A Brief Comment on Periphrastic Expressions of Objective Modality in English and Modern Greek: a Comparison

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to comment on one of the ways of expressing objective modality in English and Modern Greek, that is, through the use of participial expressions. Reference will also be made to expressions incorporating verbally-derived adjectives and nominals. It will be attempted to point out similarities and de­monstrate, as well as explain, the differences between English and Modern Greek. It is an area which has not been studied as extensive­ly as modal auxiliaries in English. Owing to this, evidence from English has been mostly based on the work of M. Perkins (1983) Modal Expressions in English. Due to complete lack of studies in Greek, though, I was compelled to run informant tests, to check my intui­tions as a native speaker of Greek and my analysis of Greek expre­ssions. These informant tests provided an objective test of my in­tuitive judgments, as well as the evidence, from Modern Greek, on which my present analysis has been based. Before proceeding with the description and comparison of periphrastic expressions in the two languages, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that all conclusions have been drawn with the reserve that the expressions used as examples, which demonstrate different points in this work, have all been taken, and dealt with, in isolation to contextual factors whose significance in determining meaning cannot be denied and/or ignored. Context has not been taken into consideration, though, mainly for two reasons. The first reason is that the par­ticular area of study is, as mentioned above, totally unexplored in Greek and rather new to English research, so there are no sources on the interaction of contextual factors and participial expressions or periphrastic expressions of deontic modality in general. Any existing works on Modal Verbs and Context can only be considered as the starting point of an investigation of the relations between con­textual factors and participial expressions. The second reason is that the analysis of such an interaction is itself, in my opinion, quite a serious task to undertake and cannot just be fitted into this present work as only a comment of secondary importance; it de­serves a fuller treatment.