Linguistic modality
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, modality is what allows speakers to evaluate a proposition
relative to a set of other propositions.
In standard formal approaches to modality, an utterance expressing modality can always roughly be paraphrased to fit the following template:
(1) According to [a set of rules, wishes, beliefs,...] it is [necessary, possible] that [the main proposition] is the case.
The set of propositions which forms the basis of evaluation is called the modal base. The result of the evaluation is called the modal force.
For example the utterance in (2) expresses that, according to what the speaker has observed, it is necessary to conclude that John has a rather high income:
(2) John must be earning a lot of money.
The modal base is here the knowledge of the speaker, the modal force is necessity. By contrast, (3) could be paraphrased as ‘Given his abilities, the strength of his teeth, etc., it is possible for John to open a beer bottle with his teeth’. Here, the modal base is defined by a subset of John's abilities, the modal force is possibility.
(3) John can open a beer bottle with his teeth.
A more elaborate account of formal semantic approaches to modality is given in section 1.
Cross-linguistically, modality can be expressed by a variety of means, such as auxiliary verbs as in the examples (2) and (3), verbal morphology (mood
) or adverbs. An overview of the various modal expressions across languages is given below in section 2.
Typological
approaches to modality usually favour a slightly wider definition of modality and also include meanings which do not fit the template in (1) exactly. Section 3 provides an overview over the range of meanings commonly associated with modality.
. Both work with the notion that propositions can be mapped to sets of possible worlds, that is, a proposition can be defined as the set of worlds in which that proposition is true. For example, the proposition ‘the earth is flat’ corresponds to the set of possible worlds in which the earth is in fact flat.
In this framework, modal expressions such as must and can are then analyzed as quantifiers over a set of possible worlds. This set of worlds is given by the modal base and is said to be the set of accessible worlds: For example, in sentence (2) above, the modal base is the knowledge the speaker has in the actual world. Therefore, the set of accessible worlds is defined by the information the speaker has about John. Assume for example that the speaker knows that John just bought a new luxury car and has rented a huge apartment. The speaker also knows that John is an honest person with a humble family background and doesn't play the lottery.
The set of accessible worlds is then the set of worlds in which all these propositions which the speaker knows about John are true.
The notions of necessity and possibility are then defined along the following lines: A proposition p follows necessarily from the set of accessible worlds, if all accessible worlds are part of p (that is, if p is true in all of these worlds). Applied to the example in (2) this would mean that in all the worlds which are defined by the speaker's knowledge about John, it is the case that John earns a lot of money (assuming there is no other explanation for John's wealth).
In a similar way a proposition p is possible according to the set of accessible worlds (i.e. the modal base), if some of these worlds are part of p.
For further reading, see for example Kratzer 1991, Kaufmann et al. 2006 and Portner 2009.
markers. Well-known examples of moods in some European languages are referred to as subjunctive
, conditional
and indicative as illustrated below with examples from French
, all three with the verb avoir ‘to have’. As in most Standard European languages, the shape of the verb conveys not only information about modality, but also about other categories such as person
and number
of the subject
.
An example for a non-European language with a similar encoding of modality is Manam. Here, a verb is prefixed by a morpheme
which encodes number and person of the subject. These prefixes come in two versions, one realis version and one irrealis version. Which one is chosen depends on whether the verb refers to an actual past or present event (realis), or merely to a possible or imagined event (irrealis) (see Elliott 2000).
s, such as the English words may, can, must, ought, will, shall, need, dare, might, could, would, and should, are often used to express modality, especially in the Germanic languages
.
s such as "want" can be used to express modality lexically, as can adverb
s.
, stating what would happen under a certain condition or conditions (expressed periphrastically in English as would + main verb), and the subjunctive mood
, stating the speaker's preferences for what should occur (such as he leave in the English I demand that he leave) or hypotheticals (such as English If I were to go,....).
Counterfactuals refer to things that are contrary to the actual situation. In English, counterfactuals are expressed in "if"-clauses by using a tense form that normally refers to a time prior to the time actually semantically referred to in the if-clause. For example, If I knew that, I wouldn't have to ask contains the counterfactual If I knew, which refers to the present tense despite the form of the verb, and which denies the proposition "I know that". This contrasts with the construction If I know that,..., which is not a counterfactual because it means that maybe I know it and maybe I don't (or maybe I will know it, and maybe I will not).Likewise, If I had known that, I would have gone there contains the counterfactual If I had known, denying the proposition that I knew; despite the pluperfect verbal construction, the time referred to is the past, not the past-of-the-past.
Examples of the expression of epistemic modality in English are: he might be there (low probability, substantial doubt), He may be there (possibility), He should be there by now (high probability), and He must be there by now (very high probability, little doubt).
