Semantic change in the English modal system

It has been commonly recognized that the particular members of the PDE modal system, i.e. the modal verbs, can be employed for the expression of different types of modality (cf., for example, COATES 1983; PALMER 2001).

Moreover, as shown by BYBEE and PAGLIUCA (1985), BYBEE, PERKINS and PAGLIUCA (1994); PALMER (2001), and others, there is a cross-linguistic tendency for a given grammaticalized markers of modality to convey more than just one modal meaning. Also encountered are contrastive studies independently indicating that such multifunctional uses are available to the equivalents of the English modals in French (cf. SALKIE 1996), GREEK (cf.

TSANGALIDIS 2004) or the Slavic languages (cf. HANSEN 2004). Crucially, different modals vary in the range of modal meanings expressed. NUYTS (1994:

100), who focuses on English and Dutch, says that:

In fact, while the category of the modals in general allows expression of these three types of modality mentioned above [i.e. participant-internal, participant-external and epistemic in the nomenclature adopted here — J.N.], this is not true for each single modal auxiliary in those languages.

Most individual modals can only express two (and in some cases even just one) of these qualificational categories, and in general, only a limited number of them allows the expression of epistemic modality.

Also, in many cases the epistemic usage turns out to be only the secondary or less frequent one, which means that this qualification is certainly not the most prominent of all semantic categories expressed by the modals [...]. (NUYTS 1994: 100)

TRAUGOTT and DASHER (2005: 107) add that cognates of a modal in related languages frequently differ in the variety of meanings that they can be used with.

Prompted by the fact that possibility and necessity are intertwined in terms of logic, scholars tend to regard the various meanings of a given modal as a case of polysemy (cf. HERMERÉN 1978; PALMER 1986; TRAUGOTT and DASHER

2005; NYKIEL 2006). A somewhat different, that is, monosemantic, stance, is offered by PERKINS(1983), WIERZBICKA(1987), and KLINGE(1993). The former two argue in favor a modal expression having an identifiable core meaning and, accordingly, seek to isolate it. Working with the Relevance Theory, KLINGE

(1993) goes one step further in that he proposes that the PDE modals should be seen to cover one semantic field of potentiality. Depending on the modal, potentiality can have different shades yet, in essence, all of them serve to furnish the hearer with the speaker’s assessment of the viability of the relation between the propositional content of a sentence and it being verified in practice. A common thread binding all the monosemantic approaches mentioned above is the assumption that the meaning of the modal is stable. It is the semantic and pragmatic context of the utterance that brings out the difference between, say, an epistemic and non-epistemic use of a modal. In this study I adhere to the polysemic view of the meanings of modal verbs, which finds further support in diachronic research.

Literature abounds in accounts of the English modals which are shown to originate in verbs of non-modal or pre-modal semantics and only subsequently do they acquire non-epistemic meanings first and epistemic meanings later.

There emerges a deep-seated tendency for participant-internal and participant-external uses of the modals to precede epistemic applications, which has induced linguists to consider non-epistemic modality as somewhat basic (cf. SHEPHERD 1982). In English the tendency has been attested and/or acknowledged by GOOSSENS (1982), SHEPHERD (1982), PLANK(1984), TRAUGOTT

(1989), SWEETSER (1990), KYTÖ (1991), DENISON (1993), WARNER (1993), JACOBSSON (1994), TRAUGOTT and DASHER (2005), and others. GAMON (1994) observes a similar diachronic propensity in the case of the German modals mögen and müssen while SHEPHERD (1982) detects largely the same scenario in the history of the modals in Antiguan Creole. That the notion of such unidirectionality is indeed sound reasoning is additionally borne out by the process of language acquisition by children. As noted by SHIELDS (1974), SHEPHERD (1982), and PERKINS (1983), side by side with the child’s cognitive development, the non-epistemic uses of the modals and other expressions of modality, being less abstract, come before the epistemic notions. Persistent as the deontic-to-epistemic tendency is, rare instances of an against-the-stream development from epistemic to non-epistemic have also been documented.

LIVNAT(2002), for example, looks into the history of the Hebrew modal adverb

participant-internal possibility participant-external possibility deonticpossibility epistemicpossibility epistemicnecessity participant-external necessity

deonticnecessity participant-internal necessity

future

‘bestrong’,‘know’, ‘arriveat’,‘finish’, ‘suffice’ ‘be

permitted’, ‘dare’

‘be’,‘become’, ‘happen’,‘befall’, ‘stand’, ‘Idon’tknow’, ‘like’ desire,movement toward ‘ifitbecomes’, perfect

‘owe’,duty, ‘belong’, ‘begood/proper’ ‘have’, ‘besupposed’ ‘need’

imperative

condition concession complementation

future Figure3.VanderAUWERAandPLUNGIAN’S(1998:98)mapofmodality

ulay ‘perhaps’ which goes a long way from signaling epistemic possibility only in Biblical Hebrew to functioning also as a deontic in directive speech acts in Modern Hebrew.

Two studies devoted to the examination of the evolution of modal polysemy need to be singled out here, those of BYBEE, PERKINS and PAGLIUCA (1994) and van der AUWERAand PLUNGIAN(1998). It is a central postulate of both that it is possible to sketch universal paths of the development of modal meanings traveled by the members of a modal system. Working on a sample of a large number of the world’s languages, BYBEE, PERKINS and PAGLIUCA (1994) arrive at three paths of modality which take into account the pre-modal meaning of a form, its modal evolution as well as its post-modal function. Van der AUWERA

and PLUNGIAN (1998) manage to integrate the single paths into a map which explicitly marks the developments attested by means of the arrows, as shown in Figure 3. The central part of the map, enclosed by the square, encompasses the developments within modality. It is important to notice the pre-eminent trend for the tokens of participant-internal modality to turn into markers of participant-external modality and then into those of epistemic modality. To the left off the square the major groups of the lexical sources of modal markers are indicated. It can also be seen that the arrows extend beyond the square on the right hand side, an index to erstwhile modal markers having a post-modal life.

Van der AUWERA and PLUNGIAN (1998: 104) refer to this process as demodalization and it also resembles desemanticization à la GREENBERG (1991).

It takes only a moment’s look at the post-modal uses of modals to recognize that the labels “future,” “condition,” “complementation” and “imperative” (cf.

BYBEE, PERKINS and PAGLIUCA 1994: 212—236) have more to do with syntax than with semantics. This stands to show that the semantic development of a modal expression is paralleled by its syntactic evolution frequently captured under the heading of grammaticalization. The correspondence between modal markers and grammaticalization is discussed in Section 2.6.