Modality and Its Interaction with the Verbal System

Download or read book Modality and Its Interaction with the Verbal System written by Lambertus Christiaan Jozef Barbiers and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a broad overview of the issues relevant for the study of syntax of modals and their interaction with the verbal system. A large number of novel observations are offered from a variety of languages, including Dutch, (Modern and Middle) English, German, Lele, Macedonian, Middle Dutch and Slovene. The wealth of data, the critical evaluation of existing syntactic analyses of modality and the alternative analyses proposed make the book interesting for both for descriptively and for theoretically oriented syntacticians. Major concerns addressed are: the distinction between epistemic and root modality (where the arguments pro and contra the assumption of a corresponding difference in syntactic structure are evaluated, refined, and supplemented by arguments for syntactic distinction between necessity and possibility modals and by consideration of the influence of the modal's complement on the interpretation), the interaction between modality and clausal phenomena (in particular negation, but also imperatives, aspect and Aktionsart), and the acquisition of modality (addressing cross-linguistic differences in the possibility for root infinitives to express modal interpretations and the late acquisition of epistemic interpretations as compared with non-epistemic interpretations).