to the epistemic modal ones. For instance, know is used not only to express epistemic knowledge about propositions, as in (2), but also knowledge about how to carry out actions, as in (20), and knowledge about the identity of entities, as in (21). (20) I know how to spell it. (BNC: KBF 12158) (21) I know a publisher. (BNC: HH9 1486) The different uses of know go with complements of semantically and morphosyntactically differing types: in (2), the complement is a propositional finite clause; in (20), it is a non-​propositional infinitival complement; in (21), it is a non-​propositional noun phrase.2 Similar situations are found in other languages. In Jacaltec (Mayan), wohtaj ‘know’ in a construction with a propositional complement expresses epistemic 2  Propositions

are understood here as semantic units that can be said to have a truth value. Other names for such meaning units are “(potential) facts” and “third-​order entities”. Non-​propositional meaning units are understood as meaning units that cannot be said to have a truth value. They include what has been referred to in the literature as “states-​of-​affairs”, “events”, and “second-​order entities”. See Boye (2010a) and (2012) for in-​depth discussions of the distinction; see also e.g. Lyons (1977: 842–​843), Palmer (1979: 35), and Perkins (1983: 7–​8) for discussions of the distinction in relation to the contrast between epistemic and non-​epistemic modal meanings.

The expression of epistemic modality    121 knowledge, as in (22a), while in a construction with a non-​propositional complement, as in (22b), it expresses non-​epistemic knowledge about how to carry out actions. (22) Jacaltec (Mayan; Craig 1977: 235, 241) a. Wohtaj I.know jet to.us

[tato comp bay where

ay is chon we.go

tzet what toj ?

tu’]. that

ch’alaxoj is.given (propositional complement)

‘I know that they will give us something where we are going.’ b. Wohtaj [hin watx’en kap I.know I.make ? clf/​the   camixe]. shirt

(non-​propositional complement)

‘I know how to make shirts.’ In Awa Pit (Barbacoan), likewise, the verb min-​‘think’ is used with propositional complements (more specifically, Curnow’s 1997 “type 2” complements) to express the epistemic modal meaning of ‘wonder whether’, and with non-​propositional complements (more specifically, Curnow’s 1997 “type 4” complements) to express the non-​epistemic meaning of ‘intend’ (Curnow 1997: 257–​258).3 As mentioned, epistemic modal expressions are often also found in a fourth group of expressions that are typically considered lexical:  adverbs.4 English examples of epistemic modal adverbs include certainly, probably, possibly, and perhaps (e.g. Simon-​Vandenbergen and Aijmer 2007a; Mortensen 2010:  91–​ 100; cf. also Conrad and Biber 2000 on adverbials “indicating the degree of certainty or doubt concerning the proposition”, and González-​Álvarez 1996 on “epistemic disjuncts”). Semantically similar adverbs are found in many other languages. This holds for languages related to English, of course (cf. e.g. Mortensen 2010: 91–​100 on Danish; Bartsch 1976 on what she refers to as “K0” adverbs in German; Cinque 1999: 11–​12 on “modal adverbs” in French and Italian; and Nuyts’ work on Dutch adverbs; e.g. Nuyts 1993), but also for entirely unrelated languages (Boye 2012). Epistemic modal adverbs have been identified in such genetically and geographically diverse languages as Basque (Jendraschek 2003: 31–​58), Japanese (Aoki 1986: 234–​235), Lango (Nilo-​Saharan; Noonan 1992:  183–​184), Limbu (Sino-​Tibetan; van Driem 1987:  241–​244), Mapuche 3  Curnow (1997: 258) writes “type 3” rather than “type 4”, but this is a typo as is evident from Curnow (1997: 265–​266). 4  Epistemic modal adverbs are most often classified as lexical. For this reason, they are dealt with here as lexical. However, there are arguments to suggest that in some languages, at least, expressions described as adverbs are better regarded as grammatical (Boye and Harder 2009, 2012; see also the discussion of parentheticals).

122   Kasper Boye (Araucanian; see e.g. Smeets 1989: 94 on penú ‘maybe’), Rapanui (Austronesian; see Du Feu 1996: 175 on peaha ‘perhaps’ and koi’te ‘maybe’), and Tidore (West Papuan; van Staden 2000: 151–​156 and 230). These adverbs are all basically sentential or clausal (but see section 7.6.1). For instance, the Limbu adverbs li·ya ‘perhaps’ and laɁba ‘probably’ in (23) and (24) clearly relate to clauses, rather than to noun phrases. (23) Limbu (van Driem 1987: 244) Ya·Ɂl groan

li·ya. epmod

‘He’s perhaps groaning.’ (24) Limbu (van Driem 1987: 244) Ya·Ɂl groan

laɁba. epmod

‘He’s probably groaning.’ This is what could be expected: the relevant clauses are arguably all propositional, and epistemic modal adverbs—​like other epistemic modal expressions—​are concerned with evaluating propositions (see section 7.6.1 for further discussion of scope properties). As mentioned, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that all languages have lexical epistemic modal expressions at their disposal. For instance, all languages that have verbs as a distinct lexical category arguably have epistemic modal verbs. However, the literature on epistemic modality has to a large extent been focused on grammatical expressions.

7.2.2 Grammatical expressions Epistemic modal meanings are found in different types of grammatical expressions. For many languages, epistemic modal auxiliaries, clitics, or affixes have been identified. As is well known from English and related languages, modal auxiliaries may have epistemic meanings side by side with non-​epistemic ones. In (25), for instance, may is used with an epistemic modal meaning (expressing epistemic possibility), while in (26) it is used with a deontic modal meaning (expressing permission). (25) There may be some truth in that, but it sounded like a bit of the old fustian all the same. (BNC: ABS 179) (26) At the end of your training contract you may apply for admission as a solicitor. (BNC: HAJ 788) Auxiliaries which are exclusively epistemic modal are also found, however. Supyire (Niger-​Congo) has an auxiliary, kú, which seems to be used only with the meaning of ‘potential’. Another auxiliary, bú, is used to express ‘reduced level of certainty’ as well as

The expression of epistemic modality    123 ‘greater distance in the future’. In sentences describing situations that are not located in the distant future, bú can only be read with the former, epistemic modal, meaning, as illustrated in (27). (27) Supyire (Carlson 1994: 367)

ùmpanŋa

tomorrow

mìì cáà I   fut

bú epmod

shyá go

sà go

yyaha face

yige u take.out    her

na. on

‘Tomorrow I will perhaps go visit her (lit. bring out face on her).’ Examples of epistemic modal clitics are found in St’át’imcets (Salishan). The clitics belong to a wider group of second-​position clitics, which comprises also evidential clitics (van Eijk 1997: 199). In (28), an epistemic modal clitic tu7 ‘full knowledge, completive’, co-​occurs with a reportative evidential one, ku7. (28) St’át’imcets (Matthewson 1998: 162) Pel’p lost

ku7 evid

tu7 epmod

[ku det

sk’úk’wmi7t]. child

‘A child got lost (someone told me).’ Examples of epistemic modal affixes are found in Choctaw (Muskogean). The Choctaw epistemic modal suffixes belong to a wider set of “third-​position” suffixes, which Broadwell (2006: 184) refers to as “evidential”. Some of these, however, at least -​aamo ‘certainly’ and -​chi/​-​chichook ‘unsure’, are clearly epistemic modal. (29) Choctaw (Broadwell 2006: 184) Mashkooki’ Creek

yakni’ land

iya-​li-​k-​aamo. go-​1sg-​tns-​epmod

‘I went to Creek land.’ (30) Choctaw (Broadwell 2006: 186) Pam-​at Pam-​NOM

tamaaha’ town

iya-​tok-​chi. go-​pst-​epmod

‘I wonder if Pam went to town.’ Auxiliaries, clitics, and affixes are perhaps the most common grammatical means of coding epistemic modality. They are not the only means, however. Copulas, complex constructions, and complementizers may in some languages be classified as epistemic modal. As for epistemic modal copulas, they may be identified in several Sino-​Tibetan languages. Ladakhi provides an example. At least one of the copulas found in this language, yod, may be analyzed as epistemic modal: it “is used to express the meaning of ‘to be’ when the speaker talks about something on the basis of his definite knowledge”

124   Kasper Boye (Koshal 1979: 186; cf. Koshal 1979: 193–​194 on the use of yod in verbal constructions); “[…. ] if the speaker does not feel absolutely certain about the veracity of his knowledge, dug-​may be used [i.e. instead of yod]” (Koshal 1979: 187). (31) Ladakhi (Koshal 1979: 186) Khoŋ-​ŋə he

pe-​ne money

yot. EPMOD

‘He has money (based on definite knowledge).’ Another Sino-​Tibetan language, Qiang, provides examples of complex constructions with epistemic modal meaning. A construction involving the nominalizer -​m, a copula, and either a definite or an indefinite marker or -​tan ‘appearance’ is used to express epistemic possibility. In contrast, a construction involving only the nominalizer -​s and a copula is used to emphasize certainty (LaPolla 2003: 72). (32) Qiang (LaPolla 2003: 72) The: 3SG

tha-​z̦i-​m-​tan there-​exist-​NMLZ-​appearance

ŋuə. COP

‘S/​he might be there.’ (33) Qiang (LaPolla 2003: 72) The: 3SG

tha-​z̦i-​s there-​exist-​NMLZ

ŋuə. COP

‘S/​he is definitely there.’ In both (32) and (33), it seems impossible to identify one single morpheme as being responsible for the epistemic modal meanings. Hence, it is natural to analyze the whole constructions as associated with these meanings. Examples of epistemic modal complementizers are found in Jacaltec (Mayan). According to Craig (1977: 267), the complementizers chubil and tato in (34) and (35), respectively, differ in that the former indicates “a high degree of credibility or certainty” about the complement proposition, while the latter “introduces a notion of disbelief or reservation”. (34) Jacaltec (Craig 1977: 268) Xal said

naj CLF/​the

alcal alcalde

[chubil COMP

chuluj will.come

‘The alcalde said that the president is going to come.’

naj CLF/​the

presidente]. president

The expression of epistemic modality    125 (35) Jacaltec (Craig 1977: 268) Xal said

naj CLF/​he

[tato COMP

chuluj will.come

naj CLF/​the

presidente]. president

‘He said that the president is going to come.’ Complementizers like these have been largely ignored in the literature on epistemic modality. However, they may actually be quite widespread:  Boye et al. (2015) identify epistemic modal complementizers in 22 out of 89 genetically and geographically diverse languages. There are arguments to suggest that Germanic complementizers too may be fruitfully viewed as epistemic modal, although they have traditionally not been associated with epistemic modality (Boye 2008; Nordström 2010; cf. also Frajzyngier 1995 on modal complementizers). In particular, complementizers like Danish om, English if, German ob, and Dutch of can be analyzed as indicating uncertainty about the proposition in the complement clause they introduce. Thus, while in (36) the superordinate subject (‘he’) knows whether the complement proposition (‘she is at home’) is true, by means of the Dutch complementizer of the speaker presents herself or himself as uncertain about the proposition. (36) Dutch (Eva van Lier, p.c.) Hij he

weet know.PRS

[of COMP

ze she

thuis at.home

is]. be.PRS

‘He knows whether she is at home.’ In (37), similarly, by means of the Danish complementizer om the speaker presents herself or himself as uncertain about the proposition (‘he will leave’) expressed by the prepositional complement. (37)  Danish Hun she

går go.PRS

uanset regardless

[om COMP

han he

går]. go.PRS

‘She will leave regardless whether he will leave.’ We have seen that epistemic modal meanings may be coded in a variety of types of grammatical expressions. Epistemic modal meaning is probably not found with all types of grammatical expressions, however. It may be suspected, for instance, that nominal classifiers and articles cannot be used to express degrees of confidence in a proposition. As in the case of lexical expressions, grammatical epistemic modal expressions generally relate to clauses, or to the predicate core of clauses, rather than noun phrases. For instance, the Choctaw suffixes already discussed attach to (other suffixes attached to)

126   Kasper Boye verb bases. This reflects the fact that propositions, which epistemic modal expressions are used to evaluate, are typically expressed by clauses.

7.2.3 Zero coding It has often been claimed that assertions imply a high confidence in (i.e. certainty about) the proposition asserted (e.g. Lyons 1977: 808–​809; Givón 2001: vol. 2, 291; but see also Palmer 2001: 64–​65). This claim is supported by the fact that in English and related languages constructing a declarative sentence—​i.e. a marker of assertion—​with a marker of high confidence, e.g. certainly, may have an emphatic effect, and by the fact that markers of high confidence may devaluate, as in the case of the German adverb sicherlich and the Danish adverb sikkert, which used to indicate certainty, but now indicate probability. The claim does not entail that, in languages like English, declaratives are coded with an epistemic modal meaning. Nor does it entail that, in these languages, one can or must postulate zero morphs with an epistemic modal meaning. However, it provides a motivation for the zero coding of high confidence in languages for which zero coding can be postulated.5 Hidatsa (Siouan) is such a language. In Hidatsa, the epistemic modal marker c, which “indicates that the speaker believes the sentence to be true” (Matthews 1965: 100), has an optional zero allomorph conditioned by the presence of the past-​tense marker stao (Matthews 1965: 115; cf. Palmer 2001: 66–​67). Thus, in Hidatsa high confidence is optionally zero-​coded. A second claim has sometimes also been advanced, namely that polar questions imply a low confidence in (i.e. uncertainty about) the proposition questioned (e.g. Givón 2001: vol. 2, 291). This claim is supported by two facts, which mirror the facts which support the first claim. Firstly, in English and related languages constructing an interrogative sentence—​i.e. a marker of polar questions—​with a marker of low confidence, e.g. perhaps, may have an emphatic effect. Secondly, markers of low confidence often develop into polar question markers (Boye 2005a). This is the case, for instance, with the Danish adverb mon, which originated in a modal verb used for expressing epistemic possibility. In parallel to what was said about the first claim earlier, the second claim provides a motivation for zero coding of low confidence in languages for which such zero coding can be postulated. Hixkaryana (Carib) provides an example. In Hixkaryana, the “non-​past uncertainty” suffix is used to indicate low confidence (or polar question), but only in the absence of any overt epistemic modal or evidential marker. Thus, a zero marker indicating low confidence can arguably be postulated (cf. also Grimes 1964: 27, and Palmer 2001: 54, 58 on Huichol (Uto-​Aztecan)). In contrast, medium confidence (i.e. likelihood, probability) does not seem to be zero-​coded in any language (Boye 2012: 174–​179). 5  Zero

coding is understood here, in the sense of Croft (2003), simply as coding by the absence of overt expression. Zero coding thus does not entail existence of underlying forms deleted in surface structure.

The expression of epistemic modality    127

7.3  Epistemic modal systems By “system” I mean a distributionally delimited set of linguistic expressions. The term “system” is preferred over the term “paradigm” in order to stress (1) that it also covers sets of expressions that are not inflectional (the term “paradigm” is often associated with inflections), and (2) that it also covers sets of expressions that are not mutually exclusive (the term “paradigm” is often associated with mutual exclusiveness). In some languages, epistemic modal expressions make up notionally coherent systems. That is, in some languages, one finds systems in which all members may be described as epistemic modal, i.e. as expressing the degree of confidence in a proposition (Boye 2012). One illustration already mentioned is Jacaltec. This language has a system of complementizers with chubil and tato as its main members. As discussed in section 7.2.2, both these complementizers have epistemic modal meanings: the system displays a contrast between “a high degree of credibility or certainty” and “a notion of disbelief or reservation” (Craig 1977: 267). Other examples of epistemic modal systems are found in Bororo (Macro-​Ge), Tariana (Arawakan), and Limbu (Sino-​Tibetan). Bororo displays a choice in finite clauses between an epistemically neutral “recent” suffix (realized as Ø) and an “uncertainty” suffix -​rau (Crowell 1979:  86–​88). Tariana has an epistemic modal system in the future markers, which features a contrast between “definite” (or certain) and “indefinite” (or uncertain) future (Aikhenvald 2003a: 320–​321). Finally, Limbu has an epistemic system of clause-​final elements. As described by van Driem (1987: 243–​2 44), the system is defined by two features: (1) its members are “adverbs” (in contrast, other clause-​f inal elements are “particles”); (2) its members are clause-​f inal (in contrast, other clause-​modifying adverbs are not clause-​f inal). There are three members. One member, Ɂi·ya ‘perhaps’, “indicates possibility and is speculative and non-​committal”. The two other members, iɁre·Ɂe· and laɁba, both signal “suspected probability”, the former signalling “greater certainty on part of the speaker” than the latter. (38) and (39) illustrate the contrast between Ɂi·ya and laɁba. (38) Limbu (van Driem 1987: 244) Ya·Ɂl groan

li·ya. EPMOD

‘He’s perhaps groaning.’ (39) Limbu (van Driem 1987: 244) Ya·Ɂl groan

laɁba. EPMOD

‘He’s probably groaning.’

128   Kasper Boye If epistemic expressions had random distributions, the chances of finding epistemic systems like these in any of the world’s languages would be extremely small. Accordingly, the existence of such systems has theoretical implications. Above all, they stress the significance of epistemic modality as a descriptive category. On the other hand, it should be emphasized that many languages do not seem to have uniform epistemic modal systems. In some languages, epistemic modal expressions are found in systems which also cover expressions that do not have epistemic modal meaning. For instance, West Greenlandic (Eskimo-​Aleut) has a system of suffixes filling the same suffix slot, following tense suffixes, which comprises not only epistemic modal suffixes (e.g. -​junnarsi ‘probably’), but also suffixes which, in the relevant suffix slot, have or can have evidential meaning (-​sima ‘apparently’, -​gunar ‘it seems, probably’) (e.g. Fortescue 1984: 293–​294). Similarly, Cavineña (Tacanan) has a system of second-​ position particles (Guillaume 2008: 638), which in addition to an epistemic modal particle (indicating less than full certainty) features evidential particles, emphatic particles, and an emotive particle (‘pity’). In other languages, epistemic modality is scattered among a range of different expressions. To judge from Carlson (1994: 363–​369), this is the case in Supyire, where some epistemic modal meanings are expressed by adverbials, and others by serial-​verb, auxiliary, or copula constructions. Languages that do have uniform epistemic modal systems often display such scattering as well. In Tariana, for instance, the epistemic modal system of future markers previously mentioned is supplemented by a marker of uncertainty, complex predicate constructions expressing epistemic possibility, and a “clause-​like complex predicate” expressing epistemic possibility of future propositions (Aikhenvald 2003a: 387–​390, 449–​450, 457).

7.4  Combinations of epistemic modal expressions It is natural to assume that for any given epistemic evaluator there can be only one epistemic modal evaluation per proposition: you cannot be certain and in doubt about the same proposition at the same time. Of course, epistemic evaluation may undergo online revision, as in (40) where possibly is replaced by probably in the course of speaking. (40) What we’re looking for is a new policy initiative which will allow in appropriate circumstances inward investment of er er a significant strategic nature to be accommodated within North Yorkshire and that could possibly probably be Harrogate district. (BNC: KM7 421) However, cases like (40) do not really challenge the assumption: one epistemic evaluation is replaced by another one, not supplemented by another one. In accordance with

The expression of epistemic modality    129 the assumption, one might expect that propositions can be accompanied by only one epistemic expression at a time. In many languages, however, there is no such restriction (Boye 2012; cf. Boye 2010b: 302–​304 on evidentiality; cf. Hoye 1997 on the combinations of English modal verbs and modal adverbs). First, at least two distinct but semantically overlapping epistemic modal expressions may collaborate obligatorily in expressing a single epistemic modal meaning. For instance, in order to convey uncertainty about a non-​past situation in Hixkaryana, one may use a construction which requires both the epistemic modal marker na ‘uncertainty’ and a semantically compatible “nonpast uncertainty” suffix, as in (41a). (41b) illustrates that na cannot be combined with the ordinary non-​past suffix. (41) Hixkaryana (Derbyshire 1979: 144; no glosses provided) a. Nomokyan ha-​na. ‘Maybe he’ll come.’ b. *Nomokyaha ha-​na. Second, at least two distinct but semantically overlapping epistemic modal expressions may collaborate optionally in emphasizing a single epistemic modal meaning. This is arguably what happens in (42), where may and perhaps seem to occur in a “harmonic combination” (Lyons 1977:  807–​808; Coates 1983:  45–​46 and 137–​138; Palmer 1986: 63–​64, 2001: 35), emphasizing the meaning of epistemic possibility. (42) The following study of Owen may perhaps be regarded as only a partial success. (BNC: B06 448) Third, at least two epistemic modal expressions which accompany the same propositional expression may be combined so that one takes the other one in its semantic scope. This is the case in (43). (43) West Greenlandic (Boye 2012: 265–​266) Aalla-​ssa-​gunar-​qquuqi-​voq. travel-​FUT-​EPMOD-​EPMOD-​3SG.DECL ‘Probably he will presumably go.’ Both -​qquuqi ‘undoubtedly, must have’ and -​gunar ‘it seems, probably’ express degree of confidence in the proposition ‘he will go’, and clearly, the former suffix takes the latter in its semantic scope: the meaning of -​qquuqi, translated in (43) as ‘probably’, applies not only to the proposition itself, but also to the epistemic modal evaluation expressed by -​gunar. It seems that in cases where epistemic modal expressions scope semantically over other epistemic modal expressions, only the expression which has the widest scope can be used performatively in the sense of this term discussed in Chapter 3.

130   Kasper Boye

7.5  Ordering of grammatical epistemic modal expressions relative to other grammatical expressions Consider (44) and (45). (44) Kamula (Trans-​New Guinea; Routamaa 1994: 29) Dusupi Dusupi

teyu-​lo-​la. fall-​FUT-​EPMOD

‘Dusupi might fall.’ (45) Sudest (Austronesian; Anderson and Ross 2002: 335) Mbwata EPMOD

ne FUT

i-​mena. 3SG-​come

‘He might come’/​‘Perhaps he’ll come.’ In (44), the epistemic modal marker -​la follows the future marker -​lo, whereas in (45), the epistemic modal marker mbwata precedes the future marker ne. In both examples, however, the epistemic modal marker occurs further away than the future marker from a common semantic and morphosyntactic core: in (44), the core is teyo ‘fall’; in (45), it is mena ‘come’. In what follows, I will say of an expression X that it occurs “outside” another expression Y, and correspondingly I  will say of Y that it occurs “inside” X, if X occurs further away than Y from a common semantic and morphosyntactic core. A number of scholars have compared orderings like these (e.g. Foley and Van Valin 1984: 208–​224; Bybee 1985a: 33–​35, 196–​200; Hengeveld 1989; Van Valin and LaPolla 1997: 40–​52; Cinque 1999; Julien 2002; Nordström 2010). While points of disagreement certainly exist, all studies suggest that the ordering of grammatical expressions is governed by quite strong cross-​linguistic tendencies, and they roughly point at the same tendencies. In sections 7.5.1–​7.5.2, I  first discuss these tendencies as far as they concern epistemic modal expressions. Subsequently, in section 7.5.3, I turn to the relative ordering of epistemic modal expressions and evidential expressions. See also Chapters 20 and 21 for detailed treatments of ordering issues from the point of view of specific theoretical approaches. Beforehand, it should be emphasized that the claims that are made apply only (1) to the relative ordering of grammatical expressions and of adverbs, (2) to the ordering of expressions of the same type (for instance, the discussion includes the relative ordering of tense and epistemic modal suffixes, but unlike some of the literature, it excludes

The expression of epistemic modality    131 the relative ordering of tense suffixes and epistemic modal auxiliaries), and (3) to the ordering of expressions the positions of which can be defined relative to the same semantic and morphosyntactic core (also this restriction is sometimes ignored in the literature). The reader is referred to Boye (2012) for a discussion of the basis of these restrictions.

7.5.1 Epistemic modal expressions tend to appear inside co-​occurring illocutionary expressions The term “illocutionary expression” is understood here as equivalent to Searle’s (1969) term “illocutionary-​force indicating device”. It covers expressions of meanings like “polar question”, “assertion”, and “command”, i.e. expressions that indicate the type of (direct) illocutionary speech act. Illocutionary meanings and epistemic modal meanings may be conveyed by different types of grammatical expressions, and they may be covered by the same expression. For languages which code illocutionary and epistemic modal meanings in distinct grammatical expressions of the same type, however, there is a cross-​linguistic tendency for epistemic modal expressions to appear inside co-​occurring illocutionary expressions. The typical ordering is illustrated in (46) and (47), from Japanese, with the epistemic modal markers ka ‘doubt, wonder’ and yooda ‘belief ’ and the illocutionary markers ne ‘question’ and yo ‘assertion’. (46)   Japanese (Shinzato 2007: 174) Shibai play

ga SBJ

hajimaru start

ka EPMOD

ne. Q

‘(I wonder, therefore I ask) is the play starting?’ (47)  Japanese (Shinzato 2007: 175) Nee INTJEC

doomo Yukiko somehow Yukiko

ga henji SBJ   reply

wo OBJ

dasa-​nakat-​ta send-​NEG-​PST

yooda     yo. EPMOD DECL ‘It seems that Yukiko didn’t send a reply, (I tell you).’ The tendency has been documented in particular by Cinque (1999: 76, 106), but also e.g. Hengeveld (1989: 141–​142), Van Valin and LaPolla (1997: 46), and Hengeveld and Mackenzie (2008: 32) point towards it. It should be noted, though, that epistemic modal expressions do not readily co-​occur with all semantic types of illocutionary expressions (see section 7.6).

132   Kasper Boye

7.5.2 Epistemic modal expressions tend to appear outside co-​occurring temporal, aspectual, and root modal expressions Similarly, in languages which code temporal and epistemic modal meanings in distinct grammatical expressions of the same type, there is a cross-​linguistic tendency for epistemic modal expressions to appear outside co-​occurring tense expressions. Both (44) and (45), discussed earlier, exemplify the typical ordering. Another example is (48), which involves the epistemic modal marker -​chi/​-​chichook ‘unsure’ and the past-​tense marker -​tok. (48) Choctaw (Broadwell 2006: 186) Pam-​at Pam-​NOM

tamaaha’ town

iya-​tok-​chi. go-​PST-​EPMOD

‘I wonder if Pam went to town.’ The tendency has been documented by Cinque (1999) and, in particular, Nordström (2010) (but see also Bybee 1985a:  196–​200 on the typical ordering of “mood”, which among other things covers epistemic modal markers and tense). In a survey of around 1100 languages, Nordström found 66 languages which have “markers of propositional modality” appearing outside tense markers, and only 8 languages exhibiting the reverse ordering. Not all Nordström’s “markers of propositional modality” are epistemic modal, however, in the strict sense which is relevant here (Boye 2012). There also seems to be a tendency for both tense and epistemic modal expressions to appear outside co-​occurring aspect and root modal expressions. Particularly nice examples of this are found in West Greenlandic. West Greenlandic features the following ordering of suffix slots (“extender” covers root modal suffixes, i.e. Fortescue’s 1980: 275 “Potentiality” suffixes; “modifier” covers aspect, manner, and degree suffixes, cf. Fortescue 1980 and 1984: 313–​314; “epistemic” covers both epistemic modal suffixes and evidential ones; “colorator” covers suffixes that express a “subjective coloration”; “  ‘must’ While the basic neuter patient prefix on verbs is io-​, as above, the neuter prefix on nouns is o-​. The initial glide i-​(IPA [j]‌) is dropped from morphological verbs strongly lexicalized as referring expressions. It is also dropped in some uses of the above form as a qualifier.  (44)  Ka’k some

nón:we where

tsi at

niioháhes path.is.long

orihwentà:’on finished.matter

tenshonteristawèn:rate’. they.will.go.over.steel

‘Somewhere along the way they had to cross over some railroad tracks.’ Though earlier records of Mohawk are sparse, we are fortunate to have a manuscript dictionary (425 pages of fine handwritten script) of Mohawk from 1826, compiled by the Jesuit missionary Josèph Marcoux. Marcoux spent most of his career at Kahnawà:ke, where the longer form is now unknown. But in 1826 Marcoux listed only the long form. (The symbol 8 was used for [w]‌.) (45) Marcoux (1826: 59) ‘Certain’: Iori8entāhon. In his 1828 manuscript grammar, he provided an example of its use, cited in (46a) and rendered in modern spelling and analysis in (46b). (46) Marcoux (1828: 108) a. Iori8wentāhon, iaken, ensesahtenti. ‘Il veut absolument que tu t’en retournes.’ b. Iorihwentà:’on io-​rihw-​ent-​a’-​on n-​matter-​finished-​inch-​st

iaken’ iak-​en-​’ indf.agt-​say-​st

ensehsahtén:ti’. en-​se-​hs-​ahtenti-​’ fut-​rep-​2sg.agt-​leave-​pfv ‘They say you must return.’ (lit. ‘It is a finished matter—​one says you will go back.’)

242   Marianne Mithun With frequent use, an erstwhile qualifying matrix verb has become reduced segmentally. Word stress in Mohawk is penultimate (apart from certain epenthetic vowels). Here the last three syllables including the long, stressed one, remain: iorihwentà:’on > entà:’on. In most dialects, this longer form no longer has a modal meaning; only the reduced form entà:’on is used this way. Even in Kahnawà:ke, where Marcoux spent the most time, the longer form iorihwentà:’on now has only a more literal meaning: ‘it is completely demolished’.

11.5.3 Still further development: Prosody, substance, inflection, and position Erstwhile matrix predicates conveying modal distinctions may develop still further with use. When they are understood primarily as qualifiers, they may break away from their original matrix position. Such a development can be illustrated with a construction based on the root -​ehr-​ ‘think, believe’. Verbs based on this root frequently serve as matrix predicates in complement constructions. The sentence in (47) was from a conversation about a garden.  (47) Tanon’ and

í:kehre’ I.think

ienakarótha’ one.pole.stands.it

thó there

rotiiénthon. they.have.planted

‘And I think they’ve planted pole beans.’ Prosodically this construction shows the expected pattern of a single sentence, with a pitch reset on the matrix verb í:kehre’ ‘I think’, then a continuous descent from one stressed syllable to the next through the end of the second clause (Figure 11.5).

Pitch (Hz)

300 200 150 100

Tanon’ í:kéhre’ And I think

70 0

ienakarótha’ thó rotiiénthon. they’ve planted pole beans. Time (s)

1.498

Figure 11.5  Single prosodic sentence: ‘I think they’ve planted pole beans.’

Modality and mood in Iroquoian    243 The same matrix verb í:kehre’ ‘I think’ appears in (48).  (48) Kwáh really orhon’kéhstsi early.morning

í:kehre’ I.think

ohrhon’kè:ne in.the.morning

í:kehre’ I.think

niiawèn:’en. it.happened

ónhte’ perhaps

‘I believe it must be in the morning, early morning I think it happened.’ But here the prosodic structure is different. The matrix is lower in pitch than its complement (Figure 11.6).

Pitch (Hz)

300 200 150

Kwáh í:kehre’

ohrhon’kè:ne ónhte’

orhon’kéhstsi í:kehre’ niiawèn:’en.

I think

it must be morning

early morning I think it happened.

100 0

2.943

Time (s)

Figure 11.6  Prosodically reduced í:kehre’: ‘I think it must be morning.’

Again the prosody reflects information structure within the context of the discourse rather than syntactic status. The important information at this point was the substance of the thought, not the act of thinking. The initial kwah í:kehre’ served as a qualifier of the following clause, not the main point of the utterance. Interaction provides additional evidence for the status of the information. The qualifying function of í:kehre’ ‘I think’ can be seen in remarks following the suggestion about the garden in (47).  (49) A: Tanon’ and

í:kehre’ I.think

ienakarótha’ one.pole.stands.it

thó there

‘And I think they’ve planted pole beans.’ B: Én:. yes

rotiiénthon they.have.planted

kwah quite

í:ken. it.is

‘Yes, in fact they have.’ C: Hen, yes

tkanakarotónnion’. they.are.pole.standing.there.variously

‘Yes, there are poles standing along there.’

rotiiénthon. they.have.planted

244   Marianne Mithun A: Hen, yes

tówa’ maybe

iawèn:ré’ teens

nikanaká:rake so.poles.number

kà:niote’. pole.standing

‘Yes, there are umpteen poles there.’ After speaker A’s remark “I think they’ve planted pole beans”, others registered their agreement, but with the complement “they’ve planted pole beans”, not with the apparent matrix verb í:kehre’ ‘I think’. There is further evidence of the grammatical development of this erstwhile matrix verb. It is no longer necessarily tied to its original initial syntactic position in the sentence. In (50) it appears in the middle of the temporal adverbial phrase ‘once a month’, spoken with very low pitch (Figure 11.7).  (50) Enhatikhwà:ren they.will.meal.set.out

énska one

í:kehre’ I.think

enwenhnì:ta’. it.will.be.a.moon

‘They would put on a feast, about once a month.’

Pitch (Hz)

200 150 100 70 50 30

Enhatikhwà:ren They’d put on a feed 0

énska

í:kehré’

[ en ] enwenhnì:ta’ [ en ] .

one

I think

it will be a moon.

Time (s)

2.096

Figure 11.7  Prosodically integrated and reduced í:kehre’ ‘I think’

The same freedom of position can be seen in (48) above (“I believe it was early morning when I think it happened”); í:kehre’ ‘I think’ occurred not only in matrix position but also inside of the complement clause. Í:kehre’ has continued to evolve. It is often reduced to khere’ or even khe, as seen earlier in (27d) (“it might be good if I took them all to the doctor”). When asked about these shortened forms, speakers feel there is no pronominal element in either, though the etymological pronominal prefix k-​‘I’ is actually still present. They simply translate the forms khere’ and khe as ‘maybe’ or ‘might’. The shorter forms now often appear as elements of a cluster khere’ kati’ ken or khe kati’ ken, literally ‘think in.fact. Q’, but they are viewed by speakers as a single unit.

Modality and mood in Iroquoian    245  (51) Khere’kati’kén guess

tóka’ maybe

sahontenhní:non’. they.resold.it

‘Guess maybe they sold it again.’ This cluster is even sometimes reduced further to khé:ken ‘guess maybe’.

11.6  Fuzzy boundaries: Processes of semantic development As noted earlier, it has been observed that both the external boundaries delimiting the domain of modality and the internal boundaries between categories within it are fuzzy. Probably the most important reason for the fuzziness is the fact that the markers involved are constantly evolving both formally, as seen in the previous section, and functionally, as will be seen in this one. Often a marker begins with a specific modal function, then is extended to additional functions. Markers at the earlier stage could be taken as support for models that distinguish smaller categories, while those at later stages could be taken as support for models with larger, more general categories. It has been observed that modal auxiliaries show certain recurring patterns of semantic development. In Chapter 3 (pp. 42–​43) it is stated that … there exists a significant cross-​linguistic trend for languages to have a category of grammatical expression forms, usually called the “modal” auxiliaries, which expresses the set of meanings introduced in section 11.3 [in Chapter 3]. The significance of this observation is further increased by the fact that there also turns out to exist a cross-​linguistically applicable systematic developmental relationship between these meanings in these forms: they evolve along a quite fixed path from dynamic to deontic and to epistemic. This path applies in diachrony ( … —​see Chapter 16) and it also applies in ontogenesis ( … —​see Chapter 18).

Though the Iroquoian languages do not contain formally identifiable sets of modal auxiliaries, they show similar pathways of development. Three of these pathways are illustrated in the following sections.

11.6.1 Dynamic > deontic necessity: entà:’on ‘must’ As pointed out by Palmer (1979:  91), cited in Chapter  3, dynamic modality should include not only ability but also need or necessity of the primary participant. Coates (1983) unites such dynamic and deontic uses of English must in her category of root modals. Mohawk shows both uses of its counterpart entà:’on ‘must’. It is easy to imagine how such a development could take place on the basis of the use of the construction in

246   Marianne Mithun the modern language. The sentence below was uttered by a speaker who had been asked a question.  (52) Entà:’on must

enkanonhtonnión:ko’. I.will.think.about.it

‘I have to think about it.’ This could be interpreted as a personal, agent-​internal need, of the type described by Palmer. But it is not always easy to determine the extent to which a need is personal. The ‘you’ in (53) referred to all Mohawk speakers, including this speaker herself and her listeners.  (53) Entà:’on’ must tóka’ if

enhserihwa'sátsteke’ you.will.be.matter.strong

tesatahontsó:ni you.want

Ne aóskon the.pure

onkwehnéha’ real.person

tasewahthá:ren’. you.would.speak

‘You have to be determined if you want to speak pure Mohawk.’ In (54) the need was even less personal, closer to situational necessity. A village had been bothered by a pack of wild dogs.  (54) a. [...]

entà:’on must

ok something

nenkaié:ren’. it.will.be.done

‘[The chief called a big town meeting and announced that] something had to be done.’ b. [...]

akwé:kon all

ki’ in.fact

entà:’on must

enkonwanahshéhton’. one.will.kill.them

‘[There were too many dogs roaming around. The men met and decided that] all had to be killed.’ The marker entà:’on is also used in modern Mohawk as a straightforward indication of obligation, deontic necessity, as seen in (35) above (“if anyone utters a word of English, she has to pay”). The speaker had just explained that her friends dedicated to the preservation of the Mohawk language had laid down some ground rules for their gatherings. As seen earlier, the particle entà:’on originated in a full verb iorihwentà:’on ‘it is a finished matter’. Other Iroquoian languages contain cognates of the individual morphemes but not of the verb as a whole in any modal function, so it is not possible to reconstruct the pathway of semantic development by comparisons across the family. The philological record of Mohawk also provides no direct evidence of the pathway. Circumstantial evidence, however, points in the direction of an extension from dynamic to deontic uses.

Modality and mood in Iroquoian    247 In his 1826 manuscript dictionary of Mohawk, Marcoux cites a different construction for deontic necessity: ioterihwíson, based on a different verb root -​is ‘finish, complete’ (io-​neuter patient, -​ate-​ middle, -​rihw-​ ‘matter’, -​is ‘finish’, -on stative). (55) Marcoux (1826: 124; English translations added) ‘Devoir’: Marquant obligation. Il se tourne par ‘il faut que’: Ioteri8īson. [‘It is necessary.’] ‘Je dois partir’: Ioteri8īson enkahtēnti. [‘I should leave.’] ‘Vous devez obéir à vos parens’: Ioteri8īson enietsi8ennarākwăke ietsiiēnha. [‘You should obey your parents.’] ‘Il est de ton devoir d’aller à l’église’: Ioteri8īson nasaterennaiennēseke. [‘It is your duty to go to church.’] The development seen here, an extension from dynamic to deontic necessity, results in a general category supporting models like those proposed by Hofmann (1976), Coates (1983), and van der Auwera and Plungian (1998).

11.6.2 Agent-​internal dynamic > deontic > epistemic possibility and permission A second construction shows a fascinating trajectory, which can be reconstructed through comparison of related languages. It provides a clear example of a development from a concrete action verb to a marker of agent-​internal dynamic possibility, then deontic possibility, and finally epistemic possibility, as well as, in some of the languages, permission. All of the Five Nations languages contain cognate verb roots of the form -​kweni. (Tuscarora shares this root as well, but it can be seen to have been borrowed from one of the Five Nations languages.)4 In transitive verbs, the root has the meaning ‘beat’ (at something, such as a fight or game), as in the Mohawk example in (56a). With a middle voice prefix, it means ‘win’, as in the Mohawk example in (56b).  (56) a. Wa’akhikwé:ni’. wa’-​akhi-​kweni-​’ fact-​1pl/​3pl-​beat-​pfv ‘We beat them.’ 4  Tuscarora has undergone several sound shifts which permit us to distinguish cognates from loans: *t > ʔn /​_​_​V, and *n > t except before a nasalized vowel. If the Tuscarora root “be certain, definite” were native, it would have the shape *-​nukęʔ. If the Tuscarora root “win” were native, it would have the shape *-kweti.

248   Marianne Mithun b. Wa’kwatkwé:ni’. wa’-​kw-​at-​kweni-​’ fact-​1pl.agt-​mid-​beat-​pfv ‘We won.’ Also in all of the Northern Iroquoian languages, intransitive verbs based on this root mean ‘be able to do, manage’. They can serve as the only predicate of a sentence. One Mohawk woman, asked whether she still played golf, replied that she was too old to play. The response in (57) indicates basic ability.  (57) Iáh not

nì:’ myself

thaonsakkwé:ni’ am.I.still.able

ó:nen. now

‘Me, I’m no longer able now.’ Such verbs occur more often as the matrix of complement constructions expressing agent-​ internal dynamic ability. One man recorded a song and gave it to a friend. The friend listened to it, and the next time they met, he could sing it. Example (58) shows inherent possibility.  (58) Ó:nen then

wahakwé:ni’ he.was.able

raónha himself

taharì:wahkwek. he.would.pick.up.the.word

‘Then he could sing it himself.’ In Mohawk these are the only uses of this root in verbs meaning ‘beat’ or ‘win’, and to indicate participant-​inherent dynamic possibility. In the Wisconsin dialect of Oneida, as well as in Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora, intransitive verbs based on this root are used not only for participant-​ inherent dynamic possibility, but also for participant-​external dynamic possibility. In these uses the pronominal prefix is neuter ka-​or o-​, referring to the event. (59) Oneida (Clifford Abbott, p.c.) Ne kanyó when tsi’ where

akakwe:ní: it.can.be

akwe:kú all

kwah just

tsyok nu everywhere

ʌhunatawʌli they.will.travel

kanatayʌtú:se [...]. villages.are

‘When it is possible for everyone all over to travel about by the villages, [then there will be peace and they will be happy.]’ (60) Onondaga (Woodbury 1992: line 484.1) Nayé’ so.then

né’tho here

nú̜   :we place

áhsu̜ again

ękákwé:nya’ it.will.be.possible

‘This is where it will again be possible for them to be happy.’

ęyakotú̜ nhahǽ:k. one.will.be.happy

Modality and mood in Iroquoian    249 (61) Cayuga (Foster 1974: line 302.91) [...]

okwé:nyo̜ n it.is.possible

Né: ne that

hęyo̜ thyé̜ thwahso̜ ęy. one.will.draw.on.them

‘[He made medicines.] For that reason it will be possible for people to draw on them.’ (62) Seneca (Wallace Chafe, p.c.) [...]

Okwe:nyo̜ n it.is.possible

tsi’té̜   :’o̜ h bird

ęshékwano̜ :n. you.will.feed.them

‘[After winnowing, you have chaff left over.] You can feed the birds.’ (63) Tuscarora (Elton Greene [speaker], p.c.) [...]

A:kakwè:ni’ it.would.be.possible

kyè:ní:kę: this

a:kayéhya’k. they.would.cross

‘[When they got to the creek, they saw a grapevine hanging there.] They would be able to cross.’ Mohawk speakers agree that the cognate form a:kakwé:ni’ is never used this way for participant-​external possibility. In Seneca and Tuscarora, verbs based on the root *-​kweni are also used when enabling conditions are social. (64) Seneca (Wallace Chafe, p.c.) Okwe:nyo̜ n it.is.possible

næ:h contrastive

so̜ :ka:’ someone

é̜ ó̜    hno̜  hso̜ :ni’ he.will.house.build

ne’hoh, [...]. there ‘Somebody can build himself a house there [because the land belongs to the Seneca Nation].’ They can be used for asking permission. (65) Seneca (Wallace Chafe, p.c.) Okwe:nyo̜    nyo it.is.possible

ękátha’to̜ :’? I.will.borrow.it

‘May I borrow it?’ The Tuscarora were granted permission by treaty to sell their beadwork at a park in perpetuity.

250   Marianne Mithun (66) Tuscarora (Elton Greene [speaker], p.c.) E̜ kakwè:ni’ it.will.be.possible

ękayętęhnì:né̜ hek, they.will.keep.selling

kyè:ní:kę: this

ha’ the

tà:wé̜ :te things

kayakyetì:yahs. they.make ‘They could sell what they make.’ There are also examples in Cayuga and Seneca of uses of verbs based on the root -​kweni, which could be seen as epistemic possibility. (67) Cayuga (Reginald Henry [speaker], p.c.) [...]

E̜ ka:kwení’ it.will.be.possible

k’ishé̜ h perhaps

ne:’ it.is

to:ké̜ hs in.fact

ne:’ it.is

kwe:ko̜ all

hęyotiyenaha:k. it.will.catch.them ‘[I might set out ten traps. I might catch just six or seven rabbits.] They might perhaps in fact all catch one.’ (68) Seneca (Wallace Chafe, p.c.) É̜ :h yes

okwe:nyo̜ kwe it.is.possible

næ:h contrastive

o:nęh. now

‘Yes, it could be now.’ Seneca shows an additional development. The Seneca stative verb okwe:nyo̜:h ‘it is possible’, with neuter patient prefix o-​, is now also often used to indicate participant-​internal dynamic possibility, inherent capacity, with no variation in pronominal prefix, tense, or aspect. Example (69) illustrates its use for future, (70) for irrealis, and (71) for factual. Furthermore, the word is not necessarily confined to the matrix position, as shown in (71). (69) Seneca (Myrtle Peterson [speaker], p.c.) Okwe:nyo̜ :h it.is.possible

næ:’ just

kwah really

e:yæno̜ ́ tkę:ni’. I.will.beat.him

‘I really can beat him.’ (70) Seneca (Wallace Chafe, p.c.) Okwe:nyo̜ :h it.is.possible

næ:h contrastive

‘I could beat them.’

á:keyánotke̜ :ni’. I.would.beat.them

Modality and mood in Iroquoian    251 (71) Seneca (Wallace Chafe, p.c.) Ta:h so

tha’ké̜ :’o̜ h finally

o’ka:je̜ :’ I.stood

okwe:nyöh. it.is.possible

‘So finally I could stand.’ (The speaker had been ill.) The erstwhile Seneca verb is losing its syntactic status as a matrix clause. The distribution of forms across the languages suggests a pathway of semantic development. Since all of the Five Nations languages contain cognate roots meaning ‘beat’, and we know that lexical items with concrete meanings tend to develop into grammatical markers with more abstract functions, the original meaning of *-​kweni was most likely ‘beat’. Because the only other use shared by all of the languages is marking participant-​internal ability, this appears to be the first grammatical development. The extension of the marker to participant-​external possibility appears only in Tuscarora, Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, and the westernmost dialect of Oneida. The use for specifically social conditions occurs only in Tuscarora, Seneca, and Cayuga so far as is known. The extension to permission appears only in Tuscarora and Seneca. An incipient extension to epistemic possibility appears only in Seneca and Cayuga, as can be seen in figure 11.8. This distribution suggests the trajectory shown in Figure 11.9. Contact may have played a role in these developments, though that would not necessarily change the picture. After their move north, the Tuscarora were in close contact with the Five Nations communities, and there was intermarriage. The Tuscarora verb root -​kweni-​ ‘beat’ was copied from one of those languages. In the late eighteenth century, the Onondaga and Cayuga sought refuge with the Seneca in western New  York, having sided with the British during the American Revolution. Many Onondagas, Cayugas, and Mohawks then settled together at the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, where their descendants live now. We know of other contact effects from these periods. Tuscarora

Seneca

Cayuga

Onondaga

Oneida

Mohawk

(x)

x

x

x

x

x

dynamic: participant-internal

x

x

x

x

x

x

dynamic: participant-external

x

x

x

x

deontic: permission

x

x

‘beat’

epistemic possibility

x

x

Figure 11.8  Functions of -​kweni-​ verbs ‘beat’ > agent-internal dynamic possibility > dynamic possibility > permission > epistemic possibility

Figure 11.9  Development of *-​kweni

252   Marianne Mithun The scenario sketched in Figure 11.9 shows the full pathway of development observed for Germanic modal auxiliaries. Possible mechanisms behind each development are easy to imagine. Participant-​internal and participant-​external enabling conditions frequently coexist; it would be easy for listeners to reinterpret the basis for a speaker’s choice. Participant-​external conditions can include social conditions, among which can be permission. Finally, if something can happen (dynamic possibility) it might happen (epistemic possibility). The semantic development of *-​kweni is actually not unlike that of Latin *potere ‘be able’, cited by Bybee et al. (1994: 190), which developed into French pouvoir and Spanish poder, both meaning ‘can’ as auxiliaries, but ‘power’ as nouns. The original meaning of Iroquoian *-​kweni ‘beat’ might be compared to ‘overpower’.

11.6.3 Participant-​external possibility > permission, polite requests, epistemic possibility The Northern Iroquoian languages show a third development that parallels shifts undergone by modal auxiliaries in Germanic languages, from dynamic to deontic to epistemic possibility. It also provides an explanation for the formal marking of distinctions within individual languages which support models that combine participant-​external dynamic possibility with deontic possibility. All of the Northern Iroquoian languages contain cognate reflexes of the root *-​atǫ with the meaning ‘become’. Verbs based on this root contain a pronominal prefix identifying the person or entity that undergoes the change, like -​hon-​ ‘they’ in the Mohawk ­example below.  (72) Ià:ia’k six

nihononhwén:tsake’ so.they.nations.number

wahón:ton. they.became

‘They became the League of Six Nations.’ This is the only meaning of the Tuscarora cognate -​a’nę, indicating that this form, with this meaning, can be reconstructed for Proto-​Northern-​Iroquoian. Reflexes of this root are also used with neuter pronominal prefixes in Mohawk, Oneida, and Onondaga to signal participant-​external dynamic possibility. A Mohawk example is in (32) above (“the water was so good that you could drink it”). Another example is below.  (73)

[...]

ón:ton’ it.was.possible

naiakwathe’serón:ni’. we.would.make.flour

‘[After we got a corn grinder], we could make flour.’

Modality and mood in Iroquoian    253 An Oneida example is in (74). A hunter shot a deer, but the deer ran off. He followed her tracks hoping to have a chance to shoot again. The enabling condition here was opportunity. (74) Oneida (Hinton n.d.: 31)  Wá:lelhe’ he.thought

atsyok after

ᴧwá:tu it.will.be.possible

kwi awhile

ᴧshalú:tate’. he.will.shoot.it.again

‘He thought that after awhile he would be able to shoot it again.’ An Onondaga example is in (75). (75) Onondaga (Woodbury 1992: 39)  Ónę now

ęwá:tu̜  ʔ it.will.be.possible

óhniʔ also

ęyakoyaʔtayeísék. they.will.assemble

‘Now, also they will be able to assemble in meetings [once there is peace].’ The conditions may be social, as in the Mohawk example in (76) , cited earlier as (36).  (76) Iáh not

ki: this

teiotòn:’on was.it.possible

aontaiakoiakèn:’en for.her.to.come.out

kí:ken, [...]. this.one

‘She couldn’t come out [because she had a visitor].’ In the same three languages, the same construction is used for deontic possibility, that is, permission. A Mohawk example was seen earlier in (22) and (37) (“may I have a cup of coffee?”). Oneida and Onondaga examples of permission are in (77) and (78). (77) Oneida (Michelson ed. 1979: 20)  ᴧwa:tú: it.will.be.possible

kwi well

ᴧhsatnutolya’tá:na’ you.will.go.play

kᴧ little

‘You can go out and play for awhile.’ (78) Onondaga Woodbury (2003: 171)  E̜wá:tu̜ʔ it.will.be.possible ‘Can I go outside?’

khę Q

asté outside

nhękéʔ? there.I.will.go

nahe:hya. awhile

254   Marianne Mithun The same Mohawk construction is also used in polite requests, as in (79).  (79) Enwá:ton’ it.will.be.possible

kati’ then

ken q

ní:se’ too.you

ahsatatenà:ton’. you.would.name.yourself

‘Would you also please give your name?’ As seen in the previous section, participant-​external possibility and permission are usually expressed in verbs built on the root *-​kweni in the western languages. There is some indication, however, that verbs built on *atǫ once served modality functions in the western languages. On rare occasions, forms based on this root still occur. (80) Cayuga (Reginald Henry [speaker], p.c.) A:wa:tó̜ ’ it.would.be.possible

t’ikę perhaps

ne’ the

kaya’thá’ movies

aekyatkę’seha’? you.and.I.would.go.see

‘Would it be possible for us to go to the movies?’ = ‘Would you like to go to the movies?’ (81) Seneca (Wallace Chafe, p.c.) Ki:h or

ęwo̜ :to̜ ’ it.will.be.possible

ya:e’ first

ęhsáję’kwáho̜ :tę’? you.will.put.tobacco.in.your.mouth

‘Or would you rather first put tobacco in your mouth?’ Seneca shows an epistemic use of the root. (82) Seneca (Wallace Chafe, p.c.) O:nęh now

kę:s customarily

ęwo̜ :to̜ ’ it.will.be.possible

neh the

ętso̜ :to̜ ’. she.will.become.again

‘Then she might recover.’ Both Cayuga and Seneca contain a negative particle t’á:o̜/​ta’á:o̜ h ‘couldn’t, impossible.’ (83) Cayuga (Reginald Henry [speaker], p.c.) Thé̜ ’ not

ni’ myself

t’á:o̜ impossible

a:yo̜ khní:nya:k. we.two.would.marry ‘I can’t find anyone to marry.’

a:ketshé̜ :i’ would.I.find

so̜ ká:’a someone

Modality and mood in Iroquoian    255 (84) Seneca (Myrtle Peterson [speaker], p.c.) Akekwé:nyo̜ : I.am.able

ni:’ myself

tęké̜ I.will.run

ta’á:o̜ impossible

a:khæt. he.would.catch

‘I can run so that he can’t catch me.’ These particles meaning “impossible” appear to be cognate with the Mohawk thaón:ton, as in (85), Oneida thautú:, and Onondaga tha:wá:tu̜ʔ ‘it would not be possible’, used in exactly the same contexts.5 (85) Iah ki’ tháon:ton not in.fact is.it.possible

ne the

akwé:kon all

óksa'k immediately

ahsherihónnien’. you.would.teach.them ‘You can’t teach them everything right away.’ Since the only meaning of reflexes of *-​atǫ common to all of the languages is “become”, this appears to be its original function. This is the most concrete of the modern meanings, and it is represented in all branches of Northern Iroquoian, and the only meaning found in the most distantly-​related Tuscarora. This meaning is not an unprecedented starting point for the development of a marker of modality. Bybee et al. (1994: 188) note that in Lahu (Tibeto-​Burman), a verb meaning “be, become” is the source of a modal auxiliary expressing root possibility and permission. It appears that in the Five Nations languages, *-atǫ first developed into a participant-​external dynamic modality marker. This meaning persists in the negative particles in Cayuga and Seneca. The participant-​external conditions ultimately included social conditions and permission, a kind of social enabling condition. In some of the languages, the fact that something can happen was interpreted to mean that it might, epistemic possibility. We thus have another trajectory much like those observed for Germanic modals, all with the root *-​atǫ (as shown in Figure 11.10). Another development intervened, however, complicating the pattern of distribution. The function of verbs based on the root *-kweni ‘be able’ began expanding from indicating a participant-​internal dynamic possibility to a participant-​external dynamic possibility as well, in competition with *-​atǫ. The two forms are still in competition in Onondaga, but *-kweni has largely replaced *-​atǫ in Cayuga and Seneca, leaving only a few relics. 5 The

Mohawk, Oneida, and Onondaga cognates are well-​formed negative verbs (*th-​aa-​w-​ato̜ contrastive-​irrealis-​neuter-​be.possible), with the (surprising but regular) sound change *awa > o̜. The Cayuga and Seneca particles are exactly the expected reflexes for the beginning of the word. Where Mohawk, Oneida, and Onondaga use the contrastive prefix th-​for negation before the irrealis, Cayuga and Seneca regularly use the negative prefix te’-​. Cayuga shows regular laryngeal spreading in that first syllable, and Seneca shows vowel harmony. The only idiosyncratic development in Cayuga and Seneca is loss of the final syllable -​to̜.

