Book review

The expression of modality

Frawley, William (ed.). 2005. The expression of modality. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter

Reviewed by Kamila Turewicz, University of Szczecin

The Expression of Modality is a collection of articles addressing a variety of issues in the area of modality. The collection consists of a preface, 7 original contributions and a part called Topical outline.

In the first contribution of the volume, Jan Nuyts presents an overview of widely recognized concepts in the study of modality. He offers a broad view of modality as qualifications of states of affairs, pointing to the traditional view of three basic modal categories: dynamic, deontic and epistemic (Palmer 1979). Nuyts acknowledges the existing terminological diversity: Palmer's dynamic modality corresponds to Goossens's (1985) facultative modality and Hengeveld's (1988) inherent modality. Additionally, Nuyts posits situational (dynamic) modality to cover cases in which dynamic modality is "inherent in the situation described in the clause as a whole". For deontic and epistemic modalities Nuyts offers a scalar view, covering negation. He goes on to discuss alternative approaches, such as Van der Auwera and Plungian (1998), Bybee et al. (1985), and Coates (1983). The discussion is followed by an overview of marginal categories of modality: mood, alethic modality, volition and intention, evidentiality, and boulomaic modality. Nuyts' extensive discussion on diversity of both modal categories and parameters behind postulated subcategorizations is representative of most influential works in the field, but contains only mere traces of analyses developed by Talmy, Sweetser, and Langacker.

The predominating element in de Haan's "Typological approaches to modality" is the diversity of proposals. De Haan comments on terminological debates in the typological literature, and offers an overview of expressions of modality through typologically distinct languages. Common cross-linguistic expressions of modality are modal auxiliaries, adverbs and adjectives, modal tags, particles, and modal case. The next topic is the realis / irrealis distinction, encoded morphologically mainly in languages of New Guinea and North America. The discussion on "complex interactions of modal meanings in the world's languages" (p.45) leads to semantic maps, (van der Auwera and Plungian (1998) and Bybee et al. (1994)) as reflecting upon internal structure of the domain of modality and its links to non-modal meanings. Despite its limitations, the author views semantic maps as a substantial move towards "a unified picture of modal meanings and forms". A section on modality and tense discusses cross-linguistic tendencies for some language forms to cover both modal and tense relations. De Haan employs modal logic calculus to explicate the possible contribution of negation to modal meanings in different languages. The chapter closes with a discussion on evidentiality and related mirativity.

In the chapter by Stefan Kaufmann, Cleo Condoravdi and Valentina Harizanov - "Formal approaches to modality", the model-theoretic apparatus of modal logic is employed to the semantic analysis of modal expressions. Having introduced modal operators for necessity and possibility, the authors present a sample derivation illustrating propositional modal logic at work in its syntactic and semantic dimensions. Summing up, the authors explicate a close relationships between syntactic and semantic aspects of modal propositional logic (p.79). Kratzer's notions of modal bases and ordering source are introduced as tools to distinguish among epistemic, deontic, and doxastic modal meanings. The part on modality and time illustrates the pervasiveness of semantic interactions between the domains of tense and modality. The conclusions point out main achievements of formal modal logic in accounting for the 'bewildering polysemy' of modal auxiliaries and adverbials, and foreground the need to approach modality as a linguistic phenomenon interacting with other grammatical categories. I find this chapter illuminating, because it foregrounds aspects of modality that are relevant to a cognitive linguistic perspective. The authors propose formal tools to grasp the close relationship between syntactic and semantic facets of propositional modality, which reminds me of the symbolic nature of language structure. Kratzer's notion of modal bases resembles Langacker's (1991) notion of Ground.

