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Mood and Modality

Mood and Modality. Rajat Kumar Mohanty rkm[AT]cse[DOT]iitb[DOT]ac[DOT]in Centre for Indian Language Technology Department of Computer Science and Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Mumbai, India. Outline. Propositional Modality Epistemic Evidential Event Modality Deontic

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Mood and Modality

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  1. Mood and Modality Rajat Kumar Mohanty rkm[AT]cse[DOT]iitb[DOT]ac[DOT]in Centre for Indian Language Technology Department of Computer Science and Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Mumbai, India

  2. Outline • Propositional Modality • Epistemic • Evidential • Event Modality • Deontic • Dynamic CFILT

  3. Modality • Modality differs from tense and aspect in that it does not refer directly to any characteristic of the events, but simply to the status of the proposition. • Example: • John is at home. • John may/must be at home now. • John may/must come in now. • John can solve this problem. • English uses a modal verbs to distinguish a judgement about a proposition from a categorical statement. CFILT

  4. Modality • Propositional Modality (concerned with the speaker’s judgement of the proposition) • John may be at home now. (it is possible that…) • John must be at home now. (it is necessary that…) • Event Modality (concerned with the speaker’s attitude towards a potential future event) • John may come in now. (it is possible for John to come in now…) • John must come in now. (it is necessary for John to come in now…) CFILT

  5. Propositional Modality • Epistemic • The speaker expresses his judgment about the factual status. • John must be in the office . (The speaker makes a firm judgement, on the basis of evidence, e.g., that the office lights are on; that he is not at home, etc) • Evidential • The speaker indicates the evidence they have for its factual status. • He is said to be extremely rich. (reported) • He claims to have shot down a mosquito. (reported) CFILT

  6. Epistemic Modality • The three types of epistemic modality: • Speculative • John may be in the office (uncertainty/a possible conclusion) (The speaker is uncertain whether John is in his office) • Deductive • John must be in the office (the only possible conclusion) (The speaker makes a firm judgement, on the basis of evidence, e.g., that the office lights are on; that he is not at home, etc) • Assumptive • John will be in the office (a reasonable conclusion) (The judgement is based on what is generally known about John, e.g., that he always starts at eight, that he is a workholic, etc) CFILT

  7. Evidential Modality • Evidential Modality • Reported (e.g., He is said to be extremely rich. (reported) • Sensory • ‘Meanings’ of the ‘evidentials’ (Willet, 1988) • Direct Evidence • Visual • Auditory • Sensory • Indirect Evidence • Reported • Second-hand • Third-hand • From Folklore • Inferring • From results • From reasoning CFILT

  8. Reported Evidence • Second-hand Evidence: The speaker claims to have heard of the situation described from someone who was a direct witness. • Third-hand Evidence: The speaker claims to have heard of the situation described, but not from a direct witness. • Evidence from folklore: The speaker claims that the situation described is part of established oral story. CFILT

  9. Event Modality • Deontic • The conditioning factors are external. It relates to obligation or permission emanating from an external source. • John may come in now. (permission) • John must come in now. (obligation) • Dynamic • The conditioning factors are internal. It relates to ability or willingness, which comes from the individual concern. • John can speak Hindi. (ability) • John will do it for you. (willingness) CFILT

  10. Deontic Modality • The most common types of Deontic modality are the ‘directives’, where we try to get others to do things. • Permissive (may) (e.g, You may go now) • Obligative (must) (e.g., You must go now) • MAY and MUST also express epistemic modality. CFILT

  11. Dynamic Modality • There appear to be two types of dynamic modality, expressing ability and willingness. • Abilitive (can) (e.g., He can run five miles a minutes.) • Volitive (will) (e.g., Why don’t you go and see if John will let you stay?) • CAN is used both for epistemic modality (only when negated) and for deontic modality. CFILT

  12. Modal Verbs • Modals (English) • will, shall, may, can, must, would, should, might, could • Ought (to), need (to), dare (to) • Modal verbs are used in all four types of modality • Epistemic • Evidential • Deontic • Dynamic CFILT

  13. Properties of English Modals • WILL and SHALL are often used to refer to future time • The properties of Modal verbs share with other auxiliary verbs BE and HAVE • In addition to that, they have formal features of their own • They do not co-occur e.g., *will can, *may shall, *must will, etc. • They do not have –s forms for their third person singular e.g., *mays, *shalls, *musts, (wills, dares) CFILT

  14. Properties of English Modals • They do not havenon-finite forms. e.g., *to can, *to may, *to must • Must has no past tense form, although the others do. e.g.,could, should, would, might, etc. • Only could is used to refer to past time in direct speech (though all may occur in reported speech) • There are formal differences between the modal verbs, in their epistemic and deontic senses, in terms of negation and tense. CFILT

  15. Formal Differences • The same modal verb may be used in English for both epistemic and deontic modality. • Deontic MUST has negative mustn’t and needn’t, but epistemic MUST has no morphologically related negative. • John must / mustn’t come for the meeting. (deontic) • John must /*mustn’t be in his office. (epistemic) • MAY and MUST followed by HAVE always epistemic. • John may/must have been in his office. CFILT

  16. Formal Differences • MAY is replaceable by CAN only in deontic use • You may go now. (deontic) • You can go now. (deontic) • He may/*can be in his office. (epistemic) • When MUST refers to the future, it is deontic. • John must come for the meeting. (deontic) • John must be in his office. (epistemic) CFILT

  17. Possibility and Necessity • Why the same form is used in different types of modality? • The explanation is in terms of possibility and necessity. • The Epistemic Speculative and Deductive can be interpreted in terms of what is epistemically possible and what is epistemically necessary: • John may be in his office. (It is possible that…) • John must be in his office. (It is necessary that…) CFILT

  18. Possibility and Necessity • The Deontic permissive and Obligative can be interpreted in terms of what is deontically possible and what is deontically necessary: • You may/can go now. (It is possible for you to…) • You must go now. (It is necessary for you to…) CFILT

  19. Sources and Suggested Reading • Bhat, D.N.S. 1999. The prominence of tense, aspect and mood. (Studies in language companion series). Benjamins, Philadelphia. • Palmer, F.R. 1990. Modality and English Modals. Longman, NY. • Palmer, F.R. 2001. Mood and Modality. CUP • Plank, F. 1984. The modals story retold. Studies in Language 8:305-64 • Willet, T. 1988. A cross-linguistic survey of the grammaticalization of evidentiality. Studies in Language 12: 51-97 CFILT

  20. Thank You CFILT

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