256   Marianne Mithun ∗-ato ‘become’ > participant-internal dynamic possibility > participant-external dynamic possibility > permission > epistemic possibility

Figure 11.10  Development of *-​atǫ ‘become’

11.7 Conclusion Though most current models of modality were developed on the basis of Germanic languages with paradigms of modal auxiliaries, surprisingly similar semantic categories can be found in languages that are quite different typologically and that lack auxiliaries altogether. The formal markers of modality and mood in the Iroquoian languages provide support for most of the categories and distinctions proposed in current models of the domain. Both of the most frequently-​recognized types of mood distinctions, those pertaining to sentence types and factuality, are expressed inflectionally in the languages. The three traditional categories of modality, dynamic, deontic, and epistemic, are also distinguished formally in Iroquoian languages, expressed with either full verbs or particles. Within the category of dynamic modality, a distinction is drawn in some models between those participant-​inherent needs or abilities and those conditioned by participant-​external circumstances. Iroquoian languages contain markers of modality that distinguish the two. Within other models, dynamic and deontic modality are combined into a larger general category. Iroquoian languages also contain markers of modality that cover both. Finally, some models include evidential distinctions within the domain of modality, as part of epistemic modality or as coordinate with it. Evidential markers are used in Iroquoian languages, as in many others, not only to specify the source of information but to indicate reduced personal commitment to statements, a kind of epistemic modality. Bybee and colleagues (1985, 1994, 1995) have proposed that the categories of modality and mood are best viewed as sets of diachronically related functions. A diachronic view indeed helps make sense of the great diversity in both the forms and the functions of the markers. As qualifying expressions, modality markers are particularly susceptible to change in shape. Their typical non-​focal information status is reflected in reduction of prosodic prominence, substance, and syntactic status, much like modal auxiliaries in other languages. A view of modality as a set of distinctions conveyed by markers at varying stages of formal and functional development can help to explain the diversity we find within languages, in language after language.

Modality and mood in Iroquoian    257

Abbreviations Abbreviations for glosses beyond the Leipzig Glossing Conventions are: agt grammatical agent cisl cislocative contr contrastive fact factual hab

habitual aspect

mid middle pat

grammatical patient

prt partitive rep repetitive rev reversive st stative

Chapter 12

Modalit y a nd mo od in Cha di c Zygmunt Frajzyngier

12.1 Introduction1 The aim of this chapter is to describe the modality and mood functions encoded in some Chadic languages. I have attempted to retain the distinction between “modality” and “mood” as defined for the purpose of this volume (see Chapters 1 and 2), but this is not always possible, as there can be difficulties in determining how the marking of the “sentence type”, typically considered to be a mood category, differs from the marking of modality. There may be cases in which the semantically based distinctions are blurred. This is mainly because the structural criteria, viz. the co-​occurrence restrictions of various formal devices as listed below, indicate the existence of functional domains different from those usually described in studies of Indo-​European languages. Chadic languages (n~160), comprised of three or four branches, depending on classification (Newman 1977), are spoken in Northern and Central Nigeria, Northern Cameroon, Southern Chad, and Niger. The largest of these languages, Hausa, is spoken by more than 20 million people in Nigeria and Niger, and in Hausa communities scattered throughout West and Central Africa. Fewer than ten Chadic languages are spoken by more than 100,000 people, and many Chadic languages are endangered. Chadic languages constitute the largest and typologically most diverse family within the 1  Numerous

speakers of various Chadic languages provided me with the data without which this chapter would not have been possible. The work on Chadic languages was made possible by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, University of Colorado, and the Charles and Jane Butcher Foundation. I am most grateful to Erin Shay for the critical reading of an earlier version of this chapter, for her comments regarding organization and argumentation, and for numerous editorial comments. I am also most grateful to the editors, Jan Nuyts and Johan van der Auwera, for numerous suggestions regarding the substance and organization of this chapter. For all errors of fact or interpretation, I alone am responsible.

Modality and mood in Chadic    259 Afroasiatic phylum. The most salient typological differences within the Chadic family involve the position of the verb in the pragmatically neutral clause, which in some languages is clause-​initial and in others clause-​medial, and the structure of the verbal piece, which in some languages may be composed of up to nine morphemes and in other languages is mono-​morphemic. These typological characteristics correlate with the position of modality and mood markers. Chadic languages also exhibit interesting typological similarities, to wit: the post-​verbal or clause-​final position of the negative marker and, in some cases, markers coding modality; the presence of interrogative markers in clause-​final position (though by no means in all languages); and the presence of a large number of verbal affixes, called “extensions”, some of which code modality and mood. There are hundreds of studies devoted to Hausa. Only about 40 other Chadic languages have been described, in most cases by just one scholar. For the majority of languages there exists only fragmentary information. The existing grammars of Chadic languages devote little space to the issues of modality and mood, and often the information on these categories, if available at all, is distributed in a non-​systematic way across discussions devoted to verbal stems, aspects, tenses, adverbs, negation, interrogative clauses, and various types of complex sentences. For these reasons, this chapter focuses on major modality and mood categories attested in the grammatical systems of languages for which they have been treated at some length. The discussion includes: assertive mood with its subdomain of factuality, commands, questions about the truth of the proposition (“polar questions”), and questions about components of the proposition (“content questions”). It does not include negation, as negation is not in the scope of the present volume. I will occasionally touch on issues of evidentiality as they affect whether or not the speaker can code factuality of the event. The data in this chapter are drawn from Hausa, the best-​described Chadic language, and from several other languages, representing each of the three or four branches (depending on classification) of Chadic, for which recent information on modality and mood is available. The grammatical or lexical means involved in the coding of modality and mood include verbs, adverbs, and, in the case of several Chadic languages, ideophones. In our overview we will assume that the function of a formal means, whether grammatical or lexical, is determined by its place within a functional domain, where it contrasts with other markers within the same domain (Frajzyngier and Mycielski 1998). Consequently, the evidence for the existence of a given mood or modality category and its function is provided by contrasting it with other moods or modalities coded by lexical and grammatical means. For reasons of space, the evidence for the postulated place of a given function within its functional domain is not presented systematically, though it has been presented systematically in the relevant sources. Many Chadic languages make a distinction between pragmatically independent clauses, i.e. clauses that can be interpreted on their own, and pragmatically dependent clauses, i.e. clauses that must be interpreted in connection with another clause or with some element in the discourse environment. The distinction between the two types of clauses is marked in some languages by two tense and aspectual systems (Frajzyngier 2004) and by the use of

260   Zygmunt Frajzyngier different subject markers. The existence of negation of the assertive mood as a functional domain is taken as a given for all languages in this study and is not discussed further. The chapter discusses modal adverbs only insofar as their use has been explicitly described in individual languages. Dictionaries often contain a number of adverbs that on the face of it appear to be modal, but there is not enough information about their use to include these in the present chapter. The means of coding modality and mood in complement clauses are often different from those in simple or matrix clauses. The modality and mood functions coded in complement clauses are also different, and often richer, than those coded in simple clauses. In particular, complements of verbs of saying may be marked for various epistemic and deontic modalities. Complements of verbs of perception and cognitive verbs may be marked to indicate the source of information (in the simple sentence, Chadic languages do not mark the category of evidentiality). Complements of volitional verbs may be marked for realis and irrealis wishes. Most grammars devote little space to the modality and mood of complex sentences. For a full discussion of coding modal and mood functions in complement clauses in Chadic languages, see Frajzyngier (1996). In the present study, the discussion of modality and mood of simple clauses is followed by modality and mood marking in complementation. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 12.2 describes the formal means deployed in Chadic languages in the coding of modality and mood. This is followed by the description of various types of moods and modalities, where the main criterion is their place within illocutionary acts. This is followed by a summary and conclusions regarding the system of modality and mood.

12.2  Formal means coding modality and mood in Chadic The formal means employed to code modality and mood in Chadic languages include: • Inflectional marking on the verb and on subject pronouns. This marking includes:  tones, reduplication of various segments of the verbal root, affixation (often referred to as “verbal extensions”), and vowel alternations, including vowel reduction. These markings distinguish between the indicative and imperative or subjunctive mood. • Modal verbs. • Modal adverbs. • Prepositions that precede the verbs. • A large variety of particles, which may precede or follow the verb or may occur in clause-​initial or clause-​final position. These particles are different from adverbs, as sometimes they may be clitics.

Modality and mood in Chadic    261 • Intonation patterns for the clause. These are deployed to code interrogative mood but may also code dubitative modality (see section 12.3.3 for a definition of the latter notion). • A wide range of complementizers (Frajzyngier 1996) coding the mood of the complement clause. • Linear order of subject pronouns and the verb (in Lele; cf. Frajzyngier 2001) and linear order of clauses (in Hdi; cf. Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002), both of which can code mood. • Ideophones. This category, widespread in Africa, consists of lexical items whose phonology is often different from the phonological system of the language in which they occur and whose distribution is often limited to co-​occurrence with just one verb, adjective, or adverb, or in the description of just one state of affairs. Ideophones are also used to code modality, as defined in the present volume. Several of these formal means may co-​occur within the same clause. Particles, prepositions, modal verbs, modal adverbs, and linear order may co-​occur with inflectional marking on the verb and on pronouns. Tonal means, along with vowel reduction or vowel changes within the verb, are involved in the distinction between indicative mood on the one hand and imperative or “subjunctive”, “jussive”, or “optative” mood on the other. Most of the types of formal means (not necessarily the same formal means) listed here can be deployed to code other functional domains in the language.

12.3  Assertive mood in Chadic languages The unmarked mood in the majority of Chadic languages described so far appears to indicate what the speaker would like the hearer to believe. The use of this mood, here called “assertive” (after Palmer 2001), does not necessarily mean that the speaker believes in the truth of the proposition. Marked moods indicating doubt in truth, hedging about the truth, etc., indicate that speakers are aware that the assertion may be interpreted as the speaker’s belief in the truth of the proposition, hence the use of hedging means to avoid this interpretation. I devote some space to these markers in Chadic languages, as they are seldom seen in Indo-​European languages.

12.3.1 Factuality Some languages have markers whose function appears to be that of overtly indicating the factuality of the event, i.e. that the event happened or will happen. While in some cases the real-​world interpretation of factuality appears to overlap with “realis”, as commonly understood, the two functions are not identical. In Mina, the domain of factuality consists of two subdomains: factuality without any expression of speaker’s or

262   Zygmunt Frajzyngier participant’s concern, and factuality coding either the speaker’s concern or what the speaker believes may be a participant’s concern. The evidence that the two modalities are part of the same domain is provided by the fact that (a) their markers are mutually exclusive and (b) their markers cannot co-​occur with the marker of negation. It is the lack of occurrence with the negation markers that distinguishes factuality from realis modality as used elsewhere in this volume. The factuality without concern is marked by the particle za (glossed as EE “end of event” in Frajzyngier et al. 2005 but fact in the present paper) occurring in post-​verbal position. Whether it occurs directly after the verb or after a complement depends on the type of the complement. They occur after the direct object but before the locative complement: (1) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 451) Séy then

hìdíi people

wà dem

mə̀ rel

ndá-​y come-​aff

zà. fact

‘Then those people [the hyenas] came.’ The factuality marker can occur in the mood of obligation, marked by the form mə́ , glossed as opt for optative: (2) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 253) Mə́ opt

zə́ fact

ndə̀ go

Túgwà patience

hà 2sg

gwà. first yə̀ call

ví? who

‘Let her go first. Patience, who are you talking about?’ But it cannot be used with the imperative mood: (3) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 472) Kə ̀ ɗ ə́m calabash Gi pol

vl-​à give-​go

tsáy finish

nà 1pl.excl

wə̀ də́! food

dàp. only

‘Calabash, give us food! That is all.’ The factuality marker za also cannot be used in any verbless predications, such as equational, possessive, existential, and locative clauses, because of the internal

Modality and mood in Chadic    263 semantic contradiction. This provides evidence that the form codes the factuality of an event. Further evidence that the marker za codes a category in the domain of mood and that it codes factuality is provided by the fact that it cannot occur in negative clauses, as well as by the fact that it is mutually exclusive with the speaker’s concern marker ka. The particle kà, glossed conc for “concern”, is a modal marker that codes the speaker’s concern with respect to the event or one of the participants in the event. The speaker’s concern subsumes the speaker’s disapproval, as in (4a), the speaker’s approval, as in (4b), benefit for the speaker, as in (4c), or benefit for the object, as in (4d). The distribution of the particle ka is similar to that of the particle za: (4) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 366) a. Skə ̀ n thing

nàm 1du

dzáŋ find

skə̀ n thing

syì com

ɗíyà put

há 2sg

gáy spoil

kà. conc

‘The thing we found, you are ruining it.’ b. Wàl woman

ɮím hear kà conc

gám chase ngàm because

á 3sg

mə̀ mouth

r skú d.hab   neg

kə̀ inf

kə́. Gr-​á-​h   pár inf   search-​go-​2sg another ngáts-​á-​h   nə́f pinch-​go-​2sg heart

rà. d.hab

‘The woman who does not obey should be chased away. You have to find yourself another, because this one pinches your heart.’ c. Mbí anaph

mə̀ rel

tr-​á-​k save-​go-​1sg

kà. conc

‘It is he who saved me!’ d. Séy so mə̀ rel kə́ purp

dòktér doctor n prep n prep

à 3sg kə́ inf kə́ inf

zá comp

mìnjé now

déɓ-​é-​k take-​go-​1sg

ángə̀ if

ɗáhà exist

mbəĺ   wàl revive woman

hìdì man

sə̀ nə̀ 1sg   go wà dem

kà. conc

‘The doctor said, “if there is a man who can take me there, I will go to cure that woman”. ’

264   Zygmunt Frajzyngier The category “concern” also implies that the speaker considers the event to be unusual, newsworthy. Thus in (5), perceiving that just one sesame seed fell into the water is the unusual fact: (5) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 409) Hìdì-​yíì man-​pl Cìkíɗ sesame

wá dem   tə́ gen

í 3pl gwíɗíŋ single

ɗíy-​á put-​go ndə̀ v   fall

ɮáŋ cross

làkwát. river

kà. conc

‘The men started to cross the river. A single sesame seed fell down.’ Kapsiki, another Central Chadic language, has a clause-​initial marker náx, whose functions very much resemble those of Mina za. For a description of Kapsiki, see Smith (1969). (The data below are all elicited, they are from my own fieldwork. The transcription and glosses should be considered preliminary.) The marker náx can occur in affirmative clauses and cannot occur in negative clauses: (6) Kapsiki Náx fact

‘yá 1sg

kə́ r.past

təd ́ ə̀ -​ɗ à fall-​1sg

mbə̀ ɗá. yesterday

‘I fell down yesterday.’ It can also occur in questions about the truth of the proposition. This does not contradict the function of the marker, as the polar question marker occurs in clause-​final position, and the semantic structure of the clause is something like “X happened; is it true?”: (7) Kapsiki Náxə̀ fact

Zrá Zra

kə́ r.past

dzí go

šə̀ kw market

ná? q

‘Did Zra go to the market?’ The marker náx cannot, however, occur in any content questions, because of the incompatibility of two different values for the same domain: asking a question about an element of the content and asserting the factuality of the content: (8) Kapsiki Wá who

ndə̀ pro.sg

nyá dem

kə̀ r.past

dzí go

šə́kw market

‘Who [among the known group] went to the market?’

wà? q

Modality and mood in Chadic    265 If the form náx is used with a verb expressing doubt, the clause is interpreted as denying the truth: (9) Kapsiki a. Kə̀ r.past

pá-​v buy-​in

hlá cow

Zrá Zra

zə̀ I

tàráw. doubt

‘I doubt that Zra bought a cow.’/​‘I think Zra bought a cow.’ b. Náx   kə̀   fact r.past

pá-​v   buy-​in

hlá cow

Zrá   Zra

zə̀   tàráw.   I   doubt

‘I am sure Zra didn’t buy a cow.’ It may well be that the Giziga marker le (Erin Shay p.c.) has a function similar to that of the markers za in Mina and náx in Kapsiki. The Pévé marker si has a similar function too (Erin Shay, p.c.). Wandala (Central Chadic) does not have a particle whose distribution is the same as that of the forms zà and kà in Mina or the form náx in Kapsiki. It has, however, a backgrounding aspect marked by reduplication of the verbal root, with subject pronouns inserted in between the reduplicated parts. This aspect marks the factual background for another event. It shares with the factuality markers the property of not occurring in the negative clause:   (10)  Wandala (Frajzyngier 2012: 632) Nóo pres

và time

ordinateur computer

tə́-​n t-​dem yá 1sg

ndà speak

kínì c.foc

njà-​n-​í-​njà sit-​1sg-​ep-​sit

ə́lv language

á-​t pred-​t

wáfk-​á face-​gen

Wándàlà. Wandala

‘Here I am sitting in front of the computer speaking the Wandala language.’ Given that the backgrounding aspect in Wandala cannot occur in negative clauses, it shares some of the properties of the factuality markers in Mina and Kapsiki.

12.3.2 Direct versus indirect perception in embedded clauses Direct or indirect perception, often linked with the notion of evidentiality, is relevant to the category of epistemic modality. Complements of verbs of perception may have different epistemic values, in that they may be marked for direct perception, which asserts the

266   Zygmunt Frajzyngier factuality of the perceived event, or they may be marked for indirect perception, where the factuality of the event is not as strongly asserted. Direct perception may be coded through nominalization of the verb in complement clauses. In the following example, the evidence for the nominalization of the verb is provided by the first person singular suffix ɗá, which is a possessive rather than a subject pronoun: (11) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 470) Snà-​n-​snà hear-​3-​hear

dzà’á-​ɗá. go-​1sg

tá obj

‘He heard me go.’/​‘He heard my departure.’ Direct perception may also be coded through matrix-​clause coding of the subject of the complement clause: (12) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 472) Ǹ gh-​ìxà-​ǹ ghà see-​1sg-​see

tà impf

dzà’á. go

‘He saw me go.’ Indirect perception is marked by the de dicto complementizer ká: (13) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 475) Ǹ dá stat

sn-​í hear-​1sg

mággá-​kú make-​abs

gà prep

ká comp Xdí Hdi

tsá def

mariage-​xà marriage-​pl

ká-​xə̀n   comp-​3pl

yá dem

tà impf

mándí ɓángál-​xà like   marriage (Fu.)-​pl

yá. dem ‘I have heard that marriages are being made in Hdi.’

12.3.3 Dubitative modality in Mina Mina has the category of dubitative modality, marked by the clause-​final particle ngà. The modality codes the speaker’s doubts about the truth of the whole proposition, as

Modality and mood in Chadic    267 evidenced by the fact that the dubitative marker may co-​occur with the polar question marker. (14) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 228) à 3sg

lùw-​á-​h say-​go-​2sg

zá comp

hà 2sg

nék good

skù neg

ngà dub

vú? q

‘Will he tell you that you are not good?’ (I doubt he will.) Uncertainty about the truth of a component of the proposition is marked by the preposition mə ̀ ná ‘like’: (15) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 229) Ván rain

ɗá fetch.go

mə̀ ná like

rà d.hab

á pred

nə̀ prep

lúmò. market

‘It was raining as if from the side of the market.’ Mina also has an adverb kómɓì that codes uncertainty: (16) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 94) Yí 3pl

  zá comp

dámù bush

mbù child

kómɓì maybe

fés small

ngà like

ɮ-​ú cut-​3sg

mə̀   rel

cíŋ dem

á pred

nók 1pl.excl

sə́n know

skù. neg

‘They said, “there is a small child like that in the bush, maybe he cut it out, we do not know”. ’ Dubitative modality in Lele is marked by the clause-​final marker sáŋ: (17) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 268) Nè make

dí 3m

hómyà sick

sáŋ. dub

‘He claims to be sick.’ (But I doubt it.) (18) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 268) Na-​y hyp-​3m

hómyà sick

sáŋ. dub

‘He said that he is sick.’ (But I doubt it.)

268   Zygmunt Frajzyngier

12.4  Hypothetical modality Many Chadic languages have hypothetical modality, whereby the speaker indicates that the event or state described by the proposition is possible but the speaker has no way of knowing whether it actually has occurred or will occur. Hausa has a hypothetical modality, called “potential” in Newman (2000: 586), which in other works is called “future-​2”, “ingressive”, or “indefinite future”. The form is marked by the low-​tone suffix à added to the subject pronoun. Newman (2000: 587) states that the form “indicates an action that will possibly take place in the future (God willing)”. He further states that the form differs from the future tense in “having a lesser degree of certainty and a lesser element of intentionality or commitment” (Newman 2000: 587). In Hausa examples the unmarked tone represents high tone: (19) Hausa (Newman 2000: 587) ɗaalìbaa student

tâ 3f.pot

kai bring

makà. dat.2sg.m

‘The student may bring it to you.’ The evidence that the form codes uncertainty on the part of the speaker is provided by the fact that a clause with the potential marker cannot be followed by a phrase corresponding to ‘I am sure’, whereby the speaker asserts his certainty with respect to the proposition of the utterance (personal research). In Hdi hypothetical modality may have in its scope past, present, and future events. There are at least two markers of this type of modality, viz. the clause-​final particle ɓà, illustrated in (20) and (21), and the auxiliary verb kúmà ‘want’, illustrated in (22). (20) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 271) Bá hyp

lá-​b-​lá go-​out-​go

ɓá. hyp

‘Perhaps he went.’ The scope of the hypothetical modality is limited to the phrase marked by the initial particle bá: (21) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 272) Ká comp

ùvá cat

mántsá comp

bá hyp

tà impf

dzà-​í go-​1sg

‘Cat said, “I might go, but …” ’ (Not ‘Perhaps cat said …’)

ɓá … hyp

Modality and mood in Chadic    269 The verb “want” occurs as a marker of hypothetical modality in many Chadic languages: (22) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 272) Yáwà well tá obj

mtá death

tá prep

màrà-​n-​tà show-​3-​ref

kà seq

dá-​ní father-​3sg ɮày comp

mà prep ná comp

m̀  ndú man ndá stat

kúm-​ày want-​po

tà impf gl-​íyù grow-​1sg

tàmá. already ‘Well, the death of one’s father would mean that he [the fellow whose father has died] is already an adult.’ Adverbs coding hypothetical modality, unlike locative adverbs, occur in clause-​initial position. The adverb pàtə̀ k ‘perhaps’ has been recorded only in the hedging function and only with respect to past events or to a referential proposition: (23) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 273) Pàtə̀ k perhaps

ndá assc

mà in

ghwà river

tá prep

Bgàɬà. Bgaɬa

‘Perhaps in the direction of the river Bgaɬa.’ An expression corresponding to “they say” is a frequent marker of uncertainty and can co-​occur with the marker pàtə̀ k ‘perhaps’: (24) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 273) Pàtə̀ k perhaps

mà prep

vàkú year

1952 1952

pàtə̀ k perhaps

mà prep

vàkú year

1958 1958

kú-​lù. comp-​uh ‘Perhaps in the year 1952, perhaps in the year 1958.’ The modal phrase kà wáyà ‘perhaps’ followed by the complementizer ká’a has been recorded only with respect to future hypothetical propositions: (25) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 273) Kà wáyà perhaps

ká-​’á comp

màmú … exist

‘Perhaps there will be …’

270   Zygmunt Frajzyngier The adverb xótxótà codes certainty: (26) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 273) Kà seq

xótxótà certainly

dzà’á fut

skwá-​tà buy-​ref

lgùt-​á-​ní cloth-​gen-​3sg

màxtsím. tomorrow

‘Certainly he will buy his clothes tomorrow.’ Mina marks hypothetical modality by one of the two forms coding future events. The preposition n followed by the infinitive marker kə́ is used when the speaker cannot be sure about the event, as is the case with content questions: (27) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 462) Séy then máy choose

wàl woman

wà dem

wá dem

ží then

zá comp ví who

wà but hí 2pl

sə́ 1sg fú all

n prep

kə̀ inf

tàŋ   hí ded 2pl

kálkál. equal (Fu.)

‘Then the woman said, “who am I going to choose? you are all equal”. ’ This form is also used in conditional protasis and apodosis clauses, i.e., in situations which are inherently hypothetical: (28) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 499) Ndìká better (Fu.)

mə̀ njé now

gómbòk frog

  zá fact

mbàɗ become

wìrnjík. ash

wàhíŋ dem sə́ 1sg

sə̀ 1sg

n prep

n prep kə́ inf

kə̀ inf

dzáŋ find

ndráɮ smash

‘From now on when I find a frog, I will smash it to ashes.’ In Lele (East Chadic) hypothetical modality is marked by the addition of the hypothetical marker na preceding the predicate of an otherwise indicative clause: (29) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 201) Dày 3m

ná assc

na hyp

nè cop

tìbré ashes

‘That person will be like ashes of a ceiba tree.’

mayna. ceiba.tree

Modality and mood in Chadic    271 Compare assertion: (30) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 264) Dày 3m

ná assc

nè cop

tìbré ashes

mayna . ceiba.tree

‘That person is like ashes of a ceiba tree.’ The marker na, serving as de dicto complementizer, is the main marker of hypothetical modality of the complement clause: (31) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 264) Dày 3m

kóŋ certain

na-​y hyp-​3m

kálè climb.fut

luŋba horse

kùrmbàlò chief

kè-​y gen-​3m

ni loc

sàríyà verdict

  na ùs-​ìy hyp   concern.fut-​3m

jénè sit.fut na-​y   hyp-​3m

dà prep bórè cut.fut

ɗé. neg

‘The other [said] that if he could climb on the chief ’s horse and pronounce judgments [they could kill him], he would not care.’ As is the case in a few other Chadic languages, the verb “want” is also used as a marker of hypothetical modality. In Lele, the verb tob ‘want’ occurs in the imperfective aspect: (32) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 262) Kus-​iy body-​3m

jè impf

tob want

go ref

né-​y. make-​3m

‘He seems to be sick.’ Compare assertion: (33) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 262) Kus-​iy body-​3M

nè-​y. make-​3M

‘He is sick.’ (lit. ‘His body makes him.’) Hypothetical modality in the complement clause in Lele is marked by the complementizer na following the comment clause marker ba:

272   Zygmunt Frajzyngier (34) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 333) Dàì 3m

hàŋ here

na hyp

ba com

kùrmbàlò chief

tamá̃-​y wife-​3m

ge hum

bé-​y give-​3m

na-​y hyp-​3m

ba com

wèl sleep

ná assc

un-​do ... assc-​3f

‘The first one said that if he is given the chief ’s wife to sleep with …’

12.5 Mirative Mirative is a category which represents information as “new or unexpected” (DeLancey 1997, 2012:  529)  and transcends the boundaries of previously established domains. It overlaps with modality, as it indicates the speaker’s surprise at the event or a state. It is encoded in the grammatical systems of at least two Central Chadic languages. Mirative in Hdi is marked by the particle wí (yà) or wúyá, glossed as ‘there’, in clause-​ initial position: (35) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 293, 88) a. Wíyà there

yàghá should.not

kí-​ì COMP-​1SG

ká 2SG

Kày interj

xgà-​n-​tá call-​3-​REF

ká comp

ùvá cat

kə̀ r dog ndá assc

yàghí. squirrel

‘ “Didn’t I tell you not to invite dog?” cat said to squirrel.’ b. Wúyá here

ká-​ŋnì com-​1pl.excl

ndá-​xəŋ. assc-​3pl

‘Here is what we told them.’ Mirative in Mina is marked by the particle syí, which may occur in clause-​final position (as in the examples in (36) and (37a) below) or may follow the temporal adverbial but precede the subject (as in (37b)). The particle codes an unexpected event from the point of view of participants in the event): (36) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 470; glosses adjusted) a. Ah oh syì COM

Bàhámàn Bahaman ták all

á pred píc sun

wà dem

tùk you

bákà today

syì? mir

‘Oh, Bahaman, for you, with all this heat?’

Modality and mood in Chadic    273 b. Á pred wúl neck

túk you ɓéɬ break

há 2sg

bə́ŋ think

rà d.hab

rə̀   d.hab

wá dem

skù neg

syì. mir

‘You are not thinking, you are yelling with joy.’ The mirative can be used with the imperative mood markers which indicates that the two actually belong to different domains: (37) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 471; glosses adjusted) a. Àa ah

ndə̀ go

ɓət̀ -​á get-​GO

nòk 1pl

skú neg

syì mir

á vàŋgáy? how

‘Ah, go bring it to us, otherwise what can we do?’ b. Íi they há 2sg

zá COMP n prep

bákà today kə́ inf

syí mir də́ cook

tàlàn head

tùkóŋ. 2sg

‘They said, “today you will cook yourself ”. ’

12.6  Polar questions Many Chadic languages make a formal distinction between polar questions and content questions. Polar questions ask about the truth of the proposition (Frajzyngier 1985a) and thus provide support for the hypothesis that in many languages the indicative sentence is interpreted as something that the speaker would like the hearer to believe (see Frajzyngier 1985a, 1987; contrary to Palmer 1987a). In all Chadic languages questions can be marked by tonal changes alone, mainly by the raising of the last high tone of the clause (Leben 1989). In addition to tonal changes, many languages mark polar questions by means of a dedicated clause-​final interrogative particle, i.e. an interrogative particle that only occurs in polar questions. The form of the polar question in the majority of Chadic languages from all branches is thus S–​Q, where Q is an interrogative particle. The importance of this particle is that it occupies the same position as some other mood markers and that it cannot co-​occur with some other mood markers. The marking of the interrogative function through the further raising of the last high tone of the clause or of the penultimate tone of the utterance can

274   Zygmunt Frajzyngier co-​occur with the clause-​final particle, indicating that the two coding means are not in complementary distribution: (38) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 264) á 3sg

gə̀ r want

kə́ inf

mìsíl steal

skə̀ neg

vú? q

‘Will he not steal?’ Polar questions are often used as indirect means of coding negation with the second-​ person subject or with the third person when the third person is present in the environment of speech (Frajzyngier and Jirsa 2006). In some languages there exist formal means to express modalities other than deontic and epistemic within interrogative clauses. Thus, the addition of an interjection after the clause-​final interrogative particle in Hdi codes sarcasm or the speaker’s conviction that the answer is negative: (39) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 356) Xdí Hdi

ká 2sg

r-​ké? q-​interj

‘Are you Hdi?’ (The speaker knows and wants to assert that the addressee is not Hdi.) Mupun (West Chadic) has two polar question markers. The clause-​final marker wo codes the speaker’s question combined with surprise, as in (40a), the clause-​final marker e codes the speaker’s question without the expression of the speaker’s attitude toward the question, as in (40b). (40) Mupun (Frajzyngier 1993: 369, 366) a. Wur 3m

lap marry

mpuo another

wo? q

‘Did he marry another one?’ (The speaker is astonished.) b. Wur 3m

lap marry

mpuo another

e? q

‘Did he marry another one?’

12.7  Questions about the speaker’s assumption about the truth A number of Chadic languages have grammaticalized questions about the speaker’s assumption about the truth (“tag questions”, in English). In Wandala

Modality and mood in Chadic    275 the tag question is marked through high tone on the clause-​final negation marker: (41) Wandala (Frajzyngier 2012: 686) Tà 3PL

bàdà-​tə́r-​bàdà sweet.talk-​3PL-​sweet.talk

á pred

tə̀ T

ksə̀ town

ká? neg.tag

‘They sweet-​talk them in the village, isn’t it so?’

12.8  Content questions Content questions constitute a separate subdomain of interrogative clauses. In some languages, the content question is marked by a question word in clause-​final position: (42) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 292, 291) a. Mə̀ REL

gáy spoil

ví? who

‘Who spoiled it?’ b. Tə́ GEN

ngíɗ DEM

wà DEM

mí? what

‘What is that over there?’ The fact that all content question words in Mina end in the vowel i may indicate that these words are composed of an unspecified word, such as m ‘what’ or w ‘who’, and the interrogative component i. In many Chadic languages content questions involve two markers: the unspecified content words corresponding to “who”, “what”, “where”, and “when”, and a clause-​final interrogative marker (Frajzyngier 1985b). Unlike in many Indo-​European languages, these unspecified content words do not code questions. Their role is to indicate the target of the content question through its semantic properties such as human versus non-​ human, place, time, and reason. Grammatical relations are coded by the position of the content word in the clause. The interrogative mood of the clause is marked by a clause-​ final interrogative marker that in some languages is different from the clause-​final interrogative marker used in polar questions. While all Chadic languages described so far mark the distinction between content and polar questions, the existence of a dedicated interrogative particle that does not function as a question word is a characteristic of only some languages. In Mupun the clause-​final polar question marker is the vowel e or o, while in content question the clause-​final interrogative marker is -​(y)i:

276   Zygmunt Frajzyngier (43) Mupun (Frajzyngier 1993: 375–​376) A cop

mi what

a cop

da-​komtak da-​komtak

(n)-​Mupun prep-​Mupun

səsə dem

yi? q

‘What does “da komtak” mean in Mupun?’ In some languages, the clause-​final interrogative particle is the same in content and polar questions: (44) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 278) a. Dìgìgí 2m.2m

tem ̀ lé-​ŋ corn-​def

kòy steal

ges̀ é or

gí 2m

kòy steal

ɗé neg

ga ?̀ q

‘Was it you who stole the corn or wasn’t it?’ b. Wéy who

ba com

é go

gà? q

‘Who went away?’ In addition to the clause-​final interrogative marker, content questions are also marked by interrogative intonation, which is the same as in polar questions.

12.9 Imperative mood Within the domain of the mood of obligation, many Chadic languages distinguish at least four categories:  imperative, whose default interpretation is obligation with the expectation of immediate implementation and which is often, but not always, addressed to the second person; optative, which expresses wishes with respect to the first, second, and third person without the expectation of the immediate implementation; permissive; and prohibitive, which can have all persons in its scope and which is not necessarily formally a negation of the imperative mood. In some Chadic languages, the form of the verb is the same in the indicative and in the imperative, while in others different forms of the verb code the distinction between the two moods. The imperative mood has two other characteristics that distinguish it from the indicative mood in Chadic languages: the coding of plurality of the addressee by markers distinct from second-​person plural subject pronouns, and the obligatory coding of the object of a transitive verb. In these languages, the pronominal object cannot be overtly marked with transitive verbs in the indicative mood, especially in past-​time reference.

Modality and mood in Chadic    277 The imperative in Hausa differs from other verbal forms in not employing singular subject pronouns or aspectual markers and in having a specific tonal pattern on the verb, usually low–​high. Unlike imperative forms in some other Chadic languages, the imperative in Hausa has no special plural form of the verb; instead, the plurality of the addressee is marked by the second-​person plural subject pronoun, as in (45c): (45) Hausa (Newman 2000: 262, 591) a. Tàashi! go ‘Go!’ b. Kàawoo carry.vent

ruwaa! water

‘Bring water!’ c. Kù 2pl

yi make

hàƙurii! patience

‘You (pl.) be patient!’ The imperative in Hdi differs from the indicative in the absence of subject pronouns and in the means of coding the plurality of the addressee, which is different from the coding of the second-​person plural subject pronoun. The verbal stem in the imperative has the same tones as in the indicative, cf. (46). Plurality of the addressee is marked by the suffix wá, which is not a pronoun and is unrelated to the second-​person plural pronominal marker, as shown in (47). (46) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 274) Lá! Klá! ɮghà! Dà! Kátá!

‘Go!’ ‘Take it!’ ‘Take it!’ ‘Cook it!’ ‘Help!’

(47) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 278) a. Lá-​wá-​lá go-​PL-​GO

dà PREP

ghəŋg-​á head-​GEN

kás-​ì-​ɗí-​k-​tá catch.pl-​away-​1sg-​inn-​ref

xàɗík world

m̀ndú-​xà, … man-​PL

‘Go into the world in order to bring me men …’

dá PURP

278   Zygmunt Frajzyngier b. Kl-​í-​g-​í-​ɗá-​ghà-​wá take-​EP-​INN-​AWAY-​1SG-​GO-​PL

kɗìx-​á-​ɗà, donkey-​GEN-​1SG

ká-​’á. COMP-​3SG

‘ “Bring me my donkey!” he said.’ Mina marks the imperative mood through tonal changes on the verb. The tone on the imperative is low, as in (48a), even if the tone on the indicative verb is high, as in (48b). (48) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 231) ɮì! meat

a. Ɓàm eat

‘Eat the meat!’ b. Kə̀ INF

ɓám eat

ɮì meat

zà. fact

‘He ate the meat.’ Although the imperative phrase in the second person does not need to have a pronoun in the singular, as shown in (49b), such a pronoun is used when there is a modal adverb or when there is a sequence of commands, as illustrated in (49a). (49) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 232, 234) a. Gélbə̀ better (Fu.) nòk 1PL.INCL

kám TOP (Fu.) mbə̀ child

ntá one

há 2SG

pàts-​à take.imper-​go

há 2SG

d-​à cook.imper-​go

nòkóŋ. 1pl.incl

‘You’d better take one of your children and cook him for us all.’ b. Tèwèl twirl

ɮámbáy! stick

‘Let him twirl the stick!’ The imperative may have a nominal addressee preceding the verb: (50) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 233) a. Kwáykwáyà hyena

ndə̀ go

dáp just

nə̀ go

gr-​á find-​go

nòkóŋ! 1pl

‘Hyena, you just go and provide for us!’ (Kefedjerveng dialect) b. Há 2sg

lùw-​á-​ŋ say-​go-​3sg

ngásì like.that

ɮámbáy n-​dí stick   go

‘You say to it just like that, “stick, do it?” ’

ɗál do

tə́   ded

vù? q

Modality and mood in Chadic    279 Unlike Hdi, Mina codes the plural number of the addressee through the second-​person plural pronoun, rather than by a dedicated plural imperative marker. The pronoun has high tone in the imperative: (51) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 234) a. Á pred hì 2PL

tìkìn 2PL

hí 2pl

kám TOP (Fu.)

fú all (Fu.)

nd-​àhá go.imper-​go

tàŋ! ded

‘As for you, you all come!’ b. Hí 2PL

yà call

ngùl husband

ngə̀ n 3sg

wà wife

tùk 2sg

kə̀  inf

mìsíl steal

zà. fact

‘Call her husband, [tell him] “your wife has committed a theft”. ’ A characteristic feature of some Chadic languages, including Mina, is that in the indicative mood, the object pronoun does not have to be coded in the perfective aspect: (52) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 454) ɮàŋ cross

í 3pl

ɮàŋ cross

zá. fact

‘They crossed [the river].’ In the future tense and in the imperative mood, i.e. in reference to events that have not yet happened, a nominal or a pronominal object must be included with a transitive verb. If the verb is transitive and there is no nominal or specific pronominal object, the third-​ person definite object marker ú must be added to the verb even if no potential object has been mentioned in the preceding discourse: (53) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 232–​233) Zə̀ m-​ú! Bə̀ k-​ú! Wày-​ú! Bèr-​ú! Pə̀ s-​ú!

‘Eat!’ ‘Pour (sand, grain, flour)!’ ‘Forget!’ ‘Sell!’ ‘Cover with soil!’

In complement clauses in Mina, wishes with respect to another person are coded by a verb of saying in the matrix clause followed by the imperative or the subjunctive mood in the embedded clause. Direct orders in complement clauses are marked by the imperative form of the verb, as they are in the independent clause:

280   Zygmunt Frajzyngier (54) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 471, 479) a. À 3SG

zá comp

ɮ-​ə́ŋ send-​3sg

hí 2pl

hìdì. person

‘He said, “send somebody!”. ’ b. À 3SG

zá comp

hí 2pl

ndə̀  go

lúw-​á-​ŋ say-​go-​3sg

mə́ opt

d-​àhá-​w. bring-​go-​3sg

‘He said, “go tell her to bring it here!”. ’ Polite imperatives in embedded clauses, just as in matrix clauses, are coded by the clause-​final marker gí: (55) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 475, 463) a. Á 3SG

zá COMP

ɮámbáy stick

ŋɗ-​á-​k hit-​GO-​1SG

gí. POL

‘She said, “stick, beat me, please”. ’ b. Záván-​yíì guinea fowl-​PL

zá comp

  fə̀ ɗ-​á   ná shave-​go 1PL

tàlàn   head

kə́ conc

gí. please

‘The guinea fowl said, “shave our heads, please”. ’ Lele makes a distinction between the imperative and the indicative stem. The imperative stem is formed through addition of the vowel a to verbs with the root vowel a or i and addition of the vowel u to verbs with the root vowel u. Addition of the vowels is the first rule that the root undergoes in the formation of the imperative. The vowels i and u are subsequently deleted from all stems that have a final consonant that is allowed to be word-​final. Note the root forms of haba and à (all examples from Garrigues-​Cresswell, avec Weibegué, 1981 below are given with my glosses and analysis): (56) Lele (Garrigues-​Cresswell, avec Weibegué, 1981: 2–​3) À-​je go.IMP-​VENT kama, water haba-​ng find-​1SG

ná ASSC

bè-​ng DAT-​1SG

ná   gìlàdí ASSC stalk

mìsé, sorghum

ná ASSC

dà PREP

sóòyó tamarind

gúndù gourd

pìnà one

ná ASSC

à-​je go.IMP-​VENT to-​roò bottom-​3F

ni. LOC

‘Bring me a gourd with water and stalks of sorghum. Come to find me under the tamarind tree.’

Modality and mood in Chadic    281 The second-​person singular pronoun may precede the verb, but it must be the independent form of the pronoun rather than a subject pronoun: (57) Lele (Garrigues-​Cresswell, avec Weibegué, 1981: 2–​3) Dàmè 2F

ɗinglá! listen.IMP

‘Listen!’ The imperative form of the stem in Lele does not distinguish between singular and plural addressees. The syntax of giving orders differs from the syntax of the indicative mood in that the subject pronoun for the second-​person plural follows rather than precedes the verb. If there are any complements, they follow the second-​person plural pronoun: (58) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 281) a. Pàmà search.imp

ngú! 2PL

‘Search!’ b. Kùlù buy.IMP

ngú 2PL

kùlbá! cow

‘Buy a cow!’ The imperative form of the verb is readily employed among peers and among people belonging to different age and social groups. Thus one can use the imperative when addressing one’s parents or a chief, provided that the inherent meaning of the verb does not produce an impolite effect when combined with the imperative. The following imperative construction is considered polite: (59) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 281) Da eat.IMP

ngù 2PL

kasa corn

ná ASSC

já side

koloŋ! DEM.R

‘Eat the corn at the other side!’

12.10 Optative mood The optative mood is a mood of obligation with respect to all persons with no implication of an immediate implementation of the speaker’s wish. Unlike in many

282   Zygmunt Frajzyngier Indo-​European languages, the optative mood in some Chadic languages cannot be used with the first-​person singular. It may, however, be applied to the first-​person plural inclusive. The optative mood differs from the imperative mood in having a different set of markers and, most important, in the absence of a distinctive form coding plurality of the addressee. Plurality of the subject in the optative mood is marked by plural subject pronouns. The optative mood of complement clauses in Hausa is marked by low-​tone subject pronouns in the complement clause, i.e., in the same way that the optative mood is marked in the matrix clause: (60) Hausa (Newman 2000: 97) Yaa 3M.SG

aikàa send

dà ASSC

dainà stop

yàƙe-​yàƙe. fighting

sàaƙoo message

cêwaa COMP

sù 3PL.OPT

‘He sent a message that they should stop fighting.’ Compare the indicative mood in the complement clause: (61) Hausa (Newman 2000: 97) Yaa 3SG.M

musàa deny

cêwaa COMP

shii 3SG

ɓàraawòo thief

nee. COP.M

‘He denied that he was a thief.’ Optative mood in Hdi is coded by different forms in different aspects. In the imperfective, the optative mood is marked by the sequential marker kà preceding the verb, which ends in the vowel a, as in (62a). This is in contrast with the indicative form of the verb, which has either no final vowel or only an epenthetic vowel—​compare the sequential clause in (62b): (62) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 280) a. Kà SEQ

zá eat

Pghìntà. Phinta

‘Phinta should eat.’ b. Kà SEQ

zə́ eat

Pghìntà. Phinta

‘And Phinta ate.’ Subject pronouns have low tone in the optative modality, as in (63a), and high tone in the assertive modality, as in (63b):

Modality and mood in Chadic    283 (63) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 280, 281) a. Kà SEQ

zá-​tsì eat-​3SG

(tá OBJ

skwì)! food

tá OBJ

skwì. food

‘Let him eat!’ b. Kà SEQ

zə́-​tsí eat-​3SG

‘And he eats.’ The tone of the third-​p erson plural subject, which is always low, remains low in the optative mood, and the optative function is coded by the vowel a following the verb: (64) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 282) Kà SEQ

wùdá-​xə̀ n fight-​3PL

tá OBJ

wùdá fight

ká-​’á. COMP-​3SG

‘He said that they should fight.’ The optative mood also differs from the imperative mood in that the plurality of the addressee is marked by subject pronouns rather than by the marker wá. The plural subject pronoun in the optative mood has low tone. In the indicative mood the subject pronoun has high tone: (65) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 282) a. Kà SEQ

wùdá-​kùnì fight-​2PL

tá OBJ

wùdá fight

ká-​’á. COMP-​3SG

‘He said that you (PL) should fight.’ b. Kà SEQ

wùdə́-​kúní fight-​2PL

tá OBJ

wùdá fight

ká-​’á. COMP-​3SG

‘And he said that you fight.’ The optative mood in Mina is marked by the form mə́, which precedes the verb in the imperative form, which has low tone. The third-​person singular pronominal subject is unmarked: (66) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 239) Mə́ OPT

ləm ̀ build

bíŋ. house

‘Let him build a house.’

284   Zygmunt Frajzyngier Compare the relative clause, which happens to be marked by the low-​tone mə:̀ (67) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 239) Mə̀ REL

lə́m build

bíŋ. house

‘The one who builds a house.’ Wishes with respect to the third person in an embedded clause are also coded by the optative marker mə́ preceding the imperative form of the verb: (68) Mina (Frajzyngier et al. 2005: 329) Hí 2PL

ndə̀ go

lùw-​á-​ŋ say-​GO-​3SG

mə́ OPT

ndà-​hà. go-​GO.IMPER

‘Go tell him to come here.’ The optative mood in Lele expresses wishes with respect to the first, second, or third person. Wishes with respect to the first and third person are coded through the imperative form of the verb preceded by a first-​or third-​person subject pronoun. Wishes with respect to the first-​person dual inclusive are coded through the pronoun ngà following the verb: (69) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 425) Kà[w]‌ go.IMP

ngà 1DU.INCL

kùní home

kùlè-​ndì. interior-​3M

túg home

kò-​m GEN-​2SG

ni LOC

gólè see.FUT

‘Let’s go to your home [and] we will see the interior of the house.’ The optative function for the third person is coded by the construction Noun/​Pronoun Verb:IMP. This is distinct from the indicative mood, where the third-​person pronoun follows the verb: (70) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 283) a. Dí 3M

yàgà plow.IMP

bé-​ŋ DAT-​1SG

‘Let him plow my field for me!’ b. Dú 3F

ìrà go.IMP

kàsúgù. market

‘Let her go to the market!’

kúsó! field

Modality and mood in Chadic    285 If the clause has a nominal subject, the subject is followed by a third-​person pronoun agreeing with the nominal subject in gender and number: (71) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 283) Kiya Kiya

dí 3M

ìrà. go.IMP

‘Let Kiya go.’ When a clause in the imperative mood follows the complementizer na, the third-​person subject pronoun is omitted: (72) Lele (Garrigues-​Cresswell, avec Weibegué, 1981: 8–​9) Yàá tell ìrà go.IMP gé 3PL

bè-​ì DAT-​3M

na HYP

ná ASSC

kìrè road

ná ASSC

ana leave.IMP

gìdìrè moon

na HYP

ma die.IMP

kíndi kara   índùwé truly   people human.PL gé 3PL

ná, ASSC ma die.IMP

jè. VENT

‘[He] told him that the moon would die and never return, and the people would die and return.’ There are no examples of the third-​person plural pronoun with the imperative stem and hypothetical modality at the same time. The word order in the optative mood for the third person is different from the word order in the assertive mood. It is also different from the word order of the imperative for the second-​person plural, where the pronoun follows rather than precedes the verb. The optative mood for the first-​person plural (and only the first-​person plural inclusive is allowed) is formed by the imperative form of the verb followed by the first-​person plural pronoun and complements, if any: (73) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 283) a. Yà-​ngá talk.IMP-​1DU.INCL

kolo word

‘Let us talk about something else.’ b. Ìrà-​ngá! go.IMP-​1DU.INCL ‘Let us go!’

goɗàŋ. another

286   Zygmunt Frajzyngier An optative complement of the verb of saying in Lele has the de dicto complementizer na and the verb in the imperative form. Note that in non-​deontic complements the verb is in the indicative form: (74) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 388) Bayndí-​ŋ man-​DEF

teren-​di daughter-​3M

se INCEPT

hím-​gé take-​3PL

yàá say

bòr skim

húm-​gé, take.IMP-​3PL

na HYP ná ASSC

kama. water

‘The daughter of the man told him to take them. He took them and they skimmed across the river.’ Complements of volitional verbs in Lele distinguish between wishes that may be realized and hypothetical wishes. Wishes that may be realized are marked by the complementizer go and hypothetical wishes are marked by the sequence go na or by the marker na alone. Example (75) offers a few instances of complements of volitional verbs that may be realized: (75) Lele (Garrigues-​Cresswell, avec Weibegué, 1981: 4–​5; Frajzyngier 2001: 406) tòb want

a. Ng 1SG

go REF

bóré save.FUT

me 2F

gèylè. life

‘I want to save your life.’ b. Na-​y HYP-​3M na HYP

è go

bòr save

gúnyé spider

jè VENT

tòb want

geìl-​ì health-​3M go REF

ba COM

dígrè-​y kill.FUT-​3M

gú̃yé. spider gà Q

‘He said that he saved spider, and spider wants to kill him?’ Example (76) illustrates a hypothetical wish with the complementizer na: (76) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 488) Wèlè day

pìnà one

ná ASSC

gèy want (Ng.)

na-​y HYP-​3M

gísè-​dù. try.FUT-​3F

‘One day he wished to test her.’ In (77) the sequence of complementizers go na follows the volitional verb in the negative clause, i.e., when the wish is not realized:

Modality and mood in Chadic    287 (77) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 464) Bayndí man go REF

è go na HYP

jè VENT

ná ASSC

hímé-​gé take.FUT-​3PL

kòbró boat

bayndí-​ŋ man-​DEF

tòb want

ɗé. NEG

‘A man came with a boat but he refused to take them.’

12.11 Permission Lele is one of the few Chadic languages for which there is evidence of grammaticalization of the mood of permission. Permission is coded by the form ɗa, the imperative form of the verb ɗe ‘let, leave’, preceding the nominal or pronominal subject of the main verb. The main verb is in the imperative form. The speaker may be the person seeking permission. The interesting fact about the mood of permission is that it is different from the optative mood in Lele and other Chadic languages. If there is a nominal subject in the clause, the third-​person pronoun may precede or follow the main verb (but not both at the same time). A third-​person pronoun precedes the verb of the complement clause: (78) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 285) Ɗa let.IMP

Kiya Kiya

dí 3M

à go.IMP

jè. VENT

‘Let Kiya come.’ (He is trying to see me, so allow him to come.) In natural discourse, because of politeness requirements, the form coding permission may be used to express the speaker’s wish with respect to the third person: (79) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 285) (Ɗa) let

(dí) 3M

à go.IMP

jè. VENT

‘Let him come.’ Unlike in the first-​person plural inclusive, the verb ɗa ‘release’ may be used for the first-​ person singular, but again only in the sense of ‘release, allow’:

288   Zygmunt Frajzyngier (80) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 285) a. Ɗa let

ŋ 1SG

ìrà. go.IMP

‘Let (allow) me go.’ (Not ‘I have to go’.) ŋ 1SG

b. Ɗa let.IMP

dá eat.IMP

wò. mush

‘Let (allow) me eat.’ The imperative form ɗa can be followed by a verb in the future tense: (81) Lele (Frajzyngier 2001: 285) ŋ 1SG

Ɗá-​ŋ let.IMP-​1SG

dé eat.FUT

wò. mush

‘Let me go, I will eat.’ (‘Do not bother me, I am going to eat.’)

12.12 Prohibitive mood Unlike in many Indo-​European languages, the prohibitive mood marker is distinct from the negation marker. In some Chadic languages the prohibitive mood marker may be the only marker coding prohibitive, while in others it may co-​occur with the marker of negation. The prohibitive in Hausa is marked by the clause-​initial particle kadà preceding the verb in the imperative form. Unlike in the imperative, the singular subject pronoun does occur in the prohibitive mood: (82) Hausa (Newman 2000: 263) Kadà PROH

kà 2SG.M

taashì. get.up

‘Don’t you (m.) get up.’ The prohibitive mood in Hdi is marked by the marker mà, which co-​occurs with the indicative rather than the optative form of the verb: (83) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 288) a. Mà PROH

zə-́ ​ká. eat-​2SG

‘Do not eat!’

Modality and mood in Chadic    289 b. Mà PROH

zə-́ ​kúní. eat-​2PL

‘Do not eat!’ (plural addressee) The prohibitive mood marker may co-​occur with other markers of negation or it may be the only negative marker in the clause. The prohibitive, unlike the imperative, has no distinct marker of plurality of the addressee. The plurality of the subject is marked by the plural subject pronoun: (84) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 530) Mà PROH

wùdə-́ ​kún fight-​2PL

tá OBJ

wùdá fight

mà PREP

vwàx-​á field-​GEN

mídz-​á-​ɗá. mother.in.law-​GEN-​1SG ‘Do not fight in the field of my mother-​in-​law!’ Prohibitive sentential complements precede the matrix clause. They are marked in one of two ways. In one, the complement clause is preceded by the prohibitive particle mà, which serves as the prohibitive marker in simple sentences (in some cases the matrix clause consists only of the complementizer and the subject): (85) Hdi (Frajzyngier, fieldnotes) Mà PROH

zə-́ ​í eat-​1SG

ká-​’á. COMP-​3SG

‘He forbade me to eat.’ The second means of coding prohibition in the complement clause is through the use of the modal verb yàghá ‘should not’ followed by a verbal noun; a nominalized form of the verb, as in (86a). The verb yàghá cannot be used in the matrix clause if it is the only clause in the sentence, as (86b) shows. (86) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 446) a. Yàgh-​ká should.not-​2SG ká-​’á COMP-​3SG

dá PURP

ǹ gh-​ú look-​SO

dà PREP

mná-​ná-​tà. tell-​DEM-​REF

‘ “Do not look inside the pot”, he said to him.’ b. *Yàgh-​ì should.not-​1SG

dá PREP

‘I should not look inside.’

ǹ gh look

dìdà. inside

sígà pot

yá DEM

290   Zygmunt Frajzyngier Prohibitive mood in Lele is formed through the placement of the negative particle ɗé at the end of a clause containing the imperative form of the verb: (87) Lele (Garrigues-​Cresswell, avec Weibegué, 1981: 2–​3; Frajzyngier 2001: 274) a. Tamá, woman,

ɗé. NEG

ul cry.IMP

‘Woman, do not cry!’ b. Ladá touch.IMP

bìsí antelope

kò-​nòŋ GEN-​1SG

ná ASSC

kà -​m hand-​2M

ɗé. NEG

‘Do not touch my antelope with your hands.’ Hence, the prohibitive mood in Lele differs from other negative forms in this language only in having the verb in the imperative form. There is no special prohibitive marker.