Elizabeth Traugott discusses issues central to the diachronic study of modality: the process of grammaticalization, which derives modal auxiliaries from non-modal expressions, semantic change, innovation, unidirectionality, and the role of synchronic contexts triggering diachronic semantic processes. Traugott discusses the Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic change, which embraces the the idea that "speakers / writers invite hearers / readers to infer meaning beyond what is said" (p.115). A discussion of cross-linguistic typological studies presents aspects of Bybee et al. (1994) and van der Auwera and Plungian (1998). The discussion is followed by an overview of corpora and frequency studies of English, including the study of the development of modal verbs. The final part focuses on the English modal system. Traugott stresses the gradient character of the notion of modality and the low predictability of the grammaticalization process of modal verbs.

Soonja Hooi, in her chapter "Acquisition of modality", reviews developmental studies on markers of deontic, dynamic, epistemic and evidential modalities. She begins with a discussion of general developmental tendencies confirmed for languages with similar morphosyntactic patterns, and identifies aspects of the gradual nature of the acquisition of modality. Hooi reports on research on stages of cognitive development and the development of modality. Later she discusses caregiver input, pointing to a strong correlation between caregiver input and the development of modal systems. In the conclusions, Hooi hints at the precedence of pragmatic and semantic interactive clues over syntactic ones in the acquisition of modality.

Pamela Munro's "Modal expressions in Valley Zapotec" begins with general information on linguistic means expressing modal concepts. The chapter offers a survey of the Valley Zapotec modal system, which includes Irrealis, Subjunctive and Definite modal subcategories. Discussing the typological status of Valley Zapotec, the author submits that the dialect does not allow indeterminacy with regard to epistemic and deontic meanings.

Sherman Wilcox and Barbara Schaffer, in "Modality in America Sign Language" give a general overview of world's signed languages, sketching issues relevant for a description of ASL: phonological, morphological, syntactic components, grammaticalization, finger spelling and classes of articulators. The authors present manual gestures indicating modal meanings and sentences illustrating respective modal uses, based on the subcategorization proposed by van der Auwera and Plungian (1998). Wilcox and Shaffer argue that modal markers in ASL develop out of lexical sources, very much as in spoken languages (p.233). What appears to differentiate between expression of modality in spoken and signed languages is that two grammaticalization routs can be defined. From manual through lexical to grammatical form or from non-manual gesture through prosodic function to grammatical device.

Evaluation

Frawley views the book as 'a comprehensive tutorial' on modal phenomena. Indeed, the combined expertise of the contributing researchers provides a thorough introduction to the area of modality, both in terms of categories and language expressions covering them. The number and diversity of the considered languages is immense. The question whether the volume can offer a unified view of modal phenomena deserves more than a yes or no answer. A recurrent theme in the respective chapters is the search for subcategories of the conceptual domain of modality, leading to the plethora of used distinctions and terminologies. Naturally, researchers enter the domain through respective language expressions of modality, and a substantial array of labels is needed to account for the richness and variety of modal expressions in the languages of the world. My own view would be that the framework of Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987, 1991) could be of some help in detecting unity in variety.

References

Bybee, Joan L., Perkins, Revere, and Pagliuca, William. 1994. The Evolution of Grammar. Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press

Coates, Jennifer. 1983. The semantics of the modal auxiliaries. London: Croom Helm.

Goossens, Louis. 1985. Modality and the modals. In: M. Bolkestein, C. De Groot, L.Mackenzie (eds.), Predicates and terms in functional grammar. Dordrecht: Foris, 203-217.

Hengeveld, Kees. 1988. Illocution, mood and modality in a functional grammar of Spanish. Journal of Semantics 6: 227-69

Langacker, R. W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. 1 Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Langacker, R. W. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol II Descriptive Applications. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Palmer, F. R. 1979.Modality and the English modals. London: Longman.

Van der Auwera, Johan, and Plungian, Vladimir. 1998. Modality’s semantic map, Linguistic typology 2.1, 79-124.

Links

The expression of modality at Mouton de Gruyter

Commissioned
Submitted
Final version submitted

[ jump to top ]

| | | | | | | | | | | | | |