Generic "will".

[Andrew Patterson]

Larry Lantham wrote:

After all, if it's a fact, what kind of stance could a speaker have about it?

Larry, it seems you posted at the same time. I hadn't thought about that and take it back.

I think Larry is right. You can't take a stance on a fact.

[metal56]

Larry Lantham wrote:

After all, if it's a fact, what kind of stance could a speaker have about it?

Larry, it seems you posted at the same time. I hadn't thought about that and take it back.

I think Larry is right. You can't take a stance on a fact.

Does one take a stance on an utterance or incident when reporting it?

Stance is possible even with non-modal utterances. Facts are stance.

[metal56]

Lewis makes it pretty clear that modal auxiliaries mark for the speaker's stance as concerns NON-FACTUAL elements of the proposition. After all, if it's a fact, what kind of stance could a speaker have about it?

The stance of showing that he/she is not the author/creator of the fact.


Why is the "will" here if the speaker has seen the weather report and it says "Rain tomorrow in the north. Sunny in the south."?

Speaker: It will rain tomorrow.

Courtrooms are full of stance on the facts - juries.

[metal56]

Anyway, in truth:

"I was saying (in reference to Popper's theory) Popper believed that
scientific theories cannot be absolutely confirmed by facts, since
a future fact may come up which breaks the pattern of confirmation,
but that theories can be absolutely falsified, since it only takes
one instance to refute a universal claim that a theory may make."

www2.cddc.vt.edu/spoon-archives/feyerabend.archive

How long is a fact a fact?

[metal56]

Larry Lantham wrote:

After all, if it's a fact, what kind of stance could a speaker have about it?

Larry, it seems you posted at the same time. I hadn't thought about that and take it back.

I think Larry is right. You can't take a stance on a fact.

Here's a biggie read:

http://www.grammatics.com/appraisal/tex ... white).pdf

And another:

http://www.grammatics.com/appraisal/tex ... t-Text.pdf

[metal56]

This is a new expression for me: boulomaic verbs. Never come across that one before.

From:

http://www.grammatics.com/appraisal/tex ... t-Text.pdf


I like this (from the same link):

"Stance is therefore interpreted in terms of the relationship between the speakers, the relative status of speakers, and the presentation of self."

[JuanTwoThree]

To be historical for a moment, is it possible that some of the less modal and thus less "explainable" uses result from their being fossils from earlier systems?

Considering that Anglo-Saxon had these meanings:



CUNNAN
to know how to, have power to, be able to, can
to be or become acquainted with, be thoroughly conversant with, know
DURRAN
to dare, venture, presume
MAGAN
to be able to, have permission or power to
to be strong, confident, avail, prevail
MOTAN
(may), to be allowed to, have opportunity to, be able to, be compelled to, must
SCULAN
to be obliged to, have to, must, ought to, owe
+TURFAN
to need to, be required to, must, have occasion to
want, be needy, owe
WILLAN
be willing to, wish to, desire to, be used to, be about to, shall, will
wish, desire


then there must be a comet's tail of uses that did not change when the verbs made their long journey from these OE meanings to the current majority meaning.

I'm particularly struck by that "be used to" meaning of willan which would go a long way to explaining "will for habit" and "would for past habit". And that "be about to" might help with that "Xmas will fall on a Sunday this year" which had us perplexed.

http://www-users.york.ac.uk and about three more lines of URL helped me refresh my memory about these OE verbs and their meanings.

[metal56]

I'm particularly struck by that "be used to" meaning of willan which would go a long way to explaining "will for habit" and "would for past habit". And that "be about to" might help with that "Xmas will fall on a Sunday this year" which had us perplexed.

You'se a gem, Juan. good find. We should go back to using "willan" as a marker of habit, persistence and generic qualities. Would make things much clearer.

And "be used to" is also "accustomed to". So:

He will keep smoking in bed. (It's so annoying.)
He is accustomed to smoking in bed. It's so annoying.
He is used to smoking in bed. It's so annoying.

In the first one, the item in brackets is not really needed to express the annoyance or displeasure (stance) of the speaker.

[Andrew Patterson]

You have mentioned "A BRIEF GLOSSARY OF MODALITY" website before, Metal. It also refers to boulomaic (bouletic) modality:
http://wwwesterni.unibg.it/anglistica/slin/modgloss.htm

boulomaic modality: can be paraphrased as it is hoped/desired/feared/regretted that…Rescher (1968: 24-6) includes want under boulomaic modality (see also Simpson 1993: 47-8). Perkins (1983: 11) classes boulomaic modality as a type of dynamic modality because of the 'disposition' meaning. It could also be said that the disposition comes from the desire of a human source so is similar to deontic volitive modalities where a subject aspires to influence the world. It ranges from not-wanting through not-opposing to wanting. (Palmer (1986: 12) suggests that 'bouletic' would be etymologically preferable.)