12.13  Normative modality Hdi has grammaticalized a variety of deontic modality that codes activities and norms to be followed, as a general rule, in pursuit of certain goals, or norms and rules that exist even if no action on the part of the subject is involved. This modality does not code the speaker’s own wishes nor does it refer to specific subject’s obligations. This modal category is coded by the preposition ngá ‘for’ (glossed as norm for “normative”) in clause-​initial position, where its only function is to code modality. Pronominal subjects are drawn from the possessive set, indicating that the verb is nominalized. Unlike in the imperative mood, the verb in normative modality cannot be reduplicated, indicating that normative modality is distinct from the imperative mood: (88) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 286) a. Ngá NORM

xwáyá-​ní run-​3SG

ndá ASSC

zèŋzèŋ. throwing.knife

‘He should run around with a throwing knife.’ b. Tà PREP tá OBJ

xúl-​á back-​GEN

vàkú year

xìs two

ngá NORM

pghù. libation

‘After two years he should pour a libation.’

pgh-​ày-​ní pour-​PO-​3SG

Modality and mood in Chadic    291 A clause in normative modality may have a nominal subject. Such subjects are non-​referential, although they may have been mentioned in the previous discourse, as in the following examples describing the general roles of participants in a ceremony: (89) Hdi (Frajzyngier, with Shay, 2002: 286) a. Ngá NORM ndá ASSC

sá-​bà go-​OUT lgùt-​á cloth-​GEN

tsá DEM

m̀  ndú man

yá DEM

ngrá black

tà PREP

vghá-​ní. body-​3SG

jíbìl outdoors

‘The man should come out wearing black clothes.’ b. Ngá NORM

dà-​gá-​ghà-​tà cook-​INN-​D.PVG-​REF.SUBJ

índà all

grá-​xà-​ní friend-​PL-​3SG

tá OBJ

ghzú. beer ‘All of his friends should cook beer and bring it there.’

12.14  Ideophones and the coding of modality Ideophones constitute a lexical category whose phonology is often different from the phonological system of the language in which they occur and whose distribution is often limited to co-​occurrence with just one verb, one adjective, or one adverb. They have a variety of functions. In this section I discuss just one of these functions, that of the coding of modality. The types of modality coded by ideophones are quite difficult to classify, mainly because each ideophone has a very constrained distribution. Common characteristics of the modal function of ideophones include expression of the speaker’s regret, surprise, and, less often, joy. In Mina most monosyllabic ideophones have high tone. Many ideophones provide an acoustic or temporal characterization of the event (all data on ideophones in Mina below are from my own fieldnotes): (90) Mina a. Wírìh IDEO

də̀ mə̀ s stomach

tə́ GEN

ɮə̀ cow

mə̀ REL

tə̀ z-​ì burst-​AFF

‘Wírìh [action of bursting], the stomach of the cow burst.’

zà. FACT

292   Zygmunt Frajzyngier b. Wáts IDEO

mə̀  REL

ŋg-​í break-​AFF

zà. FACT

‘Wats [action of breaking], it is broken.’ Some ideophones, however, have a modal function: (91) Mina a. Tíŋ IDEO

mə̀ REL

mùts-​ì die-​AFF

zà. FACT

‘Suddenly, he is dead.’ b. Vák IDEO

à 3SG

ɓə̀ t-​ù. take-​3SG

‘He took it fast, suddenly.’ (The speaker is not happy with the manner in which the thing was taken.) c. Dáwày Daway

vír IDEO

kə́ INF

nàz throw

ŋgwə̀ l husband

ŋgə̀ ŋ 3SG

kà. CONC

‘Daway threw out her husband.’ (The speaker expresses disapproval of Daway’s action.)

12.15 Conclusion Although the information about modality and mood in Chadic languages is far from being complete, certain common characteristics and certain differences can be detected. In many Chadic languages, the verb alone, or the verb and the form of the subject pronoun, distinguishes between the indicative mood and the mood of obligation. If the verb has the indicative form and there are no other markers of modality, the clause indicates what the speaker would like the hearer to believe. Although this fact seems to be non-​controversial nowadays, it was not always so. And there are languages where the assertion has to be overtly marked. For the argumentation, see Frajzyngier (1985a, 1987). Categories frequently coded within the domain of epistemic modality include, in addition to the unmarked indicative: hypothetical modality, where the speaker presents the event as possible; dubitative modality, where the speaker doubts the truth of the proposition; and all kinds of hedging on the truth of the proposition, as coded by modal adverbs. Some Chadic languages have two forms coding future events, one of which is modally unmarked and the other of which is modally marked and expresses uncertainty about the event. Several languages have the category of mirative modality, coding speaker’s surprise at the event or the state.

Modality and mood in Chadic    293 Within the domain of deontic modality and mood, some Chadic languages distinguish among the imperative, optative, and prohibitive moods. In some languages, neither the imperative nor the optative can be applied to the first-​person singular, though it may be applied to the first-​person plural. Some languages also code normative modality, whereby the speaker expresses social norms rather than the speaker’s own attitude toward the proposition. Modality and mood in complementation involves the following semantic domains: • de dicto/​de re distinction for complements of verbs of saying; • direct versus indirect perception for complements of verbs of perception; • direct versus indirect knowledge for complements of cognitive verbs; and • realis versus irrealis wishes for complements of volitional verbs.

Abbreviations Ar.

Arabic

aff

affectedness

anaph

anaphora

assc

associative

away

movement away

com

comment marker

comp

complementizer

conc

concern

cop

copula

d

dependent

dat

dative

ded

deduced reference

def

definite

dem

demonstrative

du

dual

dub

dubitative

ep

epenthesis

excl

exclusive

f

feminine

Fu.

Fula

fact

factitive

294   Zygmunt Frajzyngier foc

focus

Fr.

French

fut

future

gen

genitive

go

goal

hab

habitual

hum

human

hyp

hypothetical

ideo

ideophone

imp

imperative

imper

imperative

impf

imperfective

in

movement in

incept

inceptive

incl

inclusive

inf

infinitive

inn

inner space

interj

interjection

loc

locative

m

masculine

mir

mirative

neg

negative

Ng.

Ngambay

norm

normative

obj

object

opt

optative

out

extension coding movement out

past

past

perf

perfective

pl

plural

pol

polite

pot

potential

pred

predicator

prep

preposition

Modality and mood in Chadic    295 pres

present or presentative

pro

pronoun

proh

prohibitive

purp

purpose

pvg

point of view of goal

q

interrogative

r

remote

r.past

referential past

ref

referential

rel

relative

seq

sequential

sg

singular

so

source orientation

stat

stative

subj

subject

t

target

top

topicalizer

uh

unspecified human

up

extension coding movement up

vent

ventive

vn

verbal noun

Chapter 13

Modalit y a nd mo od in Sin i t i c Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube

13.1 Introduction1 There is no real difference in Chinese linguistics between “modality” and “mood”. The same word qíngtài 情态 is frequently used for both notions, although there are two other alternative words for “mood”: yǔqì 语气 and yǔtài 语态.2 The absence of a clear distinction is easy to understand, as the traditional definition of “mood” refers to a set of syntactic and semantic contrasts signaled by alternative paradigms of the verb, expressed by the verbal morphology. And it is well known that Chinese does not have, or has only very few morphological devices that serve a grammatical function, and then mainly of the derivational type. 1 This research has been supported by funding from the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/​ 2007-​ 2013)/​ ERC Advanced Grant Agreement no.  230388 for the 41/​2year project “Sinotype” (2009–​2013); and also by grants from the Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR, France) on “Diachronic change in Southern Min” (Diamin) (Programme blanc 2009-​2011, ANR-​08-​BLAN-​0174) and ‘Typologie des processus synchroniques et diachroniques en Min-​Sud, langue sinitique’ (Tysomin) (Programme blanc 2012–​2015, ANR-​11-​ISH2-​ 001-​01). We express our gratitude to both these organizations. We would also like to express our gratitude to the two editors for their careful editorial work with detailed comments and criticisms of several versions of this chapter that have undoubtedly greatly improved the analysis. In addition, we would like to thank the following colleagues for their dedicated research assistance in collecting and transcribing data, including narratives and conversations: (i) for Taiwanese Southern Min—​ Dr Imogen Yu-​ Chin Chen and (ii) for Hong Kong Cantonese—​ Mrs Catherine Ng Chan Kam Chi. Finally, we thank members of the Sinotype team in Paris for their comments and discussion, and checking of the Sinitic data:  Weirong Chen, Yujie Chen, Hilario de Sousa, XuPing Li, Sing Sing Ngai, and Wang Jian. The authors remain of course responsible for all interpretations, and for any errors. 2  For the category of inflectional mood, the term yǔqì 语气 is preferred, as in xūnĭyǔqì 虚拟语气 ‘subjunctive mood’. Yet in yǔqìcí 语气詞 ‘modal particle’, referring to the ubiquitous clause-​final particles of Sinitic languages, the concept reverts back again to the broader category of modality.

Modality and mood in Sinitic    297 As for modality, which is more a semantic notion than a grammatical one, we will use the narrow definition provided in Chapter 3, viz. a semantic subfield, alongside time and aspect, which all belong to the wider domain of qualificational categories. In Sinitic languages, as in many other languages of the world, modality is primarily expressed by a sub-​class of verbs called “modal auxiliary verbs” (qíngtài zhùdòngcí 情态助动词) or sometimes “can-​wish verbs” (néngyuàn dòngcí 能愿动词).3 It can also be expressed by certain adverbs, but more often by particles, as there is a sub-​category of particles in Chinese called “modal particles” (yǔqì zhùcí 语气助词), found in the clause-​or sentence-​final position. As far as mainstream Chinese linguistics is concerned, there is no recognized class of  “modal adverbs” (see Chao 1968: 780–​790). The layout of our analysis of modality and mood in Sinitic is as follows. In section 13.2, we define auxiliary verbs as a grammatical category in Sinitic languages and analyze the notion of modality as expressed by the Chinese modals, as well as giving a brief sketch of their diachronic evolution. In sections 13.3, 13.4, and 13.5 we treat modal verbs in each of three major Sinitic languages that are the focus of this chapter, namely, Standard Mandarin, Hong Kong Cantonese, and Taiwanese Southern Min. The descriptions include modal verbs of possibility, necessity, obligation, and requirement, and also the volitional modals. In section 13.6, potential verb compounds are examined across the three languages. This is an important domain to discuss in any overview on modality, since these constructions typologically characterize Sinitic languages. Section 13.7 describes sentence types from the point of view of mood and the role of negation in modality which is intimately connected to construction types expressing the irrealis, the interrogative, and the imperative mood in Sinitic languages. Finally, section 13.8 discusses the plethora of attitudinal functions for clause-​final modal particles, an essential discourse feature of East and Southeast Asian languages, which is inseparable from the expression of speaker stance and intersubjectivity.

13.2  Fundamental characteristics of modal auxiliaries We first discuss the issue of which lexical category modals belong to, given that they can be, and have been, treated as auxiliary verbs, adverbs, and even as full verbs. We then briefly turn to the notion of modality as expressed by the Chinese modals, and to their diachronic evolution.4

3 

This appellation was first created by Wang Li (1944). Due to space limitations, we have used Standard Mandarin data to illustrate the arguments in this section. Similar syntactic properties for modal verbs in Cantonese and Southern Min are provided to some extent in sections 13.4 and 13.5 below, where relevant references for Cantonese and Southern Min are also found. 4 

298    Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube

13.2.1 Main verbs, auxiliary verbs, or adverbs? In contemporary Sinitic languages, there is a certain number of distributional criteria allowing the establishment of an autonomous category of “auxiliary verbs”. As they occupy essentially the same place as that occupied by adverbs, that is, preceding the verb, some scholars consider them as adverbs. They can, however, be distinguished from adverbs on three fundamental points, and from verbs on two. Auxiliaries can, first of all, be used alone as free elements, especially when answering polar verb-​neg-​verb questions (section 13.7), which is not usually the case for monosyllabic adverbs. (1) 你明天能不能來? 能。 Nĭ 2sg

míngtiān tomorrow

néng can

bù neg

néng can

lái? come

Néng. can

‘Can you come tomorrow? (Yes, I) can.’ Secondly, their behavior in face of negation is idiosyncratic. Thus, x–​vp (where X stands for the modal auxiliary) can be negated by the following forms: neg–​x–​vp, x–​neg–​vp as illustrated in (2), and, notably, neg–​x–​neg–​vp as illustrated in (3), which clearly distinguishes them from adverbs for which there is, in the main, only the one possibility of neg–​adv–​vp. (2) 她 病了, 可以 不上 課。 Tā 3sg

bìng ill

le, p.crs

kĕyĭ may

bù neg

shàng-​kè. go-​class

‘She’s ill, and does not have to go to class.’ (3) 他不敢不 去。 Tā 3sg

bù neg

găn dare

bù neg

qù. go

‘He doesn’t dare not to go.’ Thirdly, the syntactic function of modal verbs is certainly not the same as that of adverbs. Adverbs modify the verbs they precede and are involved in a modifier–​head construction, whereas modal verbs do not modify the following VPs but are the center in a verb–​object construction. In other words, it is their following VPs which act as either verbal or clausal complements, “embedded”, so to speak, under the modal verb as a kind of object; see Zhu Dexi (1982: 122) for a discussion of this concept of “predicative object verbs”, which we adopt in this survey.

Modality and mood in Sinitic    299 Why then treat them as auxiliary verbs and not as full verbs, if they are acting as the centre of v–​o constructions? A fourth characteristic may explain this: modal verbs cannot be followed by a nominal or pronominal object or any kind of nominalization, as opposed to normal transitive verbs, which can. This was only possible for their source verbs in Archaic Chinese, including to a lesser extent those found in Medieval Chinese. Chinese auxiliary verbs are typically derived from full verbs along various grammaticalization pathways (see section 13.2.3 for a short diachronic overview). Finally, the fifth property of auxiliary verbs concerns the fact that contrary to ordinary verbs, they can neither be reduplicated nor be modified by aspectual particles. This feature allows us to distinguish the dual function of many modal verbs in Chinese languages. Albeit derived from lexical verbs, in some cases the main verb usage still co-​exists side-​by-​side with the modal one, if there is a protracted transitional stage for the grammaticalization process (which illustrates the heuristic principle of persistence, Hopper 1991). This may presage a stage where only the modal use is pertinent, the main verb usage having become obsolete. In the three Sinitic languages treated in this survey, both types of modal verbs are found, that is, ones which still retain a semantically separate main verb usage, and ones which are uniquely modal (indicated below, as appropriate). These five syntactic tests used to distinguish modal verbs as a class in Standard Mandarin can be applied equally well to modal verbs in Cantonese and Southern Min (q.v. respectively Luke and Nancarrow 1998, Cheng 1980).

13.2.2 Modality Modal auxiliary verbs are usually grouped into the three traditional, core modal notions, viz. epistemic, deontic, and dynamic, with the addition of a few less common, if not more controversial categories, such as boulomaic, alethic, and evidential modality (q.v. Palmer 1986). These modal auxiliary verbs form a closed list which varies, however, from one Sinitic language to another and from one author to another. If only those in common use are retained, there are no more than fifteen to twenty high-​frequency modal auxiliaries in Standard Mandarin (Peng Lizhen 2007: 88–​90), which can essentially be classified into three main semantic fields of (i) possibility and permission; (ii) necessity, obligation, and certainty; and (iii) volition. A caveat associated with these semantic fields is that most modal verbs display a very high degree of polysemy, a feature that will come to the forefront in the following analysis.5

5 

See Zhu Dexi (1982: 61–​66), Ding Shengshu (1961), and the exhaustive list of 43 auxiliary verbs given by Chao Yuen Ren (1968: 735–​748).

300    Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube Several interpretations are thus possible for a single modal form. For instance, the two main verbs of possibility, néng 能 and kĕyĭ, 可以 are given the following interpretations by Zhu Dexi (1982: 62): “néng and kĕyĭ both express capacity of the subject which can or cannot be realized (i.e. ‘participant-​internal possibility’ as used in the present framework); néng also expresses an objective possibility (what we will call ‘participant-​external possibility’ below); néng and kĕyĭ express permission due to circumstances or to reason (what we will call ‘participant-​external deontic modality’)”. The problem is that the distinction made between “subjective” and “objective” modality, and which most Chinese linguists adopt, is clearly not very easy to apply. In this analysis, we adopt the bipartition proposed by van der Auwera and Plungian (1998) into two types of modality: epistemic and non-​epistemic or situational. The non-​ epistemic type is further subdivided into participant-​external and participant-​internal (see also Chapter 3). Some of their main sub-​categories are displayed in Table 13.1.

13.2.3 Diachronic overview As mentioned above, modal verbs in Chinese were all originally lexical verbs, allowing nominal objects. Through grammaticalization, they later developed into auxiliary verbs, allowing predicative objects. Such an evolution is cross-​linguistically robust (see Lightfoot 1979: 81; Hopper and Traugott 1993: 45 – 48; Harris and Campbell 1995: 172; Traugott and Dasher 2002: 105–​151). For Chinese it is difficult to know, however, precisely when these developments took place, and, above all, when the new category of auxiliary verbs was definitively established. What is certain, however, is that the majority of them (néng 能, kĕ 可, kĕyĭ 可以, dāng 當, găn 敢, etc.) already existed in Late Archaic Chinese during the period corresponding to Classical Chinese, fifth–​second century bc, even if their use as fully lexical verbs remained in force. Table 13.1 Bipartition for Chinese modal auxiliary verbs Epistemic

Situational (non-​epistemic) Participant-​external

possibility

Participant-​internal

possibility permission

ability

probability

obligation

willingness

certainty

requirement

volition, intention

necessity

necessity

Modality and mood in Sinitic    301 Concerning the historical evolution of the modal auxiliaries, several hypotheses have been proposed by Peyraube (1999—​on the auxiliaries of possibility and necessity; 2001—​on the auxiliaries of volition), also by Li Ming (2001, 2002), and by Peyraube and Li Ming (2009, 2012):    (i) The modal auxiliaries have undergone a shift from non-​epistemic to epistemic.  (ii) There has also been a shift from weak subjective epistemicity to more strongly subjective epistemicity, supporting the claim that meanings tend to move toward greater subjectivity and in accordance with the analysis of Traugott (1989) on epistemic meanings in English. (iii) For the modal verbs of volition, the historical development has involved the following important semantic changes:  intention > future (also attested cross-​ linguistically, see Bybee 1995); weak volition > strong volition; physical domain > mental domain. For more details, see Peyraube and Li Ming (2009, 2012). The following sections present the modal system in three Sinitic languages from a synchronic point of view for Standard Mandarin, Cantonese Yue, and Taiwanese Southern Min.

13.3  Modal verbs in Standard Mandarin For Standard Mandarin or pŭtōnghuà, we examine three groups of modal verbs. The first of these groups concerns verbs expressing mainly possibility, but also permission. For Standard Mandarin, these include néng 能 and nénggòu 能够 ‘can, able to’, huì 会 ‘can, able to, know how to’, kĕyĭ 可以 ‘may, to be permitted to, can, able to’, and yŭnxŭ 允许 ‘to be permitted to, may’.6 The second group contains auxiliaries of necessity, obligation, and certainty: yīnggāi 应该 ‘ought to’, gāi 该 ‘ought to’, yīngdāng 应当 and dĕi 得 ‘have got to, must’, bìxū 必须 and xūyào 需要 ‘need, be necessary’. In the third group, we find verbs of volition:  yào 要 ‘want to’, xiǎng 想 ‘wish to, intend’, xiǎngyào 想要 ‘wish to’, ài 爱 ‘like to, fond of ’, yuànyì 愿意 ‘wish to, to be willing to’, qíngyuàn 情愿 ‘would rather’, lèyì 乐意 ‘be glad to’, xĭhuān 喜欢, ‘like to’, kĕn 肯 ‘be willing, be not unwilling’, gǎn 敢 ‘dare’. As will be observed below, many verbs

6  Other modal verbs in this category are xǔ 许 ‘to be permitted to, may’, zhǔn 准 ‘to be permitted to, may.’ See Zhu Dexi (1982) for further discussion, the source of some of the Mandarin examples. Other data are taken from the Corpus of Contemporary Chinese, available on the website of the Center for Chinese Linguistics at Peking University:  , from a transcription of two conversations by standard Mandarin speakers from Beijing, the first entitled A Camping Trip to the Victorian Countryside and the second, China’s Education System, and also from Mary Erbaugh’s Pear Stories data for Mandarin: .

302    Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube may have both epistemic and non-​epistemic participant-​external interpretations, or both epistemic and non-​epistemic participant-​internal meanings, if not all three (q.v. Nuyts 2001a).

13.3.1 Auxiliary verbs expressing possibility, permission and capacity The modals néng 能 and nénggòu 能够 are highly polysemous, both possessing the epistemic and non-​epistemic senses of ‘can, able to, may’. First, they may be used to express two subtypes of participant-​external modality—​dynamic possibility as in (4) (referring to the removal of an obstacle, ‘numbness’), as well as the deontic meaning of permission, ‘may’, as in (5). (4) 我的脚不麻了，能动。 Wǒ 1sg

de lig

jiǎo foot

bù neg

má numb

le, p.crs

néng can

dòng. move

‘My foot is no longer numb, (I) can move it.’ (5) 他现在能離開了。 Tā 3sg

xiànzài now

néng may

líkāi leave

le. p.crs

‘He may leave now.’ An utterance similar to (5), tā néng míngtiān lái [3sg may tomorrow come] 他能明天來, can be interpreted in terms of both epistemic possibility (‘perhaps he’ll come’) or in terms of participant-​external deontic permission (‘he’s permitted to come’). The modal verb kěyĭ 可以 ‘can, may, to be permitted to’ appears to be a near synonym of néng. In many cases, the two may substitute one for the other, as in example (5) above and (6): (6) 可以进來吗? Kĕyĭ may

jìnlái enter

ma? p.q

‘May (I) come in?’ In their negated forms, however, bù néng and bù kĕyĭ cannot be easily interchanged, since the negated form bù kĕyĭ is not semantically symmetrical with the positive form: it has the sense of ‘should not’ or ‘not be allowed to’ rather than ‘not be able to’, cf. zhèyàng zuò bù kĕyĭ [this.way neg may do] 这样做不可以 (‘doing it this way is not allowed’).

Modality and mood in Sinitic    303 The modal huì 会 can be used in future contexts with the sense of epistemic possibility:7 (7) 看样子会下雨。 Kàn look

yàngzi appearance

huì can

xià fall

yŭ. rain

‘It seems it could rain.’

13.3.2 Auxiliary verbs expressing necessity and obligation Yīnggāi 应该 ‘should’ and the less common gāi 该 ‘ought to’ express epistemic necessity due to some kind of reasoning, as in (8), and non-​epistemic participant-​external necessity—​a requirement for a happy future, as in (9). (8) 书应该在桌子上。 Shū book

yīnggāi should

zài be.at

zhuōzi-​shang. table-​on

‘The book should be on the table.’ (9) 我想起了马晓军，我觉得我应该嫁给他。 Wŏ 1sg

xiăngqĭ-​le recall-​pfv

jià-​gĕi marry-​to

Mă Xiăojūn, (name)

wŏ 1sg

juéde feel

wŏ 1sg

yīnggāi should

tā. 3sg

‘Thinking about Ma Xiaojun, I feel I ought to get married to him.’ The modal dĕi 得 ‘must’ is mainly used with a deontic sense of obligation and thus largely with human subjects. (10)  没门儿, 我得走。 Méi neg.pfv

ménr, way,

wŏ 1sg

dĕi must

zŏu. go

‘It can’t be helped, I have to (must) go.’

7 

There is another modal adverb, kěnéng 可能, that also expresses the “can” of possibility and occurs in this same context in (7) as huì, and in past contexts as well.

304    Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube The two auxiliaries bìxū 必须 and xūyào需要 are near synonyms meaning ‘must’, ‘need’, or ‘it is necessary to’. (11) 我必须 (需要)想办法先挣点钱，以便能够在北京待下去。 Wŏ 1sg

bìxū must

yĭbiàn in.order.to

(xūyào) (must) nénggòu be.able

xiăng find zài at

bànfă way

Bĕijīng Beijing

xiān first

zhèng earn

diăn some

qián, money

dài-​xiàqu. stay

‘I must find a way to earn some money first of all, in order to be able to stay in Beijing.’

13.3.3 Auxiliary modal verbs of volition, capacity, and ability In addition to their epistemic values described in section 13.3.1 above, néng and nénggòu also express the capacity or ability of agents to perform an action, that is, participant-​ internal dynamic modality. (12) 能(够)挑二百斤的担子上山。 èr-​bǎi 200

Néng(gòu) tiǎo able carry

jīn pound

de lig

dànzi load

shàng climb

shān. mountain

‘(He) is able to carry a load of two hundred pounds (and) climb the mountain.’ The modal huì 会 in (13) expresses the meaning of participant-​internal ability, particularly with reference to intellectual ability and learned skills, as opposed to physical capacity to carry out an action. (13) 他们都不会写, 写了一丁点 儿。 Tāmen 3pl

dōu all

bù neg

huì able

xiě, write

xiě write

le pfv

yī-​dīng-​diănr. one-​tiny-​bit

‘None of them could write it (an essay); (so they) just wrote a tiny little bit.’ The most common auxiliary verb of volition which expresses the dynamic meaning of intention or wish to do something in Mandarin is yào 要 ‘want to’: (14) 那些人都要退学。 Nèixiē that.cl.pl

rén people

dōu all

yào want

tuìxué. withdraw.study

‘All these people want to withdraw from their studies.’

Modality and mood in Sinitic    305 Yào also expresses a non-​deontic participant-​external meaning of necessity, that is, ‘must’ or ‘have to’, as in (15) and serves to mark a near future tense, in (16): (15) 过河要有船。 Guò Cross

hé river

yào must

yŏu have

chuán. boat

‘(You) must have a boat for crossing the river.’ (16) 快要下雨。 Kuài soon

yào want.fut

xià fall

yŭ. rain

‘It’s going to rain soon.’ Verbs expressing the meaning of desire and willingness include yuànyì 愿意 ‘be willing to, wish to’ and kĕn 肯 ‘be willing to’. (17) 他不愿意干那么脏的活儿。 Tā 3sg

bù neg

yuànyì willing

gàn do

nàme such

zāng dirty

de lig

huór. job

‘He wasn’t willing to do such dirty work (as washing up).’ Xiăng 想 has the meaning of ‘want to, wish to, desire to’, as in (18), and is ambiguous with its lexical meaning ‘to think of ’ in (19): (18) 谁想去打乒乓球哇? Shéi who

xiǎng want

qù go.prp

dǎ play

pīngpāng pingpong

qíu ball

wa? p.cnf

‘Who wants to play ping pong?’ (19) 她想去吗? Tā 3sg

xiăng think

qù go

ma? p.q

‘Is she thinking of going?’ /​‘Does she want to go?’ This completes our brief description of the modal verb system of Standard Mandarin. In-​d epth studies are to be found in Alleton (1984) and Peng Lizhen (2007).

306    Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube

13.4  Modal verbs in Cantonese In a discourse study of Cantonese modal verbs, Luke and Nancarrow (1998) found that the four most frequently occurring ones were wúih 會 ‘will, can’, hóyíh 可以 ‘can’, yiu 要 ‘want, must’, and séung 想 ‘wish’.8 These and a selection of other high frequency modals in Cantonese are treated next, according to the classification framework adopted.9

13.4.1 Auxiliary verbs of possibility, capacity, and permission The main modal verbs in Cantonese for expressing participant-​external possibility, capacity, and deontic permission, are wúih 會, hóyíh 可以, and dāk 得 (‘must’/​ ‘can’). The modal verb sīk 識 ‘can’ is used for participant-​internal capacity. The modal wúih 會 possesses the main modal meaning of prediction.10 (20) 唧係會死㗎嘞。 Jēk p.fam

haih be

wúih will

séi die

ga-​lak. p.asst-​p.fnl

‘That means she was going to die.’ The prediction meaning in (20) has lead to its development as the most common marker of future and irrealis contexts in Cantonese. This irrealis function can be easily observed in conditional and counterfactual clauses, with which wúih is highly compatible, as in (21): (21) 有乜嘢會發生係你身上呀, 如果你冇食物? Yáuh have yùhgwó if

mātyé what léih 2sg

wúih will móuh neg

faatsāng happen

hái at

léih 2sg

sān-​seuhng body-​on

a, p.rnf

sihkmaht? food

‘What will happen to you, if you have no food?’ 8  These findings were based on a running text from popular Cantonese fiction comprising 22,426 words. 9  In the sections on Cantonese and Southern Min, we follow the commonly accepted practice in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where these languages are respectively spoken, of using Chinese traditional characters and not the simplified ones. 10 Unless otherwise indicated, the Cantonese data come from four recordings and texts collected by H. Chappell in Hong Kong. These include two narratives, (i) the Tale of the Reborn Lady at the Red Flowering Plum 再世紅梅記, a traditional Chinese opera story of a reincarnated damsel, a scholar-​hero, and a villainous chief minister and (ii) Balcony Rendezvous 樓台會 a traditional Chinese opera story of the star-​ crossed lovers, Liang Shanbo and ZhuYingtai; a television interview on the art of tea-​making (from TVB Jade) and a written text in the form of pulp fiction, Fuīsīk 灰色, The Color Gray about a treacherous wife and poisoner.

Modality and mood in Sinitic    307 The verb hóyíh 可以 expresses not only the deontic permission ‘may’ but also the participant-​external ‘can’ of possibility. The two following examples illustrate respectively these two main modal meanings. (22) 唔可以呃到人嘅。 M̀ h neg

hóyíh can

āk-​dó trick-​accm

yàhn person

ge. p.asst

‘It’s wrong to trick others.’ (‘You may not trick others/​You mustn’t trick others.’) (23) 而且我仲可以搵個人照顧妳添。 Yìhché ngóh furthermore 1sg

juhng hóyíh still can

wán find

go cl

yàhn jiugu léih person care 2sg

tīm. too

‘Furthermore, I can even find someone to look after you too!’ The post-​verbal use of dāk 得 ‘can’ refers to its use as the second verb in a compound structure, verb-​dāk 得, where it can code dynamic ability as in (24), but also participant-​external possibility, as in (25). (24) 佢话 。 Kéuih 3sg

wah say

p.q

‘He said, “How will I be able to recognize you?” ’ That this modal may be classified with auxiliaries that precede the main verb is apparent from the fact that it can occur as a free word in answer to questions, as in (25) (from Kwok 1971: 73): (25) 喂, 去得未呀? Wai Hey

heui go

dāk able

mèi neg

 我得嘅嘞。 a? p.q

‘Hey, can we go yet?’

Ngóh 1sg

dāk can

ge p.asst

la. p.crs

‘Sure (I can).’

The notion of participant-​internal ability, as a learned skill, is expressed by sīk 識, in the sense of knowing how to do something, such as driving a car, or speaking a language. This corresponds to this particular use of huì 会 (會) in Mandarin (section 13.3.1) and to the semantically specific e7hiau2 會曉 in Southern Min (section 13.5.1). (Example from Luke and Nancarrow 1998.) (26) 佢識打幾種跟斗。 Kéuih 3sg

sīk can

dá hit

géi-​júng several-​cl.kind

‘He can do several kinds of somersault.’

gwāandáu. somersault

308    Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube

13.4.2 Auxiliary verbs of obligation and necessity Moving into the domain of obligation, the main modal verbs which code shades of this meaning are yiu 要 ‘need’ or ‘have to’ (necessity) and yīnggōi 應該 ‘should’. The former verb is illustrated in (27). (27) 你都要搵份工作嚟維持生計喇！ Léih 2sg sānggai living

dōu also

yiu must

wán find

fahn cl

gūngjok work

làih dir.prp

wàihchìh maintain

la. p.crs

‘You’ll have to find a job to earn your living.’ The example with yīnggōi in (28) expresses deontic obligation, showing how degree adverbs such as hóu ‘very’ may modify certain modal verbs in Cantonese. In the example in (29), we find yīnggōi used in its epistemic sense of making an “educated guess” or estimation of the situation. (28) 我好應該承擔一啲責任。 Ngóh 1sg

hóu very

yīnggōi should

sìhngdāam shoulder

yāt-​dī one-​cl.pl

jaakyahm. responsibility

‘I should really shoulder some of the responsibility.’ (29) 嗰陣時應該得七 歲。 Gó-​jahn that-​cl

sìh time

yīnggōi should

dāk only

chāt seven

seui. years.of.age

‘At that time, I think I was only seven.’

13.4.3 Auxiliary modal verbs of volition The two main verbs expressing volition in Cantonese are yiu 要 ‘want’ and séung 想 ‘wish’. The modal yiu 要 can also express deontic obligation ‘must, need to’ (section 13.4.2), and imminence (near future), even though it is less common in this role than is wúih 會 ‘will’ (Luke and Nancarrow 1998: 109). Similarly to standard Mandarin, the modal yiu 要 has a main verb usage meaning ‘to want (+ noun), to order’, or ‘to require’ from which its modal uses of volition and obligation have evolved, exemplified below. Its various uses as a modal far outnumber those as a main verb in textual counts (Luke and Nancarrow 1998: 96).

Modality and mood in Sinitic    309 (30) 你 … 點解要幫我? Léih 2sg

dímgáai why

yiu want

bōng help

ngóh? 1sg

‘Why do you want to help me?’ The main use of séung 想 ‘wish’ is as an auxiliary modal, having evolved from the main verb usage ‘to think’, a sense which it no longer synchronically possesses (see section 13.3.3. for the case in Mandarin). (31) 我想去見嫲嫲。 Ngóh 1sg

séung wish

heui go

gin see

màhmàh. grandma

‘I want to go and see my grandma.’ Other more semantically specific volitional modals are háng 肯and yuhn 願 which both mean ‘to be willing to’. The reader is referred to the more detailed treatments of Cantonese modals in Kwok (1971: ch. 5), Nancarrow and Luke (1998), Luke and Nancarrow (1998), and Matthews and Yip (2011: ch. 12).

13.5  Modal verbs in Southern Min Southern Min has a fascinating repertory of modal verbs that can be classified into three sets according to their lexical domain and their mode of negation, for every set is accompanied by its own semantically-​matching, negative counterpart. Moreover, the negated phrases frequently occur as fused forms. As Cheng (1977) has aptly observed, there is an inseparable relation in Taiwanese Southern Min between negation and modality.

13.5.1 Auxiliary verbs of possibility, ability, and permission In Southern Min, the most common modal verb for expressing participant-​external possibility is e7 會 ‘be likely’, accompanied by its negative form, be7 𣍐 in (32), claimed to be a fusion of bo5+e7 無+會(neg+‘can’).11 It can also serve as a participant-​internal

11  be7 𣍐 also has a dialectal variant, bue7, while it is pronounced bue0 in clause-​final position as a question marker.

310    Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube dynamic modal verb ‘can’ expressing capacity, as in (33) and (34) (examples adapted from Teng 1980):12 (32) 會寒𣍐? E7 can

kuann5 be.cold

bue0? neg.can

‘Will it be cold?’ (33) 這個物件會震動。 Chit8-​e5 this-​cl

mih4kiann2 thing

e7 can

tin2tang7. move

‘This thing can move.’ (34) 亻因老板真會啉。 In1 3pl

lau2pan2 boss

chin1 really

e7 can

lim1. drink

‘His boss can really drink.’ These two senses of e7會 ‘can’ may be usefully compared with the closely related e7hiau2 會曉 ‘can’, as in I1 e7 hiau2 siu5chui2 [3sg can swim] 伊會曉泅水 ‘she can (knows how to) swim’. The verb e7-​hiau2 serves only as a participant-​internal modal, typically referring to intellectual ability, thus akin to certain uses of both huì 会 (會) in Mandarin, and savoir in French, while e7 會 alone, refers mainly to ability in terms of physical capacity for its respective participant-​internal modal use. Other important modal verbs found in the semantic domain of permission are e7sai2 會使 ‘to be permitted, to be OK’ in (38), e7tang1 會當 ‘can (be possible), to be allowed’ in (35), and e7eng7會用 ‘may, be permitted’. (35) 龜仔車會當載幾個儂? Ku1-​a2 tortoise

chhia1 car

e7tang1 can

chai3 load

kui2-​e5 how.many-​cl

lang5? people

‘How many people can a VW beetle carry?’

12  In a very insightful paper on Southern Min modal verbs, Teng (1980) uses the distinction of “external” versus “internal” for his main classification. These very roughly correspond to “participant-​external” and “participant-​internal” possibility in the system we have adopted (see section 13.2). We have added the glosses and tone numbers to his examples. See also Fan (2011) who treats modal verbs of possibility in a large survey of Sinitic languages, including many Min dialects.

Modality and mood in Sinitic    311

13.5.2 Auxiliary modal verbs of obligation and necessity The verb tioh8 着 in Southern Min, ‘to hit the mark, to be right’, is a case in point of an action verb, having undergone dramatic semantic change to evolve into a deontic modal verb of obligation ‘should, must’. It often occurs in its compound form tioh8ai3 着愛 ‘ought to’, formed with ai3 ‘to want, to need’, as in (36) (referring to a custom). (36) 過年着愛換桶仔。 Kue3ninn5 New.year

tioh8ai3 need

uann7 change

thang2-​a2. bucket-​nmz

‘At the New Year, people have to change their buckets.’ For more discussion, see Cheng (1980) and Yang (1991).

13.5.3 Auxiliary modal verbs of volition In Southern Min, the two main modal verbs of volition are beh4 卜 ‘want’ and ai3 愛 ‘want’. It is not surprising to find that the modal beh4 can also be used to mark irrealis and future contexts, given that this is a very common pathway of semantic extension for want verbs. The next two examples respectively illustrate each of these uses for beh4 and the third one for the basic lexical meaning of the verb ai3 which means ‘to like, to love, to be fond of ’.13 (37) 我卜來去菜市仔。 Gua2 1sg

beh4 want

lai5-​khi3 go

chhai3-​chhi7-​a2. market-​nmz

‘I want to go to the market.’ (38) 卜做生意會使呀 ，啊卜做啥物? Beh4 want

cho3 do

seng1-​li2 trading

e7sai2 permissible

ah itj

beh4 want.fut

cho3 do

siann2-​mih4? what

a, p.cnf

‘Wanting to do business is OK, (but) what will we sell?’

13 

Unless otherwise indicated, the Southern Min data come from narrative and conversational texts collected by H.  Chappell in Taipei. One concerns reminiscences of childhood experiences during summer holidays, running a family business and waitering (Jesse’s narratives) while the other is a family conversation about relatives in Australia, stockmarket losses, divination, and changing jobs (Fate).

312    Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube (39) 哇彼陣仔我真愛卨山。 Oa= itj

hit4-​chun7-​a2 that-​time-​nmz

gua2 1sg

chin1 really

ai3 like

peh4-​suann1. climb-​mountain

‘Oh, at that time, I really liked mountain-​climbing.’ Apart from its volitional sense, the modal verb ai3 愛 may also be used as a necessity modal, ‘must’ or ‘to have to’, a usage much more common in our texts than ‘like’: (40) 咱 -​咱 一 定 愛請一個會計。 Lan2 -​ 1pl.inc

lan2 1pl.inc

it4-​teng7 certainly

ai3 need

chhiann2 employ

chit8-​e5 one-​cl

hue7-​ke3. accountant

‘We—​we certainly need to employ an accountant.’ In this function, it is lexically replacing two modal ‘competitors’, tioh8 着 ‘must’ and tioh8ai3 着愛 ‘should’, its compound form (Cheng 1980: 79), as in (36) above. A fused form of the negative counterpart of ai3愛 codes the negative imperative: mai3 莫+ verb ‘don’t verb’ (see section 13.7.3 below). In addition to these two main modal verbs of volition, beh4 and ai3, there are other more semantically specific verbs such as cheng5-​goan7 情愿 ‘to be willing’ and siunn2-beh4 想卜 ‘would like, to want’ in common use in Southern Min.

13.6  Potential verb compounds in Sinitic languages Potential verb compounds in Sinitic languages constitute a special structure which, in general, is used to express both dynamic ability and participant-​external possibility and, depending on the language, sometimes permission. These compounds are morphologically derived from both resultative verb compounds (rvcs) and directional verb compounds (dvcs) by infixation of either a positive or negative modal form. Such verb complexes represent three very common types in Sinitic languages, all belonging to the verb–​complement predicate structure (shùbŭ jiégòu 述补结 构) and can thus be considered as a distinctive syntactic characteristic of this branch of lan­guages. The compound form acts as the base for the infixation, to which the modal form is attached. There are two structures, depending on whether we have an rvc or a dvc:

Modality and mood in Sinitic    313 (41) Resultative verb compounds (rvc): v1[action/​event]—v2[state/​phase marker] kàn-​dŏng 看懂 chuān-​pò 穿破

‘read (and understand)’ ‘wear out, perforate’

Directional verb compounds (dvc): v1[action/​event]—​(v2[spatial orientation])—​(v3[deictic: 來 ‘come’/​去 ‘go’]) diào-​xiàlái 掉下来 ‘fall down (towards speaker)’ pá-​shàngqù 爬上去 ‘climb up (away from speaker)’ (See Chao 1968: 350–​358; Li and Thompson 1981: 54–​68 for more detailed descriptions of rvcs and dvcs and Chappell forthcoming b on their interaction with major clause types in Mandarin.)

13.6.1 Potential verb compounds in Standard Mandarin Both resultative and directional verb compounds are structurally highly adapted for use in this special modal construction called “potential verb compounds”, or kĕnéng bŭyŭ 可能补语 in Chinese linguistics. Across Sinitic languages, the construction typically makes use of infixes for both the positive and negative forms. For example, in Standard Mandarin, atonal de 得 (< dé ‘able’) is used in the positive form: v1 de 得 v2; the atonal infix bu 不 (< negative adverb bù) is used in the negative form: v1 bu 不 v2. These two realizations of the potential verb compound allow for the interpretation of either ‘able to v1 so that v2’, as in (42), or alternatively, ‘unable to v1 so that v2’, as in (43). (42) v1得v2 吃得惯。 Chī-​de-​guàn. eat-​neg.pot-​accustomed ‘Able to get used to (eating) the food.’ (43) v1不v2 吃不惯。 Chī-​bu-​guàn. eat-​neg.POT-​accustomed ‘Unable to get used to (eating) the food.’

314    Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube The modal infix de 得 has its source in a lexical verb dé 得 meaning ‘to get, to obtain’ and belongs to a pattern of widespread polysemy found in a large number of other Sinitic languages (see section 13.6.2 for Cantonese) as well as in many unrelated Southeast Asian languages (see Matisoff 1991 among others).

13.6.2 Potential verb compounds in Cantonese Following the same principle as in Mandarin, Cantonese potential verb compounds are similarly formed with the cognate infix dāk 得 < ‘be able’. Compare the two following pairs of examples, based respectively on a resultative verb compound (rvc) and a directional verb compound (dvc). (44) Resultative: sihk-​báau [eat-​full] 食飽 ‘eat one’s fill’ Potential: sihk-​dāk-​báau [eat-​POT-​full] 食得飽 ‘can eat one’s fill’ (45) Directional: mōk-​hōi [peel-​open] 剝開 ‘peel open’ Potential: mōk-​dāk-​hōi [peel-​POT-​open] 剝得開 ‘can be peeled open’ There are two methods for forming the negative counterpart of the potential verb compound in Cantonese. The more common, and apparently the native Cantonese, strategy is to simply periphrastically place the negative marker in front of the positive form of the potential verb compound, thus: neg verb1–​dak–​verb2, as in (47). The second infixed strategy—​ verb1 neg–​verb2, illustrated in (46)—​mirroring the Standard Mandarin form, is more restricted in use and appears to be a borrowing that has, however, become steadily nativized. These two different negation strategies may lead to differences in modal meaning. According to Cheung (1972: 120), the form with a negative infix in (46) generally has just the one modal meaning of inability, whereas the periphrastic form in (47) has the additional deontic meaning of lack of permission: ‘may not’. The examples are both based on the rvc dá-​laahn ‘hit-​break’: (46) 打唔爛。 Dá-​m̀h-​laahn. hit-​neg.POT-​break ‘Unable to break by hitting (no matter how hard one tries).’ (47) 唔打得爛。 M̀   h-​dá-​dāk-​laahn. neg-​hit-​POT-​break (i)  ‘Unable to break by hitting (no matter how hard one tries).’ (ii)  ‘May not hit so that it breaks.’

Modality and mood in Sinitic    315 Cantonese thus provides an interesting contrast with Mandarin, for which the periphrastic strategy for negation is ungrammatical:  *bù chī-​d e-​b ăo [neg eat-​ POT-​f ull] *不吃得飽 as opposed to chī-​bu-​b ăo [eat-​n eg.POT-​f ull] ‘unable to eat one’s fill’. 14

13.6.3 Potential verb compounds in Southern Min Both rvcs and dvcs in Southern Min use the infix e7 會 ‘able’ to derive the positive form of the potential verb compound: v1 會 v2; and they use the infix be7 or bue7 𣍐 ‘unable’ for the negative potential form: v1 𣍐 v2. Similarly to Mandarin, these two variants of the potential verb compound allow for the general interpretation of ‘able to v1 so that v2’ or alternatively, ‘unable to v1 so that v2’: (48) 我看會清。 Gua2 1sg

khuann3-​e7-​tshin7. look-pot-​clearly

‘I could see clearly.’ (49) 我看𣍐清。 Gua2 1sg

khuann3-​be7-​tshin7. look-​neg.pot-​clearly

‘I couldn’t see clearly.’ According to Teng (1980: 35), in Southern Min, the potential verb compound can also have the possibility reading, as in ­example (50). (50) 这款酒，我啉𣍐醉啦。 Chit4-​khuann2 this-​cl.kind

chiu2 wine

gua2 1sg

lim1-​be7-​chui3 drink-​neg.POT-​drunk

la1. p.hor

‘This kind of wine won’t make me drunk.’ Discussion of further types of pvcs is found in Li Rulong (2007: 133–​140).

14  Note, however, that age differentiation is in evidence here: younger generation speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese do not greatly use the form of the negative potential verb compound with neg 唔 verb1-​ dak 得-​verb2 (Hilário de Sousa and Sing Sing Ngai, pers. comm.).

316    Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube

13.7  Mood in Sinitic languages In this section, we discuss mood in Sinitic languages, and specifically the coding of interrogatives and imperatives, in other words, what is traditionally called “sentence types” (see Chapters 5, 8). The focus will be on the close interaction between modal verbs and negative adverbs with respect to their role in forming the interrogative and (negative) imperative moods, evidently as identified by structure rather than by any inflectional means. We first discuss the matter in general terms before turning to illustrations in the three languages in focus in this chapter.

13.7.1 Negation, interrogation, and the imperative The negative adverbs used in standard clausal negation consistently occur in preverbal position. They are generally independent morphemes, although there is ample evidence of fusion with modal verbs having taken place in many of the Sinitic languages, resulting in a rather large number of portmanteau negative markers. Four of the main and recurrent negative adverbs found in Sinitic belong to the semantic categories outlined in Table 13.2 (for a larger selection, see sections 13.7.2–​13.7.4 below; Chappell 1994). These negative adverbs are crucial elements in Sinitic languages in the formation of the interrogative mood, and specifically of polar questions, as well as of the semantically rich manifestations of the negative imperative mood. Table 13.2 Four semantic categories of negative adverbs in Sinitic languages Type

Gloss

Examples

General and volitional negatives

‘do not (want to) verb’

bù 不 Mandarin m̀h 唔 Cantonese m7 伓 Southern Min

Lack of necessity negatives

‘do not need to verb’

béng 甭 Mandarin m̀ h sái 唔使 Cantonese (m7)bien2 (伓)免 Southern Min

Irrealis negatives

‘to have not yet verbed’a

meih 未 Cantonese be7 未 Southern Min

Negative imperatives

‘don’t do verb’

bié 别 Mandarin mai3 莫 Southern Min máih 咪 Cantonese

a

  This category is not present in Mandarin.

Modality and mood in Sinitic    317 Interrogatives span a vast field of different semantic types and syntactic constructions in Sinitic languages—​ f rom information questions featuring wh-​ pronouns, via neutral verb–​n eg–​v erb polar questions and disjunctive questions to non-​neutral polar questions formed with clause-​f inal interrogative particles. As clause-​f inal particles with an interrogative function are described in section 13.8, we simply briefly outline here the use of negative adverbs in the formation of polar and tag questions. Polar “yes–​no” questions are demonstrably quite intimately linked with the use of negatives in Sinitic languages, given their iconic syntactic configuration of verb–​ neg–​verb: nĭ qù bu qù? [2sg go neg go] 你去不去? ‘Are you going?’ As far as modality is concerned, Chao (1968: 800) claims that this type of polar question tends to be non-​committal as to the answer expected. In other words, in the example just given, there is no presupposition on the part of the speaker as to whether the addressee is likely to go or not. In contrast to this, particle questions with sentence-​final ma 吗 in Mandarin, which also belong to the polar “yes–​no” type, contain a “slight or considerable doubt about an affirmative answer” on the part of the speaker (or questioner), according to Chao. Example (1) above contains a verb–​neg–​verb question based on the modal verb, néng ‘can’, in Mandarin, showing its neutrality as far as any assumption is concerned, compared with the particle question in (6) which expresses doubt. Turning to imperatives, the positive form of this mood in Sinitic languages minimally consists of the main verb accompanied by an exclamatory intonation. The presence—​as in the Southern Min example (51)—​or ellipsis of a second person subject represents one major structural variation while, in its negated form, the negative adverb directly precedes the main verb. (51) 汝看！ Li2 2sg

khuann3! see

‘Look!’ Additionally, one of the many clause-​final particles (section 13.8) usually co-​occurs in this construction, as in the Mandarin example (53) below. Naturally, the verbal constituent may be expanded as a predicate or complex clause with several verbs, their objects and adverbs. In the following sections, the imperative will be examined mainly with respect to its negative counterpart for the reason that the negative imperative typically has more construction types and semantic modalities than the positive form in Sinitic languages.

13.7.2 Mood, negation, and sentence types in Standard Mandarin Mandarin possesses a relatively small number of negative adverbs and verbs compared with Southern Sinitic languages. These are the general and volitional negative, bù 不, the existential

318    Hilary Chappell and Alain Peyraube negative marker méi (yŏu) 没(有) used in past perfective contexts, and two negative imperative markers, bù yào 不要 ‘don’t’ or bié 別 and bù yòng 不用 or béng 甭 ‘(you) don’t need to’.15 The general negative adverb bù 不 in Standard Mandarin expresses lack of volition in addition to its basic function of negating declarative clauses, that is, it may express ‘to not want to verb’ or ‘to not be willing to verb’, as in (52), as well as, unembellished, ‘not verb’. As such, it is not surprising that bù 不 is the main negative adverb used in the negation of most of the Mandarin epistemic and deontic modals discussed in sections 13.2 and 13.3 above. (52) 我可不想跳那种舞。 Wǒ 1sg

kě but

bù neg

xiǎng want

tiào jump

nèi-​zhǒng that-​type

wǔ. dance

‘But I didn’t want to do that kind of dance.’ The Mandarin positive imperative, including examples such as duō chī diănr! [more eat little] 多吃点儿 ‘eat a little more!’ has its negative imperative counterpart formed by either bù yào 不要 ‘neg want’ or its fused form, bié 別, as in (53) (about blackberries): (53) 他说, 嗨, 小的你可別吃呀！ Tā 3sg

shuō: say

Hāi! itj

Xiǎo small

de lig

nĭ 2sg

kě but

bié neg.imp

chī eat

ya! p.hor

‘He said, “Hey! Don’t eat the small ones!” ’ Similarly, the “lack of necessity” negative—​ bù yòng 不用 ‘don’t need to; shouldn’t’—​is also found in the fused form béng 甭 in many Mandarin dialects, and may be used in negative imperatives as well as a negator in erstwhile declarative sentences: (54) 你既然都知道了，我就甭说了! Nĭ jìrán dōu 2sg since all

zhīdao le, know pfv

wŏ 1sg

jiù béng shuō then neg.imp volition. Necessity appears at the top of the implicative scale as the most frequently borrowed semantic category, while possibility and volition are not borrowed unless necessity is borrowed too (Elšík and Matras 2009:  312). In the majority of cases we are aware of, the languages borrow one modal of necessity. In some cases, as in Turkish and Greek Albanian, we find MAT-​borrowings for both necessity and possibility, which is compatible with Matras’ borrowing hierarchy.2 An apparent 2 

An example from Asia corroborating this scale is found in Biak, an Austronesian language of Papua, the easternmost province of Indonesia. This language, which displays considerable transfer from Malay/​ Indonesian, has only one vernacular modal (the verb ve ‘want’) while it lacks vernacular equivalents for the modals bias ‘can’ and harus ‘must’ borrowed from Indonesian (van den Heuvel 2007: 332ff.).

410    Björn Hansen and Umberto Ansaldo Table 17.1 MAT-​borrowings of modals in Europe Borrowing language

Borrowed from language

Modal

Semantics

Estonian

Middle High German

pruukima

¬NEC

Karelian

Russian

dolžen

NEC

Karelian, Veps

Russian

prišlos’

NEC

Polish

German

musieć

NEC

Czech

German

muset

NEC

Slovak

German

musiet’

NEC

Upper Sorbian

German

dyrbjeć

NEC

Lower Sorbian

German

musaś

NEC

Ukrainian

German via Polish

musyty

NEC

Belarussian

German via Polish

music’

NEC

Latvian

Balto-​Finnic

vajadzēt

NEC

Hungarian

German

muszáj

NEC

Romanian

South-​Slavonic

a trebui

NEC

Turkish

Arabic

lâzım

NEC

Arabic

mümkün

POSS

Arabic

la:zïm

NEC

Arabic

va:jïb

NEC

Gagauz

Arabic

la:zïm

NEC

Uzbek

Arabic

mumkin

POSS

Yakut

Russian

na:da

NEC

Berber

Arabic

laq

NEC

Arabic

mken

POSS

Greek

préps

NEC

mborés

POSS

epitrépsetə

POSS

Azeri

Arvanitika (Greek Albanian)

Source: Hansen and de Haan 2009: 548 counter-​example is provided by Russian, which has borrowed only a single modal, but, surprisingly, a modal of possibility. In the seventeenth century, a period of intensive language contact with Polish, the adverbial modal of possibility možno was borrowed from the latter. This form came to replace the inherited East Slavonic

Areality in modality and mood    411 modal moščno which, interestingly, had the same meaning as its MAT-​counterpart (Hansen 2001: 358ff.). Closer diachronic research shows, however, that at the same time a modal of necessity was borrowed from Polish, viz. musit’ ‘must’, which after a short period disappeared again (Besters-​Dilger 1997:  20). Furthermore, intensive contact between closely related languages can lead to the rare phenomenon of massive MAT replication, that is a situation where a replica language takes over the whole system of modals. Besters-​Dilger (2005) reports a wholesale reconstruction of the modal system in the ancestor language of Modern Ukrainian, the so-​called “prosta mova”, in the second half of the sixteenth century. The formerly East Slavonic elements were replaced by MAT replicas from the culturally dominant high prestige language Polish. Modern Ukrainian, thus, possesses six MAT replicas: možna (from Polish można ‘one can’), musyty (from Polish musieć ‘must’), povynen (from Polish powinien ‘one should’), naležyt’ (from Polish należy ‘one has to’) and treba (from Polish trzeba ‘one has to’). It is worth noting that in some cases we find borrowing chains involving more than two languages. This can be illustrated by Slovak Romani musaj (Elšík and Matras 2009: 274). This element is a MAT replication of the Hungarian element muszáj, which in itself is borrowed from German muss sein ‘must.prs.3.sg be.inf’. A similar example of areal diffusion is the spread of the same German modal müssen ‘must’ or rather its Old High German ancestor muozan among the Slavonic languages (Hansen 2000, 2001): it was borrowed directly into Polish (musieć), Czech (muset), Slovak (musiet’), Lower Sorbian (musaś), and indirectly via Polish into Ukrainian (musyty) and Belarussian (music’). The modal müssen and its replicas, thus, cover a large linguistic area in Central and Eastern Europe. If a language replicates a modal as a form-​function unit, the meaning of the replica can either (a) completely or (b) partially coincide with the source item. The first case can again be illustrated by the replication of German müssen. In semantics and in the main syntactic parameters, the Polish, Czech, and Slovak modals overlap with German müssen: syntactically, the replicas feature a subject encoded in nominative case, a lexical verb in the infinitive, and they carry inflection and show subject agreement; and semantically, they show the same polyfunctionality as the source element, featuring dynamic, deontic, and epistemic meanings. Compare Polish corpus example (1) with our German translation in (2):3 (1) Polish (Corpus PWN) Muszę must.1sg

się refl

teraz now

położyć, rest.inf

bo because

jestem be.1sg

bardzo very

osłabiony. tired.m.sg ‘I must rest now, because I’m very tired.’ 3 

Unless indicated otherwise, examples in this chapter are adopted from corpus data or, in some cases, construed by the authors.