In contrast, deontic modality is concerned with possibility and necessity in terms of freedom to act (including ability, permission, and duty). English examples include She can go (ability), You may go (permission), You should go (obligation), and You must go (strong obligation). In English as in many other languages, some of the same words are used for deontic modality as for epistemic modality.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, modality is what allows speakers to evaluate a proposition
Proposition
In logic and philosophy, the term proposition refers to either the "content" or "meaning" of a meaningful declarative sentence or the pattern of symbols, marks, or sounds that make up a meaningful declarative sentence...
relative to a set of other propositions.
In standard formal approaches to modality, an utterance expressing modality can always roughly be paraphrased to fit the following template:
(1) According to [a set of rules, wishes, beliefs,...] it is [necessary, possible] that [the main proposition] is the case.
The set of propositions which forms the basis of evaluation is called the modal base. The result of the evaluation is called the modal force.
For example the utterance in (2) expresses that, according to what the speaker has observed, it is necessary to conclude that John has a rather high income:
(2) John must be earning a lot of money.
The modal base is here the knowledge of the speaker, the modal force is necessity. By contrast, (3) could be paraphrased as ‘Given his abilities, the strength of his teeth, etc., it is possible for John to open a beer bottle with his teeth’. Here, the modal base is defined by a subset of John's abilities, the modal force is possibility.
(3) John can open a beer bottle with his teeth.
A more elaborate account of formal semantic approaches to modality is given in section 1.
Cross-linguistically, modality can be expressed by a variety of means, such as auxiliary verbs as in the examples (2) and (3), verbal morphology (mood
Grammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
) or adverbs. An overview of the various modal expressions across languages is given below in section 2.
Typological
Linguistic typology
Linguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages...
approaches to modality usually favour a slightly wider definition of modality and also include meanings which do not fit the template in (1) exactly. Section 3 provides an overview over the range of meanings commonly associated with modality.
Semantic accounts
Semantic approaches dealing with modality are traditionally based on the principles of modal logicModal logic
Modal logic is a type of formal logic that extends classical propositional and predicate logic to include operators expressing modality. Modals — words that express modalities — qualify a statement. For example, the statement "John is happy" might be qualified by saying that John is...
. Both work with the notion that propositions can be mapped to sets of possible worlds, that is, a proposition can be defined as the set of worlds in which that proposition is true. For example, the proposition ‘the earth is flat’ corresponds to the set of possible worlds in which the earth is in fact flat.
In this framework, modal expressions such as must and can are then analyzed as quantifiers over a set of possible worlds. This set of worlds is given by the modal base and is said to be the set of accessible worlds: For example, in sentence (2) above, the modal base is the knowledge the speaker has in the actual world. Therefore, the set of accessible worlds is defined by the information the speaker has about John. Assume for example that the speaker knows that John just bought a new luxury car and has rented a huge apartment. The speaker also knows that John is an honest person with a humble family background and doesn't play the lottery.
The set of accessible worlds is then the set of worlds in which all these propositions which the speaker knows about John are true.
The notions of necessity and possibility are then defined along the following lines: A proposition p follows necessarily from the set of accessible worlds, if all accessible worlds are part of p (that is, if p is true in all of these worlds). Applied to the example in (2) this would mean that in all the worlds which are defined by the speaker's knowledge about John, it is the case that John earns a lot of money (assuming there is no other explanation for John's wealth).
In a similar way a proposition p is possible according to the set of accessible worlds (i.e. the modal base), if some of these worlds are part of p.
For further reading, see for example Kratzer 1991, Kaufmann et al. 2006 and Portner 2009.
Verbal Morphology
In many languages modal categories are expressed by verbal morphology. If these verbal markers of modality are obligatory in a language, they are called moodGrammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
markers. Well-known examples of moods in some European languages are referred to as subjunctive
Subjunctive mood
In grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of irreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred....
, conditional
Conditional mood
In linguistics, the conditional mood is the inflectional form of the verb used in the independent clause of a conditional sentence to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event, that is contingent on another set of circumstances...
and indicative as illustrated below with examples from French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, all three with the verb avoir ‘to have’. As in most Standard European languages, the shape of the verb conveys not only information about modality, but also about other categories such as person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
and number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
of the subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
.
| (4) | Je | doute | que | vous | ayez | raison. |
| doubt | that | have. | right | |||
| `I doubt that you're right.' | ||||||
| (5) | Si | c'était | vrai | on | l'aurait | vu | à | CNN |
| If | this-was | true | one | it-have. | seen | on | CNN | |
| `If this was true you would have seen it on CNN.' | ||||||||
| (6) | Il | a | raison |
| have. | right | ||
| `He's right.' | |||
An example for a non-European language with a similar encoding of modality is Manam. Here, a verb is prefixed by a morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
which encodes number and person of the subject. These prefixes come in two versions, one realis version and one irrealis version. Which one is chosen depends on whether the verb refers to an actual past or present event (realis), or merely to a possible or imagined event (irrealis) (see Elliott 2000).