I've actually printed this out but somehow missed this. It's of great interest to me because these words form half of the section of my Venn diagram that links to http://www.geocities.com/endipatterson/ ... erlap.html (the overlap of "to+obj+inf" and "to+inf") The other half are verbs prefixed by "would". In the link I had referred to these verbs as

verbs with suppletive action

www.thefreedictionary.com/Suppletive = Supplying deficiencies, supplementary; as, a suppletory oath. It's the supplying deficiencies sense of course that I meant.

I always like to extend the idea of modality to the chain verbs (catenatives) when I can.

[metal56]

You have mentioned "A BRIEF GLOSSARY OF MODALITY" website before, Metal. It also refers to boulomaic (bouletic) modality:

Just shows how impressed I was by the term then, I'd completely forgotten it.



Do you agree with Stubbs here?

Stubbs (1996) ... proposes that the category of ‘modality’ should be extended well beyond the modal verbs to include all wordings by which speakers/writers modulate their attachment to, or detachment from, the proposition.

[metal56]

Also:

I stand apart from much of the modality and evidentiality literature (see for example, Lyons 1977; Palmer 1986 or Chafe and Nichols 1986) and at least some of the hedging literature (see Markkanen and Schröder 1997) where accounts of epistemic modals and similar resources, for example, often assume that the sole function of these wordings is to reveal the speaker/writer’s state of mind or knowledge, to indicate that the speaker/writer is uncertain or tentative and is not committed to the truth value of the proposition.

Beyond modality and hedging: A dialogic
view of the language of intersubjective
stance

P. R. R. WHITE

[Andrew Patterson]

Metal wrote:

Stubbs (1996) ... proposes that the category of ‘modality’ should be extended well beyond the modal verbs to include all wordings by which speakers/writers modulate their attachment to, or detachment from, the proposition.

He implies that much earlier by defining modality thus:

‘modality equals those linguistic means by which a speaker can express his attitude towards the proposition. Modality is thus the attitude of the speaker towards the content of what he says’ (Kärkkäinen: 150, Stubbs 1986: 15).

And it wouldn't surprise me if that wasn't a rehash of what someone else had said. What else could it be?

Personally, I have long regarded it as,

the philosophical framework in which the proposition is interpreted.

Which amounts to the same thing but somehow sounds more precise. Alternatively, you could say it it just one 's "stance" on the proposition. That being the case, modality covers ALL cases that are not mere factual propositions; not just the plain paraphrases of modality such as, "it is necessary that..." that are often trotted out. This would include all chain verbs and representations of mood except the indicative, which is by default an unframed proposition.

Going back to the lions can be dangerous quote, the only way that modality can be applied to a fact is when the proposition is not "fully framed". It ceases to be a fact once fully framed and logically if a fact is indisputable in all cases, it CANNOT be framed at all.

[metal56]

Going back to the lions can be dangerous quote, the only way that modality can be applied to a fact is when the proposition is not "fully framed". It ceases to be a fact once fully framed and logically if a fact is indisputable in all cases, it CANNOT be framed at all.

Tell me, do you differentiate between irrealis modality and realis modality? I seems you do. And is there a real difference between alethic modality and epistemic modality?

[metal56]

"The linguistic and logical point of the distinction between realis and irrealis is that there is no external truth or reality that is being referenced. "

http://www.aptalaska.net/~ron/FOOD%2005 ... realis.htm

[Andrew Patterson]

Metal wrote:

Tell me, do you differentiate between irrealis modality and realis modality? I seems you do.

I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it. To an extent all modality is uncertain even if we include mood in the definition. Interogative mood: If I wasn't uncertain I wouldn't ask the question, even in rhetorical questions there is uncertainty for the listener, or indeed for the speaker if the purpose is to gather one's thoughts. The subjunctive moods, are about hopes and wishes which by their nature either have not yet happened or have and can't be changed. epistemic modality is a judgement, which is never perfect, deontic modality is about duty which may not be fulfilled, dynamic modality is about potential or volition which may not be fulfilled, either.

True, we can be 0.01% realis to 99.99% realis, but never 0% realis or 100% because if we were, we might as well use the indicative.

In a word, there's a continuum.

No, don't scrub it, I think get it now:
Realis modality although unreal in the sense that I have described nevertheless frames a proposition that is real or at least deterministic (I suppose it would be possible to further split down into realis, deterministic and irealis.) Irealis modality frames a proposition that is itself unreal and non-deterministic.

As for alethic modality, it seems to be a sub-division of epistemic modality. Why do they have to use obscure words? Alethic modality seems to be simply belief due to deduction. This of course begs the question as to how we come to have an epistemic framework where deduction is not involved and what we should call this/these sub-division(s). We come to hold non-alethic epistemic frameworks due to uncertainty. I don't know of any word meaning pertaining to uncertainty, so I think I'll have to coin one. αβέβαιος (abebaios) is the Greek for "uncertain" the adjective from that would be "abebeic" so I would suggest we call it "abebeic modality" or "abebeic epistemic modality".