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Modality and Factivity: One Perspective on the Meaning of the English Modal Auxiliaries

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Modality and Factivity: One Perspective on the Meaning of the English Modal Auxiliaries MODALITY AND FACTIVITY: ONE PERSPECTIVE ON THE MEANING OF THE ENGLISH MODAL AUXILIARIES by NICOLA M,BREWER Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of PhD The University of Leeds Department of Linguistics and Phonetics December 1987 ii ABSTRACT This study concentrates on modality as expressed by the set of modal auxiliaries and seeks to establish that these verbs share semantic as well as syntactic properties by identifying a single core meaning which they share. The relationship between modality and factivity is examined with the aim of gaining an insight into the former, more complex concept. When viewed from this perspective, the defining characteristic of all the modal auxiliary verbs in almost all of their uses is found to be nonfactivity. The meanings expressed by this set of verbs are classified according to a framework derived from modal logic consisting of three basic types of modality each of which relates to a different set of laws or principles; the relative factivity associated with the modal auxiliaries is seen to vary with the nature of modality as defined and classified by this framework. Within each of the three types of modality, a semantic scale is identified and modality is described as a gradable concept for which scalar analysis is appropriate, both within and beyond these three scales. Relative factivity is also shown to vary according to the degree of modality expressed by each of the modal verbs. The nature and degree of modality expressed interact with features of the linguistic (and pragmatic) context to determine the particular factive or a contrafactive interpretation conveyed by a given modal auxiliary token. The influence of certain combinations of contextual features is sufficiently strong to force a factive or contrafactive reading of a modal token, although in general the role of such features is merely to strengthen or weaken the relative factivity associated with the modal verb. Epistemic modality is seen to be most directly related to nonfactivity and therefore to be the most central modal meaning. The modal auxiliaries are found to be semantically less modal when they occur in contexts of determinate factual status. Least modal are those members of this set of auxiliary verbs which in certain uses have determinate factual status even without the presence of any of the significant contextual features. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii LIST OF TABLES V ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER TWO THE CLASSIFICATION OF MODALITY 22 2.1 The modal auxiliaries 22 2.2 Modality and the modals 29 2.3 The system of modality 32 2.4 Categories of the concept of modality 38 2.4.1 The concept of modality 38 2.4.2 Language and logic 46 2.4.3 Root and epistemic modality 50 2.4.4 The subcategorisation of root modality 72 2.5 Degrees of modality 78 2.5.1 Epistemic scale 80 2.5.2 Logical relations 87 2.5.3 Deontic scale 91 2.5.4 Dynamic scale 97 2.5.5 Between the scales 102 2.5.6 Beyond the scales 113 iv CHAPTER THREE FACTIVITY AND ACTUALITY 119 3.1 Survey of the literature 120 3.2 Terms and definitions 151 3.2.1 Presupposition, assertion and implication 151 3.2.2 Factivity and related terms 155 3.2.3 Actuality and related terms 158 3.2.4 Semantics, pragmatics, context and co-text 159 3.3 Nonfactive predicates and modalised sentences 160 CHAPTER FOUR MODALITY AND FACTIVITY 163 4.1 The nature of the relationship 164 4.2 The importance of contextual features 171 4.3 Relative factivity 210 4.3.1 Epistemic modality 212 MAY MIGHT 212 214 COULD 219 WILL WOULD 220 233 SHALL SHOULD 242 244 MUST 251 4.3.2 Deontic modality 254 MAY MIGHT 254 256 CAN COULD 257 260 MUST OUGHT TO SHOULD 261 269 272 4.3.3 Dynamic modality 278 MAY MIGHT 278 278 WILL SHALL WOULD 280 282 283 CAN COULD 291 303 4.4 Summary of results 307 CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION 315 NOTES 319 BIBLIOGRAPHY 344 LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Frequency of each modal 17 Table 2 Comparison of terms 50 Table 3 Root and epistemic meanings 55 Table 4 Past marking characteristics 60 Table 5 Internal and external negation 65 Table 6 The domain of modality 74 Table 7 The subclassification of root modality 75 Table 8 Scale of likelihood 80 Table 9 Scale of certainty 80 Table 10 Hermeren's scale of neutral modalities 88 Table 11 Hermeren's scale of external modalities 96 Table 12 Hermeren's scale of internal modalities 99 Table 13 Uses of MAY and MUST 104 Table 14 Perkins' frames 106 Table 15 Root and epistemic meanings of CAN/MAY and 108 MUST/HAVE TO Table 16 Gradients in root meanings 109 Table 17 Classification of predicates: 142 factive and nonfactive Table 18 Classification of predicates: 142 emotive and nonemotive Table 19 Semifactive and indifferent predicates 143 Table 20 Non-auxiliary modal expressions 144 Table 21 Factual