412    Björn Hansen and Umberto Ansaldo (2) German Ich muss mich jetzt hinlegen, denn ich bin sehr müde. I must.1sg refl now rest.inf because I be.1sg very tired ‘I must rest now, because I’m very tired.’ This constructional and semantic equivalence notwithstanding, there may be differences in frequency and distribution among genres. The epistemic use of the Slavonic replicas of German müssen, for example, has been claimed to be less frequent than in the model language (compare Weiss 1987, 2009). Van der Auwera, Schalley and Nuyts (2005), who compare auxiliary and adverb strategies for the expression of epistemic possibility in the Slavonic translations of a Harry Potter book, encountered big frequency differences in the preference for verbs or adverbs between the individual languages: for example, languages spoken at the Eastern periphery of Europe prefer epistemic adverbs. As mentioned above, there are cases where the replication of a modal involves semantic shifts leading only to a partial semantic overlap between model and replica. For example, Elšík and Matras (2009: 294) report that the Romani modal trubu-​is specialized for weak obligation, although its source modal, Romanian trebui, has a more general meaning. Apart from semantic deviations from the model element, there may be differences in the syntactic make-​up of the modal constructions. One interesting case is presented by the Belarussian replica of Polish musieć, which shows a constructional split correlating with the epistemic/​non-​epistemic distinction. Whereas the Standard Polish (and German) modal encodes non-​epistemic and epistemic meanings in a parallel way with the personal construction “nominative subject—​finite modal—​infinitival verb”, Belarussian structurally distinguishes the two meanings by the use of different constructions: the non-​epistemic use is always expressed by the pattern “nominative subject—​finite modal—​infinitival verb” (as in Polish) and the epistemic use is encoded by the construction “uninflected finite modal in third person singular—​nominative subject—​finite verb” (see also Nau 2012). Compare: (3) Belarussian Cesta dough.nom.sg

music’ must.prs.3sg

byc’ be.inf

mjakkim. soft.inst.sg

‘The dough has to be soft.’ (4) Belarussian Music’, must.prs.3sg

adnym one.inst

z of

haloŭnych important.gen.sg

impul’saŭ, impulse.gen.pl

Areality in modality and mood    413 stala become.pst.f.sg

jaho his

sustreča   z encounter.nom.sg.f with

Katryn Karron. K.K.

‘One main impetus must have been his encounter with K.K.’ In the first case the modal is used as a typical verbal auxiliary and in the second as a sentence adverb scoping over the whole clause; this structural distinction is reflected in the word order. Apart from the deviations involving split marking, we can find cases of a complete structural divergence between model and replica language. This phenomenon can be illustrated on the basis of Crimean Romani, which replicated the Russian modal of necessity dolžen: in the source language dolžen is morphologically an adjective which opens a syntactic slot for a lexical verb in the infinitive, whereas the replica combines with a Balkan-​style finite verb phrase with a complementizer. Compare: (5) Russian (Russian National Corpus) Vy you.pl

dolžny obliged.pl

mne me.dat

otvetit’! answer.inf

‘You should answer me!’ (6) Crimean Romani (Elšík and Matras 2009: 275) Tume you

sanusas cop.imprf.2pl

dolžn’a obliged.pl

te comp

raskeld’ijen meet.sbjv.2pl

les. he.acc

‘You guys must have met him.’ MAT-​borrowings of modals apparently do not have to lead to a change in the inventory of schematic syntactic constructions responsible for argument encoding and agreement, they do not lead to new subject encoding properties of the target language. This indicates that modals as lexical items are much higher on the borrowing scale than schematic syntactic constructions.

17.3.1.2 Material replications of (morphological) mood markers As mentioned in the introduction to section 17.3, we could not find many instances of MAT-​replication of inflectional mood markers. The borrowing of bound mood morphemes seems to presuppose contact scenarios of heavy social pressure, as, for example, in the case of ethnic minorities whose speakers are fully fluent in the dominant majority language. One of these cases is found on the fringes of the European area, in the Northern dialect of Kurdish, the Anatolian dialect to be more precise, the speakers of which have been under strong influence of Turkish. According to Bulut (2006: 107f.) and Haig (2007: 173), Kurdish speakers replicated the Turkish clause-​ final clitic conditional marker se/​sa used to mark the protasis of the conditional clause.

414    Björn Hansen and Umberto Ansaldo (7) Turkish (Ketrez 2012: 202) bil-​se-​m know-cond-1sg

Fransızca French

Fransada France.loc

iş work

arayabilirim. look.for.can.aor.1sg

‘If I knew French, I could look for a job in France.’ (8) Kurdish (Haig 2007: 173) Eer if

bapir-​ê grandfather-​iz.m

xa=sa refl=cond

ew-​na dem-​pl

min 1sg.obl

ew-​na dem.pl

ne-​girt-​ine neg-​take.pst-​pl

cem. to

di-​mir-​in. prog-​die.pst-​pl

‘If my grandfather had not taken them in they would have died.’ Another instance of the very rare borrowing of inflectional mood markers is found in Lude, an intermediate dialect between Karelian and Veps (Kehayov et al. 2013). Lude is a seriously endangered language spoken in Karelia/​Russia. Speakers of Lude still use the synthetic conditional suffix -iž- ​, but reinforce it by adding the clitic -b, a MAT replication of the Russian conditional. This means that the original synthetic suffix is not replaced but reinforced leading to a double marking of the conditional: (9) Central Lude (Kehayov et al. 2013: 79) Esli-​b if-​cond

olda-​iž be-​cond.3sg

ńügü now

omal my.own.all

sukset ski.pl.nom

minä I

anda-​iž i-​n give-​cond-​1sg

vunukkal. grandchild.all

‘If I had skis, I would give them to my grandchild.’

17.3.1.3 Material replications of (non-​morphological) sentence type markers Although there is a considerable lack of contact studies on sentence type, there are attested instances of the material replication of, for example, question markers. Yiddish, which is known to be heavily influenced by Slavonic languages, has replicated Belarussian ci or Polish czy, which mark embedded or non-​embedded polar questions. (10) Yiddish (Reershemius 2007: 252) Eltern parents a a

fregn: ask.3pl

tsenerling teenager

tsi q

meg may

men one

lozn let.inf

trinken? drink.inf

‘Parents ask: should one allow teenagers to go for a drink?’

Areality in modality and mood    415 (11) Belarussian (Reershemius 2007: 252) Ci q

vedae know.3sg

ën he

heta? that

‘Does he know that?’ If we treat hortative particles as sentence type markers we do find more examples of MAT replication; as Petar Kehayov (p.c.) pointed out, the two Eastern Balto-​Finnic languages Karelian and Veps have borrowed the Russian hortative particle pust’. Another example would be the Turkish imperative-​hortative particle haydi, which got replicated in many Balkan languages (e.g. Serbian/​Croatian, Romanian, Albanian, Bulgarian) as illustrated in the following examples: (12) Serbian (Corpus of modern Serbian) Hajde ptl

da comp

pređemo cross.1pl

na on

ti! you

‘Shouldn’t we call each other by our first names?’ (13) Turkish () Haydi, ptl

masalardaki table.loc.adj

her every

şeyi thing.acc

kaldırın. clear.away.imp.2sg

‘Come on, take all your stuff from the table!’

17.3.2 PAT replication without material borrowings 17.3.2.1 PAT replications of modals Although this field, in comparison to the material borrowings of MM markers, has not been studied very extensively, we can firmly assume that languages easily replicate modal patterns either via polysemy copying or via contact induced grammaticalization. An interesting case of the former is found in the West Slavonic languages which have replicated the meanings of German sollen (cf. Weiss 1987, 2009; Hansen 2005; Wiemer and Hansen 2012). This modal has the highly specific meaning “weak necessity based on an utterance”, which can be paraphrased by “Z informed/​-​es Y about the fact that Z wants X to do p”: (14) German (Rowling, Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen) Die the Stein stone

Schüler students

sollen shall.prs.3pl

der   Weisen the wise.pl

schließlich finally

nichts nothing

vom from.

erfahren. learn.about.inf

‘Students aren’t supposed to know about the Sorcerer’s Stone, after all.’

416    Björn Hansen and Umberto Ansaldo Apart from that, the polysemy pattern of sollen also came to cover the evidential meaning  “hearsay”. In Polish, Sorbian, Czech, and Slovak these two meanings have been copied onto the inherited verb “to have” plus infinitive. As in the case of the borrowing of müssen mentioned in section 17.3.1.1, there are considerable differences in frequency and stylistic distribution. For example, in Czech the evidential meaning of mít, as in (15), is mainly restricted to journalistic styles, whereas for our German translation in (16) there are no restrictions. (15) Czech (Štícha 2003: 118) Liberijec Liberian

měl have.pst.3sg

ho him

hlavou head.inst.sg

do to

úmyslně on.purpose

udeřit beat.inf

obličeje. face.gen.sg

‘The Liberian is said to have deliberately beat him with the head into his face.’ (16) German Der the Kopf head

Liberianer Liberian ins in.the

soll shall.prs.3sg Gesicht face

ihm him

geschlagen ptcp.beat.ptcp

absichtlich on.purpose

mit with

dem the

haben. have.inf

‘The Liberian is said to have deliberately beat him with the head into his face.’ A case of contact induced grammaticalization involving an identical lexical source can be assumed for the development of modals of negated necessity, again in the German-​ West Slavonic contact area (see Wiemer and Hansen 2012). As de Haan (1997) shows, languages differ as to how they express the difference between wide and narrow scope of negation: they can either use different modals in order to differentiate between wide and narrow scope,4 or they can use one and the same modal in which case it is the position of the negator which determines the scope. Whereas most Slavonic languages rely on the so-​ called negation placement strategy to encode negated necessity, Polish, Lower Sorbian, and Upper Sorbian have developed a suppletive modal of necessity restricted to negative polarity contexts. This element, illustrated in German (17b), Polish (18b), and Lower Sorbian (19b), is based on the verb with the meaning “to need”, illustrated in German (17a), Polish (18a), and Lower Sorbian (19a), and cannot be used to express positive necessity, as shown in (17c), (18c), and (19c) ((18a, b) are our own translations of (17a, b)): 4  De

Haan (1997: 58ff, 86ff) uses this formalization: (MOD (NEG(p))) for narrow scope and (NEG (MOD(p))) for wide scope of negation.

Areality in modality and mood    417 (17) German (a. from ; b. from Duden: Richtiges und gutes Deutsch) a. Ich I

brauche need.prs.1sg

ein a

neues new

Auto. car

zu to

kommen. come.inf

‘I need a new car.’ b. Du you

brauchst need.prs.2sg

nicht not

‘You don’t have to come.’ c. Du you

*brauchst /​musst need.prs.2sg /​must.prs.2sg

kommen. to.come.inf

‘You have to come.’ (18) Polish a. Potrzebuję need.prs.1sg

nowego new.m.gen.sg

samochodu. car.gen.sg

‘I need a new car.’ b. Nie not

potrzebujesz need.prs.2sg

przychodzić. come.inf

‘You don’t have to come.’ c. *Potrzebujesz /​ musisz need.prs.2sg /​must.prs.2sg

 przyjść. to.come.inf

‘You have to come.’ (19) Lower Sorbian () a. Za for

mólowanje painting

trjebaš need.prs.2sg

šćotku brush

a and

barwy. paint

‘For painting you need a brush and paint.’ b. Wón he

njetrjeba not.need.prs.3sg

źinsa today

źěłaś. work.inf

‘He doesn’t have to work today.’ c. Wón he

*trjeba /​ musy not.need.prs.3sg /​must.prs.3sg

‘He has to work today.’

źinsa   today

źěłaś. work.inf

418    Björn Hansen and Umberto Ansaldo The rise of this new structure in Polish and Sorbian qualifies as replica contact-​induced grammaticalization and not as polysemy copying, because it involves the repetition of changes both on the semantic level (semantic shift “to need something” > “necessity”) and the morphosyntactic level (nominal phrase in the accusative > infinitival phrase) which are typical of grammaticalization processes.

17.3.2.2 PAT replications of mood markers Whereas the MAT borrowing of morphological mood markers seems to be extremely rare, in situations of high contact intensity we do find instances of the restructuring of mood systems. One type of restructuring can be labeled “negative borrowing” in the sense “that a category … [is] lost in the replica language because of its absence in the model language” (Sasse 1990: 14). This has happened in Arvanitika, the Albanian dialect spoken in Greece, where the mood system which originally consisted of five subcategories was reduced to a tripartite system as in Greek. Arvanitika lost the categories of optative and admirative which are not part of the dominant Greek system (Sasse 1990: 42f, 1991: 230ff). A second type of restructuring involves the redistribution of functions to morphological forms without loss of markers and without MAT borrowing. This can be illustrated by the conditional in the Slavonic minority languages of Italy, that is, in Friulian Slovene spoken near the Italian-​Slovene border, and in Molise Slavic, a Croatian dialect spoken in the Molise Region of southern Italy, which, being isolated from mainland Croatian for 500 years, has been in intensive contact with varieties of Italian. As Breu (1999: 246, 2011:  172ff) points out, even under the heavy pressure from surrounding Italian, the speakers of Molise Slavic did not borrow any mood morphemes. What we do find, however, is the functional expansion of the imperfect, originally a pure tense–​aspect marker, into conditional functions. These are cases of polysemy copying involving the development of a new function triggered by an existing pattern of polyfunctionality in the model language, in this case a variety of spoken Italian. Compare (20) and (21). (For similar data from Friulian Slovene, see Benacchio 2005: 96.) (20) Italian (Breu 1999: 247) Se if

lo it

sapevo know.ipf.1sg

non not

parlavo talk.ipf.1sg

con with

lui. him

‘If I had known that, I wouldn’t have talked to him.’ (21) Molise Slavic (Breu 1999: 247) Si if

znadahu know.ipf.1sg

ne not

kjikjarijahu talk.ipf.1sg

s with

njime. him

‘If I had known that, I wouldn’t have talked to him.’ It is interesting to note that the conditional conjunction si represents a MAT replication, which shows that conjunctions seem to be higher on the borrowing scale than bound mood markers.

Areality in modality and mood    419 As Petar Kehayov (p.c.) pointed out, in varieties of Estonian we find some structures which might be explained by PAT replication of Russian mood. Whereas Standard Estonian has a morphological conditional mood, speakers of some South Estonian dialects use the past participle as in Russian. A similar case of PAT replication is attested in spoken Estonian where the indicative past tense of the verb can be used in hortative function: Estonian läksime! ‘go-​PST-​2PL’ vs. Russian pošli ‘go-​PST-​PL’.

17.4  Some select areal features of modals and mood markers in Europe On the basis of the individual replication processes described above, the MM systems of languages of Europe have come to share some specific areal features. In this chapter we do not aim to provide a complete areal linguistic profile of MM in Europe (see Chapter 15), but we do wish to mention a few elements, in the light of the discussion in the previous section. First, all languages of Europe without exception have modals in the sense of polyfunctional word-​like elements expressing possibility or necessity (Hansen and de Haan 2009; van der Auwera and Ammann 2011). A second highly characteristic feature of Europe is that nearly all languages have modals that can code both non-​epistemic and epistemic modality, both for possibility and for necessity, like, for example, English may and must (van der Auwera and Ammann 2011: 310). In some languages we are dealing with clear cases of replication from one source language to the replica languages, in others, however, the direction of change is not clear, which is the reason why we assume non-​unidirectional isomorphism in the sense defined in section 17.2. There is, for example no indication that the rise of modal polyfunctionality in Slavonic has been triggered by Germanic or any other Western European language. The data presented in Hansen (2001) support the view of isomorphism or parallel development. According to Hansen and de Haan (2009), in European languages modal notions are typically expressed by verbal constructions. However, outside the so-​ called Charlemagne-​Sprachbund5 we find instances of modals of non-​verbal origin, that is modals derived from adjectives, adverbs, or nouns. This is the case in Irish, West and East Slavonic (except Sorbian), Hungarian, and Turkish. Modal affixes are not typical of the European languages, they are only found at the European periphery, in Latvian, Finno-​ Ugric, and Turkic. Modal systems of neighboring languages, thus not only show semantic overlap, but also convergence of the syntactic make-​up of the construction in which the modal element is used. Modal constructions among other things differ with respect to the syntactic encoding of the subject argument, assignment of subject agreement marking, 5 

This term coined by van der Auwera (1998a) refers to French, Italian, German, and Dutch which are held to form the centre of the SAE area.

420    Björn Hansen and Umberto Ansaldo and “tense–​mood–​aspect” (TMA) marking. Hansen and de Haan (2009) show that TMA and agreement marking patterns are not evenly distributed among the European languages. This can be seen on the map in Figure 17.1 (from Hansen and de Haan 2009: 535). The data show the Mediterranean area and South Eastern Europe to be the hotbeds of the use of modal constructions where subject agreement and TMA are not or not only marked on the modal, but on the finite lexical verb. For example, constructions with double-​marking for both TMA and agreement are found in Arabic; doubled agreement marking without doubled TMA marking is found in the Balkan languages. A further isogloss shows the more general distribution of all constructions where TMA is marked on the modal and the agreement on the lexical verb, irrespective of singular or double marking. This type is found in an even larger area comprising not only the mentioned varieties of Arabic and the Balkan languages, but also the Turkic languages and Hungarian. The latter two have constructions where the modal carries TMA-​ marking and the lexical verb is in a nominalized form marked with a possessive suffix for the subject. Finally, uninflected particle-​like modals are mainly found on the Balkans:  Albanian, Greek, Bulgarian, and Slovene. The isogloss covering the Balkan Ice Kar Vep Vod Est Izh Liv Lv Lt Bel Fin

Dan

Irl Eng

Dut Ger

Sor Cz

Fr Slo

Bas Ita

Spa

Pol

Mar Arb

Kab

Uzb

Ukr

Sk Hun

Ro

Scr Alb

Rus

Aze

Gag

Bul Grk

Trk Lev Arb

Mal Eg Arb

( (

): double TMA and AGR marking (doubled pattern) ): double AGR marking (doubled and split/doubled pattern)

(- - - -): split AGR and TMA marking (split/doubled and split pattern) (

): AGR and TMA marking exclusively on the lexical verb.

Figure 17.1  Distribution of agreement and TMA-​marking in modal constructions Source: Hansen and de Haan 2009: 535

Areality in modality and mood    421 Ice Nor

Fin

Swd Ir

Dan Eng

Srb

Dut

Wel

Grm

Brt

Cz

Fr

Lith Pol

Rus

Slk Hun

Bsq Prt

Est Lat

Ctl

BCS

Spn

It

Rum Blg

Alb Mlt

Mcd

Geor Arm Trk

Grk

“Western Conditional” “Eastern Conditional”

Figure 17.2  Subjunctive and Eastern conditional Source: Thieroff 2010: 18

languages can be explained by PAT replication. It has been shown on the basis of historical facts that the replacement of the infinitive by a semi-​finite form originated in Middle Greek (Wiemer and Hansen 2012: 80–​83). However, the area delimited by (▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪), where AGR and TMA are marked exclusively on the lexical verb, never formed a historical region and should, thus, be treated more appropriately as an area of mutual reinforcement or parallel development. As mentioned in section 17.3.1.2, mood seems to be less prone to contact-​induced changes. What we do find, however, are convergence areas based on mutual isomorphism and parallel development. As Thieroff (2010), who analysed the rich data presented in the contributions to Rothstein and Thieroff (eds. 2010), points out, there are two different morphological types of conditionals, plotted on the map in Figure 17.2 (from Thieroff 2010: 18). The so-​called “western conditional”, found mainly in the western languages of the continent, is built with a past and a future morpheme, whereas the “eastern conditional”, which is found in Slavonic, Baltic, Finnic, Hungarian, and Turkish, does not contain a future morpheme. These two types show a certain East–​West distribution, even though we have no evidence for individual replication processes.

17.5  Mainland Southeast Asia Unlike Europe which, at least according to some views, could be considered a large linguistic area (see Bisang 2008), the Asian region is populated by a number of largely

422    Björn Hansen and Umberto Ansaldo unrelated and typologically very diverse language families. Even if we restrict ourselves to the East Asian region only, we are dealing with at least the following range: Sino-​ Tibetan, Tibeto-​Burman, Tai-​Kadai, Mon-​Khmer, Austronesian, and Altaic. While in some cases contact over prolonged periods of time has certainly taken place, the range of diverse types, together with the large proportion of isolating languages in which TMA marking is not obligatory, presents a challenge for an areal view of MM. Also, the state of the field here offers only limited insights into MM markers in languages of Asia. For the purpose of this chapter things are somewhat facilitated by the fact that there undoubtedly exists one hotbed of areal patterns in the region, namely Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA; Enfield 2003; Ansaldo 2010). And it is indeed in this area that we find at least one interesting areal pattern of MM, as described later in this section. But let us first briefly say somewhat more about MSEA in general. The fact that it can be treated as a linguistic area has already been recognized in the studies of Matisoff (1991) and Bisang (1991, 1996) on the grammaticalization of verbs into TMA markers and coverbs. In these works it is clearly shown that unrelated languages of the region not only exhibit a high degree of similarity in syntax (Bisang 1996; Enfield 2003), but also recruit semantically similar items for purposes of grammaticalization (Enfield 2003). More than a decade earlier Hashimoto (1986) had already commented on the parallels between Southern Sinitic and Southeast Asian languages, a parallel that, considering the clearly different historical lineages of the languages, can only be explained through contact (or independent parallel grammaticalization). For example, Cantonese still exhibits N-​ADJ order in certain compounds, just as Thai and other MSEA languages do (Hashimoto 1986), as in jyu saang [literally: fish raw] ‘raw fish’, while Mandarin follows the opposite order. Perhaps more interestingly, direct objects precede indirect objects in Cantonese and Kejia, in contrast to Northern Sinitic languages, but comparable to Thai (Hashimoto 1986). (22) Cantonese Ngo5 I

bei2 give

bun2 cl

syu1 book

nei5. you

‘I give you the book.’ (23) Thai Khǎw he

hâj give

ŋǝǝn money

(kε ̀ ε). (to)

‘He gives me money.’ A synopsis of areal features of MSEA is provided in Table 17.2 (which draws on Ansaldo 2010: 940 and on the overview of typological features of MSEA in Enfield 2003). The table focuses in particular on those properties that clearly place (Southern) Sinitic within the typology of MSEA (for a full overview and references to language-​specific literature, see Enfield 2005: 186–​190).

Areality in modality and mood    423 Table 17.2 Some salient areal features of MSEA Phonology

a. Large vowel inventories displaying complex vowel combination b. Lexical tone systems with distinctions in contour and register

Morphology

c. Isolating analytic morphology d. Polyfunctionality of grammatical markers e. Recruitment of open class items for grammatical function

Syntax

f. Classifier systems in NP

While some of these features are found in Sinitic languages at large, others are typical of Southern varieties and not found in Northern Sinitic, in particular in phonology and syntax. Features (a) and (b) are more pronounced in varieties such as Cantonese, where a larger inventory of vowels is found than in Mandarin, with a short–​long vowel contrast for example between [a]‌and [aː]. Likewise the Cantonese tone system is more complex, with up to nine distinct classes and three different levels, in comparison with five tones in Mandarin with no level distinction (see Yip 2002). While features (c), (d), and (e) are typical of all Sinitic varieties, (f) shows an affinity between Cantonese and other MSEA languages: the classifier system of Cantonese is more complex extending beyond numeral classifiers. Let us now illustrate area effects on MSEA in the realm of MM by means of one case, viz. the verb meaning ‘come to have’ or ‘acquire’, which occurs as a grammaticalized item in a number of modal constructions (Enfield 2003; van der Auwera, Kehayov and Vittrant 2009). As a grammaticalized pre-​or postverbal marker, this verb forms “acquire-​type” modals in many languages of the region, which share at times the same etymon (MAT replication) and at times overlap in terms of grammaticalization path albeit with different, unrelated forms (PAT replication). This process has been thoroughly documented in Enfield (2003), on whose work this discussion relies. It is illustrated in (24) (Enfield 2003: 360). (24) V-​ acquire > V-​succeed > can V succeed > can V The pathway of grammaticalization can be seen in English where get receives a modal interpretation as in I get to leave early. While the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic complexities of “come-​to-​have” verbs in MSEA are beyond the scope of this chapter, Figure 17.3 (adapted from Enfield 2003: 160) offers a summary of the polyfunctionality of items such as Cantonese dak1. One should bear in mind that this is not a process whereby old functions (to the left) disappear as new functions (to the right of the cline) emerge. Rather, as is typical of grammaticalization in isolating languages, which characterize the majority of this area, lexical and grammaticalized functions often co-​exist in one and the same item, and lead

424    Björn Hansen and Umberto Ansaldo result of prior event  ‘come to have’  ‘succeed’

 ‘can’  ‘know/ have ability of ’

Figure 17.3  Polyfunctionality of “come to have” Source: Adapted from Enfield 2003: 160

to grammatical polyfunctionality, or variable interpretations. The following functions have been found in “come-​to-​have” verbs: (i) ability or permission (Bisang 2008: 119: + desirable); (ii) obligation (Bisang 2008: 119: – desired); (iii)  epistemic. Function (iii) is debated (it is clearly not found in Cantonese, see Cheng and Sybesma 2004). By far the most common is (i), with some instances of (ii) also being reported in what follows. In Lao the verb daj4 ‘to acquire’ can be used to indicate dynamic modality (ability) in both pre-​verbal (cf. (27) below) and post-​verbal (cf. (25)) positions. (25) Lao (Enfield 2003: 78) Khòòj5 I

vaw phaa2 speak

saa3 language

laaw2 Lao

daj4. can/​ok

‘I can speak Lao.’ In sentence-​final position daj4 can also express epistemic modality: (26) Lao (Enfield 2003: 102) Qaat5 Might

ca0 irr

thùù5 suffer

cap2 catch

ka0 foc.pl

pên3 be

daj4. can

‘It’s possible that you would even be arrested.’ In pre-​verbal position the same marker can be used to express the attainment of a state that involves ability: (27) Lao (Enfield 2003: 78) Khòòj5 I

daj4 able

paj0 go

lòòj2 swim

nam4. water

‘I got to go swimming.’ From the point of view of areality it is interesting to note that acquire modal verbs show similar grammaticalization patterns across unrelated languages in MSEA. For example, in Sinitic dei3 expresses obligation:

Areality in modality and mood    425 (28) Mandarin (Enfield 2003: 307) Wo3 I

dei3 should/​must

xuan3 select

ta1. s/​he

‘I should select him.’ Other non-​cognate forms are found in Khmer, Khmu, Hmong, and Vietnamese (Enfield 2003: 165, 178–​179). In Khmer, in pre-​verbal position, baːn can trigger an interpretation of ability (Bisang 2008); in Khmu bwan as a main V expresses having knowledge of something; in Hmong tau in preverbal position expresses procedural ability; and in Vietnamese there is a marginal usage of a similar form to express knowledge of. Even more striking are the parallels found in the post-​verbal forms. In all these languages (including southern Sinitic), a post-​verbal “acquire” form is used as modal “can”. (29) Khmer (Enfield 2003: 189) Rwep Count

còmnuen amount

krwep grain

baaj rice

baan. can

‘(You) could count the amount of rice grains.’ (30) Khmu (Enfield 2003: 193) Ô’ I

mah eat

ah meat

so’ dog

(am) (neg)

bwan. can

‘I can(not) eat dog meat.’ (31) Hmong (Enfield 2003: 193) Kuv I

hais speak

tsis neg

tau can

‘I cannot speak Vietnamese.’ (32) Mandarin (Enfield 2003: 196) Chi1 bu Eat neg ‘Inedible.’

de2. can

(33) Cantonese (Enfield 2003: 197) Jáu leave

dāk can

ge pl

‘We can leave now.’

lak. ptl

lus cl

njab-​laj. Vietnamese

426    Björn Hansen and Umberto Ansaldo In Lao daj0 (unstressed) occurs together with modals expressing obligation as in (34): (34) Lao (Enfield 2003: 147) Haw2 I

tòòng4.daj0 must

paj0 go

haa3 seek

tamluat5. police

‘We have to go and seek the police.’ In these cases the function of preverbal daj0 is to indicate the “coming about of a situation in which ‘must V’ is the case” (Enfield 2003: 147).

17.6  Some concluding reflections on language-​external factors of areality As this chapter deals with the phenomenon of areal patterns, it is useful to consider the social and cultural factors that allow areality to arise in the first place. Unlike the case of shared properties due to inheritance, where a common history of transmission and maintenance is involved, in the case of linguistic areas we face complex histories of contact, migration, and change. In other words, an understanding of areal patterns requires an examination of external factors in order to make sense of patterns of borrowing. As for the European area, we saw that MAT-​borrowing of modals seems to be quite normal in contact situations when a language with a lower degree of prestige comes into contact with a culturally dominant language, which may be associated with high prestige functions as the language of education. Such a high prestige language is German, which used to be widespread in education in large parts of Central and Eastern Europe. A similar sociolinguistic role was played by Arabic, which has had considerable influence on the modal systems of the Turkic and Berber languages, as well as by Russian, which, as the dominating language of Russia, has been the model for Eastern Balto-​Finnic (e.g. Karelian and Veps) and the Siberian Turkic languages like Yakut. Another contact scenario is presented by speakers of minorities who, being bilingual, adopt elements from the majority’s language. This can also lead to a situation of heavy borrowing in the field of modals. For instance, speakers of Albanian in Greece (Arvanitika) have replicated not only a modal of necessity but also of possibility (see Breu 2009 for details). In contrast to Europe, in the MSEA region it is far more difficult to establish a possible direction of influence. The mountainous regions on the border between China and Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam have for centuries functioned as corridors as well

Areality in modality and mood    427 as a refuge for a wide range of populations migrating for economic or political reasons. Through these corridors diverse populations have migrated back and forth and entered into linguistic and cultural contact. These areas were and still are linguistically extremely diverse, and multilingualism is high, resulting in a rich and complex contact environment. The fact that Sinitic is among the languages involved in this linguistic area would tempt us to assign it some kind of central role, considering the cultural and political dominance of all things Chinese in the history of the region. But this was not always the case: other kingdoms, such as the Thai and the Khmer, have been powerful players in the past and exerted strong political as well as cultural and linguistic pressure in the region. For our purpose a more specific problem is that, in terms of frequency and versatility, “acquire” modals are far less prominent in Sinitic than in non-​Sinitic languages of MSEA. In fact, in a sense Sinitic is an outlier in this linguistic area, and participates in it mostly from the point of view of southern varieties such as Cantonese, as can be seen, for example, in the case of the comparative construction: Cantonese and other southern varieties like Hakka show a comparative pattern known as “surpass” or “exceed”, which is also widespread in Tai-​Kadai and Hmong but not attested in northern Sinitic varieties (Ansaldo 2010). Northern varieties such as Mandarin are typologically more distant from the typical features of MSEA. While this is a known fact, believed to be related to the observation that it was only the southern part of China that participated in the cultural zone of MSEA, this divide makes it difficult to assess the role of Sinitic in the diffusion of traits. According to Enfield (2003: 365) the most likely scenario to account for “acquire” modals is the dispersal of Tai speakers from southwestern China into MSEA. In terms of distribution of “acquire” forms, Tai languages share the same etymon but Mon-​Khmer languages do not. This could indicate a more recent borrowing of the pattern. At the same time the similarity of the grammaticalization paths must reflect internal processes of change not necessarily related to contact. The same was shown for the rise of modal polyfunctionality and the distribution of agreement patterns in modal constructions in Europe (section 17.4). As these general reflections show, then, contact linguistic studies of MM markers can contribute to our general understanding of the nature and the rise of linguistic areas.

17.7 Conclusion In this chapter we have surveyed areal features in the range of MM marking in two contact regions, viz. Europe and MSEA, in the context of a discussion of general features and properties—​language-​internal and -​external ones—​of linguistic areality. Europe has received far more attention than MSEA, due to the fact that there has been much more research on MM markers in the former than in the latter. The issue—​not only in MSEA, but also in Europe, actually—​offers a goldmine for further research, with direct

428    Björn Hansen and Umberto Ansaldo relevance both for our understanding of the MM systems in (these) languages, and for the principles of areality in general.

Abbreviations acc

accusative

adj

adjective

all

allative

aor

aorist

cl

classifier

comp

complementizer

cond

conditional

cop

copula

dat

dative

dem

demonstrative

f

feminine

foc

focus

gen

genitive

imp

imperative

imprf

imperfective aspect

inf

infinitive

inst

instrumental

ipf

imperfect

irr

irrealis

iz

izafet

loc

locative

m

masculine

neg

negation

nom

nominative

obl

oblique

pl

plural

prog

progressive

prs

present tense

pst

past tense

ptcp

participle

Areality in modality and mood    429 ptl

particle

q

question marker

refl

reflexive

sbjv

subjunctive

sg

singular

Chapter 18

Modalit y a nd mo od in first l a ng uag e ac quisi t i on Maya Hickmann and Dominique Bassano

18.1 Introduction A large number of psycholinguistic studies has examined children’s acquisition of modality and mood. This overview focuses particularly on epistemic modality, which is most representative of this research, examining first the early phases of acquisition (section 18.2), then later phases (section 18.3). We then turn to the acquisition of mood (section 18.4) and to parts of the child’s language that lie at the periphery of modality and mood per se (section 18.5). Although the bulk of this research concentrates on English and a few other languages, an effort is made to present available results based on a larger range of systems, which raises new questions about the acquisition of modality, mood, and related categories. Given space limitations, this overview is necessarily selective. In addition, it only briefly mentions a second line of research in developmental psychology concerned with general cognitive capacities, such as children’s “role-​taking” capacities or “theory of mind”, that may partially underlie how they learn to represent internal states when acquiring the categories of modality and mood. Further perspectives (section 18.6) indicate the need to connect these different lines of research in light of current debates concerning the interface between language and cognition in ontogenesis.

18.2  The emergence of modality Major findings on the emergence and early development of modality in child language come from naturalistic studies, which provide longitudinal or cross-​sectional data on

Modality and mood in first language acquisition    431 spontaneous productions collected during caregiver–​child interactions. These studies show that the most important formal devices used by young children to express modality are modal auxiliaries, mental verbs, and modal inflections on the verb. Other categories, such as adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and derivational affixes, are less frequent in early child language (Stephany 1986).

18.2.1 Acquisition sequence in ontogenesis: from agent-​oriented to epistemic modality Acquisition studies usually distinguish between dynamic, deontic, and epistemic modality. The first two types are often grouped together in the category of “agent-​ oriented modalities” (Choi 2006), which corresponds to the so-​called “root modality” (see Chapter 3). Dynamic modality (earliest and most prominent) refers to how children express agents’ desire, ability, and capacity toward an action, including also volition and intention, while deontic modality refers to how they express obligation, permission, and interdiction. The agent-​oriented field contrasts with epistemic modality, which refers to how children express speakers’ cognitive attitudes, i.e., their degree of certainty about the truth of propositions, estimated possible, probable, certain, etc. (Bassano 1996; Choi 2006). The most striking result emerging from naturalistic studies across languages is that children start producing agent-​oriented before epistemic modality, and that the former is much more frequent than the latter. This developmental asynchrony is clear-​cut, particularly in languages that rely mostly on modal auxiliaries and mental verbs to express modality. For instance, it has been recurrently observed in English-​speaking children, who express intentions and desires with modal auxiliaries such as can or will and quasi-​ modals such as going to/​gonna or want to/​wanna as early as 2;0, but start to express epistemic meanings with may or must and with mental verbs, such as know and think more than six months later (Wells 1979; Shatz et al. 1983; Shatz and Wilcox 1991; Moore et al. 1994; Bartsch and Wellman 1995). The earlier development of dynamic and deontic modality in comparison to epistemic modality has also been explicitly mentioned in studies of French (Bassano 1996), Greek (Stephany 1986), Polish (Smoczyńska 1993), and Spanish (Pascual et al. 2008) child language, as well as in Shepherd’s (1993) study on the acquisition of Antiguan Creole, an English-​based creole spoken in the West Indies. The developmental progression from agent-​oriented to epistemic modality can be explained in terms of at least two sets of factors. First, pragmatic factors constitute an essential component of the use and acquisition of modality. Agent-​oriented modality concerns actions, while epistemic modality concerns knowledge. Given their social status and physical conditions, young children are naturally more concerned with norms for actions and the possibilities of performing them as well as with expressing desired states of affairs rather than worrying about their relative certainty (Stephany 1993). Pragmatic accounts are related to the origins of modality in relation to mood in

432    Maya Hickmann and Dominique Bassano the prelinguistic stage. Associated with the instrumental function of language, agent-​ oriented modality originates in requestive or imperative acts, typically expressed through a demanding intonation. In contrast, epistemic modality goes back to indicative or declarative acts, which are part of the representative or descriptive function of language. Although the two basic linguistic functions can be found in the earliest stages of language acquisition, it is the non-​epistemic function which clearly predominates at first (Stephany 1993). Second, the late acquisition of epistemic meanings is also due to interrelated cognitive and linguistic factors, since this field requires complex abilities as well as a large number of devices in complex structures, neither of which are available to young children. We return to this point in section 18.6.

18.2.2 Modal auxiliaries and the acquisition of modality In languages that have a relatively well-​defined set of modal auxiliary verbs, such as English and German, these terms play a central role in children’s acquisition of modality. However, even in English they do not form a coherent syntactic class and children acquire them individually in a piecemeal fashion. English modal verbs are acquired gradually between the middle of the second and fourth years (Wells 1979; Shatz and Wilcox 1991). Among their earliest modal expressions children use can or will and the semi-​grammaticized wanna/​want to, gonna/​going to, hafta/​have to to express ability, intention, desires, and necessity. Detailed analyses of the emergence of these agent-​ oriented modals in two children (Gee 1985; Gee and Savasir 1985; Gerhardt 1991) suggest that the children used will and gonna in distinct activity types: will to express real intention and gonna to indicate the planning of an activity without necessarily acting it out. Similarly, the three quasi-​modals hafta, needta, and wanna were associated with distinct meanings and discourse functions: hafta for external compulsion related to social conventions, needta for internal compulsion, and wanna for personal volition. In a large study of 60 children, Wells (1979) found ages of acquisition somewhat later than other studies, arguing that an average child produces several types of agent-​oriented modality by 3;3, while epistemic modality starts slowly from 3;3 on with the use of may and might to express possibility. Similar trends showing the prominence of dynamic and deontic modality in comparison to epistemic meanings were found in other languages, although modal auxiliaries play a less crucial role in these languages and present different syntactic properties. Stephany’s (1986) study of Greek child language at ages 1;9, 2;4 and 2;10 shows that only the modal verb boró ‘can/​may’ was used for the expression of ability, and that both this verb and prépi ‘must’ were restricted to conveying root modality, i.e., dynamic/​deontic meanings. Smoczyńska’s (1993: 152) study of Polish from 1;6 to 3;0 finds that the most frequent modal verbs were moze ‘can/​may’ and musi ‘must’, which expressed root modality almost exclusively. Bassano’s (1996) study of one French child from 2;9 to 4;0, reports that, among the four auxiliaries or quasi-​auxiliaries conveying modal meanings (devoir ‘must’, pouvoir ‘can/​may’, the periphrastic future form conveying intention or prediction

Modality and mood in first language acquisition    433 aller ‘go’, and the impersonal defective form il faut ‘must’), the first forms to appear in infinitival constructions were aller, first used to express personal intention and only later epistemic prediction, and (il) faut, used to express deontic necessity/​obligation. The modal auxiliaries pouvoir and devoir were not used to express epistemic meanings: pouvoir was reserved for deontic and dynamic uses, and devoir was not used until late and then very infrequently. It is well-​known that grammatical morphemes, such as nominal determiners and auxiliary verbs, are first omitted in young children’s speech and gradually develop during the first stages of language acquisition. This phenomenon is important for the acquisition of modality where it results in incomplete modal constructions in which the modal auxiliary is lacking and the modal value is therefore attached to the main verb. The production of such transitional procedures was documented in Bassano’s (1996) study and in a study comparing the emergence of periphrastic constructions in two French and two Austrian children (Bassano et al. 2004). In both French and Austrian German, relevant periphrastic constructions involving a grammatical and a main verb consisted of three structures, among which the last two concerned modality: “auxiliary plus past participle” (compound past tense), “modal verb plus infinitive” (modal constructions), and “auxiliary plus infinitive” (analytic future expressing intention/​prediction). In both languages, the emergence of the adult-​like periphrastic structures around two years of age was prepared by the earlier production of incorrect bare past participles (for compound past) and bare infinitives (for modal constructions and future, e.g., habiller bébé ‘dress baby’, brrm machen ‘do brrm’). In addition, an early production of transitional forms using filler syllables preceding main verbs (e.g., [a]‌ sauter ‘[filler] jump’) was found in the French children, showing first an increasing development followed by decrease and disappearance. Such analyses capture how modal constructions emerge through various kinds of precursors, showing the existence of initially underspecified modal forms and categories in early child language. They also address current debates on the emergence of grammar, such as the status of bare infinitives and the prosodic or syntactic nature of fillers in language acquisition (e.g. Laaha and Bassano 2013).

18.2.3 Mental terms and children’s theory of mind Most studies focusing on the development of epistemic modality consider that children’s capacity to use mental verbs (want, know, think, believe, remember) to talk about the self and others’ mental states indicates the development of a “theory of mind” (Shatz et al. 1983; Moore et al. 1994; Bartsch and Wellman 1995; Tardif and Wellman 2000; Pascual et al. 2008). One major result of naturalistic research across different languages is that desire terms such as want are the most frequent type of mental state language until the third year. Belief terms, such as know or think, appear only toward the middle of the third year and continue to increase in frequency until at least age five. In line with developments from agent-​oriented to epistemic modality, this pattern is supported by the most representative developmental studies of mental terms in English (Shatz

434    Maya Hickmann and Dominique Bassano et al. 1983; Moore et al. 1994; Bartsch and Wellman 1995). For instance, all of the ten children analyzed by Bartsch and Wellman (1995) showed a uniform development from no use of mental state verbs to an exclusive focus on verbs of desire and emotion, followed only later by a focus on thoughts and beliefs. With respect to other languages, a study of 25 Spanish-​speaking children at 3, 3½, 4, 4½, and 5 years of age (Pascual et al. 2008: 462) shows that the first and most frequent desire verb was querer ‘want’, used in more than half of the mental utterances produced by the children. Unlike desire verbs, belief verbs became considerably more frequent with increasing age and developed in variety and richness, the most frequent being saber ‘know’, recordar ‘remember’, and creer ‘believe’. Tardif and Wellman (2000) examined ten Mandarin-​speaking (21–​ 27 months) and eight Cantonese-​speaking (18–​44 months) toddlers. Although Chinese strongly differs from English with regard to several key features, the results suggest the same pattern of theory-​of-​mind development in both languages, with an early use of desire terms followed by other mental states references. However, the Chinese-​speaking children used desire terms much earlier and belief terms very infrequently. According to the authors, this finding suggests a consistency in the overall sequence, but variation in the timing of beginning and end points during children’s theory-​of-​mind development across cultures. The development of mental terms and concepts conveying epistemic modality shows a typical progression from certainty to uncertainty. Verbs such as know or remember—​ i.e. factive verbs, which presuppose the truth of their complement and indicate a high degree of certainty on the part of the speaker—​are produced earlier by children than non-​factive verbs such as think or believe (Shatz et al. 1983; Moore et al. 1994; Bartsch and Wellman 1995; Bassano 1996; Choi 2006; Pascual et al. 2008). Bassano (1996) examined the development of epistemic functions and their corresponding forms in a French child from 1;9 to 4;0. The first epistemic function to emerge was prediction, observed in the first months of the third year in utterances using the periphrastic future (e.g. va tomber ‘going to fall’). Subsequently, two other types of epistemic utterances emerged together during the first half of the third year, expressing certainty with adjectival constructions (e.g. j’en étais sûr, sûr ‘I was [really] sure, sure’) and ignorance with the verb savoir in the negative form (e.g. sais pas ‘don’t know’). Bassano categorizes the latter as a basic sub-​type of uncertainty: “disassertive modalization”. It was during the second half of the third year and onward that the child’s modal system denoting uncertainty grew richer through the acquisition of two more complex and crucial functions: on the one hand, the child started to express possibility, probability, and belief using adverbs (e.g. peut-​être ‘maybe’) and mental verbs (e.g. je crois ‘I believe’); and on the other hand, it became able to express hypothetical reference by using conditional mood and if-​particles (si papa il revient, faut pas ouvrir ‘if papa comes back, (we) must not open’; je voudrais faire ça un jour ‘I would like to do that one day’). This ontogenetic development shows that some particular epistemic functions—​predictions and the expression of ignorance—​emerge relatively early and give the child access to the epistemic field. Moreover, although epistemic utterances appeared later than dynamic and deontic ones, they showed a striking subsequent increase in number and diversity such that they represented a large number

Modality and mood in first language acquisition    435 of modal productions at the age of four, when dynamic, deontic, and epistemic have similar frequencies (Bassano 1996).

18.2.4 Correlates of early modality development A number of observations show the existence of several correlates of early modality development, indicating the potential role of various determinants of acquisition.

18.2.4.1 Syntactic complexity As mentioned above, children often first use incomplete modal constructions in which the modal verb is missing (Bassano 1996; Bassano et al. 2004). Similarly, young children generally do not use desire and belief terms in the genuine sense described above, that is to refer to internal or cognitive states and distinctions. Shatz et al. (1983) note that English-​acquiring children first tend to use them in conversation, in stereotyped and brief expressions, imitated from their peers or from adults. For example, the verb know often serves a conversational function of directing interaction (you know), also observed in studies of other languages (e.g. Pascual et  al. 2008). The genuine sense of mental verbs develops when children can use them in increasingly complex structures, such as infinitive and subordinate complement clauses. In their study on Spanish, Pascual et al. (2008) found that the production of mental verbs was correlated with mean length of utterance (MLU), as well as with an index of subordinate sentences with a complement, which was the main predictor of genuine references to desires and beliefs.

18.2.4.2 Self and others reference Not surprisingly, children first make reference to their own mental states before they refer to those of others, as shown by most developmental studies of desire and belief verbs (Moore et al. 1994; Bartsch and Wellman 1995; Tardif and Wellman 2000). This early predominance of self-​reference in children’s speech is consistent with the notion of the first-​person primacy. Only one study (Pascual et al. 2008) reports a different pattern for desire verbs, showing that children talk more about others’ desires than about their own, although this result could be explained by the experimental setting (children played with characters to which they attributed their own desires). Summarizing several studies, Choi (2006) notes a relation between type of modality and subjecthood. Children produce agent-​oriented modal verbs primarily with the first person pronoun I to express volition or intention of the self (Pea and Mawby 1984; O’Neill and Atance 2000), but they use epistemic terms more often with the third person as the subject of the modal verb and event. Analyzing subject referents in a French child, Bassano (1996) found that the self was the dominant referent for modals and for propositional subjects in dynamic modal utterances (75 per cent), and for modal subjects in deontic ones (80 per cent). In contrast, epistemic modality showed a rapid decrease in self-​reference, modal subjects frequently referring to a collective or impersonal entity, propositional subjects to external beings or objects. The results suggest that

436    Maya Hickmann and Dominique Bassano the relatively late development of epistemic modality may be in part related to the fact that it represents, to some extent, a breakdown of the basic “self-​perspective” principle applying to other modal utterances (Bassano 1996).

18.2.4.3 Input influence and conversational correlates There is good evidence for the influence of caregiver input in the early development of modality. Some studies show that the frequencies of modal devices in maternal speech mirror those in child speech. For instance, when addressing children, mothers frequently use the English modals can and will, the first and most frequent in early stages, but rarely epistemic modals, acquired later (Wells 1979; Shatz and Wilcox 1991; also Smoczyńska 1993 for Polish). However, Choi (1991, 1995, 2006) notes that high frequency alone cannot explain children’s early modal development and her own studies on the acquisition of Korean only show a partial relation between input frequency and acquisition order. Similarly, research on mental terms generally indicates that mothers use more desire terms than belief terms when their children are two years of age, but steadily use more belief terms over the course of the next year, mirroring children’s increased use. More specifically, the frequency with which mothers use belief terms when children are two years of age has been found to predict their frequency of use later on and their comprehension of mental verbs (Moore et al. 1994). However, it is unclear whether frequency of use is the only or even the major determinant. Howard et al. (2008) addressed this question in a study of conversational correlates of children’s acquisition of mental verbs and of their developing theory of mind, analyzing how mothers’ use of mental verbs (think, guess, know) in conversations might help three-​and four-​year-​old children learn mental terms. Results showed that children’s comprehension of mental verb and performance in false belief tasks were predicted by certain forms and meanings of mental verbs in maternal conversations, e.g., more questions than statements with mental verbs, more uses of mental verbs in reference to others rather than to oneself, and fewer “very certain” uses of think to the benefit of the canonical “uncertain” sense. According to the authors, these findings indicate the potential role of maternal input in children’s understanding of the mind.

18.3  Modality in later stages Later stages in the acquisition have been examined in experimental studies. These studies generally show that it takes some years for children to master all of the semantic and pragmatic distinctions that differentiate modal expressions and their conditions of use, despite their earlier production of modal devices in spontaneous speech. As Choi (2006) notes, such developmental discrepancies are partly due to the unnaturalness of experimental situations as compared to naturalistic data. Nevertheless, the results of experimental studies give us valuable insights into children’s knowledge of underlying modal concepts and into their performance at a metalinguistic level.

Modality and mood in first language acquisition    437

18.3.1 Understanding semantic distinctions in mental terms: factivity, certainty/​uncertainty, and degrees of certainty Among studies focusing on children’s theory of mind, some have investigated how they understand the presuppositions of mental/​cognitive verbs. Using a story-​telling method in which children were asked questions about the content of stories containing know and think, Johnson and Maratsos (1977) found that four-​year-​olds correctly distinguished the presuppositions of these verbs (80 per cent). However, several other studies (MacNamara et al. 1976; Johnson and Wellman 1980) using object-​location tasks (hiding or finding an object) obtained less positive results. Four-​year-​old children completely confused conditions involving “knowing”, “guessing”, “remembering”, and “forgetting”, suggesting that knowledge about the presuppositions of mental verbs develops progressively. The factive properties of know seem well understood from four years on, while understanding non-​factive properties develops later and slowly on a verb-​by-​verb basis. For example, Abbeduto and Rosenberg (1985) found that four-​year-​olds recognized the factivity of know and were aware of the non-​factive status of think, but treated believe as a factive verb up to age seven. In addition to the presuppositional properties of mental verbs, studies have focused on whether and how children understand other central semantic distinctions, and in particular whether they detect the relative strength of epistemic modal markers when expressing speakers’ attitudes of certainty or uncertainty and degrees thereof (see Moore et al. 1989, 1994; Moore and Furrow 1991). A series of studies on French (Bassano 1982, 1985a, 1985b; Bassano and Champaud 1983; Champaud and Bassano 1984) examined how children aged four to eleven years understand both the presuppositions and the epistemic attitudes involved in modal constructions such as je sais que/​si ‘I know that/​ if ’, je crois que ‘I think/​believe that’, je suis sûr que ‘I am sure that’, peut-​être que ‘maybe that’, and their negative correspondents, e.g. je ne sais pas si ‘I don’t know whether’. These studies used various tasks in which children were presented with a set of puppets that had different types of background knowledge concerning an event (e.g. whether or not a ball in a box was in front of them, the box was open or shut, their eyes were open or shut). Children were asked to choose the puppets which were likely to say some target utterances (e.g. “I know that I have a ball”, “I know that I don’t have a ball”, “I think that I have a ball”). Findings show that expressions which indicate a state of certainty (e.g. “I know” and “I am sure”) are correctly understood from four-​five years on, but not statements containing a negation on the complement proposition (e.g. “I know that I don’t have a ball”). The youngest children often shifted the negation to the main verb, treating the utterance as if it contained the expression “I don’t know”. Only seven to eight-​ year-​old children could provide a correct interpretation (Bassano and Champaud 1983; Bassano 1985a). Expressions of doubt and conviction (e.g. “I think/​believe”, “maybe”, “I am not sure”) are most difficult to master. Such uses are not differentiated from “I know” and they are treated at first as basic expressions of certainty. Differentiation between certainty and uncertainty is progressive (“maybe” and “I am not sure” are differentiated earlier than “I think/​believe”) and seems to depend on the degree of probability expressed

438    Maya Hickmann and Dominique Bassano in various devices: the higher the degree of probability, the later the modal form is differentiated from the paradigm of certainty (Bassano 1982, 1985b; Champaud and Bassano 1984). Children’s understanding of epistemic devices develops as a function of the type of modal operation involved: “assertive modalization”, confirming and strengthening assertions (certainty), is understood early, while “disassertive modalization”, indicating that the assertion is open to question or that the speaker’s commitment to the assertion is limited, is much more difficult and not fully understood until eight years of age. Coates (1988) further indicates that metalinguistic analysis of the modal system is achieved at an even later age. She used a card-​sorting method in which children (aged 8 and 12 years) and adults were asked to group together a large range of English modal terms on the basis of similarity in meaning (modals were presented in sentences on the cards, including must, have to, should, ought, will, shall, gonna, intend, could, can, able to, allowed to, may, might, possible, and probable). Adults classified the modal markers into four distinct categories:  epistemic possibility, root possibility/​ability/​permission, intention/​prediction/​futurity, and obligation/​necessity. However, eight-​year-​olds’ system of modal meanings was rudimentary and even twelve-​year-​olds did not show adult-​like competence. Some findings (Bassano et al. 1992; Champaud et al. 1993; Hickmann et al. 1993) further illustrate children’s developing skills concerning epistemic modal verbs. French children (four to nine years) were asked to narrate filmed dialogues between two speakers, one of whom produced a target utterance accusing an additional character (among two present on the scene) to have performed a “bad deed” (e.g. spilling water). The appropriateness of this target accusation depended on three factors: its truth value (who had done it), the nature of the assertion (simple or modalized in first person, e.g. [I think] the bear did it), and epistemic conditions (whether the speaker had witnessed the event). When reporting the dialogues, children’s productions at all ages showed some sensitivity to the conditions of use for modal verbs: they omitted inappropriate modal verbs and/​or made differential use of quotation forms, producing direct quotations when the quoted utterance was appropriately modalized and indirect ones when it was inappropriately modalized. Changes with age showed their increasing ability to invoke indices (indirect evidence from seven years on) and to differentiate utterance properties explicitly (modal verbs at nine years). Finally, children’s responses to questions showed that they focused first on truth value (four years) and on certainty (four to six years), gradually becoming able to focus on uncertainty and on a metalinguistic conception of modality (nine years). Such results indicate children’s early sensitivity to modal verbs, as well as the development of their metapragmatic awareness of the conditions of use necessary for their full-​fledged mastery.

