Modality in English And Kurdish: A Contrastive Study

Abstract

This study attempts a contrastive analysis of modality between English and Kurdish. The problem of the study is attributed to the difficulties faced by Kurdish learners and students at the Translation and English Departments at the College of Languages at the University of Duhok regarding mastering English modality in general and modal auxiliary verbs in particular. Modality is the category of meaning which is employed to express necessities and possibilities. The main aims of this study are to describe both epistemic and deontic modality in the two languages under study in order to define similarities and differences between them with respect to modality. The findings of the study show that modals in English are mostly grammatical auxiliaries, whereas in Kurdish they are mostly lexical items, and a variety of lexical items are employed for the expression of one single English modal auxiliary. The study ends up with a number of conclusions and recommendations.