Auxiliaries
Modal auxiliary verbAuxiliary verb
In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
s, such as the English words may, can, must, ought, will, shall, need, dare, might, could, would, and should, are often used to express modality, especially in the Germanic languages
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
.
Lexical expression
VerbVerb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
s such as "want" can be used to express modality lexically, as can adverb
Adverb
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
s.
Other
Complementizers (e.g. Russian) and conjunctions (e.g. Central Pomo, see Mithun 1995) can be used to convey modality.Modal Categories
Many different kinds of modal interpretations have been observed and studied, resulting in a variety of typologies. What follows below is one of the many ways that modality has been classified. Only broad categories have been distinguished below: the reader is referred to the main articles and the references for more detailed discussions.Realism vs. Irrealism
The closely related realis, declarative, and evidential moods refer to situations that actually exist, are claimed to exist, or are inferred to exist. In contrast, irrealis moods refer to situations that are not known to exist. Two common irrealis moods are the conditional moodConditional mood
In linguistics, the conditional mood is the inflectional form of the verb used in the independent clause of a conditional sentence to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event, that is contingent on another set of circumstances...
, stating what would happen under a certain condition or conditions (expressed periphrastically in English as would + main verb), and the subjunctive mood
Subjunctive mood
In grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of irreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred....
, stating the speaker's preferences for what should occur (such as he leave in the English I demand that he leave) or hypotheticals (such as English If I were to go,....).
Counterfactuals refer to things that are contrary to the actual situation. In English, counterfactuals are expressed in "if"-clauses by using a tense form that normally refers to a time prior to the time actually semantically referred to in the if-clause. For example, If I knew that, I wouldn't have to ask contains the counterfactual If I knew, which refers to the present tense despite the form of the verb, and which denies the proposition "I know that". This contrasts with the construction If I know that,..., which is not a counterfactual because it means that maybe I know it and maybe I don't (or maybe I will know it, and maybe I will not).Likewise, If I had known that, I would have gone there contains the counterfactual If I had known, denying the proposition that I knew; despite the pluperfect verbal construction, the time referred to is the past, not the past-of-the-past.
Epistemic vs. deontic modality
Epistemic modals are used to indicate the possibility or necessity of some piece of knowledge. In the epistemic use, modals can be interpreted as indicating inference or some other process of reasoning involved in coming to the conclusion stated in the sentence containing the modal. However, epistemic modals do not necessarily require inference, reasoning, or evidence. One effect of using an epistemic modal (as opposed to not using one) is a general weakening of the speaker's commitment to the truth of the sentence containing the modal. However, it is disputed whether the function of modals is to indicate this weakening of commitment, or whether the weakening is a by-product of some other aspect of the modal's meaning.Examples of the expression of epistemic modality in English are: he might be there (low probability, substantial doubt), He may be there (possibility), He should be there by now (high probability), and He must be there by now (very high probability, little doubt).
In contrast, deontic modality is concerned with possibility and necessity in terms of freedom to act (including ability, permission, and duty). English examples include She can go (ability), You may go (permission), You should go (obligation), and You must go (strong obligation). In English as in many other languages, some of the same words are used for deontic modality as for epistemic modality.
See also
- Deontic logicDeontic logicDeontic logic is the field of logic that is concerned with obligation, permission, and related concepts. Alternatively, a deontic logic is a formal system that attempts to capture the essential logical features of these concepts...
- Epistemology
- EvidentialityEvidentialityIn linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and/or what kind of evidence exists. An evidential is the particular grammatical element that indicates evidentiality...
- Modality (semiotics)Modality (semiotics)In semiotics, a modality is a particular way in which the information is to be encoded for presentation to humans, i.e. to the type of sign and to the status of reality ascribed to or claimed by a sign, text or genre. It is more closely associated with the semiotics of Charles Peirce than Saussure...
- Modal logicModal logicModal logic is a type of formal logic that extends classical propositional and predicate logic to include operators expressing modality. Modals — words that express modalities — qualify a statement. For example, the statement "John is happy" might be qualified by saying that John is...
- Tense–aspect–mood
- English modal adverbs at Wiktionary
External links
- Modality and Evidentiality
- What is mood and modality? SIL International, Glossary of linguistic terms.