18.3.2 Acquisition of epistemic and deontic meanings of modals Several empirical studies have relied on the notion of “relative force” to investigate children’s understanding of modal verbs and to compare the acquisition of epistemic and deontic meanings. In a seminal study, Hirst and Weil (1982) presented two experimental

Modality and mood in first language acquisition    439 tasks—​an epistemic and a deontic one—​to English-​speaking children aged 3;0 to 6;6. Children had to distinguish between two propositions differing in the strength of the modal verb: e.g. in the epistemic task, the peanut must be under the cup and the peanut may be under the box, and in the deontic task, you must go to the red room and you may go to the green room. Results showed an earlier understanding of epistemic modals as compared to deontic modals. At four years (but not before) children were able to make a large number of contrasts in the epistemic task, whereas their performance was more limited in the deontic task. In both domains, however, it was not until five to six years of age that children could discriminate all types of contrasts tested. The developmental priority of epistemic over deontic meanings in this study was unexpected, as it contradicts naturalistic data and previous studies on modal reasoning (Piérault-​Le Bonniec 1980). As pointed out by the authors, while the epistemic tasks were fairly straightforward, the deontic ones were more complex, as they depended on children’s evaluation of the authority of the characters issuing the command. Several studies replicated these experiments with some modifications. Using the more familiar expressions has to and might, Byrnes and Duff (1989) found similar results. In the epistemic domain, four-​year-​olds distinguished various modals on the basis of their relative strength and understood epistemic sentences better than deontic ones. Similarly, subsequent studies (Moore et al. 1989; Noveck et al. 1996) show that children have an increasing ability to detect the relative force of epistemic modals from around four to five years onward and that expressions which differ most in modal strength are discriminated most easily at the youngest ages. However, different results are reported by Bascelli and Barbieri’s (2002) study on the understanding of the modals dovere ‘must’ and potere ‘may’ in Italian-​speaking children aged 3;0 to 9;2: children understood deontic modal forms before epistemic ones and only achieved a full understanding of the strength of different modals at eight years. This discrepancy might be due to task differences, since the Italian study used structurally similar epistemic and deontic tasks, both requiring children to act according to the meanings of the modalized sentences. Whatever the case may be, all these studies bring to light the central role of the ability to detect the pragmatic dimension of relative force in modal understanding.

18.4 Mood: sentence types 18.4.1 The emergence of sentence types As early as the 1970s the emergence of sentence types has been the topic of studies interested in the development of communicative competence in early language. An influential contribution by Halliday (1975) analyzed the functions (instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic, imaginative and informative) of a young child’s first productions and reported a distinction at about age 1;5 between “pragmatic” utterances, aiming for a response or an action from others, and “mathetic” utterances, which

440    Maya Hickmann and Dominique Bassano organized and categorized the environment. Bates et al. (1975) analyzed the development of declarative and imperative performatives in three Italian children from prelinguistic to early linguistic phases. Dore (1975, 1977) categorized the speech acts of young children such as labeling, repeating, answering, requesting actions, requesting answers, calling, greeting, protesting, and so on. As noted in Bassano and Mendes-​Maillochon (1994), these pioneering studies showed that a good number of communicative functions or speech acts were identifiable in children as early as the one-​word phase, or even in vocalizations, although appropriate grammatical marking of communicative intent was absent. A longitudinal case study (Bassano and Mendes-​Maillochon 1994; see also Mendes-​ Maillochon 1996 for a cross-​sectional study) examined the emergence of the main sentence types—​declarative, exclamatory, injunctive (imperative), interrogative—​in a French child from 1;2 to 1;9, in relation to different functions. For example, declarative utterances covered functions such as labeling, description, or denial; exclamatory utterances covered expressions of refusal, desire, emotion; injunctive utterances corresponded to requests for attention and requests for or refusals of object or action; while interrogatives corresponded to requests for information. All four moods were present in early productions, but their frequencies and age of appearance differed. From 1;2 on there was a high proportion of declarative utterances, as well as a lower but substantial proportion of exclamatory and injunctive utterances, whereas interrogatives only emerged at around 1;6 and were rare. Thus, in the emerging organization of the communicative competence, the declarative, exclamatory, and injunctive types seem to be “primitive modalities” in contrast to the secondary or delayed interrogative type. Research also investigated how formal devices such as prosodic and morphosyntactic markings of sentence type appear and develop in child language, as well as whether and how they vary across languages. Special attention is paid to prosodic variables, particularly intonation, in conveying communicative functions, since children have an early sensitivity to intonation changes in the input and mothers draw heavily on these variations. Children also produce variations in intonation early. A number of studies show that such early variations can serve to express different communicative functions from the earliest phases of language on. Halliday (1975) noted that the child’s final rising contours were associated with pragmatic functions, whereas his falling contours were associated with mathetic functions. Later studies, which often combine auditory and acoustic analyses of prosody, obtained congruent results (for English see Flax et al. 1991 and Furrow et al. 1990; for French, Marcos 1987, 1991 and Bassano and Mendes-​ Maillochon 1994). Despite individual differences, children acquiring different languages produce a fundamental contrast: they associate rising final contours and greater intensity with pragmatic type utterances (e.g. requests), and falling intonation with descriptive utterances (e.g. labeling). Bassano and Mendes-​Maillochon’s (1994) study of French found more fine-​grained distinctions:  the child’s declaratives were mostly falling, interrogatives mostly rising, and injunctive utterances split between falling and rising contours depending on their specific functions. These patterns were roughly in accordance with intonation

Modality and mood in first language acquisition    441 contours of sentence types in French, among which only interrogatives (in particular without grammatical marking) are clearly rising. In addition, injunctive patterns may reflect interesting compensatory relations between grammatical and prosodic means in language development: the child was able to use imperative verb forms early to mark imperative injunctions but had no syntactic means of expressing “gentle” injunctions, namely requests for attention and objects, which tended to be produced with the same rising intonation pattern as requests for information. Another central question concerns the emergence of morphosyntactic devices in the expression of sentence types, such as verb mood inflections, word order, and the use of specific morphemes. In many languages, young children use verbs in the indicative and imperative present forms to express facts and requests, respectively (however, these forms often differ only by the presence/​absence of subject pronouns). Imperative verb forms are one of the earliest grammatical features acquired by children in various languages. They occur as early as age 1;2 in Italian children (Bates et al. 1975) and are also reported early in English-​and Greek-​speaking children (Stephany 1986). Bassano and Mendes-​Maillochon (1994) underline that the two earliest devices used in French to mark sentence mood at 1;2 were interjections (oh!, ah!, coucou!) serving an exclamatory function, and imperative verb forms (tiens! ‘hold!’, donne! ‘give!’, regarde! ‘look!’), serving an injunctive function. At about 1;6, other devices were consistently added: expressions in the indicative and the first interrogative morphemes (qu’est-​ce que? ‘what?’, où? ‘where?’). However, most of these morphosyntactic devices were rudimentary and tended to be used in syncretic formulations and stereotyped situations, as can be expected from these early stages of language development. Verb moods related to uncertain, counterfactual, and hypothetical situations—​such as conditional and subjunctive—​are generally acquired later, in the second half of the third year (Smoczyńska 1993). In a study of the acquisition of conditionals in English, Polish, Italian, Turkish, and Finnish, Bowerman (1986) asked why if-​ constructions appear later than other structurally similar complex sentences. In her view, children’s early conditionals belong to a category which is “apparently central to conditional semantics in languages around the world: low-​hypothetical future predictives” (Bowerman 1986: 295). This interpretation also fits Stephany’s (1986, 1993) analyses of Greek showing that the subjunctive mood is quite central in child language: children use subjunctive forms to state their wishes and intentions, to make promises, to ask for permission, or to inquire about the addressee’s intention, very frequently with a directive function, which these forms share with the imperative mood.

18.4.2 Later stages in the acquisition of sentence types Few studies have examined later developmental progressions in children’s acquisition of sentence type as a marker of mood per se. However, a large body of relevant studies has examined their growing sensitivity to multiple features of utterances, such as the relationships between the properties and functions of different sentence types in relation

442    Maya Hickmann and Dominique Bassano to a number of categories and functions of language (e.g. in the interpretation of metaphors and humor, such as irony, sarcasm, pretence, puns; see overviews in Bernicot 1992, 2003). Some of this research shows developmental progressions between three and ten years in children’s ability to understand the conditions of use and metapragmatic implications of variations in sentence types in relation to different communicative functions. From four years on, they begin to differentiate imperatives, interrogatives, and assertions as structures that provide different forms of “direct” vs “indirect” directives in their own speech, showing the ability to adapt them as a function of their addressee, e.g. when addressing a younger or older child, an adult who is available or busy, a friendly or hostile peer. However, it is only between six and ten years that they become able to reflect on specific linguistic markers (sentence types, future tense markings) to differentiate types of speech acts such as promises, predictions, and directives (Bernicot and Laval 1996; Laval and Bernicot 1999).

18.5  At the periphery of modality and mood In this section, we briefly summarize research on some aspects of child language that lie at the periphery of modality and mood per se, with particular attention to evidentials and tense–​aspect morphology.

18.5.1 Evidentials Some studies have examined children’s acquisition of evidentials in a number of languages that provide obligatory or frequent grammatical markers indicating the status or source of speakers’ knowledge as based on direct access to information (e.g. perception of a witness) or on indirect evidence (e.g. deductions from physically perceptible traces, general knowledge, reported speech, and/​or hear-​say). Some of these studies have raised some new questions by showing very early uses of these markers, thereby challenging the existence of a universal developmental progression from agent-​oriented to epistemic modality and suggesting the role of linguistic factors in development. For instance, Choi (1991, 2006) reports that Korean children start using evidential inflectional morphemes on the main verb (e.g. -​ta for new knowledge, -​e for old information, -​tay for hearsay) around their second birthday and have acquired them by 2;6, that is, at an age when English-​learning children only begin to acquire epistemic modals. She proposed to explain this surprisingly early acquisition by invoking their perceptual salience, obligatory status, high input frequency, and rich discourse-​interactional functions. However, Papafragou et al. (2007) report diverging results that show no difference in the timing of acquisition for Korean evidentials and English modals.

Modality and mood in first language acquisition    443 Studies also show general developmental progressions indicating an increasing mastery of evidential morphology or particles. Notwithstanding cross-​linguistic differences (e.g. in Korean vs Turkish, Choi and Aksu-​Koç 1996), children first rely on direct sources of knowledge and only later on indirect ones. In Turkish (Aksu-​Koç 1988; Aksu-​ Koç and Slobin 1986) they first rely on direct evidence and on inferences from physical traces (ages 1;6 to 2;0 years), then on deductions from previously known past events, and finally on linguistic reports (2;0 to 3;0 years). Tibetan data (Garfield et al. 2011) show the following progression in children’s markings between four and seven years: “ego evidentials” (e.g. I’m happy), direct sources of evidence, indirect evidence, and finally neutral evidentials (including generics). Ifantidou’s (2005) study of the Greek particles taha ‘supposedly’ and dithen ‘as if/​so-​called’ shows that children can distinguish between “pretence and reality” and display “evidential reasoning” at four years, but focus more on pretence until seven years and master evidential uses only gradually until twelve years. In Japanese (Matsui et al. 2006; Matsui and Yamamoto 2011), although children express desire before belief, they begin to produce and comprehend evidential particles at an earlier age than corresponding English forms. In addition, they begin to use the hearsay particle tte before two years, although their comprehension of this particle remains fragile and restricted to imaginary contexts such as fairy tales.

18.5.2 Tense and aspect Among ongoing debates concerning children’s acquisition of tense and aspect (see overviews in Hickmann 2003a; Hickmann and Hendriks 2015), some evidence concerns discourse uses of these markers at the periphery of modality and mood. First, a few studies concerned with future markings (e.g. Harner 1981, 1982) show that they first constitute means of expressing particular speech acts, typically intentions or promises, and that they are used only later in epistemic modal contexts such as predictions. More generally, during the development of tense–​aspect systems, children encounter most difficulties with the future because of its interconnectedness with modal concepts such as certainty. Second, an interesting observation concerns children’s uses of the past to represent counterfactual or “irrealis” situations. Such uses have been observed from about three years of age onward and until much later phases of acquisition, particularly in two types of situations: narratives of fictitious events such as fairy tales; and “pretend games” in which children attribute to themselves and to others various roles before proceeding to communicate in these roles (e.g. you were the mother). This phenomenon has been noted since early writings about child language (e.g. Lodge 1979; Kaper 1980) as well as observed recurrently across a number of languages (e.g. English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Italian, French; e.g. Antinucci and Miller 1976; Strömqvist 1984; Musatti and Orsolini 1993). Children use a range of past forms in such contexts, such as the simple past in English, sometimes in alternation with present forms, as well as imperfective past forms in French (imparfait) or Italian (imperfetto). Such uses of tense (particularly the past) and of aspect (particularly the

444    Maya Hickmann and Dominique Bassano imperfective) belong to the set of devices discussed above in relation to mood, including conditionals, subjunctives, and evidentials to talk about imaginary events. Other examples of related phenomena are dispersed in the literature, such as uses of aspect to mark different speech acts. For example, Gerhardt and Savasir (1986) observe that English-​speaking three-​year-​olds use progressive vs non-​progressive present tense forms in contexts of ongoing activities to mark the speaker’s mode of involvement, reserving the simple present to indicate that these activities conform to a norm and the progressive to discuss intentions for actions (e.g. this is how you do it vs why are you doing this?).

18.6  Further perspectives This overview leads to a complex picture showing the multidimensional nature of acquisition in the domains of modality, mood, and related peripheral categories within a cross-​linguistic perspective. As discussed in this section, the developmental literature shows universal as well as variable patterns, suggesting the role of both cognitive and linguistic determinants of acquisition. This section highlights the need for further cross-​linguistic research in the context of current debates concerning the relationship between language and cognition.

18.6.1 Universal cognitive factors Some common developmental progressions can be observed across individual children and languages, e.g. desire before belief, certainty before uncertainty, direct sources of knowledge before indirect evidence, implicit procedural knowledge before explicit declarative knowledge and meta-​representational capacities. Depending on the studies, desires and direct sources of knowledge are mastered by three years or earlier, while beliefs and indirect knowledge sources are not mastered before four years or later, and explicit metalinguistic uses are the latest to be acquired. Such recurrent results provide a starting point for generalizations concerning potentially universal cognitive determinants of acquisition. Clearly, modality and mood involve complex networks of concepts and inferences concerning internal psychological states in interpersonal interactions, such as the assessment of relative certainty and the acknowledgment of others’ mental states, which are difficult for young children, who are characterized by cognitive egocentricity and a strong reluctance to accept indeterminate situations and uncertainty (Champaud et al. 1993). Furthermore, they involve embeddings and hierarchically organized processes that have recursive properties and potentially involve multiple-​order representations (e.g. I think that you think that I think… ). In this respect, it has been argued (e.g. Ifantidou 2005) that full-​fledged mastery of epistemic modality and evidentials minimally involves second-​order representations, in contrast to other related uses (e.g. pretense, metaphors) that only involve first-​order representations. Furthermore, available

Modality and mood in first language acquisition    445 forms typically involve multiple categories, fine-​grained underlying semantic distinctions, and markings that are highly sensitive to complex contextual factors. Therefore, it may be no surprise that children take some time to come to terms with such a system, given that they begin with a relatively immature cognitive system that evolves during language acquisition. However, results also show an early inchoate understanding of at least some aspects of modality and mood as well as cross-​linguistic differences, suggesting the role of other determinants in acquisition.

18.6.2 Input factors: child-​directed speech and linguistic diversity Notwithstanding general cognitive factors that underlie children’s acquisition of modality and mood in all languages, a recurrent question concerns the impact of input properties on children’s developing categories. Input properties first include adults’ behaviors during their interactions with children, e.g. what they say to children and how they say it. In this respect, some of the studies reviewed above show that child-​directed speech partially determines whether, how frequently, and by what means children express modality and mood. Second, cross-​linguistic research suggests that language-​specific factors may partially influence acquisition. In many languages epistemic modality involves a large variety of devices to be acquired by the child (auxiliaries, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, morphology, particles, sentence structures). In addition, many of these devices require complex syntactic features, particularly object complementation with main verbs such as know and think which are acquired late (Bloom et al. 1989). More generally, developmental psycholinguistics has recurrently shown that formal properties in the input influence how children acquire their language. For example suffixes are highly salient to them and obligatory markings result in more frequent cues as compared to optional ones (Slobin ed. 1985). Grammatical markers may also be easier to acquire because they draw on a smaller set of underlying concepts than lexicalized markings (Papafragou et  al. 2007) and/​or because they imply knowledge that is implicit (automatized, unconscious) rather than explicit (declarative, meta-​representational). The evidence indicates that some of these factors play a role. For example, the existence of a small subsystem of closed-​class markers such as evidentials in some languages results in earlier uses, but if the same distinctions are lexicalized in a given language, the system provides more “diffuse” and varied markings with respect to meanings and contexts of use, which therefore occur later.

18.6.3 Modality and mood in language and cognition Yet a deeper question concerns the extent to which language particulars have implications for children’s “mind-​reading” abilities. This question is controversial and still

446    Maya Hickmann and Dominique Bassano debated. Since early Piagetian accounts based on the development of “role-​taking” or “perspective-​taking” capacities, research in developmental psycholinguistics has led to theoretical proposals that strongly diverge in how they approach this language-​ cognition interface. Some proposals suggest that universal basic concepts underlie children’s theory-​of-​ mind from the prelinguistic period on. For some authors, the relevant concepts are based on innate “core” knowledge, the existence of which is supported by infants’ unexpectedly early capacities (see a review in Hickmann 2003b), as well by evidence from atypical populations (e.g. aphasia, autism, specific language impairments; Perner et al. 2003; Papagragou et al. 2007). Other authors propose that children come to the world equipped with a strong propensity to engage in precocious and intense perceptual and cognitive processes that constitute a driving force explaining how they extract invariance from complex information very early. Yet other views attribute to human language a special role in children’s acquisition of some concepts such as those underlying modality. For example, in accordance with classical theories postulating the central role of language in “mediating” conceptual development (e.g. Vygotsky), it has been proposed (de Villiers and de Villiers 2000, 2003; de Villiers and Pyers 2002; cf. Pascual et al. 2008: 456) that some of the complex cognitive processes underlying modality may be universally dependent on the syntax of complementation. Findings show that young children master finite that-​complementizers later than non-​finite to-​complementizers, providing a linguistic explanation for the gap between desires (want to) and beliefs (think that). However, evidence from languages other than English does not support this view. Children show the same gap between desire and belief in German and Chinese as compared to English despite the fact that German (see Perner et al. 2003) provides only one complementizer for both desires and beliefs, as well as for “pretend” and “want” statements, and although Chinese (Tardif and Wellman 2000) provides particles in non-​finite clauses. Finally, cross-​linguistic research (since Slobin 1996) now suggests that language-​ specific factors may not only influence the rhythm of language acquisition, but also partially shape the underlying concepts and the ways in which they are organized by children and by adults interacting with them. Although this is still a matter of debate, one obvious implication is that cross-​linguistic comparisons have become indispensable before any conclusions can be reached. Furthermore, in order to address such questions, a larger range of complementary methods is necessary. Many claims of early acquisition are typically based on spontaneous productions that do not always allow clear interpretations of underlying intended meanings, while claims of later developments are based on experiments requiring the processing of complex event sequences. Non-​linguistic measures may also reveal some early capacities that may not be uncovered otherwise (including in prelinguistic infants) and they are necessary in order to avoid the intrinsic circularity of searching for the impact of language on cognition on the basis of language use alone.

Modality and mood in first language acquisition    447

18.7 Conclusion During the last four decades, modality and mood have inspired a large number of acquisition studies focusing on both early and late developmental periods in a number of languages. One purpose of this overview was to give an extended picture of how modal categories emerge and develop in children’s language through a range of formal devices, also taking into account categories that lie at the periphery of modality and mood, such as evidentials and tense–​aspect systems. Naturalistic studies of young children’s speech provide evidence for the early production of modal systems, generally showing an acquisition sequence that goes from agent-​oriented to epistemic modality. However, this view has been challenged for some languages, showing the need for cross-​linguistic comparisons before generalizations can be drawn. In addition, experimental studies concerning later developmental phases show that it takes some years for children to master the entire set of semantic and pragmatic distinctions that characterize modal expressions and their conditions of use. This large synthesis shows the importance of studying acquisition processes at different developmental periods and across different languages in order to shed light on crucial issues, such as the role of input factors and the relation between language and cognition during ontogenesis.

Chapter 19

Modalit y an d mo od i n Am erican Sig n L a ng uag e Barbara Shaffer and Terry Janzen

19.1 Introduction1 Analyses of modality and mood in signed languages are to date quite rare, perhaps in part because of difficulties that have been encountered in understanding the nature of morphology in signed language articulation. This chapter describes how modality and mood plays out in American Sign Language (ASL). As can be anticipated, the expression of modality and mood in ASL has much in common with that found in many languages, but because of how signed languages are articulated—​with hands, the face, and the body—​certain gradient features of modal meaning are profiled through subtle changes in the movement of articulators along with facial gestures. We see this especially as modal meanings tend toward the epistemic, and are thus more subjectively construed. This is in line with Traugott (1982, 1989) and Traugott and Dasher (2002) on increased subjectification in constructions as items grammaticalize. Here we focus on the conceptual domain of modality, and especially on the category of modal auxiliaries in ASL (since they have received most attention in the literature; but we do occasionally also refer to other form types), and we discuss the role that grammaticalization has played in the development of modals. We comment only briefly on mood. To date there has been little research that explores mood in ASL beyond fairly cursory descriptions of sentence types (e.g. declarative, imperative, question types, etc.), although irrealis moods, such as certain types of conditionals, did receive some attention. 1 We

would like to acknowledge the following permissions to reproduce materials from other sources: Figures 19.1a and 19.1b, adopted from Humphries et al. (1994: 113–​114), Figure 19.5a, adopted from Humphries et al. (1994: 60), and Figures 19.6a and 19.6b, adopted from Humphries et al. (1994: 111), are reprinted by permission of TJ Publishers. Figure 19.5b, adopted from Girod (1997: Tome 3, 23), Figure 19.7a, from Girod (1997: Tome 2, 66) and Figure 19.7b, from Girod (1997: Tome 3, 214) are reprinted by permission of “IVT—​International Visual Theatre for LSF”.

Modality and mood in American Sign Language    449 Section 19.2 sketches a few major features of ASL, and of morphology in signed languages. In section 19.3, we briefly outline several analyses to date on modality in signed languages, followed by a more detailed discussion of modals in ASL, ranging from agent-​oriented to epistemic, and looking at both form and function, in section 19.4. In section 19.5 we describe the grammaticalization of ASL modal forms, showing that gestures have frequently been shown as sources in grammaticalization pathways. Negative modals are also examined in this section. A brief overview of moods in ASL including sentence types, along with a more detailed look at irrealis moods such as conditionals, hypotheticals, and counterfactuals, is given in section 19.6, and the discussion is summarized in section 19.7.

19.2 Preliminaries 19.2.1 American Sign Language ASL is the signed language of the majority of deaf communities in the United States and Canada. While the signer’s hands might be considered to be the primary articulators of the language, it has been shown that lexical and grammatical meaning is also conveyed through routinized facial gestures (often called “non-​manual markers”) and head movements (e.g. Liddell 1977; Baker and Padden 1978; Wilbur 1987; Janzen 1999; Shaffer 2004), and body postures (Janzen 2004). Signed languages are not typically related to, or based on, the spoken language used in the surrounding non-​deaf community (Johnston and Schembri 2007), but have unique lexicons and grammatical structures. Phonemic categories originally posited (Stokoe et al. 1965) included sets of handshapes, locations, and movements that were combined in principled ways to create lexical items, which at first were thought to be simultaneously articulated, thus differing categorically from phonetic strings found in spoken languages. However, it has since been shown that this is only partially true (a handshape must be present for a movement to take place, for example), and that signs follow a temporal contour visually, analogous to the auditory contour of spoken language words (Liddell and Johnson 1989; Brentari 1998). There is a tendency for lexical words (signs) in ASL to be of one syllable in length, although two-​syllable and, more rarely, three-​syllable words are attested (Brentari 1998). While noun forms are typically bare, verbs can be morphologically quite complex (Janzen 2012a), which seems at odds with the one-​syllable tendency. Brentari shows, however, that the complexity is due at least in part to signed language articulation: each of the two hands can simultaneously carry distinct meanings, the accompanying facial gesture can add a third, while the orientation of the hands and body, the manner and speed of movement can be semantically significant, etc. (see also Vermeerbergen et al. eds. 2007). Affixation is very rare, although Janzen (2012a) suggests that some affixation may be in the process of forming as a result of early stages of grammaticalization in some categories.

450    Barbara Shaffer and Terry Janzen Basic word order in ASL is usually regarded as SVO (e.g. Liddell 2003), although much variability exists. Topic–​comment structure is pervasive in naturally-​occurring discourse (Janzen 1998, 1999), and Wilbur (1997) claims that prosodically, the stress position is clause-​final (see also Petronio and Lillo-​Martin 1997), meaning that order can alternate so as to place a stressed element, whether nominal or verbal, in clause-​final position.

19.2.2 The problem of morphology in a signed language It is now clear that human language can be produced with two distinct sets of articulators: the vocal tract for spoken language which produces auditory signals, and hands, face, and body for signed language which produce visual signals. It has also been widely demonstrated that beyond the articulation difference, signed and spoken languages are organized along numerous similar principles. This is one of the ways we know that signed languages are complex linguistic systems. Yet, more recently attention has been drawn to typological differences between signed and spoken languages (Brentari 2002; Meier 2002; Vermeerbergen et al. eds. 2007), one issue being the identification of, and relation between, meaningful units when expressed through facial gestures and head and body positioning simultaneously with the hands. In particular, the issue concerns the identification of morphological units and whether various elements can be considered bound to, or dependent upon, other free elements or stems (cf. Wilcox 2004). As mentioned in section 19.2.1, analyses of morphology find very little evidence of affixing in signed language. Instead these analyses tend to support the notion of fusion, just by virtue of the simultaneous expression of meaning units with the stem (Wilcox 2004; Janzen 2007; Johnston and Schembri 2007). This may at least in part explain why we are not observing inflectional categories on the verb related to mood in ASL, and it suggests that modal auxiliary forms accompanied by simultaneous facial gestures might be considered as morphologically complex composites, and thus that a strictly prosodic account for these features cannot be assumed. This brief description of ASL touches on only some key features of the language, many of which will be seen in sections that follow in terms of, for example, modal placement, or in the strength of commitment on the part of the signer toward the truth of a statement whose expression includes a modal element.

19.3  Approaches to the study of modality in signed languages If we consider that signed languages have been acknowledged as full-​fledged languages worthy of academic investigation for a scant 60  years at the time of this

Modality and mood in American Sign Language    451 writing,2 it should come as no surprise that discourse-​based studies of signed languages are still somewhat limited. That said, there are studies of modality in ASL and also, for example, Brazilian Cities Sign Language (BCSL) and Catalan Sign Language (CSL). The first description of modals in ASL is Wilcox and Wilcox (1995), in which the authors discuss the semantics of some ASL modals, hypothesize grammaticalization pathways for their development and suggest several iconicity principles that guide their structural properties. A significant discourse study on modals in ASL is Shaffer (2000). This study looked at modals both diachronically and synchronically, and in particular, the interaction between discourse function and information ordering in clauses containing modals. This, along with Shaffer (2002, 2004), is the first attempt to categorize modal use in ASL. Ferreira Brito (1990) describes alethic, deontic, and epistemic modality in BCSL and finds that most modal notions are expressed with auxiliaries and verbs rather than via grammatical inflection. Mental predicates used to express epistemic belief such as “think” typically appear clause-​initially, while epistemic modals are in clause-​final position. Deontic modals in her study appear both clause-​initially and preverbally. Shaffer et al. (2011) describe the results of a small discourse-​based study of modality in CSL. Again, most modal notions are expressed with verbs and auxiliaries such as OBLIGAR ‘order’ NECESSITAR ‘need’, and PODER ‘can’. Word order varies, but is relatively consistent among construction types. Like BCSL, CSL signers make use of mental predicates such as CREURE ‘believe’ and PENSAR ‘think’. Interestingly, Shaffer et al.’s study, like the studies of ASL discussed in detail in section 19.4, suggests a critical facial gesture component to the expression of both epistemic and non-​epistemic modals. Petronio and Lillo-​Martin (1997) suggest that sentence-​final modals appear in a stress location. This aligns closely with Shaffer’s (2000, 2002, 2004) observation that an utterance-​final stress position is common in ASL, and that this position frequently contains highly subjective information, and with Janzen’s (1998, 1999) observation regarding the prevalence of topic–​comment structure, where the comment constituent contains new or focused information. Hence the high proportion of verb-​final clauses, where the final verbs tend to be “heavy”: they are stressed, and they frequently are morphologically complex in terms of aspect and agreement marking. In the comment in these constructions the speaker often evaluates the statement given in the topic. This seems to be especially true when the topic constituent is fully clausal. It comes as no surprise then that comment clauses can contain very subjective elements such as epistemic modals.3

2 Cf.

Stokoe’s (1960) groundbreaking Sign Language Structure:  An Outline of the Visual Communication Systems of the American Deaf. Tervoort (1953) came to the same general conclusions, independently, regarding the use of sign communication in the Netherlands. 3  These observations suggest that the situation in ASL may be very different from that in spoken languages, in which epistemic expressions, for example, generally do not appear as focused information, and instead have backgrounded status (see Chapter 3 for references), although these phenomena merit further investigation.

452    Barbara Shaffer and Terry Janzen The two primary structural positions where ASL modals are found are preverbal and clause-​final. If the utterance has topic–​comment structure (which is not a requirement), and the comment itself is clausal, then both modal positions will most likely appear in the comment. While in some cases the same modal form appears both preverbally and utterance-​finally in the same utterance, there are also numerous instances of modals occurring only utterance-​finally. Preverbal and clause-​final modals in ASL tend to have a categorically different interpretation. While agent-​oriented modals may appear either preverbally or clause-​finally, Shaffer (2000, 2002, 2004) finds that the more a modal expression represents a subjective speaker-​oriented stance, the more likely it is that it will be located utterance-​finally. Clause-​final modals are overwhelmingly subjective. Correspondingly, epistemic modals, which are most subjective, appear almost exclusively in utterance-​final position.4 This matter will be illustrated more elaborately in section 19.4.

19.4  The ASL modals In this section we describe ASL modal categories in some detail. But before doing so, we briefly discuss the issue of gradient properties of signed language articulation. Wilcox and Wilcox (1995) claim that many modal forms in ASL have two distinct movement patterns: either a short, reduplicated, and unstressed movement, or a single lengthier and stressed movement. Figure 19.1a (from Humphries et al. 1994: 113) shows this for MUST, taking the stressed form for stronger meaning. The unstressed but reduplicated form for weaker meaning, however, is often given the gloss SHOULD, as in Figure 19.1b (from Humphries et al. 1994: 114). But beyond what Wilcox and Wilcox report, in conversational data, signers are not bound by such distinct categories. Instead they habitually vary articulation features such as the length of movement arc, number of iterations, etc., to correspond to an entire continuum of weak to strong speaker intent. As well, signers employ numerous facial gestures that accompany what is articulated on the hands to indicate additional meaning units, many of which add to the subjective strength intended by the utterance (Shaffer 2004). While some of this gradience may rightly be attributed to prosody, our sense is that this is only partly so. Similar gradience has been noted in other ASL signs that have a kind of meaning “continuum”, such as the verb pair IMPROVE/​DETERIORATE, in which a variable length of movement arc determines the degree to which an entity has improved or deteriorated. It may also be the case that many of these gradient features comprise obligatory categories and thus would be considered as morphological components of the construction in which they appear, although their status as morphemic has not yet adequately been explored. 4 

One formalist account of modal positioning (Neidle et al. 2000) treats all modal verbs as appearing pre-​verbally, with any modals that occur sentence-​finally appearing as post-​clausal tags, that is, as a copy of the preverbal modal.

Modality and mood in American Sign Language    453

(a) MUST

(b) SHOULD

Figure 19.1  ASL modals MUST and SHOULD Source: (a) from Humphries et al. 1994: 113, (b) from Humphries et al. 1994: 114

Let us now turn to the discussion of the different ASL modals. Grammars designed for adult second language learners of ASL (e.g. Baker and Cokely 1980; Humphries et al. 1980, 1994; Valli and Lucas 1992) first documented common ASL modals, and, in much the same vein as early formal analyses of modality mentioned in section 19.3 (footnote 4), suggested that their syntactic position is variable and largely unimportant. Taking those early grammars as their starting place, and noting other early linguistic descriptions that mention modal forms, Wilcox and Wilcox (1995) examine both the form and function of ASL modals, using the broad categories of root and epistemic modality. For root modals, they discuss strong and weak obligation, for example with the pair glossed as MUST and SHOULD respectively. Ability is said to be expressed by CAN. Shaffer (2000, 2002, 2004) continues the description of ASL modality by presenting a discourse-​based study, following the categorization in terms of agent-​oriented and epistemic proposed by Bybee et al. (1994) and Bybee and Fleischman (1995) (see also Heine 1995; see Chapter 3 for a description of this approach to modal categorization). Bybee and colleagues define these categories as follows: Agent-​oriented modality encompasses all modal meanings that predicate conditions on an agent with regard to the completion of an action referred to by the main predicate, e.g. obligation, desire, ability, permission and root possibility. Epistemic modality retains its traditional definition: epistemics are clausal-​scope indicators of a speaker’s commitment to the truth of a proposition. (Bybee and Fleischman 1995: 6; emphases omitted)

In ASL, both agent-​oriented and epistemic modal notions are expressed via auxiliaries5 that form a set of composites in which some articulated variant of the sign combines 5 

The question of whether or not some or all modal verb signs in ASL have lexical or auxiliary (i.e. are more grammaticalized) status is not entirely clear, but for the purpose of this discussion, we consider them to be grammaticalized, and thus refer to them throughout as auxiliaries.

454    Barbara Shaffer and Terry Janzen with certain facial and head gestures. This results in a continuum of form–​meaning pairings functioning to index either strength of condition or degree of commitment. Labeling the auxiliaries with English glosses (as is done in the examples below) is problematic in that there are typically two glosses that label two distinct items, such as MUST and SHOULD. We continue to use these labels, or a more generalized label, for example, MUST/​SHOULD, but note that in doing so we are not claiming only two items, but groups of items that cluster around the various modal meanings.6 To illustrate, Shaffer (2004) describes necessity meanings ranging from deontic agent-​oriented necessity extending to physical and biological necessity (expressed by a MUST composite), for example I have to/​must take my medicine on a full stomach, weak necessity and advisability, root necessity (a condition imposed by the specifics of the situation itself, following Coates 1983) and epistemic necessity (expressed by a SHOULD composite). Shaffer also describes markers of possibility in ASL and notes agent-​oriented meanings ranging from permission, to knowledge, skills, and abilities (expressed by a CAN composite), and root possibility and epistemic possibility (expressed by a POSSIBLE composite). Shaffer’s work emphasizes the significance of information ordering, including the frequent use of topic–​comment constructions, in the interpretation of the modal, and in determining its scope and role in the discourse. As noted in section 19.3, modals found in utterance-​final position lend themselves to more subjective, speaker-​oriented interpretations. And, significantly, epistemic modals, the highest in speaker subjectivity, were almost exclusively found in utterance-​final position. The latter is addressed in section 19.4.2, but let us begin with some agent-​oriented examples.

19.4.1 Agent-​oriented modals Example (1), from Shaffer (in preparation), shows preverbal MUST in the comment of a topic–​comment construction (in this case with a conditional reading).7 (1) [IMPLANT TAKE.OFF PUT.ASIDEa]-​top BED, WORTHLESS [FEEL++]-​hn(slow) [WANT HEAR ALARM]-​top MUST IMPLANT.ON.HEAD ‘If you took the (cochlear) implant off and went to bed, then I’d say it wouldn’t do anything for you. If you wanted to be able to hear an alarm, you would have to have your implant on.’

6  A further

glossing issue concerns the part of speech of the gloss word from English. It cannot be assumed that such features of the gloss correspond to those of the ASL sign. For example, one modal auxiliary normally glossed as POSSIBLE uses the English adjective “possible”, which does not belong to the same part of speech category. 7  We have standardized the transcriptions of examples for this discussion, hence if examples have appeared in earlier publications, their transcriptions may differ. See list of transcription conventions at the end of the chapter.

Modality and mood in American Sign Language    455 In (1) MUST expresses non-​deontic strong necessity, in the sense that the alarm clock could only be heard if the cochlear implant were in place. In (2), from Janzen and Shaffer (2013: 71), MUST functions similarly. The signer has been telling a story about an incident from her childhood involving a mouse, and in this utterance recounts how a family member made up a story about what a mouse would do if you screamed when you saw it.8 (2) IF pro.2 SCREAM, MOUSE FUTURE eye gaze up/​left, plug ears [pro.2 THINK-​EASY]-​y/​n Q FUTURE JUMP.IN.MOUTH cl:LEGS(mouse in mouth) FUTURE pro.1 1LOOK.ATa cl:F(both hands-​look) hn BELIEVE-​emph MUST COVER.MOUTH, MUST COVER.MOUTH ‘(She said) “If you scream the mouse will say, ‘you think I’m nothin’?’ and will jump straight into your mouth”. I looked at her, shocked, but believed that you had to cover your mouth. You had to!’ Here, covering one’s mouth would be necessary to avoid an unfavorable outcome. While MUST is articulated with a single firm downward movement, this contrasts with (3), from Wilcox and Shaffer (2006: 215), where the sign has a less intense reduplicated but shorter movement, thus is glossed as SHOULD, which indicates weak necessity (see Figure 19.1 above). (3) pro.2 SHOULD WRITE ORDER [WRITE]-​top “pro.1 WANT PLEASE eye gaze to addressee PUT.DOWN M-​E-​D MEDIUM CHILE” pro.2 SHOULD WRITE pro.3 DON’T.KNOW poss.2 ORDER ‘You should write down your order. Write “I want medium (hot) chile please”. You should write it, otherwise they won’t know what you want.’ SHOULD in (3) is interpreted as advice, and in this way it introduces an increased element of speaker subjectivity relative to MUST in (1) and (2). Examples (4) and (5), from Shaffer (2004: 185–​186), show instances of the modal CAN expressing agent-​oriented modality. In (4) CAN has a reading of permission. In (5) the first instance of CAN has a skill or ability reading, while the second one seems somewhat ambiguous between ability and the signer’s assessment of possibility.

8 

cl:LEGS(mouse in mouth) refers to a “legs” handshape in which the index and middle finger are extended to indicate legs. In this example, the classifier form is a metonym for the mouse that has jumped into the signer’s mouth. cl:F(both hands-​look) indicates a handshape with the thumb and index fingertip touching and the other fingers extended. This handshape, one on each hand, represents a direction of gaze.

456    Barbara Shaffer and Terry Janzen (4) poss.1 MOTHER TIME TEACH, TEACH CAN SIGN BUT ALWAYS FINGERSPELL ‘In my mother’s time teaching, the teachers were permitted to sign, but they always fingerspelled.’ (5) [CAN LIP-​READ R-​E-​A-​D-​L-​I-​P-​S EMPHASIZE LIP-​READ]-​top LATER CAN PICK-​U-​P SPEAK, SOUND ‘If you could read lips, which they (the school) emphasized, then you could learn to talk.’ The structure of (5) illustrates the way that modals interact with information ordering in ASL. The second instance of CAN here expresses the signer’s opinion rather than describing an actual condition. It is found within a comment constituent, which is the expected location for a highly subjective element of this type. But the first instance of CAN is found in the topic constituent (in this case also a protasis, because this topic functions as a conditional). Modals in topic constituents are infrequent in discourse, but may occur in hypothetical and counterfactual conditionals and other contexts in which the information is already highly topical and thus the clause, including the modal, is able to function as a topic. The topic phrase or clause containing a modal is not asserted, but is given as a condition or statement upon which the signer wishes to comment. Example (5) was taken from a longer discourse segment in which the subject of school policies and lip-​reading had already been introduced, such that the clause CAN LIP-​READ R-​E-​ A-​D-​L-​I-​P-​S EMPHASIZE LIP-​READ constitutes a reiterated and therefore identifiable condition for further subjective comment.

19.4.2 Epistemic modals Without a large corpus, studies of epistemic modality in ASL discourse will necessarily be limited and somewhat speculative. And, to date, little has been written about epistemic modality in ASL. Wilcox and Wilcox (1995) suggest that epistemic modality can be indicated with the signs POSSIBLE, MAYBE, SEEM, FEEL and OBVIOUS. Note once again that CAN/​POSSIBLE composites represent variants of a single item and it is the features of their articulation (a single firm movement for CAN and a double less intense and shorter movement for POSSIBLE) that lead to the difference in meaning. Wilcox and Wilcox also suggest that the future marker (which they gloss WILL, but which we refer to as FUTURE) can have intentional, predictive, and volitional senses, but they do not note an epistemic use of FUTURE. Shaffer’s (2000, 2004) discussions of epistemic modals include uses of CAN/​ POSSIBLE, SEEM, FEEL, OBVIOUS, FUTURE, MAYBE, DOUBT, IMPOSSIBLE, and MUST/​SHOULD (each of these understood as a composite form–​meaning pairing as described in section 19.4 above). What follows are several discourse examples from Shaffer (2000, 2004) that illustrate epistemic readings. In (6), from Shaffer (2004: 190), we see both a negative (DOUBT) and positive (POSSIBLE) epistemic commitment. Here

Modality and mood in American Sign Language    457



two people are discussing the etymology of two modern ASL signs. One of them has just asserted that the two signs now share the same form due to a prior mistranslation. The signer in (6) initially disagrees with that assertion, saying that he doubts that it is true. He then reassesses and hedges a limited commitment to the likelihood that it may be true. (6) [SAME SIGN BECAUSE BAD TRANSLATE, FALSE C-​O-​G-​N-​A-​T-​E]-​top [DOUBT]-​hs/​bf pause gesture:‘well’ [POSSIBLE]-​hn ‘I doubt that the two concepts share the same sign (now) because of a problem with translation, or because of a false cognate, but, well, I suppose it could be true.’ The sentence in (6) is a good example of a topic–​comment construction where the topical item under discussion is syntactically marked as a topic constituent, followed by two epistemic evaluations in the comment constituent. While no uses of the epistemic MUST/​SHOULD composite were found in Shaffer’s (2000) discourse data, her language consultants easily provided examples of it upon elicitation, including (7), from Shaffer (2000: 97). (7) [LIBRARY HAVE DEAF LIFE]-​top [SHOULD]-​hn/​bf ‘The library should have Deaf Life (magazine)/​I think the library has Deaf Life.’ Shaffer’s consultants noted that with a less intense movement articulation and a concomitant head nod and brow furrow, the above sentence can be understood as a positive commitment to the truth of the proposition, that the library would have the magazine. Additionally they stated that two phrasal constructions, FEEL-​SHOULD and FEEL-​ HAVE, along with the same facial gestures, are comparable in meaning to the utterance-​ final articulation of SHOULD in (7), and equally lead to an epistemic reading of the utterance. They also confirmed that it is possible to articulate the utterance in (7) with the necessity marker SHOULD in preverbal position but not as a topic, but, importantly, it would then be a statement of advisability, that a deaf school library really ought to have that magazine. In this case it cannot be articulated with the same head nod and brow furrow. Shaffer (2000, 2004) as well as Janzen and Shaffer (2002) describe epistemic uses of FUTURE in ASL and claim that information ordering along with particular facial gestures are crucial to the modal’s role in discourse. Preverbal uses of FUTURE are seen with facial gestures that add temporal information, while utterance-​final uses of FUTURE are epistemic, with concomitant facial gestures adding evaluative rather than temporal information. Example (8), from Shaffer (2004: 189), illustrates this. (8) RT 29 THINK-​LIKE pro.3a R-​O-​C-​K-​V-​I-​L-​L-​E-​P-​I-​K-​E pro.3a BUILD+ pro.3a [FUTURE]-​top DEVELOP [FUTURE]-​hn/​bf S-​O WHY MUST aMOVEb NEAR COLUMBIA M-​A-​L-​L ‘(I live off) Route 29, the Rockville Pike area. In the future I’m sure they will develop that area. So why do I have to move all the way up near Columbia Mall?’

458    Barbara Shaffer and Terry Janzen In (8) there are two instances of FUTURE, one as a topic and one as an important element of the comment. Topic-​marked FUTURE, articulated with a relatively long movement pathway and wiggling fingers, has only a temporal reading, meaning that a somewhat distant future time serves as the grounding element for the comment. FUTURE appearing in the comment, however, constitutes a subjective statement that the development is without question going to take place. Each has a different function, so that it would not be correct to conclude that the second is simply a reiteration of the first, added for reasons of emphasis.

19.5  Grammaticalization and modality Much of our current understanding about modals in ASL is due to investigations of their diachronic development. Modals are considered to be more grammatical than lexical in nature, and thus can be analyzed in terms of their grammatical evolution under the principles collectively referred to as grammaticalization. Here, we adopt the definition of grammaticalization in Brinton and Traugott (2005): Grammaticalization is the change whereby in certain linguistic contexts speakers use parts of a construction with a grammatical function. Over time the resulting grammatical item may become more grammatical by acquiring more grammatical functions and expanding its host-​classes. (Brinton and Traugott 2005: 99)

It is well known that grammaticalized forms consistently develop from lexical words, whether or not the lexical word remains in the language synchronically. When both forms remain, this phenomenon is frequently referred to as “layering” (Hopper 1991; for discussion of grammaticalization and modality generally, see Chapter 16). In the work on signed language grammaticalization, however, gestures and gestural sequences have frequently been shown to exist as the ultimate source for grammatical items (as is illustrated in the subsections below). Wilcox (2007) has demonstrated (on the basis of work by himself and by, e.g., Janzen 1998, Shaffer 2000, 2004, and Janzen and Shaffer 2002), that grammaticalization in signed languages moves along two pathway types. Some items grammaticalize from gestural sources through a lexical stage as in (9), while others appear to bypass a lexical stage, instead taking the pathway in (10).  (9) gesture > lexical item > grammatical item (10) gesture > grammatical item The importance of this insight potentially extends beyond sign language research: Heine and Kuteva (2007) acknowledge that the research on gestural sources

Modality and mood in American Sign Language    459 of both lexicon and grammatical elements in signed languages raises the question of the role that gesture and prosody might also have played in spoken language evolution. Although to date concern with this issue has been largely restricted to signed languages, the topic of gesture and grammaticalization has begun to spread (e.g. Mittelberg and Mortelmans 2013). In the following subsections we review a few examples of ASL modals and modal uses of FUTURE from Shaffer (2000) that have grammaticalized along Wilcox’s (2007) pathway type in (9) above, and we look into suppletion in the grammaticalization of negative modals.

19.5.1 OWE > MUST Shaffer (2000) traces the origin of modern ASL MUST (see Figure 19.1 in section 19.4) to its roots in old LSF (French Sign Language), as evidenced by drawings of signs produced in the mid-​nineteenth century. This is a sign articulated with one index finger pointing down and contacting an upward turned palm on the other hand, which in a particular context of use means ‘to owe money’, or as Shaffer (2000: 142) puts it, ‘financial obligation’. But even much earlier, there is evidence of widespread use of a gesture pointing to the ground in front of the speaker/​gesturer and meaning what de Jorio (2000 [1832]) calls ‘insistence’. De Jorio’s gesture descriptions are from the Mediterranean area in antiquity, or approximately 2000 years ago. Figure 19.2 (from Dodwell 2000: 36, figure on Plate XVb) illustrates the gesture. This gesture, which is very likely the source of old LSF signs such as DEVOIR ‘obligation’ and IL FAUT ‘it is necessary’, does not include the second hand, palm up (see also Boyes Braem 1981 for a similar description of LSF IL FAUT having the meaning ‘right here’ or ‘this ground’). It appears that OWE and MUST were borrowed into old ASL (historic contact between LSF and ASL has been well documented, see, for example, Frishberg 1975), whereby, as Shaffer notes, MUST lost the second hand as it began to grammaticalize into the modern ASL modal MUST/​ SHOULD.

19.5.2 STRONG > CAN/​POSSIBLE There is diachronic evidence that modern ASL CAN/​POSSIBLE, which can mean physical ability, general ability, permission, and various types of possibility (including epistemic), developed from an older source found in both old ASL and old LSF, and an even earlier gesture where the two hands are held as fists and moved downward or perhaps somewhat sideways and downward with a forceful movement. Modern ASL retains remnants of this gestural form, now a lexical adjective glossed as STRONG and meaning ‘to be strong’ or ‘strength’ (Wilcox and Wilcox 1995; Shaffer 2000). CAN/​POSSIBLE is

460    Barbara Shaffer and Terry Janzen

Figure  19.2 One directs “the extended index finger towards the ground and it indicates insistence”

now produced with the palms facing downward but retains the downward movement. There is evidence of an intermediate stage (Long 1918: 24, 25) where the palms face one another as in the gestural source and lexical STRONG, but where the meaning is understood as “expressing possibility, power, etc.” (Long 1918: 25). From this we might gather that a shift in both form and meaning was underway. It is also interesting to note that the modal meaning “can” in BCSL (Ferreira Brito 1990) is very similar in form to the older form of CAN seen in Long’s (1918) dictionary.

Modality and mood in American Sign Language    461

19.5.3 The development of temporal and epistemic FUTURE in ASL The development of FUTURE in ASL is particularly interesting both for the reason that details of its grammaticalization pathway have been charted and for the range of meanings, both lexical and grammatical, that it has in modern ASL. The future marker in both modern LSF and modern ASL is thought to have developed from a gestural source in use from at least classical antiquity until today around the Mediterranean (Shaffer 2000; Janzen and Shaffer 2002; Wilcox and Shaffer 2006; Wilcox 2007). Bybee et al. (1994) note that future markers in many languages commonly develop out of movement verb constructions (as in be going to > gonna in English), verbs of desire, and verbs of obligation. De Jorio (2000 [1832]) describes a gesture used to indicate departure which was in use at least 2000 years ago where the palm of one hand is held edgewise and moved out from underneath the palm of the other hand. This gesture is shown in Figure 19.3a, from a volume on French gestures in modern society (Wylie 1977: 17). Brouland (1855) is a single plate showing line-​drawing illustrations of 120 old LSF signs in use at the time (see also Renard and Delaporte 2004 for a reproduction). Brouland includes the old LSF sign PARTIR ‘to depart’ (see Figure 19.3b, taken from Brouland 1855), which is identical to the French gesture shown in Figure 19.3a. Shaffer (2000) gives evidence that by the early twentieth century, a similar form was in use in ASL to mean both ‘to go’ and ‘future’ concurrently, although with the dominant, edgewise hand (a)

(b)

Figure 19.3  (a) The French gesture meaning ‘to depart’; (b) Old LSF PARTIR ‘to depart’

462    Barbara Shaffer and Terry Janzen moving outward in an elongated path. This represents an excellent example of layering in the grammaticalization process (Hopper 1991), because this historical form of the lexical verb GO and the form FUTURE (perhaps at this stage also a lexical form) co-​existed in signers’ discourse. The elongated movement suggests movement along a path. Then at some point in time, two important changes took place. First, the lexical verb Go with this form was replaced by an unrelated verb form “to go” and second, the sign FUTURE moved up to the level of the cheek, which Janzen (2012a) suggests is motivated by analogy in that it aligned with other existing temporal signs articulated in the same region. This change to a higher place of articulation may have been gradual: Shaffer (2000) found examples of usages in old LSF and old ASL at an intermediate height, as in Figure 19.4 (taken from Brouland 1855). Once at the level of the cheek, only a future reading is present. In other words, this form cannot be understood as a verb of motion. As can be seen by comparing Figures 19.4 and 5, this change has taken place in both ASL (Figure 19.5a, taken from Humphries et al. 1994: 60) and LSF (Figure 19.5b, taken from Girod 1997: Tome 3, 23). The ASL form FUTURE illustrated in Figure 19.5a has thus undergone decategorialization (another of Hopper’s 1991 features of grammaticalizing items) as it progressed from full verb to future marker, which in modern ASL tends to appear preverbally. It

Figure 19.4  Old LSF FUTUR at an intermediate height between the lower torso and newest form at cheek level

Modality and mood in American Sign Language    463 (a)

(b)

Figure 19.5 (a) FUTURE in Modern ASL; (b) FUTUR in Modern LSF Source: (a) from Humphries et al. 1994: 60, (b) from Girod 1997: Tome 3, 23

moreover shows phonetic reduction, also common to grammaticalizing items. Brentari (1998) states that the articulation of signs is phonologically reduced9 when the fulcrum of movement is distalized from a joint closer to the signer’s torso to a joint further from the torso. In the LSF and ASL future markers, the fulcrum has shifted from the shoulder to the elbow, and in the most reduced forms, to the wrist. As is frequently the case with grammaticalizing items, multiple forms can co-​exist, but often with accompanying variation in phonetic form. FUTURE as illustrated in Figure 19.5a can appear utterance-​finally in ASL with both future and intentionality meanings. The path movement can vary according to the perceived distance in future time: a short path for an event in the near future, a longer path for something in the distant future. In addition, the movement can also vary in tenseness depending on the degree of intentionality or determination. When FUTURE occurs preverbally, much of the variation in form that is possible in the utterance-​final marker does not take place, which aligns with the concept of an utterance-​final stress position mentioned in sections 19.3 and 19.4. Preverbally, the movement path is shortened, perhaps with just a slight rotation of the wrist. The most highly reduced form appears prefix-​like, with the thumb only contacting the cheek briefly, followed by handshape and location assimilation to that of the verb. In this case, the outward movement path of FUTURE is lost altogether. When FUTURE occurs utterance-​finally, it is apt to more strongly reflect the signer’s belief that some situation will take place. The sign is thus frequently stress-​marked, accompanied by facial gestures that indicate certainty as part of the epistemic stance of the signer. 9 The question of phonetic or phonological reduction is not addressed here, although in grammaticalization processes, it is common for phonetic material to be lost. Brentari is addressing a general principle of reduction in signs; she does not discuss grammaticalization in particular.

