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Modes of Modality: Modality, typology and universal grammar [Studies in Language companion series 149]. Edited by Elisabeth Leiss and Werner Abraham. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2014. vi, 511 pp.
In Modes of Modality: Modality, typology and universal grammar, Elisabeth Leiss and Werner Abraham compile fifteen articles from various (sub-) fields of Linguistics (theoretical and applied linguistics, typology, the semantics/pragmatics interface, and language philosophy) with the aim of providing a universal definition of modality and capturing its various modes of realization and different subtypes in Natural Languages. The aim of this edited volume is thus to explore and compare the various functions and patterns of modality across a wide variety of languages (Slavic, Germanic, Latvian, Igbo, Kakabe (Mande) and Cantonese) through a variety of current linguistic perspectives (generative vs. functionalist, or language philosophy, among others). The central idea of this volume is that modality is found in all of the languages of the world, but it can manifest itself in various ways (intra-, but also inter-linguistically), which can either be overt or covert.
A lot of semantic and syntactic works have been devoted to the study of modality (Kratzer 2012, Palmer 2001, Portner 2009, Cinque 1999, Hacquard 2006 to cite just a few). One of the major subjects of interest has been the distinction between root and epistemic modality. For instance, in Germanic languages (but not only) this distinction is typically represented by modal polyfunctionality (Hansen: 90), as in (1):
(1) a. In the future you must try to get here earlier (deontic)
b. It must be later than I thought (epistemic)
(from Hansen: 90, ex. (1), (2))
In (1a), must is interpreted as involving an obligation: in view of the rules, in the future, you will be obliged to get here earlier. Used as an obligation, must has a root meaning, in that this interpretation focuses on the relation between the subject and the predicate. In (1b), the same modal verb is used, but the meaning is not that of an obligation, but of a probability: in view of what I know, it is probable that it is later than I thought.
Modality is typically triggered via modal verbs/adverbs (as we just saw in 1 on the example of English; see also Akiba (pp. 19-42) on...