Basic semantic meanings of modal auxiliaries.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 7:49 am

Stephen Jones wrote:
Both statements are however factual propositions. What is stated as a factual proposition is the ability to play football well, to make others lick her boots, or the wish to fondle Britney, as opposed to the action of playing football well, making others lick your boots, or fondling Britney.
To put it another way.these two sentences:
She can speak French very well
She speaks French very well
both express opinions, but are both factual propositions.
To suggest otherwise is to claim that
Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light
is a non-factual representation of the speakers opinion, whilst
Metal 56 is a sexy turn-on
is a statement of objective fact.

Some grammarians have supposed that the Potential Mood, as distinguished above from the Subjunctive, coincides with the Indicative. But as the latter "simply indicates or declares a thing," it is manifest that the former, which modifies the declaration, and introduces an idea materially distinct from it, must be considerably different. 'I can walk', 'I should walk,' appear to be so essentially distinct from the simplicity of 'I walk,' 'I walked,' as to warrant a correspondent distinction of moods. (Murray, 1824:71).
http://www.ugr.es/~lquereda/verb_in_18.htm

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 7:59 am

Andrew: "Shall you make a coffee?" has to be (?) a person talking to himself/herself and wondering what task the minion will have to do next. "Now let me think, shall you make a coffee or shall you file these?" The minion has no say in the matter. Is shall about certainty, hierarchy and power even in its rare affirmative uses?

Interesting points about "can't help" though I think you're being too prescriptive about "would like":

"I would like living in Spain if I could buy Marmite" seems to be fine if said by someone living in Spain.

What I was driving at was that we don't always use the negative of the same modal to contradict it. How do you deny "It must/will have been Colonel Mustard with the lead piping in the study" ? Certainly not with "It mustn't......."

The other person would answer "It can't have been/It won't have been because.........

which either obscures any deep meaning of must and can or we must ascribe another meaning to their respective negatives. And especially to cannot, whose being one word makes it different from the others anyway?

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 9:24 am

Some grammarians have supposed that the Potential Mood, as distinguished above from the Subjunctive, coincides with the Indicative. But as the latter "simply indicates or declares a thing," it is manifest that the former, which modifies the declaration, and introduces an idea materially distinct from it, must be considerably different.
'I can walk', 'I should walk,' appear to be so essentially distinct from the simplicity of 'I walk,' 'I walked,' as to warrant a correspondent distinction of moods. (Murray, 1824:71).

Thanks for drawing my attention to this, Metal. I’d missed it first time round.

Stephen, I think you could be on to sth here. This also seens to have some baring on whether to use a gerund or infinitive. In Grammar Dimensions: Form, Meaning, and Use. 2nd Ed. Jan Frodesen and Janet Eyring. Heinle & Heinle: Boston, 1997:

Although a gerund and an infinitive will often have practically the same meaning ("Running in the park after dark can be dangerous" and "To run in the park after dark can be dangerous"), there can be a difference in meaning. Gerunds are used to describe an "actual, vivid, or fulfilled action" whereas infinitives are better used to describe "potential, hypothetical, or future events."

This is taken up and expanded in:

http://cctc.commnet.edu/grammar/verbs.htm#gerunds

Where they write:
This is especially true with three kinds of verbs: verbs of emotion, verbs of completion/incompletion, and verbs of remembering.
They then list examples. See the website.

Stephen, are you suggesting:
1. that modals may carry potental mood as distinguished from the indicative in addition to the three modalities epistemic, deontic and dynamic; or
2. that the potential mood is an expression of one of those modalities. (Traditionally potential is seen as dynamic modality.); or
3. sth else?

What baring if any do you think this has on the mood/modality of verbs followed by gerunds or to+infinitive?

Juan wrote:

Andrew: "Shall you make a coffee?" has to be (?) a person talking to himself/herself and wondering what task the minion will have to do next. "Now let me think, shall you make a coffee or shall you file these?" The minion has no say in the matter. Is shall about certainty, hierarchy and power even in its rare affirmative uses?

OK, I think I've got that now.

Interesting points about "can't help" though I think you're being too prescriptive about "would like":

"I would like living in Spain if I could buy Marmite" seems to be fine if said by someone living in Spain.

Somehow this sounds slightly awkward although it might just slip through, either way, would you agree that there seems to be a greater tendency for a word to be followed by "to"+infinitive when preceded by "would" than when not preceded by "would"? If you do, why is that so?

I also noted that this is in the conditional mood and mood and modality are closely linked (if not the same thing), can you think of an example of "would+like followed by the gerund that doesn't use a conditional?

What I was driving at was that we don't always use the negative of the same modal to contradict it. How do you deny "It must/will have been Colonel Mustard with the lead piping in the study" ? Certainly not with "It mustn't......."
The other person would answer "It can't have been/It won't have been because.........

which either obscures any deep meaning of must and can or we must ascribe another meaning to their respective negatives. And especially to cannot, whose being one word makes it different from the others anyway?

I appreciate that. Thanks.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 10:34 am

How would you like getting a punch on the nose? How would you like being punched on the nose?

This might be said by someone who has been punched on the nose.

In a similar way, I live in Spain and find it difficult to say "I would like to live in Spain if...

Either way it seems, unsurprisingly, not to have the to-be-expected forward-lookingness of "would like to" .
"Would like to" is far more common for that reason, I suppose.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 3:12 pm

Andrew Patterson wrote:
"She could see the bus pulling away"
Sorry to complicate matters here, but there seems to be more going on here than just dynamic modality but I don't think it is epistemic or deontic, either.

To my mind using "could" in this way implies that not only was she:
1. able to see the bus pulling away, but
2. she did in fact see the bus pulling away.

Compare this to,
3. "A true gentleman is a man who can play the bagpipes but doesn't."