464    Barbara Shaffer and Terry Janzen

19.5.4 Negation and suppletive forms It is striking that when a modal concept is negated (e.g. “must not”, “can not”, etc.) we find a completely different form as well as a different grammaticalization path. In the case of possibility, for example, one might assume that to indicate inability, or lack of possibility, a simple negation of CAN resulting in CAN + NEG or NEG + CAN might be seen. This is not the case: no evidence, either diachronic or synchronic, of the use of CAN with a distinct manual negative marker is found for ASL. ASL data collected from films dating from the turn of the twentieth century as well as from early twentieth-​ century dictionaries indicate that to express the negation of permission, ability, or possibility a sign commonly glossed as CAN’T was used. There is evidence of this form in use among ASL signers dating back to 1913. Examples from the old films are (11), as signed by George Veditz, and (12) by Robert P. McGregor (both from Shaffer 2002: 40).10 (11) pro.3p NOT UNDERSTAND SIGN BECAUSE pro.3p CAN’T CAN’T CAN’T SIGN pro.3p TELL ANNOUNCE HERE SIGN REMOVE ‘They do not understand sign and because they can’t sign they declare sign banished.’ (12) [DURING THAT TIME]-​top WORLD SEEM BIG PEOPLE FEEL FARa FARb FARc left-​to-​right FEEL INTERACT CAN’Ta CAN’Tb CAN’Tc left-​to-​right ‘At that time the world seemed large. People (in different countries) felt separated from each other, and felt that they could not interact.’ In (11) CAN’T appears preverbally, and refers to the general public’s lack of ability to sign. It is articulated in much the same way as it would be in ASL currently, except, perhaps for the reduplication, which seems to have no discourse function beyond emphasis. In (12) CAN’T is in utterance-​final position and is also reduplicated, but here the repetition corresponds to locations in space to which the signer has been referring.11 Here CAN’T has a more generalized impossibility reading. Long (1918) also describes CAN’T: Can’t, -​Holding the left “G” hand out in front, strike the end of it with the forefinger of the right “G” hand, as if cutting it off, and letting the right hand continue down. (Long 1918: 25)

10 

The 1913 film examples are from The Preservation of Sign Language © 1997, SMI. Signers use different areas of the space in front of them to designate distinct objects and locations. Anaphoric or indexical references to those spaces via eye gaze, pointing, or simply locating additional signs at the location indicate semantic affinity. 11 

Modality and mood in American Sign Language    465 (a)

(b)

Figure 19.6  (a) ASL CAN; (b) ASL CAN’T Source: Humphries et al. 1994: 111

As Figures 19.6a and 19.6b (both from Humphries et al. 1994: 111) show, CAN and CAN’T in ASL are not phonologically related in that their handshapes and movements both differ. Modern ASL CAN’T is used to express notions of impossibility, unavailability, lack of skill, inability, and in limited contexts, prohibition. However, while CAN is the most common permission form in ASL, CAN’T is not seen as often for prohibition. Instead FORBID, which is phonologically related to modern ASL LAW and old LSF LOI ‘law’, is more prevalent. Example (13) shows both CAN and CAN’T with essentially polar meanings (from Shaffer in preparation). The signer has been describing technology whereby one user of a video-​phone (e.g. an interpreter) can visually “mute” the call, while the other person (the deaf caller) does not have the same capability. (13) INTERPRET WAIT++ gesture:‘hey’ DO.YOU.MIND PRIVACY WINDOW CLOSE, COVER BLUE P-​R-​I-​V-​A-​C-​Y E-​N-​A-​C-​T-​E-​D pro.1 NOT LIKE I-​T pro.3a CAN aLOOK.AT1.pat.pov pro.1, CAN’T LOOK pro.3a ‘So you’re on the phone with an interpreter, and she’s interpreting, but then there’s a long wait time, she will ask if you mind if she uses the privacy screen. You know, that blue ‘privacy enabled’ screen? I don’t like that. She can see me but I can’t see her? I just don’t like it.’ This example contrasts with (14), where CAN’T refers to a prohibition (from Shaffer in preparation). In this case, the signer asserts that interpreters who haven’t

466    Barbara Shaffer and Terry Janzen followed certain rules would have their licenses revoked and would not be allowed to interpret. (14) [KNOW ONE, TWO, THREE]-​top [FINISH]-​top [PASS]-​top aLICENSE1 pro.1 NOT FOLLOW, LAPSE pro.1 CAN’T WORK FINISH ‘If you completed everything then you’d get a license. But if you didn’t follow (the rules) you’d lose it, and then couldn’t work.’ Shaffer (2002) hypothesizes that rather than CAN or its predecessor STRONG providing the source for CAN’T in ASL, the origins are found in a marker with a ‘must not’ meaning (see Janzen and Shaffer 2002 for a detailed discussion of the grammaticalization of markers of necessity in ASL). As mentioned in section 19.5.1, Shaffer claims that the modern ASL word MUST developed from the earlier LSF word commonly glossed IL FAUT with the meaning ‘it is necessary’, the modern version of which is shown in Figure 19.7a (from Girod 1997: Tome 2, 66). IL FAUT, Shaffer posits, developed a negated form, meaning ‘must not’, from which modern ASL CAN’T developed. Modern LSF also retains a word glossed INTERDIT ‘prohibited’, seen in Figure 19.7b (from Girod 1997: Tome 3, 214), which looks identical to modern ASL CAN’T. BCSL also features a similar form, with the same meaning (Ferreira Brito 1990). Given its limited discourse function (prohibition), Shaffer (2002) suggests that the LSF form underwent more conservative semantic changes as it grammaticalized. The ASL form, on the other hand, grammaticalized further, allowing for a variety of negative necessity and negative possibility uses. Suppletion in ASL modality is not limited to CAN’T. The sign glossed IMPOSSIBLE also appears to be unrelated to POSSIBLE. In fact, only one modal + negation form is commonly used in ASL, that being NEG + SHOULD. However, its discourse function is

(a)

(b)

Figure 19.7  (a) LSF IL FAUT ‘it is necessary’; (b) LSF INTERDIT ‘prohibited’ Source: (a) from Girod 1997: Tome 2, 66 , (b) from Girod 1997: Tome 3, 214

Modality and mood in American Sign Language    467 limited to notions of “not needed”, or “not necessary”, and it can’t be used to prohibit or deter action (for more on modality and negation, see Chapter 4).

19.6 Mood in ASL 19.6.1 Sentence types Although there are some rudimentary descriptions of sentence types in ASL, mostly in grammars (e.g. Baker and Cokely 1980; Valli and Lucas 1992 and later editions) and in Baker’s (1980) and Liddell’s (1980) early work on ASL syntax, no one has to date critically discussed these in terms of mood. Sentence types listed in these publications include declarative, wh-​word and yes/​no questions, conditionals, and imperatives.12 For example, there is no difference in word order between declaratives and yes/​no questions. Instead the distinction is indicated by facial and head gestures. Declaratives, especially when the signer is making a point of asserting something, are accompanied by a single sharp head nod that coincides with the completion of the clause, whereas yes/​no questions have a set of facial gestures, including raised eyebrows and, frequently, a forward head-​tilt, that are articulated along with the entire clause.

19.6.2 Irrealis As mentioned in the introduction, irrealis moods have by and large not been discussed as such for ASL, with the exception of conditionals. Here we report on this work, as well as some recent research on hypotheticals and counterfactuals, but this is an area that needs further investigation. The protasis in an ASL conditional is structured much like a topic-​marked clause (Reilly et al. 1991), which Janzen (1998, 1999) and Janzen and Shaffer (2002) claim has grammaticalized from the yes/​no question form (but see Liddell 1986 for an alternative analysis suggesting that they are unrelated constructions). Typically the statement in the protasis is topical—​something that is identifiable to the addressee in the discourse setting. Concomitant with the protasis, the eyebrows are raised and the head is tilted slightly back, as is the case for topic constituents in topic–​comment constructions generally. Shaffer (in preparation) describes a construction type in which the utterances function to index speaker stance. In each of these constructions, the signer is conveying her stance regarding hypothetical states of affairs. For example, the signer might relate her opinion about some as yet unrealized event. In other examples the signer has no real 12  Conditionals

may not often be considered as a “sentence type” cross-​linguistically, but they are treated as such by most of the authors cited here.

468    Barbara Shaffer and Terry Janzen world experience with, or knowledge of, some objective reality, but draws hypothetical conclusions about what that reality might be like. Or, in yet other examples the signer describes situations or affairs that she knows are contrary to fact, and offers her assessment of what would happen if they were true. These examples are similar to our example (1) in section 19.4.1 in which the signer hypothesizes about a possible situation. He has no direct knowledge of the factuality of his claims, but states his hypothesis (with some hedging) as one possible, and logical, reality. In (15) the signer has described her idealized model of deaf education, which does not actually exist, and now gives her opinion about what the consequences of such an approach would be for both deaf students and their parents (from Shaffer in preparation). (15) DEAF HARD.OF.HEARING, MOTHER-​FATHER HEARING pause eye-​gaze:left [FASCINATE]-​eye-​gaze:interlocutor [DEAF pro.3a pro.3b]-​eye-​gaze:left eye-​gaze:interlocutor FALL.FOR.IT [TAP]-​eye-​gaze-​right eye-​gaze:interlocutor MOTHER-​FATHER, pro.1 WANT CLASS pro.3 CLASS [MOTHER-​FATHER]-​eye-​gaze:left gesture:‘dumbfounded’ eye-​gaze:interlocutor AT.A.LOSS STICKY MAYBE DON’T.KNOW ‘Deaf (or) hard of hearing kids with hearing parents would be fascinated (with signing deaf classrooms). They’d see the signing deaf kids’ world and fall in love with it. Then they’d tell their parents they wanted to be there (in the signing classroom). The parents wouldn’t know what to do. It could be a sticky situation, I don’t know.’ The counterfactual world in (15) that has been conceptualized by the signer is realized in this discourse segment by means of two prosodic elements: the positioning of conceptual entities variously in the space in front of the signer, and eye-​gaze away from her interlocutor and toward these conceptual spaces. In essence the signer indexes the counterfactual situation in this manner, which Shaffer describes through a mental spaces model of meaning (Fauconnier 1985; Dancygier 2012).

19.7 Conclusion In this chapter we have looked at the work to date on modality, and to a much lesser extent on mood, in ASL. Modals in ASL range from agent-​oriented to fully epistemic and highly subjective signer stance-​marking elements, expressed as auxiliaries along with facial and body gestures. Janzen (2012b) stresses that because the signer articulates

Modality and mood in American Sign Language    469 language within a physical space, conceptualized images of relational and interactive spaces are mapped onto this physical space, and as such the signer represents her mental stance toward various situations metaphorically in this physical space. Not only does she use lexicon that invites scalar subjective readings, she has the advantage of visible facial and body gestures as part of her articulation that enhance the portrayal of her point of view. Moods in ASL have not been as well documented as have modal auxiliaries, and are in need of further investigation. However, as we have tried to show, constructions with grammatical moods equally employ a combination of lexical material and face and body gestures. As we continue to probe the nuances of morphology and syntax in an articulation system based on vision, we are able to uncover more and more facts regarding linguistic convention and regularity. We can see that modality and mood in ASL express the same range of meanings found cross-​linguistically, which indicates something about the human capacity for internalized (and expressed) subjective viewpoint. And we can observe how modal expression, and to some degree mood, has developed, largely from early gestural sources, into a fully-​functional system.

Transcription conventions Upper case word glosses indicate ASL signs. Words separated by a period (e.g. MOVE. OVER) indicate that more than one English word is used to denote a single ASL sign. Letters separated by hyphens (e.g. C-​A-​R) represent fingerspelling. Plus signs (++) denote repeated movement. Square brackets indicate that a facial gesture is maintained throughout the phrase enclosed. emph indicates emphasis. […]-​top represents topic marking, and y/​n q is a yes/​no question. Subscript letters represent spatial locations associated with entities positioned in the space around the signer, and are labeled “a”, “b”, etc., arbitrarily. Subscript text indicates a “path” of locations. Subscript 1 represents a location near the signer. pro.1, pro.2, and pro.3 are first, second and third person singular pronouns. poss.1 is first person singular possessive. pro.3p is third person plural. pat.pov means “patient point of view”. Classifier constructions are cl: plus a handshape label and/​or a description which is italicized and in parentheses. hn is a head nod, bf a brow furrow, hs a negative head shake; “modifications” of these are indicated by italicized words in parentheses. Additional italicized words in the transcriptions indicate pauses, gestures, and eye-​gaze shifts that are between signed phrases. The translation line is an English approximate that does not necessarily represent equivalent grammatical features or lexical categories to those found in ASL.

Pa rt  V

T H E OR E T IC A L A P P ROAC H E S

Chapter 20

Modalit y and mo od in formal sy ntac t i c approac h e s Katrin Axel-​T ober and Remus Gergel

20.1 Introduction The present chapter concentrates on aspects of modal auxiliaries, verbs, and adverbs that have been considered to produce characteristic syntactic effects in the formal literature, and it discusses a selection of issues pertaining to mood. The compilation is necessarily non-​exhaustive in several ways. There are limitations to what can be covered given the large body of formal syntactic work over the last decades. Hence we have to confine ourselves to the most important tendencies. The chapter focuses on the frameworks of Government and Binding Theory (GB) and the subsequent Minimalism Program (Chomsky 1981, 1995; see Öhlschläger 1989; Picallo 1991; Barbiers 1995; Thráinsson and Vikner 1995; Marrano 1998; Wurmbrand 1999; É. Kiss 2002; Hualde and Ortiz de Urbina 2003; Roberts and Roussou 2003; Eide 2005; Bhatt 2006; for only a brief list of modality-​related work on different languages), but we will keep technicalities at a necessary minimum. We will also not be able to do justice to other formal approaches, such as Head-​Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), or Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG), to name only a few (but cf. a brief excursus in section 20.2). But we will pursue a discussion of central issues that have triggered work in several formal frameworks. In doing so, we will describe one alternative approach to “mainstream” GB and minimalism in exemplary fashion and in some more detail, namely the tradition known as research on “coherent constructions” in the discussion of modals in German (Bech 1955/​57; cf. e.g. Kiss 1995 and Reis 2001 for modern approaches to the core issues there).

474    Katrin Axel-Tober and Remus Gergel The organization of the chapter is as follows. In section 20.2 we discuss issues of the categorial status of the modals. Section 20.3 deals with the different types of modality and their possible structural effects, section 20.4 with the raising vs control issue with respect to the modals. Section 20.5 handles the tradition of coherence. In section 20.6 we look at the interactions of modal syntax with adverbs. Section 20.7, finally, deals with certain issues of mood in syntax.

20.2  Categorial status of modals The notion of modality in formal approaches is tied to the expression of possibility and necessity against different types of conversational backgrounds, specifically modal bases and ordering sources (Kratzer 1991b; cf. Portner 2009 for a partly new semantic classification). Given that a key line of research in recent theoretical work concerns the issue to what extent structural computation and the interfaces interact (cf. Chomsky 1995, Heim and Kratzer 1998 in particular on the conceptual role of the level of Logical Form, LF, which is relevant here), the question arises whether such a key notion as modality has well-​defined grammaticalized linguistic reflexes in morphosyntax. For English, the prevailing view in the literature has been that modals have auxiliary-​ like properties (e.g. Roberts 1985, 1993; Roberts and Roussou 2003). It was noted in early grammars of English that they are characterized by the so-​called NICE properties (Huddleston 1976). Unlike main verbs, but just like auxiliaries such as be or have, they take negation directly (without do-​support; cf. Embick and Noyer 2001 for an implementation of the latter), they invert with the subject in direct interrogatives and other inversion contexts, they may be stranded in VP ellipsis contexts (“code”) and they can have polarity emphasis. Thus the conclusion drawn by most generative research is that, alongside their clear semantic function, the English modals also have a syntactic status which is distinct from that of main verbs. The key idea, extending back to early work on transformational syntax (cf. Chomsky 1981; Roberts 1993; Lasnik 1995), is that the modals are generated in a designated auxiliary position distinct from that of main verbs (but cf. Ross 1969; Pullum and Wilson 1977; Iatridou and Zeijlstra 2010). This position has usually been called I or Infl (standing for “inflection”). Crucial in such an approach is that some functional category dominates the modal and is the head of the clause. For example, Portner (2009: 134) uses M (and more generally also F for functional). A  run-​of-​the-​mill modalized sentence would then—​in the typical GB notation—​have the basic representation in (1). IP

(1) NP/DP Subject





I Modal

I' VP Main Predicate

Modality and mood in formal syntactic approaches    475 A first idea behind this structure is that inflection and the modals are in complementary distribution; cf. (2a–​2c). (2) a.  Homer snores. b.  Homer may snore. c.  *Homer may snores. What emerges is that there is at least one projection conspicuously distinct in its syntactic properties from the VP projection of the main predicate. The facts that have been taken as crucial (in English) in this analysis are distributional in nature, namely: (3) a. Modals invariably precede, and structurally dominate, any other verbs or auxiliaries. b. Modals are not productively tensed. c. Modals lack both finite and non-​finite inflection. d. Modals invariably precede negation. e. Modals do not trigger do-​support. While the modals share the last property, (3e), with other auxiliaries, notably have and be, they are distinct from these two items in the other four properties, (3a–​3d), given that have/​be can be (i) preceded by modals, (ii) tensed, (iii) inflected in finite and non-​finite forms (cf. having been), and finally (iv) preceded by negation (when negation, in turn, is preceded by a modal). A customary way to capture the distinction in GB terms is to state that have/​be are generated in the head of a V-​type projection and they move when the I domain is available. Furthermore, the current English auxiliary do is standardly generated in a functional projection similar to the modals (e.g. Roberts 1993: 295), but as a last-​resort seems able to support inflection in appropriate configurations. At this point, a brief excursus to other frameworks is pertinent. First, the framework of HPSG (cf. e.g. Pollard and Sag 1994) uses features on a much broader basis than is customary in GB or even minimalism. (Typical features in minimalism are, e.g. case, number, person, etc.) In such a context, features would be a natural place to describe modals as well, whereas the bulk of work achieved in GB is via categorial status and movement transformations. Warner’s work on modals (cf. e.g. Warner 1993) makes use of HPSG; cf. Kiss (1995) on German. Interestingly, Warner argues for persistent auxiliarization tendencies in the English modals from Old English on. Second, the fact that the specific categorial status used for modals, or auxiliaries more generally, can become less relevant under appropriate formal descriptions, is also made clear in the framework of TAG (cf. e.g. Abeillé et al. 1990), where there is no difference in category between auxiliaries and main verbs, but where the syntactic operations applying to the two classes are distinct, i.e. adjunction and substitution, respectively. Third, in an LFG approach to auxiliaries, Falk (2003) argues that (the English) modals (e.g. can) should receive an aux-​predicate analysis, rather than an aux-​feature analysis. The account is close to more traditional

476    Katrin Axel-Tober and Remus Gergel generative work based on the I or Infl node introduced above (we refer the interested reader to Falk 2003, also for a discussion of alternatives in LFG). Returning to the GB framework, a note is in order regarding infinitival to, an item frequently considered similar to the modals. Although classically this element has been situated in the I domain, recent investigations do not regard it as a proper marker of modality. Bhatt (2006) observes that it does not invariably carry modal meanings; cf. also Moulton (2009) for a discussion of the issues in the context of complements of perception and attitude predicates. Consider (4)  and (5)  (Bhatt 2006: 41, (66a–​b)). (4) This is the best book to appear until now on this topic. (5) This is the best book to read. While (5) has a modal meaning, (4) does not. Bhatt’s solution is that the modal component in such constructions is contributed by the C domain (i.e. the structurally higher domain usually associated with complementizers in the generative tradition) and not the I domain; the subject relative in (4) lacks the relevant C head on this view. Since many of the characteristics just discussed pertaining to different modal elements are specific to English, the question arises what happens in other languages where such evidence is lacking. A standard approach is to analyze the modal elements as moved from the head position of a verbal projection to the inflectional domain, whereby the latter can be fairly densely articulated (cf. Cinque 1999). The modal elements would then land in the relevant specialized position(s) with modal import, and would not be base-​generated (or first-​merged, in minimalist terms) there. This is also the classical analysis for early English (Roberts 1993; Roberts and Roussou 2003). Even among the West Germanic languages, the situation is still more complex, however. In German, the core modal verbs are cognates of the English ones, yet their analysis as auxiliary verbs is very controversial and not necessarily the standard view. Unlike their English counterparts (cf. the list in (3)), modal verbs in German do not exhibit a set of properties that are indisputable signs of auxiliary-​hood: they have non-​ finite forms and can occur below auxiliaries in periphrastic tense and passive constructions, they can be inflected for tense (present, preterite) and mood (Konjunktiv I and II). Unlike in English, there are also no positional differences between modal verbs and indisputable main verbs. Nevertheless, the auxiliary approach has figured prominently in diachronic studies couched in the grammaticalization framework (e.g. Diewald 1999). In these studies, however, only epistemic modal verbs are classified as auxiliaries, whereas root modals are analyzed as main verbs (cf. also section 20.3 below for similar proposals for historical English and Catalan). A generative proponent of the auxiliary hypothesis for German is Wurmbrand (2001), who argues for an articulate hierarchy for German modal verbs. According to Wurmbrand, not only epistemic,

Modality and mood in formal syntactic approaches    477 but all modal variants—​deontic, dynamic, and epistemic—​are functional heads, whereas normal main verbs are lexical heads. Reis (2001) argues against Wurmbrand’s approach (cf. also Reis and Sternefeld 2004) claiming that there is not a single syntactic property which sets modal verbs or a subclass thereof such as the epistemic variants apart from uncontroversial full verbs. In sum, the evidence in German is not as strong as in English that modals are generated in the heads of functional projections. This fits well into the wider perspective of German being a language in which the evidence for an I node itself has been questioned on a broader basis (cf. Haider 1997, 2010; Reis 2001; Sternefeld 2006). Interestingly, the core modals of English and German go back to the same Germanic roots and the evolution of modal meaning variants is strikingly parallel, including the systematic diachronic emergence of epistemic meanings that gave rise to the synchronic polyfunctionality. But despite parallels and similarities, the syntax of modals in modern English and modern German has remarkably different properties (cf. also section 20.5).

20.3  Major types of modality and the investigation of structural effects The three basic types of modality familiar e.g. from Chapter 3 of this handbook, namely epistemic (with a controversy with regard to whether to include evidentiality), deontic, and dynamic, are also the terms that have earned most attention in the syntactic tradition. Circumstantial modality (as used e.g. in Kratzer’s work) has also been recently used syntactically, as will be discussed below. The additional term bouletic is typically used interchangeably with volitional modals. With the exception of some negated instances of will, the core modals do not convey straightforward volitional meanings in current English (contrary to the lexical verb want).1 Let us survey some key structural facts connected to the different types of modality. Dynamic modality has played a role syntactically in the raising vs control debate, which is discussed in section 20.4. There is, however, another equally important area in which evidence from circumstantial can has been used in modal syntax. This has to do with scope and thus with important effects at the syntax–​semantics interface. Consider (6) and (7) (adapted from Roberts 2010: 13, (11a–b); cf. also Lechner 2006: 51, (16)–(17)). (6) John cannot come today. (7) You can always count on me.

1  However, many types of modality do require a volitional subject. See Portner (2009: 135) for a novel semantic classification that uses this fact; cf. Dowty (1991) for volitionality as a key feature in establishing, e.g., agentivity as a proto-​role.

478    Katrin Axel-Tober and Remus Gergel Lechner (2006), and following him Roberts (2010), note that in such examples there is a strong preference for the modal to take scope below negation and the adverb, respectively (e.g., resulting in it is not possible for John to come today rather than it is possible for John not to come today). Slightly more technically, the modal is interpreted in a position that is below its surface position in terms of structural height. Lechner combines such observations with scope facts from negative quantifiers to argue that head movement as the movement undergone by the modals has a semantic impact and cannot be relegated to a purely phonological effect (contra Chomsky 2001). The role of epistemic modality can hardly be overemphasized when it comes to issues of modal syntax. We discuss three areas in the remainder of this section, which are interconnected: the relationship to categorial status occasionally claimed in some languages; issues of syntactic height; connections to issues at the syntax–​semantics interface (aspect, tense, quantifiers). Epistemic modality has been assigned a different categorial status in a series of approaches. A case for a different categorial status could be made in an interesting way, for instance, in languages without robust evidence for a specialized class (i.e. morphosyntactic category) of modals that is distinct from main verbs (as it is in English), but in which such evidence could obtain for a subset of the modals, namely the epistemic ones. This idea has been entertained for the development of the modals in the history of English, where the epistemic modals might have leaked into the functional domain earlier than other modals (cf. e.g. Warner 1993; Roberts and Roussou 2003 for recent discussions). In a review of Lightfoot (1979), Plank (1984: 314) observes: “premodals when used epistemically in general do not seem to have occurred non-​finitely in OE and ME”. Picallo (1991) presents an explicit proposal for differences related to categorial status, namely for the Catalan modals, in the context of research on the Romance modals (cf. Rizzi 1978). Epistemic modals in Catalan are analyzed as constituents of the I node, while root modals are analyzed as constituents of the VP. A key piece of evidence is that Catalan has certain modals that unambiguously have an epistemic reading and such modals can inter alia not appear under other auxiliaries. A related analysis is put forward by Wurmbrand (2001) for German. In contrast to the above-​mentioned proposals, Wurmbrand analyses all modal variants (dynamic, deontic, epistemic) as functional heads, yet they differ with respect to theta role assignment and their position in hierarchical structure. More precisely, she argues for a split syntactic modal domain, on the basis of various ordering and co-​occurrence restrictions in modal constructions. In the split modal domain, dynamic modals are generated in the Voice/​Aspect head and assign a theta-​role, whereas other root/​deontic modals occur in a Mod head higher up in the structure and assign no theta-​role, and epistemic modals occur in an even higher Aux head and do not assign a theta-​role either (we thus get the hierarchy AuxP > ModP > vP/​AsP >VP, where “>” indicates a structurally higher position; cf. Wurmbrand 2001: 183). The high positioning of epistemic modals is motivated

Modality and mood in formal syntactic approaches    479 by the familiar claim that unlike the deontic variants, they cannot co-​occur with the tense auxiliaries haben ‘have’ or sein ‘be’ in the periphrastic perfect/​pluperfect nor with werden ‘will’ in the periphrastic future (cf. also Abraham 1991):2 (8) German (Wurmbrand 2001: 184, (140b)) Sue Sue

hat has

zu at

Hause home

arbeiten work

müssen. must.ipp

‘Sue had an obligation to work at home.’ *‘It must have been the case that Sue worked at home.’ While this generalization is largely correct, there are limited environments in which modal verbs with epistemic readings occur embedded below Aux (Reis 2001: 294–​295; Reis and Sternefeld 2004: 499). (9) German (adapted from Reis and Sternefeld 2004: 499, (50)) Nach allem was ich weiß, hätte Peter da noch in Prag sein after all what I know had Peter then still in Prague be können. could ‘According to everything I know, Peter could still have been in Prague then.’ A further argument for locating epistemic modals in the Aux head, i.e. in the highest position of the modal domain, is provided by the claim that in sentences with stacks of modals, only the topmost modal can receive an epistemic interpretation (Wurmbrand 2001: 186). However, Kratzer (1976: 14) and Öhlschläger (1989: 210) discuss examples in which epistemic modals occur below other modals: (10) German (adapted from Öhlschläger 1989: 210, (333)) Der the

Angeklagte defendant

kann can

der the

Täter culprit

sein be

müssen. must

‘It may be the case that the defendant must be the culprit.’ To sum up, the categorial I status for a sub-​class of the modals on the basis of epistemicity and/​or, interrelatedly, ordering restrictions of the relevant functional heads cannot be upheld universally in a robust fashion. What can be observed is cross-​linguistic variation. 2  In

the IPP form, a bare infinitive is used instead of a past-​participle with German modal verbs (typically under the perfective haben ‘have’).

480    Katrin Axel-Tober and Remus Gergel Scope effects of epistemic modality have also long been observed in different research contexts. For example, epistemic modals tend to scope over negation (cf. J. Butler 2003; Gergel 2009; among others), as shown in (11) (adapted from J. Butler 2003: 984, (51)):3 (11) The registrar mustn’t/​mightn’t have got my letter. J. Butler (2003) calls can’t and needn’t “marked modals”. According to Butler’s discussion of need (J. Butler 2003: 985), “negation scoping over epistemic necessity … is acceptable only to a very small fraction of speakers”. But negation in conjunction with possibility (can’t) seems to behave differently (cf. also von Fintel and Iatridou 2003). With regard to the interaction of epistemic modality with quantifiers, von Fintel and Iatridou (2003) state the Epistemic Containment Principle (ECP), formulated in (12). The ECP captures the fact that in (13) (von Fintel and Iatridou 2003: 175) the modal obligatorily takes scope over the quantifier. (12) ECP: At LF, a quantifier cannot bind its trace across an epistemic modal. (13) Most of our students must be home by now. a. must > most of our students b. *most of our students > must The suggestion is that quantifier raising (QR) interacts with epistemic modals in such a way that binding of a quantifier’s trace across epistemic modals is precluded. The interaction of tense and modality is not easily visible in all cases, but the bulk of the formal literature has claimed that epistemic modals tend to scope over tense. Consider example (14) (cf. Groenendijk and Stokhof 1975; Mondadori 1978; Abusch 1997; Condoravdi 2002; Stowell 2004; among many others; see von Fintel and Gillies 2007 and Rullmann and Matthewson 2012 for a different view; finally, see Portner 2009: 227 for an intermediate view). (14) He might have won the game. Depending on the context, the sentence in (14) has two possible readings. On one, there was a time interval in the past at which it was (still) possible for him to win. This is the counterfactual reading (the type of modality involved is sometimes also termed alethic or metaphysical). A continuation such as but he didn’t would be perfectly felicitous on this reading. On the other reading, which is epistemic, there is an evidence-​based possibility (though, importantly, not certainty), at utterance time, that he (already) won the game. The continuation from the counterfactual reading is clearly not felicitous on this reading. What one can observe is that when epistemic, the modal scopes over tense in such 3 

Cf. also Ehrich (2001) and Narrog (2009a) for scopal interactions of negation and modal verbs in German and Japanese, respectively.

Modality and mood in formal syntactic approaches    481 instances. Notice that it was necessary to insert have to allow a past tense co-​occurring with the epistemic modal. Two clarifications are in order. First, have can indeed be a tense form in such contexts (i.e. it does not have to be treated as a perfect), a fact conditioned by the morphosyntax of English (cf. Hofmann 1966; Steedman 1997: 913–​914). Second, Stowell (2004) claims that a relic past tense form within a modal by and of itself (e.g. could as opposed to can) cannot be interpreted as an actual past tense in relation to utterance time in a matrix context, when the intended reading is epistemic—​cf. (15), which is unacceptable when an epistemic past interpretation is intended:4 (15) Jack’s wife couldn’t be very rich. Another area in which research on the interaction of modality with other categories at the syntax–​semantics interface has been conducted is aspect. A long tradition has noticed effects depending on aktionsart. Thus complements denoting states are likely to have an epistemic interpretation. For example, Steedman (1997) regards stative complements as the general type of complement of epistemic modality and generalizes from them to events. Barbiers (1995, 2002), on the other hand, suggests that complements denoting an eventuality (including states but also events) which cannot change anymore force an epistemic interpretation.5 Barbiers does not attach syntactic consequences to the interaction of aktionsart with the complement. Abraham (2002) stresses that there are aspect/​aktionsart conditions which trigger the split between root and epistemic readings of modal verbs in German and other languages:  While perfective complements yield root interpretations, imperfective ones are only compatible with epistemic interpretations. A similar distribution can be observed in English: she must die (preferably root) vs she must be dying (preferably epistemic). However, this is clearly not a categorical distinction and it is easy to construct counterexamples (e.g. recruits must have good eyesight to enter military training). A line of thought triggered essentially by Bhatt (2006) has noticed interaction between modality and viewpoint aspect in some languages along the following lines. Hacquard (2006) observes that the French modals interact with perfective/​imperfective aspect in inducing actuality entailments. Actuality entailment (AE) is the term used for modalized sentences that hold true not only in possible worlds but also in the actual world. In French, according to Hacquard, this depends, among other things, on the aspectual value. Only the perfective induces AEs, since the Romance imperfective is assumed to function as a modal operator higher up in the structure, which can then undo the actuality due to binding configurations in this approach. The basic

4 

More fine-​drawn differences obtain between the transmitted tense properties of, e.g., could and can (see phenomena such as sequence of tense; cf. Stowell 2004). 5 Barbiers offers examples such as they must have cleaned the room yesterday, which only allow epistemic readings. However, an exception is certain goal-​oriented modals (you must have earned 300 credit points to get a diploma in our department).

482    Katrin Axel-Tober and Remus Gergel contrast is illustrated with the French modal pouvoir ‘can’. While a non-​actualized continuation is infelicitous with the perfective, it is acceptable with the imperfective: (16) French (adapted from Hacquard 2006: 21, (13a)) Jane a pu soulever la table, # mais elle ne l’a pas Jane has could.pfv lift the table, # but she not it.has not soulevée. lifted ‘Jane was able to lift the table, but she didn’t lift it.’ (17) French (adapted from Hacquard 2006: 21, (13b)) Jane Jane

pouvait could.imp

soulever lift

la table, the table,

mais but

elle she

ne not

l’a it.has

pas not

soulevée. lifted ‘Jane was able to lift the table, but she didn’t lift it.’ The general idea put to use by Hacquard’s approach, which is the most explicit one along these lines, is related to the idea that epistemic modality is structurally high at the level of interpretation. Epistemic modals do not give rise to AEs, regardless of the aspectual head they combine with.6 As a final major point in this subsection, let us discuss scope issues specific to deontic modality. The role of deontic modals in the literature has frequently been that of a sub-​ class (of root modals) contrasting in some form or another with the seemingly more interesting epistemic modals. Matters in the area of scope are, however, no less complex, as Cormack and Smith (2002), J. Butler (2003), and Iatridou and Zeijlstra (2010), among many others, have recently demonstrated. Notice, for instance, that should outscopes negation in (18) and need, well-​known as a negative polarity item (NPI), takes scope below negation in (19) (both examples from Iatridou and Zeijlstra 2010: 296): (18) John shouldn’t /​should not leave. (19) John doesn’t /​does not need to leave. Iatridou and Zeijsltra (2010) discuss the interaction of deontic modals with negation by generalizing beyond NPIs such as need (cf. Nilsen 2003 for a suggestion that some adverbs might scope high due to positive polarity item—​PPI—​status). Iatridou and Zeijlstra’s description is that deontic modals fall into three classes: (i) one type can take scope exclusively above negation (must, ought, should), (ii) one type takes scope 6  AEs are not attested with the English modals, but they can obtain, e.g., with be able to (Bhatt 1999/​ 2006) and with the modalizing adverb rather (Gergel 2011).

Modality and mood in formal syntactic approaches    483 exclusively below negation (need), (iii) the third type has the freedom to scope both below and above negation (e.g. have to). Such behavior may then fall in line with the licensing of NPIs and PPIs. An additional generalization is that all modal elements listed above are not only deontic but also in fact universal quantifiers, i.e. necessity modals. According to Iatridou and Zeijlstra, existential deontic modals invariably scope below negation. It does not become entirely clear (to us) why the split should be along these lines. In the case of quantification over individuals, it is typically the existential quantifiers that develop polarity properties on a principled basis (cf. NPI any, PPI some, and polarity-​neutral a/​one); and Iatridou and Zeijlstra point out other open questions themselves.7 Further research might offer a principled account for these facts from one of the apparently most idiosyncratic corners of the modals. To summarize, the key sets of generalizations emerging from the literature are in two domains. First, most effort has been spent on showing that epistemic modals have a tendency towards wide scope. Specifically, they scope over tense and aspect, at least to a large extent over quantifiers (in terms of the ECP), and they tend to outscope negation. In addition, actuality entailments do not obtain with epistemic modals (an issue once more related to the syntax–​semantics interface, in an account such as Hacquard’s). In a second domain, there is a vivid scopal interaction between root modals and negation as well as other scope-​bearing elements. There may then be a need for two modal positions at least in a language like English, but the constraints under which those positions are filled in terms of the surfacing structure and interpretation are considerably more fine-​grained than the sole division line between epistemic and root modality. In particular, the “micro-​mechanisms” of modal base, quantificational force (necessity/​possibility), QR (or equivalent processes), tense, and aspect have all been observed in structure-​oriented research to interact vividly with modality.

20.4  Raising vs control The raising vs control distinction is related to sequences of verbal or auxiliary elements which share a single argument on the surface. This effect can be caused by two distinct grammatical mechanisms. In a raising construction, the argument in question is first merged to the embedded verb and it is then attached to the domain of the superordinate predicate. But it bears no thematic relationship with the higher predicate. A control predicate, by contrast, selects the argument from the very beginning of the derivation and theta-​marks its subject. In control structures, rather than assuming 7  Like much of the literature, Iatridou and Zeijlstra use two head positions for the modals, but one of them is V on their account. Since they do not give positive evidence for this assumption, which goes against the distributional facts of English discussed in the rest of the literature, we do not discuss it further here, but stick with the standard analysis that the two projections are functional with negation sandwiched between them. The key idea of using two positions remains, of course.

484    Katrin Axel-Tober and Remus Gergel movement out of the lower predicate, a covert pronominal element PRO resides in its specifier position. The overt argument of the higher predicate is then said to control the silent pronominal PRO.8 Applied to modality, an idea dating back in part to Ross (1969) has been that root modals are control structures while epistemic modals induce raising. However, it has been shown by Brennan (1993), Warner (1993), and Wurmbrand (1999, 2001) for English, and by Öhlschläger (1989), Kiss (1995), and Wurmbrand (1999, 2001) for German, that the root vs epistemic distinction does not correlate with control vs raising structures; cf. also Axel (2001) on Old High German. Rather, all modal verbs in non-​dynamic interpretations (i.e. the deontic and epistemic variants) pass the standard raising tests, which capitalize on the fact that the theta and case properties of the subject in raising constructions are determined only by the lower verb and not by the governing modal. This can be tested by embedding predicates with expletive, quasi-​argument, or non-​nominative “subjects”; cf. the examples in (20)–​(22), which all contain root modals ((20a–​20b) are from Wurmbrand 1999: 599; (21a–​21b) are from Wurmbrand and Bobaljik 1999:  6, (17a–b); (21c) is the German translation of (21a)). (20) a.  There may be singing but no dancing on my premises. b.  There can be a party, as long as it’s not too loud. (21) a.  It can rain in the Antarctic. b. In order for the crop not to fail, it must rain tomorrow. c. In der Antarktis kann es regnen. (22) Icelandic (adapted from Wurmbrand 2001: 191, (150a)) Haraldi Harald.dat

verður must

að to

líka like

hamborgarar. hamburgers

‘Harold must like hamburgers.’ (In order to be accepted by his new American in-​laws.) The raising tests illustrated above indicate that modal verbs are raising verbs even in their root readings. The same is, of course, true for their epistemic variants. The only systematic exception arises from the so-​called dynamic modals (e.g. ability can, volitive will), which do not pass the raising tests in general (cf. Wurmbrand 2001 for English; Öhlschläger 1989; Kiss 1995; Reis 2001 for German).9 The approximation emerging from

8 

We leave aside analyses of control as movement, sparked by backwards control in Tsez; cf. Polinsky and Potsdam (2002) and Davies and Dubinsky (2006). 9 Some instances of German wollen ‘want to’ may be analyzed as raising verbs (cf. Gergel and Hartmann 2009 and the references in it). A different type of solution could be to abandon the theta-​ criterion (cf. Heim and Kratzer 1998 for simpler cases of theta-​marking).

Modality and mood in formal syntactic approaches    485 syntactic research then is that most modals are raising verbs, but issues remain for ability and volition.

20.5  Modal verbs and the tradition of coherent predicates As has been shown in the previous sections, neither auxiliary/​functional head vs main verb status nor the availability of a raising vs control structure are universal syntactic correlates of the epistemic/​root distinction. Reis (2001) argues on the basis of German vis-​à-​vis English—​i.e. two languages that share a cognate set of core modal verbs which are polyfunctional between root/​epistemic readings—​that epistemic readings require a high degree of “bondedness” or “transparency” between the matrix expression and its complement. In languages like English, this is achieved by the functional head status of the matrix expression; in languages like German and, possibly Dutch, by what she refers to as “strong coherence”. As was mentioned in section 20.3, there are languages such as Italian and Catalan in which modal verbs exhibit a special type of infinitival complementation commonly referred to as “restructuring” (cf. Rizzi 1982; Picallo 1991). In an influential (if not generatively mainstream) tradition of research of the Germanic languages, this has been referred to as “coherence” in the infinitival syntax. Since Bech (1955/​ 57), it is well-​known that in Modern German there are two distinct ways of combining infinitival complements with their matrix clause. In what he calls incoherent constructions, we are dealing with a bi-​clausal structure, in which the infinitival complement constitutes a syntactic unit of its own, i.e. it is a separate clause besides the matrix clause. Coherent constructions, on the other hand, are monosentential structures, in which the infinitival and matrix clause constitute a single sentence unit and the matrix and the infinitival verbs are fused into just one verbal complex. Which syntactic configuration is realized in a given sentence is predicate dependent. Predicates governing infinite verbs roughly fall into three classes: (i) so-​called “obligatorily coherent” predicates, which only allow the coherent construction (e.g. scheinen ‘seem’, but also in particular the modals); (ii) so-​called “obligatorily incoherent” predicates, which require the incoherent construction (e.g. zwingen ‘force’, überzeugen ‘convince’, überrascht sein ‘to be surprised’); (iii) so-​called “optionally (in)coherent” predicates, which permit both constructions (e.g. versuchen ‘try’, wagen ‘dare’). German modal verbs belong to class (i), they are “obligatorily coherent” predicates. The best diagnostic for ±coherence is extraposition. Since German is an OV-​ language, the “fusion”, i.e. monoclausal construction, presupposes the leftward positioning of the infinitival vis-​à-​vis the governing verb. If it occurs to the right (i.e. extraposed), this is the clearest sign of incoherence. It is a well-​known fact that modal

486    Katrin Axel-Tober and Remus Gergel verbs do not allow the extraposition of their infinitival complement (cf. im Ballsaal tanzen ‘dance in the ballroom’ in (23)):10 (23) German … *weil Peter because Peter im in.the

kann/​muss/​soll/​darf/​will/​möchte can/​must/​should/​is.allowed.to/​wants.to/​would.like.to

Ballsaal ballroom

tanzen. dance

‘… because Peter can/​must/​should/​is allowed to/​wants to/​would like to dance in the ballroom.’ Intraposed (i.e. leftward governed) complements, by contrast, occur in both incoherent and coherent constructions. In the case of the modal verbs, however, there are several other pieces of evidence that also show that we are dealing with a monoclausal, i.e. coherent construction (see also Bech 1955/​57; Kiss 1995; Meurers 2000; Reis 2001; Wurmbrand 2001). For example, dependents of the matrix verbs and the infinitival verbs can be “interleaved”. In (24), the subject Peter intervenes between the dative object pronoun ihr ‘her’ and its governing verb helfen ‘help’. This shows that there is no clause-​ boundary between the modal verb and its dependents and the governed infinitival verb and its dependents. (24) German … weil because

ihr her.dat

Peter Peter

helfen help

kann/​muss/​soll/​darf/​will/​möchte. can/​must/​should/​is.allowed.to/​wants.to/​would.like.to ‘… because Peter can/​must/​should/​is allowed to/​wants to/​would like to help her.’ Another interesting syntactic characteristic of German coherent constructions can be shown in multiple verb sequences. As in the VP, the basic word order in the German verbal complex is “OV”, i.e. the governed verb occurs to the left of the governing verb; cf. (25a). For coherently constructing verbs there is an exception to this uniform ordering of verbs: in verbal clusters with more than two verbs, the maximally superordinate verb may be fronted to the left of the verbal complex; cf. (25b).11 10 It should be noted that also in the case of the volitional modals wollen and möchten, which are not raising verbs, the infinitival complement always occurs to their left, i.e. they are obligatory coherent verbs. 11  In verbal complexes with four or more verbs not only the maximally superordinate verb, but also the second highest verb and so forth may be fronted to the left periphery of the verbal complex, but the fronted verbs must then be positioned in the reversed VO order (see Bech 1955/​57 and Meurers 2000 for details).

Modality and mood in formal syntactic approaches    487  (25) German a. … weil because

Peter Peter

wegziehen away.move

können/​müssen/​dürfen can/​must/​be.allowed.to

wird. will

… because Peter will be able/​be obliged/​be allowed to move away.’ b. … weil because

Peter Peter

wird will

wegziehen away.move

können/​müssen/​dürfen. can/​must/​be.allowed.to

‘… because Peter will be able/​be obliged/​be allowed to move away.’ A further property shared by all German modals is that they govern the bare infinitive (rather than the infinitive with zu ‘to’). In modern German, this has become quite a marked property since with most verb classes, the bare infinitive has been replaced by the zu-​infinitive in the history of the language. Apart from modal verbs, only Exceptional Case Marking (i.e. accusative-​with-​infinitive) verbs and motion verbs with purpose/​consecutive readings still have bare infinitival complements in modern German. There is a one-​way correlation between government of the bare infinitive and obligatory coherence: all verbs that govern the bare infinitive are obligatorily coherent verbs.12 However, not all obligatorily coherent verbs govern the bare infinitive: there is also a class of verbs which governs the zu-​infinitive and is obligatorily coherent, namely (almost all) raising verbs (e.g. scheinen ‘seem’ and versprechen ‘promise’/​drohen ‘threaten’ in their non-​agentive, so-​called semi-​modal variants). Reis (2001) argues that the latter class of verbs exhibits a less strong form of coherence than the class of verbs (the modal verbs) that construes obligatorily coherently and governs the bare infinitive (= “strong coherence”). In her proposal, “strong coherence” is the syntactic correlate of the root/​epistemic polyfunctionality. This, Reis (2001: 310–​313) argues, explains why modal verbs are the only type of modal expressions in German that exhibit this kind of polyfunctionality.

20.6  The role of adverbials in charting the representation of modality Adverbials (including adverbs) have been used in three major ways to probe the representation of modality. First, various adverbials have been utilized as signposts for modals, both syntactically and semantically; that is, typically for the purposes of demarcating phrase structure and scope relative to the modals (similarly to tests with other 12  It is generally held that there is a one-​way correlation between raising and coherence in German: all raising verbs are (obligatorily) coherent verbs (but cf. Meurers 2000: 42–​43 for some exceptions), but not all (obligatorily) coherent verbs are raising verbs.

488    Katrin Axel-Tober and Remus Gergel auxiliaries or verbs). Second, the properties of adverbs expressing modality themselves have been analyzed structurally since Jackendoff (1972). A third line of research has considered cases of interaction containing both a modal and a modal adverb, in the study of modal harmony or concord effects. These three strands are addressed next. For adverbials as signposts we have a further threefold subdivision. We have already discussed in section 20.3, following Lechner (2006), that elements outside the core VP such as always can be used to test whether a circumstantial modal reconstructs below them. The move was quite similar to using negation as far as scopal properties were concerned. This is one way of using the adverb as a signpost, namely in terms of scope. In a related, second line of thought, it can easily be observed that, in terms of the linearized structure, such adverbs follow a modal but precede a lexical verb (cf. Pollock 1989). There is, however, also a more subtle way to capitalize on adverbials in structural terms, this time primarily from a semantically oriented vantage point (Brennan 1993; J. Butler 2003). The classical works of Kratzer had already used “in view of ” phrases to contextualize the conversational background in general. Brennan (1993) suggests that “in virtue of ” phrases more specifically target root readings: (26) allows root and epistemic readings, (27) only a root reading. (26) Anna may take out books on semester loan. (27) In virtue of being a graduate student, Anna may take out books on semester loan. Interestingly, even though fronted, such adverbials modify the predicate and rule out the epistemic reading. The reason invoked is that epistemic modals operate (standardly) over propositions. For adverb(ial)s that express modality, there are two basic ways of representation. First, like any adverbs, modal adverbs can be adjoined to different phrases and would thus be adjuncts. They then represent so-​called additional information, which is not part of the core argument structure of the main predicate. This type of syntactic representation falls within the classical X′ schema, in which adjuncts are sisters to an X′ projection (Jackendoff 1977; Chomsky 1981). Or, if bar levels are disposed with (as in Chomsky 1995 et seq.), then adjunction takes place at the level of maximal projections. The second line of research on adverbs, that has been pursued strongly in particular in the 1990s and the early 2000s, with Cinque (1999) as its clearest representative, reaches back to observations from Jackendoff (1972). On this line, (modal) adverbs occupy designated positions in a sentence. Jackendoff noted that adverbs fall into different classes, depending on the position they take at the mapping between structure and meaning. Subsequently, his position has been interpreted as drawing the line between sentence adverbials and VP adverbials; cf. Thomason and Stalnaker (1973) on the same dichotomy. But the taxonomy is wider already in Jackendoff (1972). For example, Jackendoff handles epistemic modals through the same rules that he introduces for speaker-​oriented adverbs. There is, however, no rule for adverbs that can easily transfer to root modality. For instance, the unification of root modals with the rules for subject-​oriented adverbs is not warranted, as Jackendoff (1972: 104) points out. One difference is that in

Modality and mood in formal syntactic approaches    489 some cases of passivization that involve inanimate derived subjects, root modals do not change their orientation, while subject-​oriented adverbs do (and thus produce anomalies), as shown in (28) (Jackendoff 1972: 105, (3.278) and (3.282)): (28) a.  Flowers may be picked by visitors. b. *Some flowers carefully have been picked by Bill. Some of the proposals on the theory of functional projections in the 1990s can be seen as continuations of the line of thought opened up by Jackendoff (1972). Thus, Laenzlinger (1996), Alexiadou (1997), and Cinque (1999) propose various types of (mainly spec head) mechanisms between functional heads and adverbs. Laenzlinger allows for (a maximum of) two specifiers which are appendixed to functional projections. Cinque, on the other hand, relates to a more standard X′ schema, with exactly one specifier per projection, and opts for merging the adverbs to that unique specifier position. Cinque, moreover, claims that functional heads stand in a universally fixed c-​commanding order, according to semantic import, but emphasizes that the ordering relationship itself is syntactic. Such structural hypotheses are then apparently lean in terms of internal structural assumptions, but turn out to have a richly articulate character in terms of the number of projections involved. A proper subset of Cinque’s (1999) hierarchy of functional projections pertinent to present concerns is rendered in (29). (29) epistemic modality > alethic necessity > alethic possibility > volition > deontic necessity > dynamic/​deontic possibility Finally, it is worth mentioning that modal adverbs and modals frequently interact. This is most notably so in modal harmony or modal concord configurations (cf. Halliday 1970a; Zeijlstra 2007; among others). The example in (30) (after Zeijlstra 2007: 321) is a concord case. (30) You may perhaps have read the book. One condition for concord is that the two modal elements share both the quantificational force and the type of modality. Zeijlstra furthermore shows that the phenomenon goes together with syntactic properties (e.g. sensitivity to syntactic islands). A puzzle, however, is that it is not invariably the case that the modal and the adverb sum up to one modal operator. Thus, besides the concord cases, there are also cases in which the two (or more) elements involved each make a contribution, so that the overall interpretation is cumulative. Such no-​concord cases obtain when, e.g., the quantificational force diverges, as in (31), but also when only adverbs are involved, as in (32) (both examples from Zeijlstra 2007: 317–​318). (31) John should be allowed to read this file. (32) John mandatorily obligatorily reads the books.

490    Katrin Axel-Tober and Remus Gergel Zeijlstra (2007) follows his previous research in the area of negative concord to analyze such cases. The intuitive line of argument is that an item with an interpretable feature and one with an uninterpretable feature interact in the concord cases, whereas both items are interpretable in the cumulative cases.

20.7 Mood Mood can have distinct morphological reflexes for distinct purposes across languages. In the tradition of formal approaches, the question of mood has largely been connected to the semantic component, rather than to, say, specific tree structures as was the case with the modals.13 Given this orientation, we refer the interested reader to Chapter 23 of this handbook and to Quer (2009), but we present nonetheless some key areas in which morphosyntactic effects have been noticed regarding English and German. Apart from highly formulaic phrases, the English subjunctive has one key use today, namely in the so-​called mandative subjunctive (cf. Roberts 1985: 41): (33) I suggest that he not be there by 8. A standard analysis of the English mandative subjunctive (Roberts 1985) can be given if one considers the position of the auxiliary be relative to negation. It is noteworthy that the word order in (34) below is not acceptable (cf. Roberts 1985: 41 once again): (34) *I require that he be not there by 8. Given that be typically surfaces in front of negation whenever the I position is available, but that it stays in-​situ when the I position is occupied by a modal, the consequence of such data is that one has to assume the presence of a phonologically null modal. This modal can be thought of as similar to should. Its presence offers a way of explaining the word order effects observed above. Otherwise, the subjunctive does not play any major role in the grammar of Modern English. It is worth mentioning, however, that its domain of application was considerably broader in earlier English. Roberts (1985: 41–​42), for instance, lists eight types of uses of the subjunctive in Middle English, claiming that “for each of these uses of the ME subjunctive, it is possible to find periphrastic constructions with modals”. It has been observed in the philological tradition (cf. Visser 1966:  789), which Roberts builds on, that the subjunctive was lost essentially due to phonological changes. Roberts (1985: 42) furthermore notes that “[t]‌his development was important 13  Cf. Picallo (1984) for an approach that analyzes (inter alia) the subjunctive I  node in Catalan. Picallo claims that the node in question does not have its own tense properties, but rather depends on the matrix tense.

Modality and mood in formal syntactic approaches    491 for the parametric change because it meant that by late Middle English the modals commonly appeared as ‘semantic substitutes’ for verbal inflection. This meant that modals were being construed as clausal operators, like subjunctive inflection”. A similar diachronic account is put forward by Diewald (1999) for German, who argues that German epistemic modals have been grammaticalized as distinct mood markers and have come to stand in a systematic grammatical opposition to the other verbal moods indicative and Konjuntiv I/​II. As objected by Reis (2001: 292–​293), however, the case of German is not comparable to English since in Modern German modal verbs may still be inflected for mood (Konjunktiv I/​II) themselves and there is no evidence at all that modal verbs are integrated into a mood paradigm: neither are German modal verbs auxiliary verbs, nor is there a single grammatical rule (e.g. a consecution modorum rule) which requires that an epistemic modal verb has to be used instead of the indicative or Konjunktiv I or II. In non-​generative approaches the notion of “mood” is often considered to comprise not only specific inflectional categories, but also sentence/​clausal mood (declarative, interrogative, imperative etc.). Palmer (1986: 23) stresses that if one studies modality and mood from a typological perspective, “the ways in which languages mark statements, ask questions and give commands are important, and, indeed, relevant”. As Narrog (2009a: 137) illustrates, if one adopts a “radically functional point of view”, a sentence as in (35) may be considered as an imperative and the modal verb must would then be a marker of sentence mood. (35) You must be back by five o’clock. In the generative tradition, however, the syntactic analysis of clause types and sentence mood is a completely distinct line of research that centers around issues such as the role of clause-​typing or “force-​indicating” features14 (Zanuttini and Portner 2003: 43) and the like, i.e. issues that are only partly related to inflectional moods15 and hardly intersect with issues pertaining to modal verbs, adverbs, etc. Adhering to a modular theory of grammar and to a distinction between form and meaning, it is uncontroversial that generativists would analyze an example as in (35) as a declarative clause. What is controversial, however, is the exact analysis of the interplay between syntax and pragmatics and between syntax and semantics in the area of clause types. The most articulate proposal has been put forward by Brandt et al. 14 

According to Portner (2011: 1263) the concept of sentence mood has played a prominent role in the literature on German (e.g. Reis 1999; Lohnstein 2000), whereas in work on English sentence mood is also often referred to as “sentential force” (e.g. Chierchia and McConnell-​Ginet 1990; Zanuttini and Portner 2003). The latter term is also taken up in Rizzi’s (1997) influential approach, in which the C domain is split up in a number of functional projections topped at the outmost left by the so-​called Force projection that is associated with clause typing. 15  As Portner (2011: 1263) points out, some theories (e.g. Lohnstein 2000) are based on a close relation between sentence mood and inflectional mood. Since, in the case of imperatives, inflectional mood and sentence mood frequently coincide, the distinction is “easily elided” (Portner 2011: 1263) in discussions of this sentence type.

492    Katrin Axel-Tober and Remus Gergel (1992) and Reis (1999) for the German clause-​type system.16 This approach is derivational and couched in the T-​model of grammar of the GB-​tradition. The proposal distinguishes between three (syntactic) sentence types corresponding to three (semantic) sentence moods, which are defined by abstract syntactic features: –​wh in declaratives, +wh in interrogatives, and imp in imperatives. The syntactic features are carriers of the sentence moods that specify referential modes and fall into two groups: epistemic and deontic modes (Reis 1999: 208).17 The epistemic mode comprises the declarative sentence mood, of which the referential mode can be roughly paraphrased as “there is an event instantiating the proposition” (Reis 1999:  208), and the interrogative mood, with the referential mode that “the event the clausal proposition refers to is open wrt [i.e. with respect to] its truth-​value” in the case of polar questions or “the event the clausal proposition refers to is open wrt to [sic; i.e. with respect to] the variable position indicated by the wh-​phrase” in the case of wh-​ questions (Reis 1999: 208). The deontic mode is represented by the imperative mood which “sets a norm (related to the addressee) wrt [i.e. with respect to] the existence of the event the causal proposition (virtually) refers to” (Reis 1999: 208). All other clause types and sub-​types that have been identified in descriptive accounts and their respective illocutionary potential are argued to be derivable on the basis of these clause types and their respective sentence moods in combination with the interpretive properties of additional structural, lexical, and prosodic devices. The features available in the C domain (which generally hosts complementizers or the finite verb) are explicitly investigated in connection with sentence types in Truckenbrodt (2006a), who suggests three interpretations determined by the features of C and the morphology available in it. In (36)–​(38) (cf. Truckenbrodt 2006a: 264–​ 265, (13)–(15)), S stands for the speaker and A for the addressee. Example (36) illustrates the imperative, with imperative morphology in C, (37) the declarative, with [–​WH] and indicative or Konjunktiv II morphology in C, and (38) the interrogative, with [+WH] morphology and indicative or Konjunktiv II morphology in C). (36) German Öffne open

das the

Fenster! window

‘Open the window!’/ ​‘S wants from A that A open the window.’ 16  As for English, there is to date no comprehensive generative account of the clause-​type system as a whole, but there are analyses of the syntax and syntax–​semantics interfaces of particular sentence types in English (often in comparison to other languages). Cf. e.g. Rivero and Terzi (1995), Platzack and Rosengren (1997), Han (2000), and Zanuttini et al. (2012) on imperatives; Zanuttini and Portner (2003) on exclamatives; and Gunlogson (2003) on declarative questions. 17 A  peculiarity of the approach by Brandt et  al. (1992) and Reis (1999) is that the features are associated with the head of the I projection. In most GB and minimalist analyses, clause-​typing features are located in C0 or in Force0 in Rizzian split C approaches (cf. Platzack and Rosengren 1997 for a minimalist adoption of this approach augmented by a Rizzi-​style split C analysis).