and relative assertion 152 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Bill O'Donnell for encouraging me to begin this, and Patrick Leech for seeing me through to the end; I am indebted to both of them for all the time, help and advice they gave me so generously. I should also like to thank Frances Pearson for preparing the final typescript. For my father 1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION There is a vast literature on the English modal auxiliaries, prompted by their distinctive formal characteristics and by the "fundamental concepts that they express" (Hermeren, 1978:14). It is the latter property which determines their high frequency of occurrence in the language. Hermeren (1978:59) calculates that only the articles, certain prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns rank higher than the modals in the frequency table compiled from the million-word Brown University corpus. Twaddell's impressionistic assessment that "without [the modal auxiliaries] it is hard to avoid intolerable dullness and childish banality" (1962:26) is therefore supported by subsequent, statistically quantified, studies. However, it is not only the everyday use of language in which the modal auxiliaries constantly recur; there are also certain, more sophisticated, types of modality l , the means of expression for which may well be provided by only those languages "that have been long used in literate societies for the specialised purpose of academic discussion" (Lyons, 1977:849). In other words, modal concepts are not only essential to basic, everyday uses of language, but are also required for more advanced or sophisticated linguistic purposes. Nor is the concept of modality expressed in English only by the closed set of auxiliary verbs; it may be manifested in diverse word-classes, including adverbs (POSSIBLY), adjectives (POSSIBLE), and nouns (POSSIBILITY), as well as in the suprasegmental features of stress and intonation, ie "there is ... no one single place in the clause 1p/here modality is located" (Halliday, 1970:331). *All Notes are at the end of Chapter 5. 2 However, despite - or perhaps because of - the fundamental and pervasive nature of the concept of modality, a succinct characterisation of the term has proved elusive, as has been recently acknowledged by Perkins who comments that "in spite of the vastness of the available literature, it is by no means easy to find out what modality actually is" (1980:1) 2 . Perkins' response to this problem is to adopt a very broadly-based line of enquiry, on the grounds that It is only when the different perspectives of philosophy and philosophical logic, semantics and syntax, pragmatics and social interaction, child language acquisition and developmental psychology are all brought into focus at the same time that one begins to feel that one has grasped something like an understanding of what modality must actually be. (1980:271) As will become evident, this study owes a great deal to Perkins (1980; 1982) in terms both of motivation and influence; other major influences have been Lyons (1977), Palmer's many works on modality, and papers by Leech and Coates (1979, 1980). However, the response to the problem of characterising and understanding modality adopted here is almost diametrically opposed to that of Perkins, involving as it does a concentration upon the concept of modality as expressed exclusively by the set of modal auxiliary verbs (in contrast to Perkins' extension of the discussion to cover a range of non-auxiliary modal expressions), and the examination of modality from one perspective only (rather than from the perspectives afforded by several academic disciplines). Both responses are equally valid, and both are motivated by the desire to elucidate the nature of modality. I hope that what the present study loses in breadth, it will gain in depth of analysis. The purpose of this work is to examine modality from the perspective of its conceptual affinity with factivity, 3 in order to test the hypothesis that the semantic element common to all modal auxiliaries - their core meaning or determining characteristic - is the property of nonfactivity. This particular line of enquiry was prompted by (i) the marked similarity between a number of (independently motivated) characterisations of the two concepts. According to the standard analysis of factivity first proposed by Kiparsky and Kiparsky in 1968 (reprinted 1970), a sentence containing a "factive predicate" (such as REGRET, BE SAD THAT) is said to presuppose the truth of its complement sentence, and nonfactivity is defined negatively in terms of the absence of such a presupposition. Karttunen (1971) disputes this analysis on the grounds that "nobody quite understands what we mean by the term 'presupposition' ", and prefers to characterise nonfactive predicates (such as BELIEVE, BE LIKELY THAT) as being 'noncommittal' with regard to the truth/factual status of the complement proposition, and factive predicates as carrying "a commitment to the view" that the complement proposition is true.
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