{"id":906,"date":"2010-10-04T10:00:52","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T08:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=906"},"modified":"2010-07-21T10:24:41","modified_gmt":"2010-07-21T08:24:41","slug":"decoding-modality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=906","title":{"rendered":"(De)coding modality"},"content":{"rendered":"
(De)coding modality:<\/strong> The case of must<\/em>, may<\/em>, m\u00e5ste<\/em>, and kan<\/em>. By Anna W\u00e4rnsby<\/strong>. (Lund studies in English 13.) Lund: Lund University Press, 2006. Pp. 238. ISBN 9789197515825<\/a>. $87.50.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by <\/strong>Heiko Narrog<\/strong><\/a>, Tohoku University, Japan<\/em><\/p>\n

This empirical study, based on Anna W\u00e4rnsby\u2019s doctoral dissertation at Lund University, compares the English modals must<\/em> and may<\/em> with their Swedish counterparts m\u00e5ste<\/em> and kan<\/em>. Specifically, W is interested in the polyfunctionality of Germanic modal verbs (e.g. deontic must<\/em>, which indicates an obligation, in contrast to epistemic must<\/em>, which indicates a conclusion) as well as elements in the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic context that help to resolve this ambiguity.<\/p>\n

W explores these issues in six chapters. In Ch. 1 (10\u201347), W discusses the subtypes of modality and introduces the corpus (i.e. the English-Swedish Parallel Corpus, which contains about 2.8 million words). In Ch. 2 (48\u201359), W presents the findings of a similar study by Jennifer Coates (The semantics of modal auxiliaries<\/em>, London: Croom Helm, 1983) and identifies a number of contextual factors, including aspect, verb type, and the nature of the grammatical subject, that disambiguate polyfunctional modals.<\/p>\n

Ch. 3 (60\u2013112) presents the corpus study. W examines the impact of perfect and progressive aspect, of introductory there<\/em> subjects, of state verbs, and of inanimate subjects on the interpretation of each of the four modals. In Ch. 4 (113\u201349), W proposes a refined analysis of the contextual factors discussed by Coates. Crucially, W suggests that all the features that contribute to deontic or epistemic interpretation are related to one overarching concept: controllability. In essence, if a situation described in the proposition can be controlled by an agent with intentions, it is likely to receive a deontic interpretation, and if not, it is likely to receive an epistemic interpretation.<\/p>\n

In Ch. 5 (150\u2013207), W presents an analysis of the modals using data mining software. This software allows her to propose a decision tree for each modal and to combine the decision trees of two or more modals. For example, in the decision tree for must<\/em>, the criterion in the top node of the tree is the presence or absence of marked perfect or progressive aspect: presence leads to an epistemic interpretation, absence leads further down the tree. Although must<\/em> and m\u00e5ste<\/em> have very similar decision trees, the trees for may<\/em> and kan<\/em> are dissimilar, which W attributes to different degrees of grammaticalization. The final remarks in Ch. 6 (208\u2013215) are followed by references, appendices, and name and subject indexes.<\/p>\n

This volume is a welcome addition to the ever-growing literature on modality. W has skillfully refined the information presented in Coates\u2019s important study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(De)coding modality: The case of must, may, m\u00e5ste, and kan. By Anna W\u00e4rnsby. (Lund studies in English 13.) Lund: Lund University Press, 2006. Pp. 238. ISBN 9789197515825. $87.50. Reviewed by Heiko Narrog, Tohoku University, Japan This empirical study, based on Anna W\u00e4rnsby\u2019s doctoral dissertation at Lund University, compares the English modals must and may with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":907,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions\/907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}