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Modality is an essential topic in the study of meaning, it comprises the most significant elements in human language and contains people?s perception of everyday items, phenomena, notions, etc. it is referred to the modal meaning in the sentence structure. The study of Modality focuses on touching upon the problems like the ?What is Modality??, ?Types of Modality?, ?Means of Expressing Modality?, etc.

Modality is a category of linguistic meaning having to do with the expression of possibility and necessity. A modalized sentence locates an underlying proposition in the space of possibilities. The term ?modality? derives from the postclassical Latin word ?modalitas?. This term was very rare at that time, it entered English from French ?modalité?. In the Middle English scholars used ?modus?(meaning measure, method, shape)in various senses and one of those senses is associated with ?modality?.

The interpretation of modality is unusual in modern linguistics, because it is not easy to find two authors, who comprehend modality in the same way. This is the reason that different definitions exist for modality. In the Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary modality is defined as a functional ? semantic category which expresses different types of relations between utterance and reality and different subjective relations which are contributed by the author. In other words, modality is all about encoding of different degrees of subjective response in the viewpoint of writer or speaker.

Quirk (1985:219) defines modality as the ?manner in which the meaning of a clause is qualified so as to reflect the speaker?s judgment of the likelihood of the proposition it expresses being true?.

According to Lyons and Palmer, modality is a category of meaning which deals with ?the status of the proposition?.

In his book, Palmer treats modality as a grounded grammatical category that, along with tense and aspect, is concerned with the event or situation that is transferred through connection. However, he says that unlike tense and aspect which are categories associated with the nature of the event itself, modality is concerned with the status of the proposition that describes the event. Palmer (1986) defines modality as semantic information associated with the speaker?s attitude or opinion about what is said. Bybee( (1985) gives a broader definition: what the speaker is doing with the whole proposition.

Though these definitions diverge on the particulars, they agree that modality concerns entire statements, not just events or entities, and its domain is the whole expression at a truth-functional level. Grammatically speaking, modality is associated with the sentence more than its constituents, unlike aspect, for example, which is predictably found with verbs as events.

While studying the nature of modality one may come across various definitions, types (narrow, broad), markers of modality, etc. one may get lost in the labyrinth of modal meaning, especially when taking into consideration all of its factors.

In a narrow sense, according to Erhart, modality is the combination of the grammeme: statement (realized as a declarative), question (interrogative forms) and wish (imperatives and exclamations). This definition of modality covers modal auxiliaries, adverbs (possibly, probably).

In broad sense, modality is the realization of utterance. This definition covers the expressions of interpersonal content.

Intonation patterns cover both of these definitions. Intonation is very significant. It shapes the modality of the utterance.

Modality comprises the speaker?s/writer?s attitudes (mode of reassurance, possibility, obligation, necessity, prediction, willingness, permission, volition, ability), which can be contrasting. By means of modality speaker interferes the speech act and adds something to the statement from his part. In other words, the speaker presents his/her level of truth.

Traditionally modality in English is expressed with the help of modal verbs: must, can, could, may, might, will, would, shall, should. The function of the modal verbs is to reflect our judgment about whether what we say or write is true.

Apart from modal verbs, there are other linguistic means that express modality: modal adverbs (surely, definitely, clearly, necessarily, perhaps, maybe, obviously), modal adjectives (possible, probable, certain, necessary, compulsory, sure, likely), nouns, verbs, expressions (be able to, be allowed to, be bound to, etc.) etc.

Modality in Modern English has to do with the world, not so much the way it is as the way it might potentially be. This may revolve around people?s beliefs about it or around their potential actions in it. By modal concepts are meant the concepts of what is possible, necessary, probable, conceivable and the like. The idea of modality is an old one, going back to classical Greek philosophy. Aristotle attaches particular importance to the notion of possibility and necessity. The emergence of such notions seems to be due to the fact that human beings frequently think and behave as if things might be other than in point of fact they are. In recent decades philosophers and logicians have attempted to analyse modal notions by construing them as statements about possible worlds (Niels Davidsen-Nielsen p.43). Possible worlds may be divided into different types (called modalities) according to the conceptual framework within which an event or proposition is considered real or true.

The notional concept of modality marks its association with entire statements. ?Modality concerns the factual status of information, it signals the relative actuality, validity or believability of the content of an expression? (Frawley 1993:385).