Modality and mood in formal syntactic approaches    493 (37) German Der the

Peter Peter

hat has

das that

gemacht. done

‘Peter has done this.’/ ‘S wants from A that it is common ground that Peter has done this.’ (38) German Hat has

Peter Peter

das that

gemacht? done

‘Has Peter done this?’/ ‘S wants from A that it is common ground whether Peter has done this.’ The specific implementation takes place via context indices, ultimately wh-​features.18

20.8 Conclusion In the last decades, formal research has addressed many structural properties of modal expressions. The early formal literature has been characterized by a certain anglocentricity. However, it is of vital importance to also study languages other than English. As Roberts (1993: 318) puts it, “[l]‌ike do-​support, the sharp division between modals and main verbs is unique to [Modern English; K.A. & R.G.] among Germanic and Romance languages”. In this chapter we have surveyed some influential facts analyzed in the literature concerning modal issues, and we have thereby noted, in line with an extensive body of research, that even in a closely related language like German differences in morphosyntactic realization can obtain (often as a consequence of diachronic developments). In current formal research there is an increasing exploration of a variety of languages, and a strong orientation toward correspondences with the semantics interface, aiming to better understand the mapping of the building blocks of morphosyntax to the composition of meaning.

Abbreviations AE

actuality entailment

ECP

Epistemic Containment Principle

18  See Truckenbrodt (2006a:  265–​278) for the inclusion of modal notions in the discussion of the indices, but these are revised in Truckenbrodt (2006b: 393–​394): “In the revised account, the context indices are not and . Rather, they are the features [+WH] and [–​WH] that are familiar in C”.

494    Katrin Axel-Tober and Remus Gergel DAT

dative

GB

Government and Binding Theory

HPSG

Head-​Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

IPP

infinitivus pro participio

LFG

Lexical Functional Grammar

LF

Logical Form

ME

Middle English

NPI

negative polarity item

OE

Old English

PPI

positive polarity item

QR

quantifier raising

TAG

Tree Adjoining Grammar

Chapter 21

Modalit y and mo od i n f unctional l i ng u i st i c approac h e s Karin Aijmer

21.1 Introduction The beginnings of a functional perspective on modality and mood can be traced back to a general dissatisfaction with formalist accounts of language resulting in the emergence of several branches of linguistics which call themselves functional. In this chapter I will discuss functional approaches to modality and mood. The chapter will deal with modality and mood in Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) associated with Halliday’s writings, Dik’s Functional Grammar (FG), and the mainly American functional school of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). The position taken by these schools can be described as “structuralist-​functionalist” in that they regard “the grammar of a language as itself constituting a system, which needs to be described and correlated with function within discourse” (C. Butler 2003: xvi). In addition, we have seen the emergence of a number of functional models recognizing the importance of the cognitive, social, and interactive context for the study of modality. Modality has, for instance, been analyzed in terms of its interactional and pragmatic functions to take up different stances towards the hearer and the message. The structure of the chapter is as follows. Section 21.2 introduces the topics, problems and issues in a functional analysis of modality. Section 21.3 discusses the school of SFG with a focus on the definition of modality. Section 21.4 deals with FG and RRG. Section 21.5 deals with cognitive-​functional approaches to modality. Section 21.6 analyzes modality in interactional terms as (epistemic) stance. Section 21.7 is the conclusion.

496   Karin Aijmer

21.2 Background Functionalist ideas have had an effect on many areas of linguistics including the study of modality. In 1992 a symposium on Mood and Modality was held at the University of New Mexico with the goal of bringing together linguists who had in common that they wanted to explore modality from many different perspectives in functional linguistics (Bybee and Fleischman eds. 1995). The participants at the symposium shared a conviction that the functions of modality are embedded in contexts of social interaction and, consequently, “cannot be described adequately apart from their contextual moorings in interactive discourse” (Bybee and Fleischman 1995: 3). There was agreement that the time was ripe for a broadening of the study of modality to more languages and more focus on the relationship between form and function. The empirical basis for the linguistic study of modality has been widened as a result of the greater interest in exploring the functions and uses of modal expressions. In traditional studies of modality focusing on “the grammar of modality” the focus has been on modal auxiliaries, that is on grammaticalized modal expressions. In a perspective prioritizing function, the notion of modality can be extended to other types of linguistic expressions. Nuyts (2001a) takes a broad functional perspective on the linguistic manifestations of (epistemic) modality and distinguishes four different expression types all found in Western European languages: (1) modal adverbs; (2) modal adjectives; (3) mental state predicates; (4) modal auxiliaries (Nuyts 2001a: 29). (1) Maybe/​probably/​certainly… they have run out of fuel. (2) It is possible/​probable/​likely/​certain… that they have run out of fuel. (3) I think/​believe… they have run out of fuel. (4) They may/​might/​must… have run out of fuel. Perkins (1983: 2) recognized a class of “modal expressions” extending far beyond the category of modal auxiliaries and including semi-​auxiliaries, adjectival, participial and nominal modal expressions, modal adverbs, and lexical verbs. The expressions can be deontic such as the deontic participles be permitted to, be urged to or epistemic such as be assumed to, be believed to, be considered that. Modal adverbs are generally epistemic and include clearly, evidently, maybe, probably, possibly, surely. According to Perkins (1983: 2), the close scrutiny of a wide range of modal phenomena also made it clear that “no two modal expressions could be said to have exactly the same meaning”. Hunston (2011: 66) argues that we also need to recognize modal-​like expressions appearing in contexts that signal modal meanings though the modal meaning is realized in ways that are not usually considered modal. The verb decide can, for instance, have a modal-​like meaning in expressions such as it’s up to him to decide where to go.

Modality and mood in functional linguistic approaches    497 Functional approaches to modality bring up new issues, perspectives, and views. According to Nuyts (2001a: 7), “the functionalist tenet is understood as a methodological directive to uncover functional motivations for linguistic forms and structures in grammar and in discourse”. Modality should be studied both formally and functionally and, additionally, function should be able to explain the distribution of forms. An important consequence of the functional perspective is that modality and mood should be described across a wide range of language types so that the definition of modality is given a typological dimension. In a pioneering study, Palmer (1986) laid the groundwork for a functional-​typological perspective in research on modality and mood. Although the enterprise was not carried out systematically, Palmer (1986: 2) showed that the category of modality can and should be “identified, described and compared across languages”. Subsequent analyses comparing across languages have resulted in a number of functional-​typological studies of modality, as shown by the articles on modality in the World Atlas of Language Structures Online (Haspelmath et al. eds. 2008). Moreover, some typological studies of modality have an additional diachronic dimension and represent cross-​linguistically relevant connections as grammaticalization paths on a semantic map (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998). The work by Narrog (2012b) is another good example of how we need typological studies in the grammaticalization tradition studying the emergence of modal expressions. Narrog studied cross-​linguistic diversity in the emergence and development of deontic modal markers on the basis of samples from 200 languages. In addition to typological studies of modality, we find many studies of modality in languages other than English. We can mention Hengeveld (1988) for a study of modality in Spanish and Nuyts’ (2001a) corpus-​based study of epistemic modality in several Western European languages. (See also the studies in Bybee and Fleischman eds. 1995 which include many different languages.)

21.3  Modality and mood in Systemic Functional Grammar In this section I will discuss SFG in some detail since this theory provides the most wide-​ ranging account of modality. It has also been an important motor behind recent developments in studies of modality. In SFG both modality and mood can be described with reference to the different macro-​functions that language can have. The macro-​functions distinguished by Halliday (1970b) are the interpersonal, textual, and representational function. Modality does not have the representational function to represent or refer to phenomena in the real world but it derives from the interpersonal macro-​function. [It] serves to establish and maintain social relations: for the expression of social roles, which include the communication roles created by language itself—​for example the

498   Karin Aijmer Declarative Indicative MOOD

Interrogative Imperative

Figure 21.1  The system of MOOD

roles of questioner or respondent, which we take on by asking or answering a question: and also for getting things done, by means of the interaction between one person and another. (Halliday 1970b: 143)

The interpersonal macro-​function is concerned with the establishment of social relations and with the participation by the speaker in the speech event in all kinds of personal interaction. The system of MOOD (capitalized in SFG), rendered in Figure 21.1, describes the choices underlying the exchange of information in the clause and the establishment of the social roles of the speaker and the hearer. MOOD has to do with the principles behind the choice of the indicative and the imperative and between a declarative and interrogative clause. A distinction is proposed between declarative and interrogative clauses, associated with the specific speech roles set up in dialogue which are either “giving” or “demanding” (Halliday 2004: 107). For example, in a declarative clause the speaker is giving some information to the hearer. In an interrogative clause the speaker assumes the role of asking for information. In the perspective of SFG, modality is closely associated with the MOOD system. Thus, modality is opened up as a choice if the indicative is chosen. Halliday (2004) avoids the philosophical terms epistemic and deontic modality to distinguish between different modal domains but introduces the categories “modalization” (roughly epistemic modality) and “modulation” (roughly obligation and inclination). Figure 21.2 presents a simplified version of the modality network (cf. Halliday 2004: 128). Probability

Modalization (MOOD)

Usuality

Modality Modulation

Inclination

Obligation

Figure 21.2  Simplified network for modality

Modality and mood in functional linguistic approaches    499 Modalization has to do with “proposition” (the function of the clause in the exchange of information). Propositions can be affirmed and denied. What the modality system does “is to construe the region of uncertainty that lies between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ ” (Halliday 2004: 147). There are two kinds of intermediate possibilities: degrees of probability (possibly/​probably/​certainly) and degrees of usuality (sometimes/​usually/​always) (Halliday 2004: 147). A distinction is made between modality as described above and modulation (scales of obligation and inclination). Modulation concerns proposals (a clause functioning in the exchange of “goods and services” rather than information). In a proposal, a distinction is made between the positive do it and the negative don’t do it. Modulated clauses can be offers (shall I go home?), requests to the listener (go home) or suggestions that both the speaker and the hearer do something (let’s go home). The modal dimensions distinguishing between modal expression types can be organized as paradigms. The paradigm in Table 21.1 (cf. Halliday 2004: 148) describes how “probability” can be organized as a system. Probability can be expressed by a “finite modal operator” (e.g. will), by a “modal adjunct” (e.g. probably) or a combination of both (e.g. will probably). Probability is associated with three different values (degrees of certainty). The justification for the system proposed has to do with what happens when the different modal elements are negated. The middle row can be illustrated by that’s probably true. It makes no difference whether we say that’s probably not true or that’s not probably true. The top and bottom rows in the paradigm behave differently with regard to negation. The value of the modality is changed when the modal element is negated: “certain +not” = “not+possible”; “possible+not” = “not+certain”. Another distinction which is expressed in the paradigm is that between subjective (e.g. that must be true) and objective modal expressions (e.g. it is certain that it is true). The distinction also applies to adjectives and adverbs (cf. the subjective I’m certain and the objective certainly). Halliday recognizes an additional dimension along which expressions of modality can vary. When the speaker says I’m certain the source of conviction is presented as a subjective judgment on the part of the speaker. On the other hand, certainly or must imply that the source of conviction is implicit only. These options can be expressed as a feature matrix with four different combinations, shown in Table 21.2 (Halliday 2004: 150). The modality paradigm in Table 21.1 includes both central types of modal expressions, viz. the modal auxiliaries and the modal adverbs, or “modal adjuncts”, as Halliday calls

Table 21.1 The probability paradigm Certain

that must be true

that’s certainly true

that must certainly be true

Probable

that will be true

that’s probably true

that will probably be true

Possible

that may be true

that’s possibly true

that may possibly be true

500   Karin Aijmer Table 21.2 Distinctions in the modal paradigm Subjective

Objective

Implicit

must

certainly

Explicit

I’m certain that…

it is certain that…

them. With epistemic modality certain modal expressions have been treated as grammatical metaphors. This notion should be understood in a way specific to the theory of SFG. Traditionally a lexeme with a certain literal meaning can have a transferred or metaphorical meaning. However in SFG the notion “metaphor” is used to indicate that there are different ways to express the same meaning. This brings Halliday to the idea of grammatical metaphor where the variation is mainly in the grammatical form. According to Halliday (2004: 613), “[w]‌ith modality, it is very clear that certain grammatical environments constitute metaphorical realizations of modality”. In Halliday’s example I don’t believe that pudding ever will be cooked, I don’t believe functions as an expression of modality, as can be shown if a tag is added, which will be will it, not don’t I (Halliday 2004: 613). I don’t believe is a metaphorical realization of what Halliday refers to as probability. There is a large number of such grammatical metaphors functioning as resources for the speaker to express a modal attitude. In the Systemic-​Functional perspective they are manifestations of “interpersonal grammatical metaphor”, i.e. they belong to the interpersonal metafunction associated with modality and mood. Other metaphorical expressions where modality is realized in a separate clause are, for example, it is obvious that, it stands to reason that, nobody tries to deny that, it is particularly difficult to avoid the conclusion that… “and a thousand and one others, all of which mean ‘I believe’ ” (Halliday 2004: 618). Halliday’s system of modality thus makes it possible to describe many different types of modal expressions. It is argued that all the variants met with can have an effect on the enfolding of the dialogue: We have taken the description of modality up to this degree of detail because in the analysis of discourse, especially the conversational, more dialogic forms, all these variants are likely to be met with, and their differences in meaning may have a marked effect on the unfolding and impact of discourse. (Halliday 2004: 150)

The number of modal forms is considerable: “The actual number of systematic distinctions that are made in this corner of the language runs well into the tens of thousands” (Halliday 2004: 624). Halliday’s model has provided the setting for several descriptions of modality and mood. Tucker (2001) studies “alternative or secondary modal resources” with special

Modality and mood in functional linguistic approaches    501 regard to adverbs, and to the adverb possibly in particular. He takes the view of modality that there is a choice between [modalized] and [not modalized] depending on how the verbal constituent of the clause is realized. The modalized option is between “primary modality” (the choice of a modal auxiliary) and “secondary (also referred to as alternative) modality” (e.g. a modal adverb or another modal expression of a lexical nature). It is shown that possibly provides a resource for the expression of modality in contexts where modal auxiliaries are not available to express the same functions. Possibly can, for example, occur in units at lower ranks than the clause, as in she plans to study law possibly within a year. On the basis of confirming evidence from a large collection of corpus data, Tucker concludes that modal adverbs such as possibly “are not simply an alternative resource [for a modal operator]: they are the only resource [when modal operators are not available]” (Tucker 2001: 212). Davies has made several contributions to the study of modality in the framework of SFG. Davies (1988) analyzes probability judgments realized by may, might, should, and will and their negations. In order to account for their modal meaning, Davies invokes both the ideational meaning (probability) and their textual meta-​function. For example, part of the meaning of non-​deontic may has to do with discourse relations and falls under the textual component in a multi-​component grammar. This meaning feature can be described as “contradictory of existing CG [common ground] expectation” (Davies 1988: 164). For example, in a situation where it rains a lot it would be odd to say it may rain today, while this would be normal in the Sahara desert. In the desert situation the common ground contains “it’s highly improbable that it will rain today”—​this is denied by the use of may, which is therefore not felt to be odd (C. Butler 2003: 499). In a more recent article, Davies (2001) proposes a semantic model of modality and mood in a linguistic description of English, developing some suggestions in earlier work (Davies 1979). English modals of knowledge and belief are analyzed in terms of propositional attitudes and described in a model which is based on epistemic logic and extended so as to incorporate probabilities. Propositional attitudes are expressed as operators on the proposition, such as “necessary”, “possible”, and “probable”. Some examples are given in (5) (quoted from C. Butler 2003: 500):  (5) Might: Could: Will: Must:

Not known to be false. Not necessarily believed to be false. Not necessarily believed to be true AND believed to be true with a probability of 1. Not known to be true BUT/​AND necessarily believed to be true.

The propositional operators allow the analyst to formulate implicational relations between them. Necessary belief in the truth of p implies, for example, possible belief in the truth of p (Davies 2001: 225).

502   Karin Aijmer The indicative and the subjunctive moods can be analysed with the help of the same propositional attitudes, as in (6):  (6) Indicative: Past subjunctive: Present subjunctive:

Known to be true. Believed to be probably false. Not believed to be probably false.

Halliday’s interpersonal grammar has been further developed by Martin (2000) under the heading of Appraisal. In the system of “Appraisal”, a distinction is made between different types of evaluation such as Affect (the expression of emotion), Judgment (dealing with moral assessment), and Appreciation (aesthetic commentary). Modality in a narrow sense is referred to as Engagement and defined as “a system of options” “to indicate the speaker’s degree of commitment to the appraisal being expressed, and is expressed through modality and related systems” (Hunston and Thompson 2000: 142). An additional category is Amplification (grading). Both modality and other (non-​modal) types of evaluation are central notions signaling what speakers (or writers) are attempting to achieve in their texts. The system of Engagement is a theory of how we use modality to do things with language (White 2003). Engagement includes modal resources associated with evidentiality, modality, and hedging, “that is to say, values of probability, usuality, reality phase (it seems, apparently), projection and other attributing or speech reporting resources” (White 1998: no page numbering). The theory is “dialogical” or interactive and accounts for the functions of modality in actual contexts of use. Modality is, for example, not only used to convey certainty (or uncertainty) but speakers use expressions of certainty to acknowledge the contentiousness of discourse and to “engage with alternative voices and positions” (White 2003: 261). In Engagement theory, categories are introduced to describe how modal elements are used strategically (for agreeing but also for challenging, persuasion, manipulation). The speaker can concur with explicit or implicit voices by using of course, naturally, obviously. Other modal alternatives (it seems, I think) recognize the possibility that there is some tension between what the speaker thinks and alternative voices and are understood as more argumentative. The categories proposed such as the concurrence function or counter-​expectation have turned out to be useful to analyze modality in text types such as discussions, debates, or court proceedings, replacing functional categories such as hedge or emphasizer (cf. Simon-​Vandenbergen and Aijmer 2007a).

21.4  Functional Grammar and Role and Reference Grammar According to Dik (1997), modality and mood do not constitute a unified semantic domain which could be given a single cover-​definition. Mood is restricted to the category of modal devices expressed through grammatical means while modality refers to

Modality and mood in functional linguistic approaches    503 the semantic area. “Therefore we first distinguish a number of modality types, which we then assign to different parts of the structure of the clause” (Dik 1997: vol. 1, 241). According to Goossens (1996) one of the earliest treatments of modality in FG was Bolkestein’s (1980) analysis of modal expressions denoting necessity and obligation in Latin. This study inspired his own analysis of English modal auxiliaries within this framework (Goossens 1985, 1987). Goossens (1985) proposed that the modalization of predications can be constructed in three different ways: through the addition of an operator to the main predicate, through a predicate formation rule (comparable to what elsewhere is often called a “lexical rule”, modifying the basic “predicate frame” of the main predicate), or through the selection of an independent, full modal predicate. He presents an FG view of the grammaticalization processes undergone by the English modals in their development from Old to Present-​day English. He shows that the shifts undergone by the modal auxiliaries can be described on a “grammaticalization scale” within FG capturing degrees of grammaticalization. The following scale is proposed: (7) full predicates > predicate formation > predicate operators It is tentatively suggested that modals expressing facultative (root) modality and deontic modality should be dealt with as full predicates, that epistemic modals involve predicate formation and that modals in future and conditional senses could be accounted for as predicate operators (Goossens 1985: 216). Both the later versions of FG (essentially, after Hengeveld 1988) and RRG propose models characterized by a hierarchical representation of modality, in which different semantic types of modality affect the “state of affairs” in different ways, depending on the semantic scope of each (the wider the scope, the higher the category is situated in the hierarchy). The first systematic account of this in the general framework of FG is Hengeveld (1988). Hengeveld distinguishes between three types of modality with additional modal distinctions within each group, situated at different “levels” in the scopal hierarchy: (i)  Inherent modality (level 1 modalities) refers to the linguistic means through which the speaker “can characterize the relation between a participant in a SoA [state of affairs] and the potential actualization of that SoA” (Hengeveld 1988: 233). It covers distinctions such as ability (can, be able to), volition (e.g. be willing to), obligation, and permission. The different types of inherent modality have in common that they are internal to the SoA. (ii)  Objective modal distinctions (level 2 modalities) are concerned with the speaker’s evaluation of the actuality of a SoA in terms of his or her knowledge of possible situations. A distinction is made between epistemic and deontic modality depending on the type of knowledge on which the speaker bases his or her evaluation. Thus, two types of knowledge can be distinguished (Hengeveld 1988: 137): • Knowledge of possible situations obtaining in S’s conception of reality or of a hypothesized situation.

504   Karin Aijmer •  Knowledge of possible situations relative to some system of moral, legal or social conventions. Based on the analysis of how the SoA designated by a predication is compatible with either type of knowledge, different scales of modal meanings can be established: • Epistemic objective modalities: Certain-probable-possible-conceivableimpossible. •  Deontic objective modalities: Obligatory-customary-permissible-acceptableforbidden.   (iii) Epistemological modalities (level 3 modalities) pertain to the propositional content and is part of the information the speaker wants to convey to the hearer. This covers, first of all, subjective epistemic modality, through which the speaker takes personal responsibility for the content of the proposition and signals how certain he or she is about its truth. According to Hengeveld, epistemological modality also includes evidentiality. By means of evidential modalities the speaker expresses his or her assessment of the quality of the proposition in terms of how the evidence has been arrived at. Further sub-​types can be distinguished: inferential (indirectly arrived at by inference); experiential (based on direct personal experience); quotative (what has been heard from others). Hengeveld’s (1988) study of the alternation of the subjunctive/​indicative variation in Spanish is situated within this framework. The occurrence of subjunctive or indicative follows for example from the context in which the verb appears including contexts with different types of (objective) modality. However, the mood alternation must consider a number of different factors such as different readings of verbs like creo ‘think’, the person of the speaker and the mitigation of the speech act force. Another element of mood is sentence type. In Dik’s view, sentence types are considered to be grammaticalized carriers of basic illocutions of linguistic expression (illocutionary operators) (Hengeveld 1988: 231). The basic illocutions (declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamative) are integrated into the grammar as “illocutionary operators” at a fourth level in the scopal hierarchy. The declarative operator, for example, has the following paraphrase: “DECL: S wishes A to add the content of the linguistic expression to his pragmatic information” (Hengeveld 1988: 232). A layered representation in some form seems to be required in a structural description of modality for different languages. The FG layered structure representation has, for instance, been introduced by Vet (1998) to study epistemic modal expressions of possibility in French. However, there is little agreement about what the layered system looks like and how many levels are needed (cf. also van der Auwera 2001b). Goossens (1996) confronts “standard” FG with the “facts” about can/​could, will/​would and must based mainly on Coates (1983). It is suggested that the model will have to be refined or revised in order to accommodate these observations. There are, for instance, examples

Modality and mood in functional linguistic approaches    505 of will in which it is used as a marker of prediction (illustrating future tense) merging with a subjective epistemic use (predictability). Such examples show there is no clear demarcation between tense marking and subjective epistemic markers, although they are assumed to be placed at a different levels. Harder (1998), too, turns attention to the difficulties facing a description of modality in a model assuming that categories either belong to one layer or the other or that a modal item has to be either lexical or grammatical. Following in Goossens’ footsteps he suggests that a model “with several slots for what is in some sense the ‘same’ element” can be used to capture the properties of modal elements which cannot be adequately described as either lexical or grammatical but represent degrees of grammaticalization (Harder 1998: 212). Other treatments of the layered system of modality (and other semantic dimensions), sometimes diverging from Hengeveld’s (1988) original proposal, can be found in Hengeveld (1989), Dik (1997), and (in the context of the more recent successor of FG, Functional Discourse Grammar) Hengeveld and Mackenzie (2008). In RRG modal meanings are spread over different operators modifying the proposition or part of the proposition, organized in the context of a hierarchical system which is comparable to that in FG. A distinction is made between “modality”, “status”, and “illocutionary force” operators. The operator modality is used to refer to what is generally called the root or deontic sense of the modal auxiliaries (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997: 41). Status as an operator is used for epistemic modality as well as external negation and categories like realis and irrealis. According to Van Valin and LaPolla (1997: 41) there is, for instance, a semantic relation between realis and necessity as expressed by a modal auxiliary must with an epistemic reading, and between epistemic may and irrealis. A third type of operator relates to illocutionary force. It refers to whether “an utterance is an assertion, a question, a command or an expression of wish” (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997: 41). The operators modify different layers of the clause. Modality is a so-​called core operator defined in terms of its scope relations. “We can paraphrase John must leave as John is obliged to leave which suggests that root modality codes a relationship between a core argument, the subject and the action” (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997: 45). The status (epistemic modality) and illocutionary force operators, on the other hand, are clausal since they have the whole clause in their scope. It is noteworthy that Van Valin and LaPolla (1997) find no use for a separate category mood in their theory: “Modality, status and illocutionary force are all conflated in traditional grammar under the term ‘mood’. We will not use ‘mood’ as a theoretical term because it is important to keep these concepts distinct” (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997:  42). Van Valin and LaPolla do not, for instance, regard subjunctive mood as a separate category but as a combination of irrealis and illocutionary force. As a final remark, it should be pointed out that layering as the only principle oversimplifies the description of the functions of modal forms by neglecting their cognitive-​pragmatic functions or their association with discourse. Both FG and RRG can be criticized for focusing on a grammatical or structural approach to language: there is a distinct tendency “to limit attention exclusively to purely linguistic

506   Karin Aijmer concepts and analytical categories, and to work in terms of “encapsulated” grammar models which disregard anything surpassing the strictly linguistic dimension” (Nuyts 2001a: 6).

21.5  A cognitive-​functional approach to epistemic modality Functional approaches to modality are now converging with cognitive perspectives (Goossens 2007). This is also evidenced by functional models which are both cognitive and functional. Functional Procedural Grammar (FPG) (De Schutter and Nuyts 1983; Nuyts 1989; Nuyts 2001a) is an example: [it] attempts to offer a global encompassing overview—​a ‘blueprint’—​of the process of language production, from the level of conceptual representation onwards. Such a theory is needed to comprehensively feature the full variety of notions, structures and procedures deemed relevant for understanding linguistic behaviour, and to conceive of their possible organization in the cognitive systems responsible for their behavior. (Nuyts 2001a: 272).

Functional Procedural Grammar is a cognitively oriented model providing a description of the production process and “what is behind it” (including a description of the communication situation and a model of the hearer’s knowledge and attitudes; Nuyts 2001a: 275). The speaker consults this “universe of interpretation” during the production process in order to make decisions about how to code information linguistically (e.g. with regard to social conventions and rules). The layering characteristic of many functional approaches is used to describe modality at the conceptual rather than the structural level. On the other hand, “at the linguistic level there is probably very little, if anything at all, left of layered structure, senso strictu” (Nuyts 2001a: 315). The account of layering at the linguistic level is a matter of characterizing the structural properties and behavior of different modal “expression types” including principles combining elements to a coherent structure (Nuyts 2001a: 315). According to Nuyts (2001a), a comparison of different expression types may contribute to our understanding both of the types studied and of modality in general: “Thus, we may expect to find linguistic correspondences between the alternatives which are due to the shared basic meaning of epistemic modality, but we can also expect to find (partial) linguistic differences between them due to differences in the other functional dimensions involved in their use” (Nuyts 2001a: 30). In a pioneering “paradigmatic” study, Nuyts compared epistemic adverbs and adjectives, mental state verbs, and auxiliaries, in order to establish the functional factors explaining the choice between these expression types. This can be illustrated by means of how the “opposition” between adjectives, as in it is probable that this is true, and adverbs, as in probably this is true, is analyzed. Both alternatives can be chosen to express that something is true with (in these specific examples) a high degree of certainty (the epistemic meaning). However, a closer analysis of how they are used shows that they have a

Modality and mood in functional linguistic approaches    507 different distribution and different conditions of use. The (modal) adverbs are, for instance, more frequent than the (modal) adjectives in the three West Germanic languages studied (English, Dutch, German). The usage differences should be explicable in terms of functional dimensions or factors. A number of functional factors are proposed making it possible to describe similarities and differences between modal adjectives and adverbs. Modal elements can be performative (involving the speaker’s own evaluation) or descriptive (reporting the epistemic qualification of a state of affairs). However, modal adverbs cannot be used descriptively, while adjectives can. Nuyts also contrasted modal adjectives and adverbs in terms of the distinction between subjective vs. intersubjective (the category of (inter)subjectivity): the adverbs do not code this dimension, while the adjectives do. The latter more specifically typically code intersubjectivity, which explains why they are, for instance, frequent in results on reports of scientific results where the conclusions can be shared by everyone. However, the most important factor differentiating between the use of a modal adjective and an adverb has to do with the information structure. The modal adjective unlike the corresponding adverb can acquire strong focality in the discourse context. On the basis of such factors we can arrive at a principled description of the similarities and differences between adjectives and adverbs as rendered in Table 21.3 (adapted from Nuyts 2001a: 103): In addition, modal adjectives and adverbs are used to achieve certain rhetorical or strategic effects. According to Nuyts, speakers use epistemic expressions to make “different types of strategic adjustments to an utterance”, for example, for reasons of politeness (Nuyts 2001a: 44). However, in Nuyts’ analysis the corpus data did not reveal any special strategies of the rhetorical type for either the adverbs or the adjectives in particular (they did reveal such strategies for the mental state verbs). In a follow-​up study using Nuyts’ criteria to compare modal adjectives and adverbs, Simon-​Vandenbergen and Aijmer (2007b) looked at the adjectival expressions it is certain/​it is obvious/​it is clear and their adverbial correspondences in a sample of present-​ day English. Two factors in particular were capable of explaining a large number of the adjectival uses, viz. “presenting the assessment as objective and contrasting the assessment with another modal evaluation” (Simon-​Vandenbergen and Aijmer 2007b: 443). A  comparison with the corresponding adverbs showed that they were exploited

Table 21.3 Functional factors in the use of adverbs vs. adjectives Adverb

Adjective

(Inter)subjectivity

—​

+

Descriptive use

—​

(+)

Focalized use

—​

++

(+)  not a major factor in its use +  the dimension is frequently responsible for the selection of the expression type ++  the most important factor for understanding the selection of the expression type —​  the expression is never triggered by the factor

508   Karin Aijmer rhetorically in a different way from the adjectives. Certainly has, for instance, developed additional rhetorical functions such as emphasizer while obviously can be used to express solidarity (in conversation) as well as superiority in argumentation. With clearly, on the other hand, no secondary rhetorical function was found.

21.6  Discourse-​functional and interactional approaches to modality The label “functional” is now also used with regard to various “discourse-​functional” approaches to modality. These are not specifically bound to a particular theoretical model of language and grammar but have in common that they pay attention to the role of modality in an interactional or discourse perspective. The notion “stance” is used in different disciplines such as linguistics, anthropology, sociolinguistics, and discourse-​functional linguistics (Ochs 1996; Hunston and Thompson 2000; Kärkkäinen 2003; Biber 2006; Englebretson 2007: 1) to refer to the functions of modal elements in the communication situation. Related terms are “commitment” (Stubbs 1986), “evidentiality” (Chafe 1986), “metadiscourse” (Hyland and Tse 2004), and “engagement” (White 2003). In this section I will rely on the definition of “stance” by the anthropologist Ochs (1996). According to Ochs, epistemic stance “refers to knowledge or belief vis-​à-​vis some focus of concern, including degrees of certainty of knowledge, degrees of commitment to truth of propositions and sources of knowledge, among other epistemic qualities” (Ochs 1996: 410). It is distinct from affective stance, i.e. feelings or emotions, although both types of stance can be assumed to be expressed in the communication situation. According to Ochs, stance can be indexically associated with (all other) features of the social situation in which communication takes place. As a result of their indexical properties epistemic stance markers can acquire a rich interactional meaning. They can, for example, be indexically linked to a particular social activity such as debating or to a social or professional speaker identity. The extended meaning of epistemic stance can be illustrated by the following example quoted from Ochs (1996: 423) and taken from Goodwin (1990: 154), which represents the discourse of pre-​adolescent Black children. In their conversation about collecting bottles the children used modal verbs such as can and could “to constitutively index not only the epistemic stance of possible or uncertain worlds, but also the act of suggesting” (Goodwin 1990: 111): (8) Bea: We could go around looking for more bottles. ((Discussing where to break bottle rims)) Martha: We could use a sewer. ((Discussing keeping the activity secret from boys)) Kerry: We can limp back so nobody know where we gettin’ them from.

Modality and mood in functional linguistic approaches    509 Martha does not use could to express uncertainty but to signal that she is making a suggestion (“we could use a sewer to break the bottle”). Modal elements can index multiple stances. In the case of a medical doctor (in American society) the display of certainty (indicated for example by the use of the adverb certainly) may be used to construct a professional identity as well as stances of being “knowledgeable, objective and caring” (Ochs 1996: 419). Epistemic stance can also be closely linked to argumentation and other rhetorical strategies, in particular hedging (G. Lakoff 1972; Holmes 1984). According to Holmes (1984), the reasons for modifying a speech act may, for example, be to increase solidarity (positive politeness if the speech act is favorable to the hearer) or to express more distance if the speech act can be experienced as intrusive (negative politeness). Haviland (1989: 40) gives examples where the evidential particle nan ‘perhaps’ in Tzotzil can serve as an interactional device to express hesitation or to challenge the hearer if the context is argumentative. Stance is pervasive in language and can be realized linguistically in many different ways. However there is generally no agreement about the range of grammatical and lexical resources which can be used to take up a modal stance in the interaction. Stubbs (1986:  2)  proposes a programme where “markers of commitment and detachment require to be studied through prolonged fieldwork, ethnography and textual analysis”. Markers of commitment include a large number of elements including modal verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and lexical verbs but also for instance hedges (sort of) and reported speech. Stubbs’ call for a new research program focusing on modality in text and discourse has had a huge response. This is witnessed in the literature on evaluative language, commitment, stance, hedging. A comprehensive grammar of modality along the lines suggested by Stubbs must not only consider all the different ways in which modal expressions interact in the text, but also the role of more “narrow” combinations, e.g. of modal auxiliaries and adverbs (Hoye 1997). Stance belongs to aspects of language which are jointly constructed and negotiated by the speaker and hearer in the communication situation. As a result, the focus is shifted to the examination of how modality is used in interaction in real time (“interactional linguistics”; cf. for instance Ford and Thompson 1996: 2). Marking epistemic stance “is firmly rooted in and engendered by the interaction between the conversational participants: stance displays manifest aspects of that interaction such as managing routine trouble spots, engaging in more strategic recipient design, pursuing uptake or signalling completion of one’s turn-​of-​talk” (Kärkkäinen 2003: 183). Discourse-​functional studies have in common both that modality is studied in authentic data on the basis of large corpora and that the functions associated with the modal expressions are explained in terms of the structure of discourse (for example an understanding of what goes on in conversation) or on the basis of such factors as speech or writing, text type, and situations. Several types of modal expressions have been analysed from a discourse perspective. Coates (1983) studied the modal auxiliaries in English in actual use on the basis of a large corpus. She showed, for example, that the modal auxiliaries occurred with different frequencies in speech and in writing. Coates (1987) represents a more “holistic” approach

510   Karin Aijmer to modality, where the object of study is shifted from the modal auxiliaries in several large (spoken and written) corpora to a wider range of expression types in “the microcosm of one or two spoken texts” (Coates 1987: 111). The focus is on I think, sort of, and tag questions. Downing’s (2001) study of surely opened the way to research on modal adverbials as stance-​taking. Downing describes surely within the framework of Chafe’s (1986) analysis of evidentiality, as an example of “interactive devices or resources for redefining common ground between interlocutors” (Downing 2001: 251). It is shown that surely can express a large number of interpersonal stances including confrontation and contradictory meanings depending on whether surely co-​occurs with an I-​subject or a you-​subject. On the basis of a theory of how stance can be expressed we have seen a number of comparisons between text-​types (registers) such as political discourse, media discourse and academic discourse. Biber and Finegan (1988, 1989) have shown how sophisticated statistical methods (cluster analysis) can be used to identify speech styles marked by “stance adverbials”. In their 1988 study six different categories of stance adverbials were identified and the frequency of each type was computed in texts of the (written) Lancaster–​Oslo–​Bergen (LOB) Corpus and the (spoken) London–​Lund Corpus (LLC). Texts that were maximally similar in their exploitation of stance adverbials were grouped into clusters. The clusters were then interpreted in terms of the discourse functions of the adverbials and the situational characteristics of the text. Their study showed that the discourse function of the adverbials could be at variance with their literal meanings. Surely adverbials (certainly, indeed, obviously, evidently, etc.) were for example associated with a “generally persuasive stance requesting affirmation by marking certain assertions as beyond dispute” (Biber and Finegan 1988: 31). Biber and Finegan (1989) widened the analysis to stance markers in general (including adverbs, verbs, and adjectives) drawn from different corpora. The stance markers were divided into different categories based on both semantic and grammatical criteria and their frequencies were again computed. Using this method the authors identified, for instance, a cluster characterized by its involved conversational style and the use of hedges, emphatics, certainty verbs, doubt verbs, certainty adverbs, etc. (Biber and Finegan 1989: 110). Conrad and Biber (2000) studied adverbial markers of stance in speech and in writing and in different registers. The patterns discovered were then interpreted functionally in relation to communicative characteristics of each genre. The authors suggested, for example, that the frequent occurrence of certain adverbials in conversation (probably, actually, really, sort of) “is consistent with several contextual characteristics of conversation, particularly the focus on interpersonal interactions, the conveying of personal assessments and opinions, and the lack of time for planning or revision which makes precise word choice difficult” (Conrad and Biber 2000: 65). The authors showed that there are differences depending on whether the register is conversation, news reportage, or academic prose. Epistemic stance was, for example, rarely signaled in news reportage but several different types of epistemic stance adverbials were found in academic

Modality and mood in functional linguistic approaches    511 prose. Conrad and Biber also drew attention to the social functions of stance adverbials. Perhaps and maybe could, for instance, be used to convey that a suggestion was made. Biber (2006) compared modal verbs, stance adverbials such as obviously and structures with a first person subject (e.g. I think) across different types of (written and spoken) “university registers” such as classroom teaching, class management talk, textbooks, and written course management language. The study showed that, in general, stance was more frequent in the spoken than in the written genres. However, there were important register differences cutting across the division between the spoken and written mode. Stance features were, for instance, in general more frequent in both classroom management and course management than in academic registers. A common device to express stance is I think (and other complement-​taking predicates). I think has also been discussed diachronically in terms of grammaticalization. According to Nuyts (2001a:  107), “these predicates are notoriously difficult to deal with, much more so than the adverbs and adjectives, mainly because of their complex semantic structure and their mysterious linguistic behavior, which often defies standard expectations regarding the grammatical category of verbs”. I think (that it is true) behaves differently from complement-​taking predicates in general since I think can also be inserted in the middle of the utterance or in final position. Grammaticalization has been taken to explain many of the mysterious properties of I think including its discourse functions. Thompson and Mulac (1991) traced the development of I think from a complement-​taking verb with a first person subject to its end-​ point as “an epistemic fragment” expressing a degree of speaker commitment. They did not use diachronic data but argue, on the basis of quantitative and qualitative evidence from present-​day English, that grammaticalization must have taken place along the lines suggested. According to Thompson and Mulac, the change is dependent on the frequency of I think and the blurring of the distinction between main and subordinate clause associated with the deletion of that. Thompson and Mulac’s historical account is not generally accepted but has given rise to a number of “counter-​proposals” tracing the development on the basis of empirical data from different periods in the history of English. Brinton (1996) argues in favor of an adverbial origin of the parenthetical I think on the basis of data from Old English and onwards. According to Brinton, the parenthetical construction can be derived from a type of relative construction attached to the main clause. Diagrammatically (adapted from Fischer 2007b: 105): (9) Stage I: They are poisonous. That I think. Stage II: They are poisonous {that I think, as/​so I think}. Stage III: They are poisonous, I think. OR They are poisonous, as I think. Stage IV: I think, they are poisonous./​They are, I think, poisonous. Fischer (2007b), on the other hand, argues that the parenthetical element was not part of a complex clause as claimed by Thompson and Mulac or from a relative clause as in Brinton’s analysis. She shows on the basis of a large number of examples that I think

512   Karin Aijmer occurred both in independent clauses and as a complement clause from the beginning. She therefore concludes that the parenthetical I think and related phrases “are best seen as formulaic tokens, undergoing lexicalization rather than grammaticalization” (Fischer 2007b: 112). I think is a frequent modal expression in spoken language (Aijmer 1997). The functions of I think, I believe, etc. have been described by labels such as hedging or booster which are more closely associated with discourse than with epistemic modality (commitment, certainty/​uncertainty; Kaltenböck 2010). Kärkkäinen (2003, 2007) takes the study of the functions of I think (and I guess) even further than other discourse-​functional analyses by relating them to the positions they occupy in the sequential structure of the discourse. She shows that I think and similar predicates are not just hedges or politeness markers but that they can become markers of discourse organization (discourse markers) signaling boundaries or acting as frames at points of transition in the discourse. Another approach has been to study the distribution of I think in different text types and social situations. Simon-​Vandenbergen (2000) showed, on the basis of its frequencies in the British National Corpus, that I think was particularly frequent in television debates where speakers are constantly trying to formulate their opinions (Simon-​ Vandenbergen 2000:  45). A  comparison between casual conversation and political interviews showed that different types of I think were used in different social contexts. “Whether or not I think is relatively more frequent in conversation or in political interviews, speakers do not primarily use I think to express uncertainty but to convey ‘this is my opinion’ ” (Simon-​Vandenbergen 2000: 60). Politicians do not use I think to be hedging but use it in their struggles for power in the interaction. I think has also been found to be frequent in topical discussion and debates in a BBC radio programme (White and Sano 2006).

21.7 Conclusion Modality has been dealt with in different branches of functional linguistics emerging as a reaction to the formal approach represented by generative grammar. The functional approaches to modality in SFG, FG, and RRG have in common that they propose models relating form to function. They allow for a detailed description of a number of distinctions expressed by modality. However, the focus is on the grammatical description of modality. Moreover, the starting-​point for the study of modality is usually the modal auxiliaries. However, modality must be conceived broadly as going beyond the modal auxiliaries if we take a functional view on how the semantic domain of modality is realized. It follows that the study of modality includes both grammaticalized and lexical forms. Recently there has also been more focus on the functions of modal expressions in interaction and in longer texts. In discourse-​functional approaches, modality is defined as “stance”. This notion brings into play the interaction of modality with the social situation

Modality and mood in functional linguistic approaches    513 and with the speaker–​hearer negotiation going on in the discourse. Epistemic stance provides the resources by means of which speakers construct a social or professional persona, and express attitudes and alignments towards what is said; modal expressions are also involved in social acts such as requests or suggestions. We can expect stance to be expressed differently depending on the social situation or the activity. This has been shown by numerous corpus-​based studies comparing modal expressions across different text types or discourse genres (e.g. academic discourse). Another tendency in modality studies has been to emphasize the similarity between modality and other types of attitudes which can be expressed by language. Modality can, for instance, be considered as a part of the general study of evaluative language, including not only expressions by means of which speakers express how certain they are about what is said but also judgments of good or bad.

Chapter 22

Modalit y an d mo od i n c o gnitive li ng u i st i c s and c onst ru c t i on gramm a rs Ronny Boogaart and Egbert Fortuin

22.1 Introduction1 The term “cognitive” in “cognitive linguistics” pertains to the basic assumption that there is no separate language module, but that language is an integral part of cognition. Any analysis proposed by linguists should, therefore, be in accordance with what is independently known about basic cognitive abilities such as, for instance, perception (distinguishing Figure and Ground; viewing a scene from different perspectives) and categorization (comparing experiences; establishing prototypes). When talking about semantics, cognitive linguists often start out by stressing the point that all use of language is subjective. By their very choice of words and grammatical constructions, speakers unavoidably present a specific “construal” of reality: one and the same situation may be construed in different ways. Meanings, then, are not determined by objective properties of the situation being described, but should be identified with conceptualizations as they are symbolized by linguistic expressions. The idea that language is symbolic—​made up of conventionalized pairings of forms and meanings—​is assumed not only for words in the lexicon, but for the entirety of language, including syntactic patterns. In fact, within most cognitive-​linguistic approaches 1 We would like to acknowledge the following permissions to reproduce materials from other sources:  Figure 22.1, copyright by The University of Chicago, is adopted from Mejias-​ Bikandi (1996: 160) by permission of University of Chicago Press; Figure 22.3, copyright by Oxford University Press, is adopted from Langacker (2008: 306) by permission of Oxford University Press, USA.

Modality and mood in cognitive linguistics    515 to language, lexicon and grammar do not constitute distinctive components but rather form a continuum from less to more abstract “constructions”. The latter claim takes central stage in a family of approaches that labels itself “construction grammar”. The basic starting points of cognitive linguistics and construction grammar(s) manifest themselves in the ways in which modality and mood are analyzed within these frameworks. Because of their focus on conceptualization and categorization, cognitive linguists have always been concerned with polysemy and the question how the different meanings, or “senses”, of a form are related to one another. Since modal verbs constitute a typical example of polysemy, they were dealt with by cognitive linguists from the very start of the framework. In particular, Talmy’s (1985) analysis of modals in terms of force dynamics has been very influential and the same is true for Sweetser’s (1990) force-​dynamical account of the different readings of modal verbs in terms of metaphorical mappings between different domains (section 22.2). Around the same time, Fauconnier’s (1985) framework of “mental spaces” was applied particularly to matters of mood, such as counterfactuals and subjunctives (section 22.3). The notion of construal is central to Langacker’s (2008) more specific framework of “Cognitive Grammar”, which presents the most elaborate treatment of modality and mood within cognitive linguistics to date (section 22.4): the crucial ingredients of Langacker’s account are grounding and subjectivity. Whereas most cognitive linguistic analyses of modality and mood, including Langacker’s, are concerned with the conceptual semantics of modal forms, the more recent framework of “construction grammar” (section 22.5) focuses on the linguistic contexts, that is, the constructions, in which these forms are used.

22.2  Force dynamics The theory of force dynamics set forward by Talmy (1985) is one of the central approaches to modality in cognitive linguistics. Talmy (1985, 1988, 2000) himself does not consider force dynamics to be a theory, but a fundamental semantic and conceptual category. It can be seen as a generalization of the notion of “causative”, but it also deals with notions that are not traditionally considered to be causative such as modality. Force dynamics is about how entities interact with respect to force, for example “exertion of force, resistance to such a force, the overcoming of such a resistance, blockage of the expression of force, removal of such blockage, and the like” (Talmy 1985: 293). The sentence in (1) (Talmy 1985: 295) exemplifies a non-​modal instance of this category: (1) The ball kept on rolling along the green. If a ball is not thrown, kicked, or moved by another person or entity, it is at rest. However, in (1) the ball rolls, for example because the wind pushes the ball. The use of the verb keep on emphasizes that the ball continues or persists to move, which presupposes the idea

516    Ronny Boogaart and Egbert Fortuin that in another situation it might also have stopped rolling. In terms of force dynamics: sentence (1) describes a situation where the ball has a tendency toward rest which is being overcome by an external force, in this case the wind. These two opposing forces (the ball and the wind) are physical in nature, that is, they are about concrete entities and their movement or activity. Talmy considers modality to be essentially based on the same concept of opposing physical forces. This can be illustrated with the sentence with have to in (2) (based on Talmy 1985: 326): (2) The boy had to do his homework. The basic parameters of the theory of force dynamics are two entities or forces:  an Agonist and an Antagonist. The Agonist is the entity singled out for focal attention, and expressed linguistically, and the Antagonist is the entity that opposes the Agonist. In the case of (2) the boy can be seen as the Agonist and the Antagonist is contextually given (for example the boy’s parents), just as in (1) the wind is the contextually given Antagonist. The two force entities have contrary intrinsic force tendencies, that is, either towards the action or not, and they are conceptualized as being relatively strong or weak. In the case of (2) this means that the boy has an intrinsic tendency towards not doing his homework, whereas his parents have a tendency towards doing the action (they want him to do his homework). This force interaction results in a situation of rest or action. In (2) the Antagonist is stronger than the Agonist, and compels the boy to do his homework. Talmy offers a semantic analysis for different modal verbs in terms of opposing forces (e.g. may, can, need, must, have to, want, had better, etc.) within this framework. To give another example, he describes the modal verb may in terms of a potential but absent barrier. Consider the following example: (3) The boy may go out and do his homework later. In this case the boy has a tendency to go out, and the other force, for example his parents, could potentially have an objection to that (they can metaphorically be seen as a barrier). However, the tendency of the boy is stronger than this potential objection (barrier), resulting in a situation where there are no obstacles for the realization of the boy’s tendency. As such, the meaning of may can be described in terms of an absent potential barrier. According to Talmy (1985: 295), language extends physical force concepts to the expression of social interactions. His analysis suggests that forms expressing social instances of force dynamics such as deontic modality are derived from and understood in terms of more physical notions of force such as causality. In the same vein, Talmy argues that epistemic modality must be analyzed as a metaphoric extension of deontic modality (following Sweetser 1984). The connection between language structure and general cognitive capacities is one of the fundamental properties of cognitive linguistics. In the case of force dynamics, Talmy argues that it relates most directly to the kinesthetic system.

Modality and mood in cognitive linguistics    517 It should be noted that the view that the physical domain of force dynamics forms the basis of other force dynamical meanings is not accepted by all linguists who employ the theory of force dynamics. Most notably, contrary to Talmy, Winter and Gärdenfors (1995) argue that it is the social domain which is basic to all modal verbs, rather than the physical domain. They provide a semantic-​pragmatic analysis of (Swedish) modal verbs which has to do with the power relations between speaker and hearer (or a third party). It has also been pointed out that the concept of force dynamics does not seem to be equally well applicable to all modal categories. More specifically, some instances of dynamic possibility (ability) seem to be the most difficult to describe in terms of force dynamics (see e.g. Diewald 1999: 108–​109; Fortuin 2005: 46). Since Talmy focuses on the common features of verbs within the domain of force dynamics, he pays less attention to their differences. More specifically, Talmy has been criticized for not taking into account that modal verbs are about possible and hypothetical situations, a dimension which is absent from other force dynamical verbs such as causatives (e.g. Portner 2009). A similar criticism is provided by Boye (2005b), who proposes to overcome this problematic feature of Talmy’s analysis of modality by integrating the model of force dynamics with the model of “potentiality” (also note Langacker’s 1991 analysis of modal verbs that explicitly places them in the realm of potential and projected reality—​cf. section 22.4.3—​and the analysis of modal verbs given in Radden and Dirven 2007). Force dynamics as a theory for modality has been used, sometimes in a modified way, by various people to describe different aspects of modal forms in different (European) languages (e.g. Sweetser 1990 and Pelyvás 1996, 2003 on English modals; Winter and Gärdenfors 1995 on English and Swedish modals; Achard 1998 on French modals; Boye 2001, 2005b on Danish modals; Fortuin 2000, 2005 on Russian modal constructions; Radden 2009 on English negated modals; and Sanada 2009 on must and have to). In the domain of sentence mood (illocution), Johnson (1987: 58–​60) argues that differences between speech act types such as declaratives, interrogatives etc. can be analyzed in terms of force dynamics as well. The work of Sweetser (1984, 1990) merits a separate discussion, since her contribution to the study of modality has been very influential within cognitive linguistics. One of Sweetser’s main claims is that modal verbs can be described systematically on three levels: root modality (which includes deontic modality but also dynamic modality; see Sweetser 1990: 49, 52–​53), epistemic modality and speech act modality, as exemplified respectively by the following three sentences (from Sweetser 1990: 61, 70): (4) a.  John may go. b.  John may be there. c.  He may be a university professor, but I doubt it because he’s so dumb. The epistemic use of the modal may in (4b) must be seen as a metaphorical extension of the deontic or “root” meaning in (4a): the speaker is not barred from concluding the truth of the sentence. In (4c) may does not indicate the absence of a real

518    Ronny Boogaart and Egbert Fortuin barrier, nor of an epistemic barrier, but rather the absence of a barrier in the conversational world. The interlocutor is being allowed by the speaker to treat a certain statement as appropriate or reasonable. As is stressed by Sweetser, in comparison to epistemic modality, speech act modality is much more restricted. It occurs, for example, only with the modal verb may, and not with the modal verb can, or other modal forms. Sweetser explicitly describes modal verbs as polysemous, that is, the different meanings can be seen as conventionalized (metaphorical) mappings between different domains or worlds. One of the arguments in favor of her analysis is that the same mappings between three worlds can also be seen in other linguistic forms such as conditionals and conjunctions, suggesting it is a more general and systematic phenomenon in language. Sweetser points out that there is ample diachronic evidence from different languages that epistemic modality developed out of deontic modality, rather than the other way around, and that this involves a metaphorical mapping.2 However, since the publication of Sweetser’s book there has been a discussion about both the details and more fundamental properties of Sweetser’s analysis. Winter and Gärdenfors (1995), for example, argue that epistemic uses must be seen as pragmatic strengthenings of the deontic uses, rather than as metaphorical mappings. In several writings Pelyvás (1996, 2003, 2006) has raised a number of objections to Sweetser’s analysis of epistemic modality, specifically the epistemic use of may. Pelyvás points out that there is diachronic evidence that the epistemic use of may did not develop from the deontic meaning, but rather from an earlier dynamic meaning (i.e. expressing ability). In fact, it is nowadays assumed more generally that epistemic uses of modal verbs may have developed directly out of dynamic uses rather deontic ones (Narrog 2012b: 221–​258 offers a recent overview and discussion). Finally, objections have also been raised against Sweetser’s analysis of speech act modals. Papafragou (2000b) argues that there is no need to postulate a separate speech act domain for modals, and that such speech act uses can be analyzed in terms of the regular deontic meaning.

22.3 Mental spaces The theory of mental spaces was developed by Fauconnier (1985, 1994) and later redeveloped by Fauconnier and Turner (1996, and elsewhere) into a theory of conceptual blending. It plays a considerable role in cognitive linguistics, and has also been applied to the analysis of modality and mood. In fact, Fauconnier (1985) illustrates the usefulness of mental space theory by applying the concept of mental spaces to counterfactuals and also to tense and mood (for example the difference between indicative and subjunctive mood). 2  Sweetser’s analysis is not entirely clear at this point, since she provides examples of deontic modality as the source for epistemic modality, but uses the broader term “root modality”, which also encompasses dynamic modality (“ability”).

Modality and mood in cognitive linguistics    519 The concept of a mental space corresponds to a large extent to possible worlds in philosophy of language and formal semantics. However, as Fauconnier and Sweetser (eds., 1996: 12) put it, “[b]‌ecause the explicit structure set up in spaces is minimal, and because the default structure is always revisable as discourse unfolds, spaces are very different sorts of things than worlds (such as logicians’ possible worlds, or the fictional worlds of narratives)”. The notion and use of mental space theory within the domain of modality and mood can be illustrated by the following example, from Mejias-​Bikandi (1996), featuring the same Spanish sentence with an indicative and a subjunctive respectively: (5) Spanish (Mejias-​Bikandi 1996: 159) a. Tal vez maybe

su

hijo his

está son

be.3sg.pres

en in

la det

cárcel. jail

‘Maybe his son is in jail.’ b. Tal vez maybe

su his

hijo son

esté be.3sg.irr

en in

la det

cárcel. jail

‘Maybe his son is in jail.’ In (5a) the hearer assumes or takes for granted that the speaker thinks that the subject has a son, whereas in (5b) this is not the case. This analysis can be captured in terms of mental spaces in the following way. The expression su hijo ‘his son’ carries the presupposition P “x has a son”. P is a proposition in the possibility space M built by tal vez ‘maybe’. In the case of the indicative the proposition P is inherited in M’s parent space R (“the real world”), which is the space of the speaker’s reality. This can be shown with Figure 22.1 (Mejias-​Bikandi 1996: 160). This differs from the subjunctive in (5b), where the presupposition is not inherited by the parent space R.