A few comentators have said that there is a fourth type of modality to do with facts called existential modality.

If we say that the statement in (1) is dynamic modality, I think (2) might be an example of existential modality.

<To my mind using "could" in this way implies that not only was she:
1. able to see the bus pulling away, but
2. she did in fact see the bus pulling away. >

From where she lived, she could see the bus pulling away. Now, if only it would leave.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 3:29 pm

JuanTwoThree wrote:
What I was driving at was that we don't always use the negative of the same modal to contradict it. How do you deny "It must/will have been Colonel Mustard with the lead piping in the study" ? Certainly not with "It mustn't......."

The other person would answer "It can't have been/It won't have been because.........

quote]

Does that "must have been" above refer to "It must have been Colonel Mustard who was in the study", It must have been Colonel Mustard who did the murder", or both?

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 3:51 pm

Metal wrote:

From where she lived, she could see the bus pulling away. Now, if only it would leave.

OK, Metal, once again context is everything. You are right, that it is possible to use this without an existential sense. I was wrong to say it implies an existential sense. In that context, it has no existential sense at all.

I should have said it can have that interpretation.
OK, let's put it in another context where it does have an existential sense:

Cathy rushed towards the bus stop desperately hoping that she could reach it before Heathcliffe caught the bus. But it was no use. In the distance, she could see the bus pulling away. Heathcliffe is on it she thought, I'll never see him again.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 4:18 pm

Is anyone fortunate enough to have read this?

A modal shock absorber, empathiser/emphasiser and qualifier
Author: Kjellmer G.1

Abstract:

The modal auxiliary can occasionally occurs, as it seems redundantly, in sentences like “I can promise that you'll like it”, a usage that has sometimes been difficult to explain. Its occurrence in the CobuildDirect Corpus is here investigated, and it appears that it typically occurs with three types of verbs: performative verbs, verbs of perception and verbs of mental processes. Far from being redundant, it carries out a number of important functions, labelled Shock absorber, Empathiser/Emphasiser and Qualifier. It is finally suggested that its use in those functions will explain why it predominantly occurs with the three types of verbs.

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 5:27 pm

Metal wrote quoting Kjellmer:

The modal auxiliary can occasionally occurs, as it seems redundantly, in sentences like “I can promise that you'll like it”, a usage that has sometimes been difficult to explain. Its occurrence in the CobuildDirect Corpus is here investigated, and it appears that it typically occurs with three types of verbs: performative verbs, verbs of perception and verbs of mental processes. Far from being redundant, it carries out a number of important functions, labelled Shock absorber, Empathiser/Emphasiser and Qualifier. It is finally suggested that its use in those functions will explain why it predominantly occurs with the three types of verbs.

No, I haven't read it, but it makes me think that existential modality as such doesn't need to exist.

Basically, if we define modality as how we frame the interpretation of a proposition, existential modality seems to be no more than the unframed (original) meaning of the proposition. The interpretation is still framed just not entirely.

We could say the interpretation is:
1. partially framed where so-called existential modality exists; and
2. fully framed when it does not.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 10:15 pm

I was chatting with a Canadian colleague today about modals and I remarked how one might say Juan will be in his English class right now to refer to a present supposition. Her response was "Ah, but in Canada we don't do that - we'd say I suppose/imagine/think...or something like that".

If she's right (and I have no reason to doubt her), then basic meanings of modals, even if they exist, may well vary between dialects of English anyway.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 10:30 pm

I bet "will" has a connection to the future in Canada though, eh?

Just because the path from the core meaning to the auxiliary meanings is obscured when we are dealing with functional words such as modals, does that mean that the path does not exist?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Tue Jun 14, 2005 6:19 am

Stephen Jones wrote:

That will give it the sense of ability. It still has nothing to do with the core meaning Lewis assigns to 'could' which is only good for epistemic modality.
You keep repeating the same nonsense. When will you realise that "ability" is a type of possibility? When will you see that the base of all modal auxilairies is either possibility or necessity?

Can = I assert that it is possible that ...
Could = I assert that it is "remotely" possible that ...
She can swim/She has the ability of swimming/It is possible for her to do the action of swimming.

They all mean the same and all fit Lewis' base semantic meaning. The word that connects them is "possibility", whether epistemic, doentic or dynamic. Try to understand the difference between base semantic meaning and communicative meaning.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Tue Jun 14, 2005 7:19 am

Andrew Patterson wrote: Basically, if we define modality as how we frame the interpretation of a proposition, existential modality seems to be no more than the unframed (original) meaning of the proposition. The interpretation is still framed just not entirely.

We could say the interpretation is:
1. partially framed where so-called existential modality exists; and
2. fully framed when it does not.

So the "unframed" proposition would be something like:

Some lions are dangerous. (See von Wright. 1951)

While the partially framed proposition would be:

(Some) lions can be dangerous.

???

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Tue Jun 14, 2005 7:34 am

I bet "will" has a connection to the future in Canada though, eh?

It may well do, woody, but the point is that it doesn't in my English. So, any attempt to pin down modals to one basic semantic meaning may well be obscured by the fact that there may be subtle (or not so subtle) differences in meaning across dialects. It's true for other lexical items so why not modals?

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Tue Jun 14, 2005 8:58 am

Metal wrote:

So the "unframed" proposition would be something like:
Some lions are dangerous. (See von Wright. 1951)
While the partially framed proposition would be:
(Some) lions can be dangerous.

The von Write quotation is, I think the first time that the idea of existental modality was posited and I had this very quote in my mind when I wrote that. It's just we were already discussing the example of the bus pulling away.

The answer is yes. That is exactly as I would interpret it. This is my idea, though, not anybody elses so tell me if you think I am talking rubbish, Metal.