Modality

Alex Klinge is Associate Professor in the Department of International Language Studies at the Copenhagen Business School. His research interests include negation, tense, English nominal compounding and nominal structure in English compared with other Germanic languages. Henrik Heg Mueller is Associate Professor in the Department of International Language Studies at the Copenhagen Business School. His research interests include Spanish modal auxiliaries, nominal compounding and determination.

Modality: Studies in Form and Function reflects the diversity of theoretical frameworks and the heterogeneity of linguistic phenomena under the general heading of modality. Researchers in the fields of logic, philosophy and linguistics have for many years been pondering the elusive nature of modality and grappled with ways of capturing it. The 11 studies included here cover the span from contributions that seek to clarify controversial theoretical constructs to studies which take an empirical approach to linguistic categories and cross-linguistic typological issues. The key concepts addressed are the structure of modal subcategories, subjective vs. objective modality, force dynamics, evidentiality, Spanish and English modal auxiliaries, modal uses of Italian tenses, linearization patterns in German verb chains, determinant TAM categories, modal polyfunctionality across languages and rapport management in discourse.This volume raises new questions and offers re-examination of known phenomena which should provide interesting reading to linguists and students of linguistics of all theoretical persuasions.

Introduction; 1. The Modal Confusion: On Terminology and the Concepts Behind It (Jan Nuyts, University of Antwerp); 2. Subjective and Objective Modality (Michael Herslund, Copenhagen Business School); 3. Modality and the Concept of Force-Dynamic Potential (Kasper Boye, University of Copenhagen); 4. Modality and Subjectivity (Lars Heltoft, University of Roskilde); 5. Discourse Perspectives on Modalisation: The Case of Accounts in Semi-Structured Interviews (Lars Fant, University of Stockholm); 6. Categoricalness and Temporal Projection of Spanish Modals (Henrik Hoeg Muller, Copenhagen Business School; 7. On the Modal Values of the Pluperfect - with Evidence from Italian and Danish (Iorn Korzen, Copenhagen Business School); 8. Where there is a Will, there is a Modal (Alex Klinge, Copenhagen Business School); 9. The Syntagmatic Patterning of Modality in German (John Ole Askedal, University of Oslo); 10. Mood and Modality in Bulgarian, Danish and Russian (Per Durst-Andersen, Copenhagen Business School); 11. Modal Polyfunctionality and Standard Average European (Johan van der Auwera, Andreas Amman with Saskia Kindt)