Mood and Modality

1
Mood and Modality
Rajat Kumar Mohanty rkmATcseDOTiitbDOTacDOT
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

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.

4
Modality

• Propositional Modality (concerned with the
  speakers 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 speakers
  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)

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)

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)

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

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.

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)

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.

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 dont you go and see if John will let
  you stay?)
• CAN is used both for epistemic modality (only
  when negated) and for deontic modality.

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

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)

14
Properties of English Modals

• They do not have non-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.

15
Formal Differences

• The same modal verb may be used in English for
  both epistemic and deontic modality.
• Deontic MUST has negative mustnt and neednt,
  but epistemic MUST has no morphologically related
  negative.
• John must / mustnt come for the meeting.
  (deontic)
• John must /mustnt be in his office. (epistemic)
• MAY and MUST followed by HAVE always epistemic.
• John may/must have been in his office.

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)

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)

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)

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 8305-64
• Willet, T. 1988. A cross-linguistic survey of the
  grammaticalization of evidentiality. Studies in
  Language 12 51-97

20

• Thank You