Modality includes the ways in which language is used to encode meanings such as degrees of certainty and commitment or alternatively vagueness and lack of commitment, personal beliefs against generally accepted or taken for granted knowledge, facts, etc. Modality affects the overall assertability of an expression and thus, takes the entire proposition within its scope. As such, modality evokes not only objective measures of factual status, but also subjective attitudes and orientations toward the content of an expression by its utterer.

Generally modality is referred to the modal meaning in the sentence structure. As it was mentioned above, the area of modality occupied many scholars and in the course of time many theories appeared. In his book, Palmer states two distinctions in how languages deal with the category of modality. The distinctions are Modal Systems and Mood. He is sure that languages can basically be defined through one or the other. But he also claims that typology of modality may be different because of the complexity of linguistic differences in various languages.

Coates (1983) categorizes modality into Epistemic (extrinsic) and Root (intrinsic). Other terms are ?extrinsic? and ?intrinsic?. Quirk (1985:219-20), in his turn, differs extrinsic-intrinsic types. In his book ?Mood and Modality? 2001, Palmer prefers the word ?deontic? instead of ?root? modality. On the other hand, Coates (1983: 20) prefers ?root? to ?deontic?, because it is not limited in expressing obligation and permission. Root modality comprises ?deontic?and ?dynamic? modality.

Palmer (1990:837) agrees that the distinction of ?epistemic? and ?root? modality is more proper and clear. According to Coates (1983:18-20), ?Epistemic? modality is subjective, because it involves human judgment and expresses the speaker?s attitude towards the proposition. Lyons says that ?epistemic? modals lack the past tense form and are not affected by negation and aspect. ?Root? modality on the other hand involves human control that is why ?root? modals are more difficult to characterize, though they can be identified with the use of such features as occurrence with animate subject, and stress and intonation (Coates, 1983:20, 21). Other authors claim that there is a clear difference between the terms ?deontic? and ?root? modality, though that difference in some studies may not be clear, and these terms may be used interchangeably. The use of the term ?root? emphasizes the aspect of modality.

Each modal verb in sentences expresses either epistemic or deontic modality. In addition there are some differences, for instance deontic ?must? and ?may? can be negated, whereas epistemic ?must? and ?may? cannot be, and if ?may? and ?must? are followed by ?have? in a clause, they express epistemic modality.

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Modality is concerned with the speaker?s assessment or attitude (certainty) to a state or affairs. Hence, modality deals with different worlds. In a sentence like, ?He must be right?, we deal with the world of knowledge and reason. This type of modality is known as epistemic modality. It is the expression of speaker?s confidence and it may be expressed with tags: I think, I guess and I believe.

e.g. I think Nicole is less sick than anyone thinks ? she only cherishes her illness as an instrument of power. (F. S. Fitzgerald, p. 259)

Epistemic modality is the type of linguistic modality which deals with the speaker's degree of comprehension/judgment or trust about certain affairs, i.e. epistemic modality describes the way the speaker communicates his/her doubts, certainty, thoughts, beliefs, opinions etc. Thus, it does not describe the facts, furthermore the speaker?s perception of reality may not be quite right. It estimates the likelihood, possibility, certainty of the things and affairs that may or have or will happen in a possible/certain point in the universe.

Deontic modality is also a type of linguistic modality, which indicates what is necessary or possible according to certain/ accepted norms, standards, expectations, necessity i.e. deontic modality expresses that the things in life do not coincide with the accepted social or personal standards and ideals.

Epistemic and deontic modality are connected with each other (concern themselves with the notions of possibility or necessity). Epistemic uses comprise information linked with the speaker's knowledge about the situation. In deontic uses we come across to obligation, prohibition, permission, etc. (Huddleston 1998: 78). 'Epistemic' modality is informs us about the speaker's understanding and knowledge. It refers to the reason of the speaker. Deontic modality has in it a bit of will.

According to Palmer deontic modality has the meaning of futurity, whereas epistemic modality contains the speaker?s attitude to the truth of past, present or future. According to Coates epistemic modality is the speaker's proportion of conditions and circumstances of reality. He claims that epistemic modality shows speaker?s commitment or knowledge. He refers to the speaker?s own judgments, the speaker?s (lack of) commitment to the truth of the proposition expressed.

Thus, there are four major types of epistemic modal markers in English: modal auxiliaries (may, might, can, could, must, etc), lexical modal verbs (seem, appear), modal adjectives/adverbs (likely, probably, etc.).

In speech deontic realisation can be made with the help of: grammatical moods: imperative mood: e.g. Go away!!, modal verbs: I shall help you, other verbs: I hope to finish my paper soon., adverbials and other constructions.

