: Ilse Depraetere, Bert Cappelle, Martin Hilpert, Ludovic De Cuypere, Mathieu Dehouck, Pascal Denis, S
: Models of Modals From Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics to Machine Learning
: De Gruyter Mouton
: 9783110734256
: Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL]ISSN
: 1
: CHF 141.70
:
: Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
: English
: 280
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB

Modal verbs in English communicate delicate shades of meaning, there being a large range of verbs both on the necessity side (must,have to,should,o ght to,need,nee to) and the possibility side (can,may,could,might,be able to). They therefore constitute excellent test ground to apply and compare different methodologies that can lay bare the factors that drive the speaker's choice of modal verb. This book is not merely concerned with a purely grammatical description of the use of modal verbs, but aims at advancing our understanding of lexical and grammatical units in general and of linguistic methodologies to explore these. It thus involves a genuine effort to compare, assess and combine a variety of approaches. It complements the leading descriptive qualitative work on modal verbs by testing a diverse range of quantitative methods, while not ignoring qualitative issues pertaining to the semantics-pragmatics interface. Starting from a critical assessment of what constitutes the meaning of modal verbs, different types of empirical studies (usage-based, data-driven and experimental), drawing considerably on the same data sets, shows how method triangulation can contribute to an enhanced understanding. Due attention is also given to individual variation as well as the degree to which modals can predict L2 proficiency level.



Ilse Depraetere (Université de Lille), Bert Cappelle (Université de Lille), Martin Hilpert (Université de Neuch?tel),

Ludovic De Cuypere (UGent, VUB), Mathieu Dehouck (CNRS, Lattice), Pascal Denis (Inria, MAGNET), Susanne Flach (Zürich), Natalia Grabar (CNRS, STL), Cyril Grandin, Thierry Hamon (Paris 13, LISN), Clemens Hufeld (LMU München), Benoît Leclercq (Paris 8), Hans-Jörg Schmid (LMU München)

Introduction


IlseDepraetere
BertCappelle
MartinHilpert

1 Modal verbs and why they have attracted a lot of attention


This volume applies different approaches to an area of English linguistics that is particularly challenging, that of the meaning of English modals. Our aim is to arrive at a better and richer understanding by combining insights from methods and theories among which there has as yet not been much interaction. In the course of doing so, we test their relative strengths and potential shortcomings, and show in what ways they complement each other and can shed new light on the topic at stake.

Modality, the linguistic expression of possibility and necessity, is a topic that has inspired a lot of research. This is hardly surprising for a lexical-grammatical area that pertains to an indispensable aspect of human cognition. As Narrog (2012: 1) puts it, “[h]uman beings constantly imagine things that are not real but still possible or even contrary to facts. They continually evaluate the reality status of states-of-affairs, or urge or allow interlocutors to bring about states-of-affairs in reality.” Take any moderate-sized stretch of spoken or written text and you will find that as people, we cannot help but communicate our natural interest in what is possible and what is necessary. A common way of expressing this pervasive concern is by means of modal verbs. To illustrate this, we provide in (1a-d) just some of the sentences with modal verbs that appeared on the website of a conference on English linguistics:1

(1)