Modality Across Syntactic Categories

Abstract

This volume explores the extremely rich diversity found under the “modal umbrella” in natural language. Offering a cross-linguistic perspective on the encoding of modal meanings that draws on novel data from an extensive set of languages, the book supports a view according to which modality infuses a much more extensive number of syntactic categories and levels of syntactic structure than has traditionally been thought. The volume distinguishes between “low modality,” which concerns modal interpretations that associate with the verbal and nominal cartographies in syntax, “middle modality” or modal interpretation associated to the syntactic cartography internal to the clause, and “high modality” that relates to the cartography known as the left periphery. By offering enticing combinations of cross-linguistic discussions of the more studied sources of modality together with novel or unexpected sources of modality, the volume presents specific case studies that show how meanings associated with low, middle, and high modality crystallize across a large variety of languages. The chapters on low modality explore modal meanings in structures that lack the complexity of full clauses, including conditional readings in noun phrases and modal features in lexical verbs. The chapters on middle modality examine the effects of tense and aspect on constructions with counterfactual readings, and on those that contain canonical modal verbs. The chapters on high modality are dedicated to constructions with imperative, evidential, and epistemic readings, examining, and at times challenging, traditional perspectives that syntactically associate these interpretations with the left periphery of the clause.