Dynamic (speaker/subject ? oriented) modality expresses more than ability, need, necessity, it can be situational. Deontic and dynamic modalities refer to the events that have not happened, but potentially they can take place, that is why they are called 'event modality'.

There are two types of dynamic modality the first one expresses ability (can), the second one expresses willingness (will). 'Can ' is used both for epistemic and deontic modality, it may not only express physical or mental abilities but also circumstances where the person is involved.

e.g. You can stay as long as you like. (deontic)

You can easily beat everyone else in the club. (dynamic)

You can speak French. (not definite)

There is also an important division of objective modality ? truth in the world

subjective modality? truth for a certain person. Palmer criticized this distinction, he says that there is no distinction between what is generally true and what the speaker think to be true.

According to other theories objective modality may also be referred to inherent modality, thus, objective (inherent) modality is characteristic to the predication and it reflects the relationship between utterance and reality. Its purpose is to present the speaker's knowledge about the situation. It is the attitude of the utterance towards reality/unreality, possibility/impossibility, necessity, probability, etc. Objective modality specifies the relation of the situation to reality. This type of modality expresses the reality of the situation, and that reality depends on the participant. If the source of the modality is not the part of the situation then it is the speaker. Objective modality is expressed at the level of syntactic sentence division: with grammatical means of objective mood, intonation and others.

Subjective modality shows the involvement of the speaker in the utterance. It is the expression of speaker?s attitude towards the utterance.

Objectiveand subjective modalities have been argued a lot: epistemic modality can only be subjective, deontic modality can be either subjective or objective, and dynamic modality can only be subjective.

? If modality is a relation between an external entity and the proposition, it is subjective modality.

? If modality is a relation between the referent of the sentence subject and the predicate, it is objective modality.

The distinction may be illustrated as follows:

E1. Linda must be in the bathroom.(subjective)
E2. Linda must go to the bathroom.(it is in general necessary)(objective)

Objective modality - It is impossible not to notice that our world is tormented by failure, hate, guilt and fear. (W. Saroyan, quote)

Subjective modality - I think Nicole is less sick than anyone thinks ? she only cherishes her illness as an instrument of power. (F. S. Fitzgerald, p. 259)

e.g. , the archaeologists will find the ruins of the lost city

Subjective modality involves epistemic category of probability/possibility and certainty.
Objective modality is contrasted to the subjective one: modal adjectives express objective modality and modal adverbs express subjective modality. Unlike objective modality which reflects a character of connections in reality, subjective modality does not reflect the reality. It only reflects the speaker?s commitment of reality. Subjective modality is not a part of the content of the sentence. The scholars note that objective modality is obligatory to any expression, but subjective modality is optional. To sum up, objective modality is something more ?modal? and subjective one is more ?emotional?.

When talking about the means of expressing modality, we come across different classifications of means among the scholars. The founder of the English study in Russia B. A. Ilysh says: ?Modality can be expressed in the sentence with the help of different means: modal words, modal verbs, sometimes just with the help of mere verbiage, intonation and mood.

Different modal meanings are expressed with the help of intonation. In academic literature the phonetic means of expressing modality have not been studied enough, though some scholars paid special attention to this area. Coates? investigations (1986) show that intonation and other prosodic features can be considered as modality in semantic sense. Palmer concludes that the different patterns of stress express different types of modality. Intonation is the only generally valid means of expressing modality. It is a prosodic element that gives information about the content of the utterances such as imperatives, declaratives and exclamations, besides, intonation gives information about the speaker?s personality.

The expression of modality by modals and adverbs, individually or in combination relates to the linguistic category of intonation. In case of epistemic modality, intonation pattern and modal expression correlate.

e.g. ?Well I think it should be quite good, actually, I mean it?s a terrific thing.

Coates? suggests that stress patterns and individual modal forms which express epistemic meanings (could, may, might, must) receive some kind of stress that is associated with intonation.

Modal intonation represents the highest level of semantic organization which can be reached by intonation. It took quite a while for speech melody to become a marker of modal categories. Modal intonation, for example interrogative intonation patterns denote interrogative modality the content of which is the meaning of request.

Mood refers to a grammaticalized category (grammatical category) of the verb which has a modal function and deals with the differences in the morphology of the verb. Mood is concerned with the speaker?s attitude to the proposition. The system of mood varies from language to language and the verbal paradigm differs too: e.g. indicative, subjunctive, optative, imperative, conditional, etc. On the other hand, modality is the semantic domain concerning with the elements of meaning expressed in the language.