P “C has a son” M R

Figure 22.1  Presupposition inherited by parent space in example (5a), containing an indicative Source: Mejias-Bikandi 1996: 160

520    Ronny Boogaart and Egbert Fortuin Even though mental space theory seems to be an important theory for the study of modality and mood, the number of cognitive linguistic analyses which actually apply the theory in the strict sense to modality and mood is rather small. Examples are Fauconnier’s (1985) work on counterfactuals, Dancygier and Sweetser’s (2005) work on conditionals, Mejias-​Bikandi’s (1996), Aliaga and de Bustos’ (2002) and Dam-​Jensen’s (2011) analyses of the subjunctive in Spanish, Ferrari and Sweetser’s (2012) analysis of subjectivity, including modal verbs in English, and Koier’s (2013) analysis of the modal particle pou ‘somewhere/​anywhere’ in Classical Greek.

22.4  Modality and mood in Cognitive Grammar Cognitive Grammar (CG) is a specific version of cognitive linguistics developed by Langacker (as summed up by Langacker 2008). In line with the general principles of cognitive linguistics (section 22.1), in CG, “care is taken to invoke only well-​established or easily demonstrated mental abilities that are not exclusive to language” (Langacker 2008:  8). Clearly, an analysis of modality in terms of force dynamics and polysemy, such as advocated by Talmy and Sweetser (section 22.2), accords well with this basic starting point and Langacker adopts it with slight modifications. More important for an understanding of modality and mood in CG, however, are the intertwined notions of “grounding” (section 22.4.2) and “subjectivity” (section 22.4.3), that take on quite specific meanings in Langacker’s framework. We introduce the notion of grounding by means of a brief discussion of the category of tense, that some researchers within CG regard as expressing a form of epistemic modality as well (section 22.4.1).

22.4.1 Grounding and tense The inherent subjectivity of semantics (section 22.1) is captured by Langacker in the so-​called “viewing arrangement”: the relationship between the contents of the utterance and the viewpoint of the speaker in the speech situation. These two are also referred to as the “object” and the “subject” of conceptualization, respectively. As for the latter, CG uses the term “Ground” to indicate “the speech event, its participants (speaker and hearer), their interaction, and the immediate circumstances (notably, the time and place of speaking)” (Langacker 2008: 259).3 Since the use of a 3 

This use of the term “Ground” should be distinguished from the use of the same term to indicate the perceptual distinction between “Figure” and “Ground” (Langacker 2008:  fn1). Furthermore, the CG notion “Ground” is more specific than that of “common ground” (e.g. Clark 1996), since the latter comprises all shared knowledge that is needed for understanding and rather corresponds to Langacker’s (2008: 466) “Current Discourse Space”, which includes the Ground as only one of its ingredients.

Modality and mood in cognitive linguistics    521 linguistic element inherently involves construal from the speaker’s viewpoint, it will be clear that the Ground constitutes a necessary part of any speech event. In fact, in order to enable successful communication, a speaker needs to relate his utterance to the Ground by using so-​called “grounding devices”: grammatical means to anchor the referents to the speech situation. For finite clauses in English, Langacker (1991: ch. 6) assumes that tense and modal verbs constitute such grounding devices, and this notion is, therefore, crucial for an understanding of the treatment of modality in CG. In its infinitival form, a verb merely presents a type of process. In a finite clause, the verb is combined with tense or a modal verb to indicate a specific, “grounded” instance of such a situation—​just like, in the nominal domain, the word chair only refers to a type of thing and needs to be combined with a grounding element—​for instance, a or the or this—​to constitute a grounded noun phrase and refer to an instance in the world of speaker and hearer (on type versus instance, see Langacker 2008:  264–​272). By using a grounding device, the speaker not only indicates that the referent is related to the Ground, as such, but also how it is related to it: the speaker typically has a choice between grounding devices that each indicate a different status of the referent in relation to the Ground (see, for instance, the choice between this and that in the nominal domain). According to Brisard and Patard (2011: 2), the relation between a proposition and the Ground is inherently an epistemic one, “since the speaker/​conceptualizer, when talking about concrete states of affairs, is primarily interested in the knowledge status that is to be assigned to them” (our emphasis, RB & EF). As for the verbal domain, in both (6) and (7) the situation of being ill is grounded by means of tense, with the choice between present and past typically indicating coincidence and precedence with respect to the Ground, respectively. (6) He is ill. (7) He was ill. By using an indicative tense and no modal verb, the speaker in (6) and (7) presents the situation as part of reality. In (8) and (9), however, the situation of being ill as expressed by the infinitive is related to the Ground by means of a modal verb—​more generally, infinitival complements are connected to the Ground via an inflected, tensed verb. (8) He may be ill. (9) He might be ill. In (8) and (9), there is a tense contrast as well, between may and might, but it indicates different degrees of epistemic certainty rather than temporal distance to the Ground. In these utterances, the situation of him being ill is not presented as part of reality, but is assessed in relation to reality.

522    Ronny Boogaart and Egbert Fortuin Given such non-​temporal uses of tense forms, also observable in other verbs, there has been some discussion within cognitive linguistics about the meaning of tense, more specifically about the question whether the semantics of present and past forms should itself be considered a matter of modality rather than time (see Boogaart and Janssen 2007 for an overview of analyses of tense and aspect in cognitive linguistics). Thus, the difference both between (6) and (7) and between (8) and (9) may be described in terms of “epistemic immediacy” (Brisard 1999) or an even more general cognitive notion such as “focality” (Janssen 1993), covering both modal and temporal uses. For Langacker, the question whether the category of tense expresses either modal or temporal semantics is not really an either/​or issue. In addition to prototypical temporal values, Langacker does accept the existence of schematic characterizations valid for all uses of tense forms (Langacker 2011), such as “proximal” vs “distal” for present and past, respectively (Langacker 1991).4

22.4.2 Grounding, modal verbs, and mood Langacker’s analysis of the modal verbs in English (8) and (9) as grounding devices cannot easily be extended to all the different uses of all modal verbs in English, nor to modal verbs in other languages. Unlike may/​might, can/​could, and must, modals such as English have to, need to, and be able to show person marking and have infinite forms. Therefore, they do not serve merely to ground an infinitive, like may and might do in (8) and (9). Rather, they are themselves grounded by tense, like is and was are in (6) and (7). Such verbs are said to “profile” the modal relation, or to put the modal relation “on stage”, whereas in instances such as (8) and (9), only the infinitive is profiled. In the latter, the modal verb is there to ground the infinitive and its semantic contribution consists only of specifying epistemic status with respect to the Ground. Goossens (1996), however, shows that English can may be grounded by tense as well: in its dynamic use (he could play the piano when he was six) the modal relation of ability is clearly on stage. Since the past tense in such examples expresses the temporal location of the ability in relation to the Ground, it is tense rather than the modal which serves as the grounding device. In a similar vein, Pelyvás (1996) has argued that among the modal verbs only the epistemic ones function as grounding devices (cf. Cornillie 2007). In fact, he argues that “epistemic grounding” is not so much a grammatical but rather a functional notion, and he excludes dynamic and deontic modals, but includes mental 4  Modality and mood do not only interact with tense, but also with aspect. In particular, imperfective rather than perfective past forms serve many modal functions, expressing hypothetical and other non-​real situations (Fleischman 1995). A CG account of the phenomenon is offered by Brisard (2010). Boogaart and Trnavac (2011) extend the analysis to include the epistemic reading of modal verbs when accompanied by a stative/​imperfective complement.

Modality and mood in cognitive linguistics    523 state predicates (e.g. I think that) and modal adverbs (e.g. probably) as grounding devices (cf. Nuyts 2002). Like have to, need to, and be able to in English, modal verbs in many languages do not constitute a grammatical grounding device on a par with tense, but rather behave like content verbs that are grounded by tense—​crucially, the existence of non-​finite forms for modals is incompatible with the assumption that they only have a grounding function. Within the framework of CG, this has been shown for German by Mortelmans (2001), for French by Achard (1998), and for Spanish by Cornillie (2007). The authors agree, however, that in these languages also some uses of modal verbs, most notably epistemic uses, are highly grammaticalized and as such do function as grounding predications. The resulting picture, then, is one in which grounding is a gradient rather than a binary phenomenon. The degree of grammaticalization of modals differs not only between languages, but also between modal verbs within one language, and modal verbs may thus constitute grounding predications “to a higher or lesser extent” (Mortelmans 2006; Smirnova and Mortelmans 2011). Moreover, in the languages just mentioned, the grounding of finite clauses (“clausal grounding”) is achieved not only by tense but also by the distinction between the indicative and the subjunctive mood. Thus, mood is analyzed as a grounding device as well: verbal mood markers modify whole propositions and as such indicate the relationship between the profiled situation and the Ground. Like all grounding elements, they are crucially concerned with the knowledge status of situations from the speaker’s viewpoint. A situation may be conceived of by the speaker as laying “within reality” (indicative) or “outside of reality” (subjunctive), characterized more generally by Mortelmans (2000b) as positive vs negative epistemic stance in the sense of Fillmore (1990). Since epistemic modal verbs, too, may be grounded by mood, this raises questions as to the division of labor between modality and mood. For German, Mortelmans (2000b) shows that the Konjunktiv II (the preterit subjunctive) expresses negative epistemic stance, while the epistemic modal verbs locate a process in “potential” or “projected” reality (see section 22.4.3 below; cf. Smirnova 2011 for a somewhat different view). Some combinations of modal verbs and mood, however, are less clearly compositional and may receive “unit status”—​Mortelmans argues that this applies to German dürfen “might”. In addition to tense, mood (indicative versus subjunctive), and epistemic modal verbs, “sentence mood” may also be included among the grounding elements of an utterance. This is proposed, for instance, by Dirven and Verspoor (1998:  95), who define grounding as “relating an event to the speaker’s experience of the world”. Representing grounding elements as “layers enveloping an event”, they regard the level of the speech act as the outermost grounding layer of the sentence. Speakers utter sentences to realize their communicative intentions, and in Dirven and Verspoor’s view, expressing this intention by means of one of the three sentence moods—​declarative, interrogative, imperative—​is an instance of grounding as well. They represent the grounding function of modal verbs and tense, as discussed above, at levels closer to the core of the sentence (the event), as shown in Figure 22.2 (cf. Dirven and Verspoor

524    Ronny Boogaart and Egbert Fortuin

SENTENCE MOOD MODALITY

TENSE

EVENT

Figure 22.2  Layers of grounding

1998: 100 for a more elaborate version of this scheme, using somewhat different terminology)—​the layers are ordered around the event according to the “principle of distance” (1998: 10), that is how closely the layers are conceptually related to the event.5

22.4.3 Subjectivity In addition to grounding, the CG account of modality makes use of the related concept of “subjectivity”. As noted above, it is the basic assumption of cognitive linguistics that all language use is subjective, since it involves construal on the part of the speaker, and this may be identified with Langacker’s (2008: 259) claim that the Ground, which includes the speaker’s viewpoint, is a necessary part of any speech event. Even if the Ground is not explicitly referred to, it still functions as a tacit point of reference for every utterance. The distinction between explicit and implicit reference to elements of the Ground is crucial to understand Langacker’s use of the term “subjectivity”. Elements of the Ground—​ such as the speaker, the hearer and the time and place of speaking—​are considered to be more subjectively construed if they remain implicit.6 For instance, both in (10) and in

5 Dirven

and Verspoor (1998) use the term “mood” exclusively to indicate sentence mood (declarative, interrogative, imperative) and they do not include verbal or grammatical mood, such as the distinction between indicative and subjunctive forms, in their layered representation of grounding elements. 6  Langacker’s use of the term “subjectivity” as primarily pertaining to the implicit presentation of speaker involvement is specific to CG and, crucially, differs from Traugott’s (1989; Traugott and Dasher 2002) use of the same term: in Traugott’s approach, more subjective meanings are “speaker-​related” to a higher degree, irrespective of the question whether the speaker makes this explicit or not. Narrog (2012b) and Nuyts (2012b) offer useful discussions of the various uses of the notion of subjectivity in the domain of modality.

Modality and mood in cognitive linguistics    525 (11), the evaluative adjective handsome is inherently subjective, but in (10) the Ground is more subjectively construed than in (11), since in the latter the conceptualizer (I) and the construal relationship (think) are themselves conceptualized and thus “on stage”. (10) This man is handsome. (11) I think this man is handsome. As Langacker emphasizes, linguistic expressions or meanings cannot be objective or subjective as a whole since such claims can be made only for specific entities within the overall conception. In (11), for instance, the speaker and the construal relationship may be considered “objectified”, but the entity referred to by this man is still more subjectively construed than is the man next to me in (12). In any utterance, the object of conceptualization is somehow presented from the speakers’ viewpoint, but in (12) the speaker makes his viewpoint explicit, thus construing the Ground more objectively. (12) I think the man next to me is handsome. In the realm of modality and mood, Langacker (2003) illustrates the more or less subjective construal of ground elements by means of the “different types of imperatives” in (13)–​(15).7 (13) Shred those documents right now! (14) You shred those documents right now! (15) I order you to shred those documents right now! In these utterances, the speech event participants are engaged in a force-​dynamic interaction (cf. section 22.2) in which the speaker tries to get the hearer to carry out a certain action. To do so, the speaker can make different portions of the Ground explicit: in (13), only the action is objectively construed; in (14), the hearer is overtly singled out as well, whereas in (15) the interaction itself is described; it is put on stage as an object of conceptualization. Thus, (13)–​(15) show a scale from more to less subjective construal of the Ground; even in (13) the Ground is not maximally subjective since right now profiles the time of the speech event. According to Langacker (2003: 5), the choice between the alternatives in (13)–​(15) is dependent on “such factors as the degree of cooperation expected, and hence the amount that needs to be put on stage for focused awareness”. The notion of subjectivity is also crucial for the CG account of modal verbs. It is used, both synchronically and diachronically, to describe the different uses of modal verbs. These may be more or less subjective, depending on the extent to which they pertain 7  A detailed

CG account of imperatives, in English and Japanese, is provided by Takahashi (2012). Langacker (2008: 467ff) offers a general introduction to sentence types and illocution in CG.

526    Ronny Boogaart and Egbert Fortuin either to the subject of conceptualization, that is the Ground, or to the object of conceptualization, that is the situation the sentence “is about”. As long as modal verbs are used as main verbs, their force-​dynamic semantics (section 22.2) designates a kind of potency which tends to induce the occurrence of the activity in the complement of the modal. This potency (or “modal source”) is located in the first argument participant who has the power, the ability, or the desire to realize the situation in the complement. This potency is “on stage”, or “profiled”, which basically means that it is the situation that the utterance is about. This type of construal is expressed by non-​epistemic uses of modal verbs, including English (16). (16) He could already play the piano at the age of six! (17) He could be dead by now (for all I know). In the epistemic use of modal verbs, as exemplified in (17), it is not the meaning of the modal verb itself that is profiled, but rather the situation designated by the complement. Whereas (16) is about an ability of the subject referent, (17) is about the possible situation that the subject referent is dead. In both (16) and (17), could expresses some kind of potency. In (16), this force-​dynamic aspect is part of the object of conceptualization, but in (17) it is less objectively construed. In fact, in the epistemic use, the first argument participant is no longer the locus of the potency, or the modal source. Instead, the modal force is an aspect of the speaker’s experience. To capture this, Langacker (2008: 306) uses the “idealized cognitive model” (ICM) (Lakoff 1987) of time and modality in Figure 22.3. The double dashed arrow on the left is meant to represent the modal force as it is construed in epistemic utterances such as (17). The model captures our intuition that the speaker conceptualizes reality as evolving along a certain path. The circle in the middle represents the speaker’s experience of reality—​termed “conceived reality”—​up to and including the here and now of the Ground. By using an epistemic modal to ground the situation, the speaker indicates that the situation is not (yet) accepted as real, that is, it is not part of conceived reality. However, on the basis of his experience, the speaker will construe some future paths as being more likely to become part of reality than others. This is considered to constitute

Conceived Reality (Rc) t

C

Projected Reality

Potential Reality

Figure 22.3  Epistemic stance conceptualized as a force-​dynamic experience Source: Langacker 2008: 306

Modality and mood in cognitive linguistics    527 a force-​dynamic experience that may be relatively more easy or difficult, corresponding to the different kinds and degrees of likelihood expressed by modal verbs. Thus, the choice of the modal is determined by the mental effort that is needed to imagine the situation becoming part of reality. If the speaker presents the situation as part of “projected reality”, for instance by using will in English, he indicates that he is confident that the situation will reach reality status. By using a modal such as may, on the other hand, he construes the situation as part only of “potential reality”; by using might rather than may, the assessment of potentiality is rendered “more tenuous”.8 Epistemic modal verbs, then, crucially involve the speaker’s assessment. The modal force originates, as it were, in the Ground, rather than in the first argument participant, even if the modal verb does not explicitly refer to the Ground. This is why the epistemic modals constitute grounding devices (section 22.4.1): they evoke some facet of the Ground without mentioning it explicitly—​and they are, therefore, considered subjective. Of course, non-​epistemic uses of modal verbs do not make the Ground explicit either, but they are still considered less subjective since in their interpretation the Ground is much less prominent: the modal meaning of sentences such as (16) primarily pertains to the object of conceptualization, the Ground merely functions as an implicit point of reference, as it does in any utterance. On a scale from less to more subjective uses of modal verbs, deontic uses as in (18) are somewhere in between (16) and (17). (18) You can come in now. As in (17), the first argument participant in deontic utterances is not the locus of potency (the modal source). In fact, in deontic uses, dealing with obligation and permission, the grammatical subject is usually the target rather than the source of the modal force. However, in the case of deontic modality, the force inherent in the modal verb is still meant to be effective, that is, it is aimed at actually bringing about the profiled situation. In this sense, deontic modals are still more about the object of conceptualization—​and, therefore, less subjective—​than epistemic modals are. Finally, at the most subjective (epistemic) end of the scale Langacker (2003) makes a further distinction between judgments about possible future scenarios, as in (19), and epistemic statements about the present, such as (20). (19) He could/​may/​might/​must win an Oscar tonight. (20) He could/​may/​might/​must be dead by now. Langacker considers epistemic judgments about the future to be prototypical since they pertain to how the world can be expected to evolve; they are predictions about 8  According to Langacker (2008: 309), could, as used in (17), is roughly comparable to might: “The difference is that could offers a positive judgment of (tenous) potentiality, whereas might (like may) employs the negative strategy of specifying that the evolution of Rc [conceived reality] to encompass the grounded process is not precluded”.

528    Ronny Boogaart and Egbert Fortuin the external flow of events. In fact, the interpretation of sentences such as (19) corresponds most closely to the epistemic model in Figure 22.3. The shift from “epistemic about the future” (as in (19)) to “epistemic about the present” (as in (20)) represents an instance of “subjectification” beyond the high degree of subjectivity that is already implied in (19), since in (20), evolution of the world “out there” is not at issue at all: what evolves is what the speaker knows. The modal verb in (20) is future-​oriented as well, but what is located in the future is not the grounded process itself, but rather the incorporation of this process in the speaker’s conception of reality. In this respect, Langacker (2003) draws an analogy with the use of the present tense for generics, for scheduled futures and as a historical present. Like epistemic modals used for present situations, these are cases of extreme subjectification, since any direct concern with the occurrence of actual events, at the level of the object of conceptualization, is eliminated. It turns out, then, that Langacker uses the concept of subjectivity in two different, but related ways, both of which are relevant for the study of modality and mood. On the one hand, the Ground is said to be subjectively construed if it remains implicit (see discussion of (10)–​(15)). In this sense, grounding elements—​such as tense, mood, and epistemic modal verbs—​are called subjective since they evoke the speaker’s viewpoint even if it is not made explicit (section 22.4.2). On the other hand, if no element of the Ground is explicitly referred to, other elements can still be more or less subjective depending on how much their interpretation depends on the implicit viewpoint of the speaker, hence on the Ground of the discourse (see (16)–​(20)).9 It is the latter aspect of subjectivity that is central to the CG account of modal verbs, since it allows us to distinguish, within this subjective category, between different uses in terms of their degree of subjectivity.

22.5  Modality and mood in construction grammar(s) The label “construction grammar” covers different schools of linguistics that share the assumption that language consists exclusively of symbolic units: conventionalized pairings of form and meaning (overviews of different constructionist approaches are offered by Croft and Cruse 2004: 225–​257, Evans and Green 2006: 641–​706, and the contributions in Hoffmann and Trousdale eds. 2013).10 In descriptive practice, construction 9 

This second aspect of subjectivity more closely resembles Traugott’s use of the term (cf. note 6) than the first one. 10  In fact, Langacker’s CG may be regarded as a specific branch of construction grammar as well. The reason that we presented the CG account of modality and mood separately in section 22.4 is that Langacker’s analysis in terms of grounding and subjectivity is highly specific and elaborate, and does

Modality and mood in cognitive linguistics    529 grammarians often focus on patterns of which the meaning cannot be compositionally derived from their constituting parts: they have syntactic, semantic, and/​or pragmatic properties that do not follow automatically from the lexical items involved. Such combinations must therefore be learned and stored separately as such, that is, as constructions. In some constructionist models, non-​compositionality is not a necessary property of constructions since psycholinguistic research has shown that even fully predictable combinations may be stored if they are “sufficiently frequent” (Goldberg 2006: 64; cf. also Tomasello 2003, Diessel 2004). In the study of modality and mood the notion of a construction is useful mainly because many modal forms are notoriously polysemous and “modal constructions” may be regarded as “constraints on polysemy” (Boogaart 2009). We will illustrate this specifically for constructions involving modal verbs (section 22.5.2) and for imperatives (section 22.5.3), but we start out with a discussion of complementation (section 22.5.1), which from a constructionist perspective turns out to involve modality as well.

22.5.1 Complementation As Diessel (2004) has shown, the earliest instances of non-​finite complementation in acquisition occur with formulaic clauses such as “I wanna + inf” and “I hafta + inf”. The use of such combinations does not mean that the child has acquired a more abstract, syntactic rule of infinitival complementation (aux + to + inf). According to Diessel, the matrix (wanna, hafta) is functionally more like a modal modifier. Similarly, finite complement clauses start out as constructions denoting one single situation rather than two: a “main clause” such as I think (that vp) does not denote a separate mental activity, but rather functions as an epistemic marker to an assertion in an independent “complement clause” that is not, or not yet, syntactically embedded (Diessel and Tomasello 2001). In fact, according to Thompson (2002) and Verhagen (2005), something highly similar holds for the adult grammar: the subclause in the complementation construction often provides the more important information, while the matrix is typically constituted by “epistemic/​evidential/​evaluative formulaic fragments expressing speaker stance toward the content of a clause” (Thompson 2002: 125). In Langacker’s terminology (section 22.4), the main clause does not primarily represent an object of conceptualization but rather functions at the level of the subject of conceptualization. As a consequence, modal verbs that are used as the matrix verb of a finite complement clause typically receive an epistemic reading. In German and Dutch, for instance, the epistemic reading of modal verbs is correlated with the syntactic pattern of impersonal complementation illustrated in (21). not crucially involve the notion of a construction. Not all constructionist schools are equally cognitive in orientation, witness, in particular, the formal models of “Berkeley Construction Grammar” (Fillmore 2013) and “Sign-​Based Construction Grammar” (Michaelis 2013), which are not explicitly discussed in this chapter.

530    Ronny Boogaart and Egbert Fortuin (21) Dutch (Nuyts 2001a: 189) Het it

kan can

benzine fuel

(zou would gevallen fallen

kunnen) can

zijn be

dat that

ze they

zonder without

zijn. be

‘It may (might) be that they have run out of fuel.’ In many languages, complement clauses may be used independently, without an explicit main clause (that it should have come to this!); this phenomenon is also observed more generally for subordinate clauses and is labeled “insubordination” by Evans (2007). As Evans notes, such constructions often have the modal function of expressing the speaker’s viewpoint towards the propositional contents of the utterance—​which is precisely the function of the explicit matrix in “complete” complement constructions. For independent complements in Dutch, Verstraete et al. (2012) show that they are used for a whole range of, in particular, deontic modal and evaluative functions (cf. Panther and Thornburg 2011 on German), suggesting that “insubordinate constructions are interesting for the analysis of modality and evaluation because they bring to the surface a range of parameters that are not found in more typical grammatical exponents like modal verbs and mood markers” (Verstraete et al. 2012: 124).

22.5.2 Other modal constructions While there has not been much research into modality phrased explicitly in terms of construction grammar, the example involving complementation in (21) illustrates how the framework may contribute to the study of modal verbs. Constructionist approaches have shifted attention away from abstract rules and meanings to specific and concrete constructions that can be observed—​and thus acquired—​in actual language use. Since verbs are never used in isolation but are always part of larger constructions, the latter may be regarded as constraints on polysemy: the specific interpretation of the modal is to a large extent determined by the construction in which it is used (see, among others, Coates 1983 and Heine 1995 for compatible proposals preceding the rise of construction grammar(s)). Moreover, such individual modal constructions may then have idiosyncratic properties that are not, and need not be, predictable from the meaning of the constituting parts. For example, for the German modals, Diewald (2006: 19) suggests that (22) and (23) present instances of two “partly productive, idiomatic constructions”. (22) German (Diewald 2006: 19) Er he

hat has

sie her

loben praise

‘He has been able to praise her.’

können. can

Modality and mood in cognitive linguistics    531 (23) German (Diewald 2006: 19) Er he

kann can

sie her

gelobt praised

haben. have

‘He may have praised her.’ Whereas (22), where the modal appears in the perfect form, gets a non-​epistemic reading, the utterance in (23), in which the modal has a perfect complement, can only get an epistemic reading. Since these two readings are systematically linked up with specific formal elements (“inflected perfect auxiliary + infinitive of modal verb” vs “inflected modal verb + infinitive of perfect auxiliary”), these examples may be regarded as instantiations of two different constructions. A similar line of argumentation is taken by Bybee (2010: ch. 9), dealing with high-​ frequency combinations with can and can’t, and by Boogaart (2009), focusing on Dutch kunnen ‘can’. Wärnsby (2006) offers a compatible analysis of English must and may in comparison with the Swedish equivalents måste and kan, introducing data mining techniques to reveal statistically significant patterns in the distribution of relevant features. Bergs (2010) provides a constructionist account of English expressions of future time, including the modal verbs shall and will. Future constructions are also central to Hilpert’s (2008) synchronic and diachronic use of “collostructional analysis” (cf. section 22.5.3 below) to determine co-​occurrence patterns between future auxiliaries and lexical items in various Germanic languages. Outside the domain of modal verbs, types of modal expressions that have received constructionist analyses along the same lines include modal infinitive constructions in Russian (Fortuin 2000, 2005), German (Deppermann 2006; Stefanowitsch 2010) and English (Goldberg and Van der Auwera 2012), deontic and evaluative adjectives in English (Van linden 2012), the polyfunctional particle magari ‘may be, I wish’ in Italian (Masini and Pietrandrea 2010), collocations of modal particles in Dutch (Van der Wouden 2002) and in Ancient Greek (Koier 2013), as well as the potential optative in classical Greek drama (Drummen 2013).

22.5.3 Sentence mood (illocution) When Lakoff (1987) introduced the notion of “grammatical constructions” in the sense in which it is now widely used in constructionist approaches (“direct pairings of parameters of form with parameters of meaning”, 1987: 464), he explicitly included “speech act constructions”: “constructions that are restricted in their use to expressing certain illocutionary forces that are specified as part of the grammar of English” (1987: 474). As examples, he listed, among others, the deictic there-​construction in (24) directing the hearer’s attention, the inverted exclamation in (25) expressing surprise, and the rhetorical question in (26) conveying the corresponding negative statement (Lakoff 1987: 474–​475).

532    Ronny Boogaart and Egbert Fortuin (24) There goes Harry! (25) Boy! Is he ever tall! (26) Who on earth can stop Bernard? Both the syntactic form and the semantics of these speech act constructions show idiosyncrasies, and in the mainstream generative grammar of those days grammatical patterns such as these were therefore considered too peripheral to merit much attention. It is against this background that Lakoff ’s attention for these non-​central clause structures must be understood. In a similar spirit, Michaelis and Lambrecht (1996) offer a highly detailed analysis of the more general exclamative sentence type. Hoffmann (2013) offers a constructionist perspective on the more “traditional” clause types, handling “declarative clause”, “imperative clause”, and “interrogative clause” as “stored abstract constructions”. The interrogative type is treated in some detail by Ginzburg and Sag (2001), who, working within the framework of HPSG, also assume “the primacy of constructions” (2000: 4). Hoffmann (2013:  309)  starts off from the observation that, typically, declarative clauses are used for statements, interrogative clauses for questioning, and imperative clauses for commands. Whereas this may perhaps be their prototypical semantic function, the relationship between syntactic form and speech act function is of course much more complex. Within construction grammar, the issue is addressed by Stefanowitsch (2003), who argues that at least conventionalized indirect speech acts should be considered constructions, direct pairings of form and pragmatic function, in their own right. The discussion has more general significance for issues of modality and mood since most of the conventionalized indirect speech acts contain a modal verb. Among the different readings of imperative clauses, a basic distinction can be made between directive and non-​directive readings. In their “collostructional” analysis—​a blend of “collocational” and “constructional”—​Stefanowitsch and Gries (2003) investigate the interaction between words and the grammatical constructions associated with them. For the imperative construction, they found that the purely directive use of the imperative, in which the addressee is supposed to carry out an action for the benefit of the speaker, is rare in English. In fact, imperatives are avoided with typical action verbs. So-​called “collexemes” of the construction, that is, the verbs that significantly often occur in the imperative (compared to their general frequency), have an attention-​ directing function and, moreover, concern an action that is portrayed as being in the interest of the addressee rather than the speaker (let, see, look, listen, remember). Among the non-​directive uses of the imperative, the conditional use in particular, illustrated in (27), has received attention from constructional linguists. Dancygier and Sweetser (2005) and Takahashi (2006, 2012) have shown that the conditional reading of the imperative in this pattern originates from a more general pattern, that is, the conditional paratactic construction (Culicover and Jackendoff 1997). As a matter of fact, the conditional interpretation arises in paratactic constructions with other types of predicates in the first clause as well, such as in (28).

Modality and mood in cognitive linguistics    533 (27) Break that vase and I will break your neck. (28) You drink one more can of beer and I am leaving! In construction grammar, the relationship between more abstract constructions such as the conditional paratactic construction, present in (27) and (28), and more specific instantiations of it, such as the conditional imperative construction in (27), is represented in a hierarchical network in which constructions “inherit” formal and semantic features from their more abstract “parent constructions”. Thus, the conditional interpretation of the imperative in (27) is inherited from a higher-​level paratactic construction. In fact, Fortuin and Boogaart (2009) argue that the highly specific semantics of the conditional imperative construction can be explained entirely as resulting from constructional inheritance: from the conditional paratactic construction it inherits not only its conditional meaning but also the “restrictive” semantics that “only X is needed for Y to occur”. From the directive use of the imperative, the conditional use inherits a weakened notion of hearer-​directedness (or intersubjectivity). Thus, it is argued that the interpretation of the conditional imperative construction is fully predictable on the basis of its parent constructions. As such, the analysis illustrates, again, how construction grammar may be used in dealing with polysemy in the domain of modality and mood.

22.6 Conclusion Since cognitive linguistics is generally concerned with the ways in which language users conceptualize the world from their own point of view (“construal”), the categories of modality and mood lend themselves quite naturally to a cognitive linguistic analysis, since these categories crucially involve speaker attitude and perspective. Moreover, modal forms, and especially modal verbs, constitute textbook examples of polysemy, which for a long time was one of the main research topics in cognitive linguistics. The focus on the polysemy and, more generally, on the conceptual-​semantic side of modality and mood, has been manifest in cognitive linguistics from the beginning, starting with accounts in terms of force-​dynamics (Talmy), metaphorical mappings between different domains (Sweetser), and mental spaces (Fauconnier). All of these have inspired the more encompassing model of Cognitive Grammar (Langacker), in which modality and mood are analyzed as grounding devices that may be more or less subjective. The more recent advance of construction grammar(s) can be seen as complementary to these basically semantic accounts by focusing on the formal side of modality and mood: constructionist accounts explicitly regard the different functions or meanings of a given modal form as constructional in nature, which means that they are systematically ascribed to differences in the larger linguistic context in which the form is used.

534    Ronny Boogaart and Egbert Fortuin The focus on modal verbs has remained to this day, which leaves the further study of other modal forms, such as modal adverbs and adjectives, and a more systematic treatment of mood, including illocutionary force, as a clear desideratum for future research in cognitive linguistics and construction grammar(s).

Abbreviations sg

singular

pres present det determiner irr irrealis

Chapter 23

Modalit y and mo od i n f ormal sem a nt i c s Magdalena Kaufmann and Stefan Kaufmann

23.1 Introduction Modality and mood share an uneven fate in the history of formal semantics. While modal expressions, in particular modal auxiliaries like can and must, have been investigated in detail, mood has received less attention. Also, while there is a standard formal analysis of modality in the framework of possible-​worlds semantics that is applied to a wide range of phenomena, no such common ground exists for mood. In recent years, however, a sizeable body of work on mood has emerged which systematically draws on the formal tools developed for the analysis of modals. Concurrently, research on modal expressions across languages has raised empirical problems for the standard framework, prompting calls for adjustments and augmentations. Thus the formal approach is broadening its reach and incessantly evolving, providing researchers with the tools to formulate and test empirical claims while simultaneously testing and refining the theory. In section 23.2 we focus on modality as exemplified by modal verbs. We present the main concepts and introduce the most common basic formal apparatus, and we survey some of the phenomena that are currently central in the field. In section 23.3 we turn to the treatment of mood: we discuss formal semantic treatments of both “sentential mood” and “verbal mood”. In section 23.4, finally, we address the issue of modal subordination. The space allotted does not allow for detailed discussions; instead, our main goal is to give the reader a sense of the major phenomena and theoretical approaches, as well as the tools necessary to follow the pointers and appreciate the primary literature.

536    Magdalena Kaufmann and Stefan Kaufmann

23.2 Modality 23.2.1 Modal flavors and modal forces The formal investigation of modality starts from the observation that modal verbs like must and may can be classified along two dimensions. Consider (1). (1) a.  John must be home. b.  John may be home. First, modals like must and may relate the proposition appearing in their scope (henceforth the “prejacent”—​that John is home in (1)) to some body of information that represents what is known, what is commanded, what is desired, what is aimed at, etc. In the following we refer to the nature of the relevant body of information as the “modal flavor”. Second, modal expressions differ in the relation they express between this body of information and the prejacent. This relation is known as the “modal force”. Roughly, it is “consequence” for must (a necessity modal) and “consistency” for may (a possibility modal). Thus the sentences in (1) are analyzed as stating that John’s being home is either a consequence of (in the case of must) or consistent with (in the case of may) the information available to the speaker, the curfew imposed by his parents, his goal of staying out of trouble, or whatever else might constitute the relevant body of information in a given context. Many of the discussions in the literature revolve around the exact nature and appropriate formal representation of the modal flavors and modal forces encountered in natural-​language expressions of modality, but the centrality of these two parameters is generally unquestioned. The modal flavors recognized in formal semantics are largely similar to those discussed in other contributions in this volume (consider in particular Chapter 3). Generally, though, researchers in this tradition tend to focus less on taxonomic considerations: oftentimes, they start out with a coarsely grained labeling which is only refined further if particular characteristics turn out to be relevant for the analysis at hand. For the moment, we will assume a fairly standard inventory of “epistemic” (what is known), “deontic” (what is commanded), “teleological” (what is aimed at, intention), “bouletic” (what is desired—​overlapping with both “volitional” and “boulomaic” modality in Chapter 3), and “dynamic” (what the relevant facts and/​or abilities are) modal flavors.1 Reportative uses of modals (what is said) can be included as well, but are more often left out.2 Following Hofmann (1976), the non-​epistemic flavors are 1 

See Werner (2011) for discussion of a variety of subtypes ranging from circumstantial (concerning the relevant facts in a given situation) to dispositional (concerning an agent’s general abilities) modalities from a formal semantic point of view. 2  Reportative modals straddle the boundary to evidentiality (see Chapters 3 and 4). For reasons of space, we do not deal with this category in our survey.

Modality and mood in formal semantics    537 often grouped together as “root modalities”, but recent work in formal and other traditions emphasizes the lack of a positive definition of this category (see also Chapter 3). Instead, Portner (2009) proposes “prioritizing modality” as a cover term for all modal flavors related to rules, goals, or desires—​chiefly, deontic, teleological, and bouletic modalities. The study of modality in this framework is not limited to modal auxiliaries like must and may, but has been extended to other expressions that are amenable to an analysis in terms of modal flavor and modal force. Kratzer (1981) mentions German adjectival suffixes like –​bar and –​lich, which in general express that the action indicated by the verbal stem is possible, typically in a dispositional sense (e.g. waschbar ‘washable’; löslich ‘soluble’). She also discusses sentence adverbials (e.g. möglicherweise ‘possibly’), impersonal constructions (es ist möglich, dass ‘it is possible that’), and adjectival phrases like (to be) able to. Nouns (e.g. Möglichkeit ‘possibility’) and attitude predicates (e.g. believe, demand, want) are not standardly included in formal semantic surveys of modality, but they are analyzed similarly (see in particular Hintikka 1962; Lewis 1979; and Heim 1992) and interact with modal verbs and mood in various ways (see for instance Farkas 1985, 1992, 2003; Portner 1997, 2007; Matthewson 2010). Furthermore, formal semantic approaches are concerned with modality as expressed by a wide range of grammatical constructions. Thus we find dispositional interpretations of the present tense as in (2a) (Smith 1991): (2) a.  This machine crushes peanuts. b.  The train departs at 5pm. Aside from its habitual reading, (2a) can also be used to state the purpose for which the machine was constructed; in this sense it may be true regardless of whether the machine has ever been put to use. The English simple present has also been shown to possess a “scheduling” reading (Lakoff 1971; Kaufmann 2005a; Kaufmann et  al. 2006): (2b) states that the train’s departing at 5pm is determined by a set of rules or regulations (a schedule); crucially, it does not entail that the train actually does depart at 5pm. Such sentences suggest that a modal element is present in the meaning of the tense. The English progressive likewise involves a modal element: (3) a.  John was crossing the street. b.  The coin is coming up heads. While (3a) does not entail that John did cross the street (the sentence may be true even if John was run over by a truck halfway across), it does imply that his crossing the street was more than a mere possibility—​that it was in some sense “bound to” happen (witness the fact that (3b) seems to suggest that the coin is rigged). The exact nature of this modal element has been the subject of much debate (Dowty 1979; Landman 1992; Portner 1998).

538    Magdalena Kaufmann and Stefan Kaufmann Temporal connectives, too, can carry modal implications. For instance, while before can simply express a temporal relation between two events, as in (4a), the event described by the embedded clause need not actually have taken place, as in (4b). (4) a.  Mozart wrote Le nozze di Figaro before he wrote Don Giovanni. b.  Mozart died before he finished the Requiem. On the latter, non-​veridical use, the sentence still implies that the event in question was in some sense likely—​“reasonably probable” in Beaver and Condoravdi’s (2003) modal analysis. Certain infinitival constructions with or without an infinitival marker (English to, German zu) trigger modal meanings as well (cf. Bhatt 1999): cf. English (5) (from Hackl and Nissenbaum 2012: 60) and German (6). (5) Mrs. Schaden found many things (for us) to do. (6) German (b. from Reis 2003: 157f) a. Was what

ist is

heute today

zu to

tun? do

‘What do we/​does one have to do today?’ b. Wohin where-​to

jetzt now

gehen? go.inf

‘Where could/​should/​may one [I, we] go now?’ Finally, it is generally accepted that conditional sentences have genuinely modal meanings (cf. Lewis 1975; Kratzer 1978, 1991a, 2012).3 The underlying intuition is that the antecedent is added to the body of information relative to which the consequent is evaluated.4 Kratzer applies this analysis even in sentences without an overt modal expression, such as (7a). (7) a.  If the light is on, he is at home. b.  If the light is on, he must be at home. c.  If the light is on, he will be at home. These cases, she maintains, involve a covert default operator with the semantics of epistemic must. Thus the sentences in (7) are predicted to be equivalent (or nearly 3  In

the Lewis–​Kratzer tradition, the modal meaning arises from an overt or covert modal in the consequent, and not from the connective “if ” (pace Gillies 2010). Therefore we group conditionals with grammatical constructions and not with lexical items. 4  This idea, known as the “Ramsey Test” (Ramsey 1929), has wide currency in the philosophical literature as well, although there is considerable debate as to whether all conditionals fit the same pattern (see the surveys in Edgington 1995; Bennett 2003; see also Gillies 2010, Khoo 2011 for recent discussion). Conditionals are largely beyond the scope of this survey.

Modality and mood in formal semantics    539 so, depending on the details of the analysis of the modals involved). Many English conditionals have the auxiliary will in the consequent, as in (7c). These cases fit the Kratzer-​style analysis well under the widely accepted assumption that will is in fact a modal with some temporal import (Abusch 1988; Condoravdi 2002, 2003; Kaufmann 2005b; see Kissine 2008, Klecha 2011, 2014b for recent discussion).

23.2.2 How many musts and mays? Across languages, there seems to be a strong tendency for the modal force to be lexically encoded (as in English with must for consequence and may for consistency). The modal flavor, on the other hand, often depends on the context of use. One way to account for this is to postulate separate lexical entries for each modal flavor. But authors since Kratzer (1977) found this implausible because the versatility and context dependence seems to be very common across languages: besides well-​known Indo-​European examples, Palmer (1986: 87–​89) reports examples from Tamil (Dravidian), Ngiyambaa (Pama-​Nyungan), Tubatulabal (Uto-​Aztecan), Abkhaz (Caucasian), Cairene Arabic (Semitic), and Lao (Thai). Moreover, the range of variation seems to be indefinite, casting doubt on the feasibility of an account in terms of lexical ambiguity. Consider (8) and (9). (8) John may not park here. a.  The law prohibits parking within less than 2 meters from a fire hydrant. b.  John’s mother does not want her car to be parked in a dark alley where it might get stolen more easily. (9) John can take the bus … a.  … in order to get to the railway station. b.  … in order to minimize his ecological footprint. In each case, the subsequent context determines not only the broad class in which the modal flavor belongs (deontic in (8): John’s parking in the spot in question is inconsistent with what the law says or with his mother’s rules; teleological in (9): John’s taking the bus is consistent with his goal of getting to the railway station or of minimizing his ecological footprint),5 but also the more fine-​grained distinctions between sub-​flavors suggested by the continuations in the respective (a)  and (b)  sentences. This context dependence can optionally be resolved by phrases like in view of what the law commands or in view of his aim regarding his ecological footprint. To be sure, this division of labor—​lexicalized modal force and contextually given modal flavor—​is not quite so clear across the board. On the one hand, many lexical items do impose some restrictions on possible modal flavors: English might, for example, generally allows 5  Most formal semantic approaches analyze teleological possibility as consistency of the prejacent with the goal’s being reached. Some authors consider this too weak and propose to analyze sentences like (9) as consequence with respect to one way of reaching the goal (Werner 2006), others stick to the standard analysis and treat the stronger reading as an instance of pragmatic strengthening.

540    Magdalena Kaufmann and Stefan Kaufmann only epistemic readings;6 German darf allows only deontic and teleological readings; its subjunctive form dürfte displays the expected interaction between subjunctive morphology and modality on the deontic and teleological readings, but it also has a separate epistemic reading on which it expresses necessity rather than possibility. Some items exhibit interesting idiosyncratic interactions with other categories. For example, English can (in contrast to may) can be understood epistemically only in the presence of negation (Hofmann 1976):7 (10) a.  John may be the murderer. in view of the rules of this game        [deontic] in view of what we know about the case     [epistemic] b.  John can be the murderer. in view of the rules of this game        [deontic] not: in view of what we know about the case   [*epistemic] c.  John cannot be the murderer. in view of the rules of this game        [deontic] in view of what we know about the case     [epistemic] More recently, Rullmann et al. (2008) argued that St’át’imcets (Lillooet Salish) displays the opposite tendency: in this language, the modal flavor is encoded lexically, while the modal force is determined contextually. Specifically, modal expressions are interpreted as expressing necessity by default, and possibility whenever an interpretation in terms of necessity would give rise to a contradiction. Also, the German modal verb sollen ‘should’, which is usually taken to express necessity, has sometimes been argued to have possibility readings as well (cf. Önnerfors 1997; Ehrich 2001; Grosz 2009; but see Schwager 2010). More in-​depth investigations are required to determine the nature and origin of modal flavor and modal force cross-​linguistically. This is currently an area of active research in formal semantics.

23.2.3 The formal framework One principal tenet of formal semantic analyses of modality, going back to Kratzer’s (1978 and thereafter) seminal writings on the subject, is that the wide and in principle unconstrained range of observed modal flavors can be captured in terms of two parameters which are given a formally clear and well-​understood representation: the “modal base” and the “ordering source”. Both are formally represented as the same type of model-​theoretic 6 

Note that this restriction does not apply when might serves as the past tense form of may, as in he asked if he might borrow the car. Johan van der Auwera (p.c.) points out non-​epistemic occurrences for might as a present tense modal as in you might as well leave. Interestingly, this teleological interpretation seems to be available only in combination with as well. Apparently non-​epistemic interpretations also arise with polite requests or suggestions, as in might I ask you a question? or you might want to go now (Jan Nuyts p.c.), where they suggest a treatment in terms of (conventionalized) indirect speech acts. 7  For (10), we focus exclusively on the availability of epistemic and deontic readings, ignoring various prioritizing and dynamic readings that are available in addition.

Modality and mood in formal semantics    541 object (see below). The modal flavor is determined through their interplay. In this section we first outline the technical side of the analysis, then give some examples of typical applications. For ease of exposition, our discussion here focuses on modal auxiliaries, but it also applies to other types of modal expressions like the ones mentioned in section 23.2.1.

23.2.3.1 Basic ingredients In formal semantics, the central component of a (declarative) sentence’s meaning is captured in its truth conditions (see 3.1. for some discussion of non-​declaratives).8 Truth conditions help us explain the ability of sentences to convey information in conversation, and they yield a natural account of semantic properties and relations, including consistency and consequence. In the standard formal framework, truth conditions are the link between “sentences” as grammatical objects and the “propositions” they denote. The formal representation of propositions relies on the notion of “possible worlds”. Technically, a possible world consists in an assignment of truth values to the sentences in the language. Propositions then have a very simple set-​theoretic representation: the proposition denoted by a sentence is the set of all and only those possible worlds according to which it is true. The central goal of formal semantics is to account for the ways in which the meanings of complex expressions depend on their grammatical structure and the meanings of their constituents (“compositional semantics”, cf. Partee 1984; Janssen 1997). In the case of modality, the constituents of interest are modal operators and their prejacents; the latter are typically proposition-​denoting clauses themselves. As noted, sentences of this form are understood as stating that a certain semantic relationship holds between a contextually given body of information (determining the modal flavor) and the prejacent. Both of these relata can be represented as sets of possible worlds, that is propositions (see below for more details and examples). The relations then are formally defined as follows. (11) Let p, q be two sets of possible worlds. a.  q is a ‘consequence’ of p if and only if at all possible worlds at which p is true, q is also true. (Equivalently, p is a subset of q.) b.  q is ‘consistent’ with p if and only if there is at least one possible world at which p and q are both true. (Equivalently, p and q have a non-​empty intersection.) Let us now examine the representation of modal flavors in some more detail.

23.2.3.2 Conversational backgrounds Kratzer (1978) introduced the notion of a “conversational background” (‘Redehintergrund’) as a way to deal with the variability and context dependence of modal

8  While non-​declarative sentences do not relate to truth conditions in the same straightforward way, their formal semantic analyses oftentimes draw on this notion in some direct or indirect fashion.

542    Magdalena Kaufmann and Stefan Kaufmann flavors. Every naturally occurring utterance is embedded in a situation that is associated with a whole range of conversational backgrounds (corresponding, for instance, to the participants’ beliefs, desires, and abilities, to natural and societal laws, to ethical norms and expectations, and more). The range of possible modal flavors for any occurrence of a modal expression is determined by these contextually given parameters, in part constrained by the semantics of the expression itself and its embedding context, if any, and further affected by such factors as salience and anaphoric accessibility. One would be hard pressed to put an upper limit on the total number of possible conversational backgrounds. For instance, there are many ways of specifying “what is known” in a given situation involving two interlocutors: we must distinguish at least the speaker’s and the hearer’s knowledge and the common ground between them, but there is also an open-​ended list of further potentially relevant bodies of information, including the knowledge shared by the wider community to which the interlocutors belong, or of a salient sub-​group thereof (such as experts on a particular topic), and even such inanimante sources of information as written reports or records. Recent work on epistemic modality suggests that all of these different perspectives and information sources may come into play there (DeRose 1991; Egan 2007; von Fintel and Gillies 2007, 2008; Stephenson 2007; MacFarlane 2011). A similar wealth of potentially relevant preferences, desires, norms, etc. exists for deontic, bouletic, and other modal flavors. Semanticists generally do not consider this open-​endedness an embarrassment for their theory, nor is the exploration and classification of possible conversational backgrounds considered a pressing task—​any more than, say, the exploration of the possible values of referring expressions is. That said, much attention is paid to properties of conversational backgrounds with interesting linguistic consequences. We briefly discuss some examples below. Technically, a conversational background determines a set of propositions.9 For instance, the epistemic background representing the speaker’s knowledge can be modeled as a (large and possibly infinite) set such as {that today is Tuesday, that it is raining outside, that the car is moving fast, …}. The elements of this set may be the denotations of sentences in the language (e.g. today is Tuesday, it is raining outside, the car is moving fast, …), but in general, propositions are not themselves linguistic expressions and they need not be expressible in the object language. In addition to the speaker’s epistemic background, her desires may be represented by another set of propositions, say {that today is Sunday, that it is sunny outside, that the car is moving fast, …}. This example shows that different conversational backgrounds associated with one and the same speaker can come into conflict: here, the speaker prefers for it to be sunny outside but knows that it is raining. Modal expressions can be sensitive to such conflicts (see 2.3.3). 9 In fact, Kratzer models conversational backgrounds as functions from possible worlds (of evaluation) to sets of propositions. This is an important feature, but we ignore it here for simplicity and focus on the “values” of conversational backgrounds at a given world of evaluation.

Modality and mood in formal semantics    543

23.2.3.3 Kratzer’s two-​parameter framework The difference between, say, epistemic and circumstantial readings of modals is treated in terms of the selection of different “modal bases”. Kratzer argues that the intended modal base can be made explicit by inserting phrases of the form in view of what is known, in view of the relevant facts, etc. However, such markers are not required, and in their absence the relevant modal base is given as a contextual parameter. As mentioned in section 23.2.2, not all possible values of this parameter are equally available for all modals. One of Kratzer’s own examples is the minimal pair in (12): (12) German (Kratzer 1981: 53) a. In in

dieser this

Gegend area

können can

Zwetschgenbäume plum.trees

wachsen. grow

‘Plum trees can grow in this area.’ b. Es it

kann can

sein, be

Zwetschgenbäume plum.trees

dass that

in in

dieser this

Gegend area

wachsen. grow

‘It is possible that plum trees grow in this area.’ Consider a context in which these sentences are asserted about a recently discovered small island of which it is known with certainty that no plum trees are growing there. Then (12a) has a reading on which it is true, whereas (12b) is false. Kratzer’s explanation for the contrast is that the corresponding possibility statement is true on the circumstantial reading but false on the epistemic one, and that—​for some reason that is still not fully understood—​the circumstantial reading is readily available for (12a) but hard to come by, if available at all, in the case of (12b). It is generally assumed that the sets of propositions contributed by modal bases are consistent, meaning that it is possible for them to be jointly true. Formally, a set M of propositions is consistent just in case its intersection ∩M—​that is, the set of worlds at which all propositions in M are true—​is not empty. As a first step (to be refined below), the interpretation of modals relative to a modal base can be defined in terms of consequence and consistency as follows: (13) Let M be a set of propositions given by the modal base. Then a. ‘must p’ is true relative to M if and only if p is a consequence of ∩M; b. ‘may p’ is true relative to M if and only if p is consistent with ∩M. The relativization of modality to a modal base gives us a handle on much of the variation in modal flavors. Kratzer went a step further, however, because modal bases are not sufficient to account for all the phenomena she was concerned with. First, modals

544    Magdalena Kaufmann and Stefan Kaufmann exhibit a certain amount of “gradability”, which cannot obviously be captured in terms of the simple notions of consequence and consistency we employed above: in English, as in many other languages, in addition to saying that p is impossible, possible, or necessary, one can add further shades (there is a good/​slight possibility that p) or compare possibilities with each other (p is more likely than q). We return to this in section 23.2.3.4. Secondly, Kratzer aimed to explain recalcitrant problems familiar from the philosophical literature, especially involving conditionals, deontic logic, and practical inference. The basic intuition can be illustrated with an example involving deontic modality. Suppose Freddy kept books from the library far beyond their due date, so that (14) is true. (14) [In view of the library’s rules,] Freddy should pay a fine. The library’s rules constitute the relevant deontic conversational background for the interpretation of (14), and we can make some reasonable minimal assumptions as to which propositions are provided by this background. Let us assume that it includes the propositions in (15): (15) a.  That all patrons return all books on time. b. That patrons who return their books on time do not pay fines. c. That patrons who return their books late pay fines. Notice that any set of propositions containing both (15a) and (15b) entails that Freddy does not pay a fine. Nor is this result in any way implausible: surely the “ideal” worlds at which the library’s rules are observed are ones in which nobody pays a fine. But now we face a problem: if this reasoning is plausible, it cannot be a reflection of speakers’ interpretation of (14), since it yields the wrong prediction that (14) is false. It is not hard to see where the problem originates: we stipulated that Freddy has already violated one of the library’s rules, and this affects the way in which the deontic conversational background comes to bear on the interpretation of the modal. The proposition in (15a) is false and therefore irrelevant (and (15b) does not apply to Freddy). However, propositions that are consistent with the facts, including in particular (15c), are still “in force”. And notice that jointly with the facts, (15c) does imply that Freddy pays a fine. This is, in broad strokes, the basic mechanism behind the Kratzer-​style analysis. The truth value of (14) depends on two parameters: a “modal base”—​most plausibly a circumstantial one in this case—​which fixes some relevant assumptions that are inviolable, setting the perimeter, as it were, within which the inference proceeds; and an “ordering source” whose propositions characterize the deontic modal flavor, but which figure in the interpretation only to the extent that they are compatible with the content of the modal base. Let us see how this interaction between the two conversational backgrounds is formally implemented. Depending on the intended modal flavor, the ordering source reflects what is desired, required, expected, or in yet some other sense “good” or

Modality and mood in formal semantics    545 “normal”. Possible worlds may deviate from this ideal to a greater or lesser degree. This notion is encoded in the definition of a binary relation ≤O of “comparative distance” from the ideal, induced by the ordering source (the set O of propositions in the definition):10 (16) For any set O of propositions and pair u, v of possible worlds, u is ‘at least as close’ (to the ideal) as v, written u ≤ v, if and only if all propositions in O that are true at v are also true at u (and possibly more). We write u