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Chapter 3. The scope of modal categories

An empirical study
  • Heiko Narrog
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Re-Assessing Modalising Expressions
This chapter is in the book Re-Assessing Modalising Expressions

Abstract

This paper investigates the scope of modal categories. While it is hypothesized in many linguistic theories that different modal categories have different scope, there are only very few systematic studies that show differences. The language of investigation is Japanese, which has grammaticalized all cross-linguistically relevant modal categories and has a strict and transparent head-final structure, which is conducive to the study of scope. The results show that different modal categories indeed have different scope. However the scope properties of all modal categories do not all perfectly align to form a “clean” hierarchy. These problems can be solved if one distinguishes between ‘active’ scope (i.e. the categories some category can take scope over) and ‘passive’ scope (i.e. the categories some category can take scope under), and separates volitional (mainly deontic and boulomaic) from non-volitional (mainly epistemic and evidential) modal categories.

Abstract

This paper investigates the scope of modal categories. While it is hypothesized in many linguistic theories that different modal categories have different scope, there are only very few systematic studies that show differences. The language of investigation is Japanese, which has grammaticalized all cross-linguistically relevant modal categories and has a strict and transparent head-final structure, which is conducive to the study of scope. The results show that different modal categories indeed have different scope. However the scope properties of all modal categories do not all perfectly align to form a “clean” hierarchy. These problems can be solved if one distinguishes between ‘active’ scope (i.e. the categories some category can take scope over) and ‘passive’ scope (i.e. the categories some category can take scope under), and separates volitional (mainly deontic and boulomaic) from non-volitional (mainly epistemic and evidential) modal categories.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Chapter 1. Modalising expressions and modality 1
  4. Section I. Moving to modal categories
  5. Chapter 2. Revisiting global and intra-categorial frequency shifts in the English modals 19
  6. Chapter 3. The scope of modal categories 47
  7. Chapter 4. Not just frequency, not just modality 79
  8. Chapter 5. How and why seem became an evidential 109
  9. Section II. Moving to modal co-text
  10. Chapter 6. Conditionals, modality, and Schrödinger’s cat 143
  11. Chapter 7. Modal marking in conditionals. Grammar, usage and discourse 173
  12. Chapter 8. Present-day English constructions with chance ( s ) in Talmy’s greater modal system and beyond 195
  13. Section III. Moving to modal context
  14. Chapter 9. A genre-based analysis of evaluative modality in multi-verb sequences in English 225
  15. Chapter 10. Epistemic modals in academic English 253
  16. Chapter 11. On the (con)textual properties of must , have to and shall 281
  17. Chapter 12. “The future elected government should fully represent the interests of Hongkong people” 311
  18. Subject Index 343
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.216.03nar

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Chapter 1. Modalising expressions and modality 1
  4. Section I. Moving to modal categories
  5. Chapter 2. Revisiting global and intra-categorial frequency shifts in the English modals 19
  6. Chapter 3. The scope of modal categories 47
  7. Chapter 4. Not just frequency, not just modality 79
  8. Chapter 5. How and why seem became an evidential 109
  9. Section II. Moving to modal co-text
  10. Chapter 6. Conditionals, modality, and Schrödinger’s cat 143
  11. Chapter 7. Modal marking in conditionals. Grammar, usage and discourse 173
  12. Chapter 8. Present-day English constructions with chance ( s ) in Talmy’s greater modal system and beyond 195
  13. Section III. Moving to modal context
  14. Chapter 9. A genre-based analysis of evaluative modality in multi-verb sequences in English 225
  15. Chapter 10. Epistemic modals in academic English 253
  16. Chapter 11. On the (con)textual properties of must , have to and shall 281
  17. Chapter 12. “The future elected government should fully represent the interests of Hongkong people” 311
  18. Subject Index 343
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