In the sphere of modality the category of mood is defined as a morphological verbal category which expresses the modal meaning of the sentence (and belongs to the category of grammatical markers of modality). Most languages have either modal system or mood, but some languages have both, this is one of the reasons that Lyons (1977:848) remarks ?mood is a grammatical category that is found in some, but not all languages?, as for ?modality markers?, they are found in all languages. Thus, mood is grammaticalized expression of modality, therefore in some languages the grammatical markers are also called ?mood markers?.

Moods in familiar languages have a great variety of semantic functions and the choice between them is sometimes determined according to grammatical rules rather than modal meaning.

The best-known moods cross-linguistically are indicative and subjunctive, though imperative may also be added. The distinction between the indicative and subjunctive is associated with assertion and non-assertion respectively, the reason for non-assertion is that the speaker has doubts about a statement.

H. Sweet (1982, 1:105) defines the mood as ?a grammatical form which expresses relations between subject and predicate?. Those relations may be of various characters, this is more noticeable if we look at his classification.

a) inflectional moods: indicative, subjunctive

b) auxiliary moods: conditional, permissive, compulsive

c) tense moods: preterite

d) imperative mood

1. Indicative mood /declarative/?fact mood? (realis) is used when speaker/writer wants to make statements (affirmation), reject something or express questions of actuality and likelihood. It is proper to say that the indicative is used to describe real, factual events.

e.g. Thus, the fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than the fear itself. (D. Defoe. p. 142)

Life isn?t about finding yourself, it?s about creating yourself.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder you are happy or not. (G. B. Shaw)

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

In English indicative mood is very popular. The majority of the uttered ideas are in the indicative mood.

2. Subjunctive mood/'thought mood' or 'what-if mood' (irrealis): through subjunctive mood we express wishes, hypothesis, purposes, and even requests. Though this expression in Modern English is performed with the help of modal auxiliaries, yet subjunctive mood preserves its role in this aspect. There are three types of subjunctives in Modern English: formulaic subjunctive ? used in patterns which express wishes, blessings; mandative subjunctive ? used to express obligation, orders, intentions, etc.; ?were?-subjunctive ? expresses that the situation is a hypothetical wish and has the form of ?were?:

He wished he could rip out his heart, his innards, everything that was screaming inside him? (J. K. Rowling, p. 559)

3. Imperative mood: with the help of imperative mood speaker forms sentences that make direct commands, requests:

e.g. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of clear eye and the kindly heart? (W. Saroyan, p. 280)

Remember that every man is a variation of yourself? (W. Saroyan, 280)

Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret? (W. Saroyan, p. 280)

Accept your loneliness and stick to it, all your life. (D. Lawrence, p. 149)

The use of the imperative presupposes, an unequal power relation between the speaker/writer and the hearer/reader because the speaker/writer is required to have some sort of authority over the hearer/reader in order to use the imperative like this. In addition to giving orders, there are other uses of the imperative, which are also sanctioned by unequal power relations: command, request, instruction, advice, permission, prayer.

?Oliver, calm down!? said Fred, looking slightly alarmed. ?We?re taking Hufflepuff very seriously.? (J.K.Rowling, p.

See how elastic our prejudice grow when once love comes to bend them. (H. Melvillie)

Show the readers everything, tell them nothing. (E. Hemingway, quote)

Fight and laugh and feel bitter and feel bliss? (D. Lawrence, p. 150)

Ask us no questions and we will tell you no lies. (J.K. Rowling, p. 54)

?But you?ve gotten so damned dull, Mary. I listened as long as I could.?

?Be quiet!? Nicole advised him. (F.S. Fitzgerald, p. 285)

Imperative mood is used in English quite often. When discussing imperative mood, it's proper to pay attention to 'deontic' modality which also has the same meaning. Both imperatives and ?deontic? modal sentences that have activity predicate which has carry future orientation.

The imperative has other grammatical features that make it very distinctive. The most notable one is the absence of subject e.g. Sit down!. The imperative has no tense distinctions and the verbs always take the same form. The imperative almost never occurs with the perfect and only occasionally with the progressive.

Be cooking my favourite dish when I get back home.

Another interesting aspect of imperative mood is that it may express requestive/imperative apologies, catching attention. In conversational situations, a speaker who has social power will use more and stronger imperatives than one who does not. Teachers often use the imperative with students.

Excuse me! (in the auditorium) ? this one needs special intonation which totally expresses dissatisfaction and each word is stressed. In this case we come closer to the field of phonetic means of expressing modality.

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 223