"Mood, modality and evidentiality are popular and dynamic areas in linguistics. Re-Assessing Modalising Expressions - Categories, co-text, and context focuses on the specific issue of the ways language users express permission, obligation, volition (intention), possibility and ability, necessity and prediction linguistically. Using a range of evidence and corpus data collected from different sources, the authors of this volume examine the distribution and functions of a range of patterns involving modalising expressions as predominantly found in standard American English, British English or Hong Kong English, but also in Japanese. The authors are particularly interested in addressing (co-)textual manifestations of modalising expressions as well as their distribution across different text-types and thus filling a gap research was unable to plug in the past. Thoughts on categorising or re-categorising modalising expressions initiate and complement a multi-perspectival enterprise that is intended to bring research in this area a step forward"--.

• Re-Assessing Modalising Expressions
• Editorial page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Table of contents
• Chapter 1
  • Modalising expressions and modality: An overview of trends and challenges
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Modalising expressions in English as an area of research
  • 3. Aim of the present volume
  • 4. Organisation of the present volume
  • References
• section i
  • Moving to modal categories: Contesting categorical boundaries
    • chapter 2
      • Revisiting global and intra-categorial frequency shifts in the English modals: A usage-based, constructionist view on the heterogeneity of modal development
      • 1. Introduction
      • 2. The diachrony of modals: Where we are at so far
      • 3. Modals and CxG: What are modal constructions?
      • 4. A response to Leech’s (2011) response to Millar (2009)
      • 5. What to split and what to lump?
      • 6. Conclusion
      • Acknowledgements
      • References
    • chapter 3
      • The scope of modal categories: An empirical study
      • 1. Goals and scope of this paper
      • 2. Modality and other categories of the Japanese verb and verbal complex
        • 2.1 The modal categories
        • 2.2 Other categories
        • 2.3 Selection of markers and constructions
        • 2.4 A note on verbal morphology
      • 3. The data
      • 4. Scope analysis
        • 4.1 No combination
        • 4.2 No scope ambiguity
        • 4.3 Scope ambiguity obtains
      • 5. Summary and discussion: The scope of modal categories
      • Lists of abbreviations
      • Acknowledgments
      • References
    • chapter 4
      • Not just frequency, not just modality: Production and perception of English semi-modals
      • 1. Introduction
        • 1.1 Modality, to-infinitives and V-to-Vinf as a modalizing construction
        • 1.2 The role of co(n)text: Speech-internal vs. speech-external factors
        • 1.3 Converging evidence: Production and perception
      • 2. Corpus study: Realizations of frequent V-to-Vinf items in speech
        • 2.1 Realizations of have to / used to
          • 2.1.1 Fricative devoicing
          • 2.1.2 /t/-lenition
        • 2.2 Realizations of trying to / need to
      • 3. Experimental study: Chunking and frequency information in speech perception
        • 3.1 Design and method
        • 3.2 Results and interpretation
      • 4. Synthesis and discussion
        • 4.1 Not just frequency
        • 4.2 Not just modality
        • 4.3 Converging evidence and the role of reanalysis
      • 5. Conclusion
      • Funding
      • Acknowledgments
      • References
    • chapter 5
      • How and why seem became an evidential
      • 1. Introduction
      • 2. Three research strands of conceptualizing seem
        • 2.1 An invariable core meaning: Seem between appearance and reality
        • 2.2 Seem and the hedging paradigm
        • 2.3 How and why seem turned evidential
      • 3. Conclusion
      • References
• section ii
  • Moving to modal co-text: Beyond phrase and clause units
    • chapter 6
      • Conditionals, modality, and Schrödinger’s cat: Conditionals as a family of linguistic qubits
      • 1. Motivation and aims
      • 2. The modal nature of conditionals: Considerations
      • 3. Conditionals as linguistic qubits
      • 4. Conditionals as qubits: Their function in discourse
        • 4.1 Classification of conditionals
        • 4.2 DIR-LK inferential conditionals
        • 4.3 DIR and IND rhetorical conditionals
        • 4.4 DIR-LK polar conditionals
        • 4.5 DIR-DN
        • 4.6 DIR-DD
        • 4.7 IND pretext conditionals
        • 4.8 Conditionals without apodos
      • 5. Defining the family of conditional constructions
      • 6. Conclusion
      • References
    • chapter 7
      • Modal marking in conditionals. Grammar, usage and discourse
      • 1. Introduction
      • 2. Modality and conditional clauses
      • 3. Observations and findings in previous research
      • 4. Data analysis
        • 4.1 Overall results
        • 4.2 Pragmatic biases of conditionals with modal marking in the protasis
        • 4.3 Patterns of usage
      • 5. Conclusion
      • Lists of abbreviations
      • Acknowledgments
      • References
    • chapter 8
      • Present-day English constructions with chance(s) in Talmy’s greater modal system and beyond
      • 1. Introduction
      • 2. Data and methods
      • 3. General overview: Tripartite classification
      • 4. Modalized expressions
        • 4.1 Types of modal meaning
        • 4.2 Constructional properties
      • 5. Expressions of caused modality
        • 5.1 Chance and Talmy’s greater modal system
        • 5.2 Constructional properties
      • 6. Lexical(ized) expressions
        • 6.1 Lexical uses: Chance is discourse-primary
        • 6.2 Lexicalized uses: Chance in complex predicates
        • 6.3 Lexical uses: Chance meaning ‘coincidence’
        • 6.4 Regular uses
      • 7. Conclusion
      • Acknowledgements
      • Corpus
      • References
• section iii
  • Moving to modal context: Register, genre and text type
    • chapter 9
      • A genre-based analysis of evaluative modality in multi-verb sequences in English
      • 1. Introduction
      • 2. Descriptive and methodological background
        • 2.1 Working definitions of cotext and context
        • 2.2 The deictic motion verb go
        • 2.3 General classification of multi-verb sequences with the first verb go
        • 2.4 Relation between cotext and context
      • 3. Four types of multi-verb sequences with the attenuated go
        • 3.1 The go-to-V sequence
        • 3.2 The go-Ving sequence
        • 3.3 The go-and-V sequence
        • 3.4 The go-V sequence
      • 4. Quantitative data of the go-and-V sequence
      • 5. Concluding remarks
      • Funding
      • Acknowledgments
      • References
    • chapter 10
      • Epistemic modals in academic English: A contrastive study of engineering, medicine and linguistics research papers
        • A contrastive study of engineering, medicine and linguistics research papers
          • María Luisa Carrió-Pastor
      • 1. Introduction
      • 2. Epistemic modality
      • 3. Modality, academic writing and phraseological patterns
      • 4. Corpus
      • 5. Method
      • 6. Results
        • 6.1 Expressions and value of epistemic modality
          • 6.1.1 Modal adverbs
          • 6.1.2 Modal adjectives
          • 6.1.3 Phrases/ mental state predicates
          • 6.1.4 Modal nouns
          • 6.1.5 Modal auxiliaries
        • 6.2 Orientation of epistemic modality
          • 6.2.1 Subjective epistemic modality
          • 6.2.2 Objective epistemic modality
        • 6.3 Collocations of typical epistemic modals
      • 7. Conclusions
      • References
    • chapter 11
      • On the (con)textual properties of must, have to and shall: An integrative account
      • 1. Introduction
      • 2. Discourse modes
      • 3. Modality: Basic concepts
      • 4. Method
      • 5. Results and discussion
        • 5.1 Root must
        • 5.2 Deontic shall
        • 5.3 Root have to
      • 6. Conclusion
      • Acknowledgments
      • References
      • Appendix
    • chapter 12
      • “The future elected government should fully represent the interests of Hongkong people”: Diachronic change in the use of modalising expressions in Hong Kong English between 1928 and 2018
      • 1. Introduction
      • 2. The socio-historical background: History, politics and genre development
        • 2.1 History and politics in Hong Kong: The last 90 years
        • 2.2 Press coverage in Great Britain and Hong Kong from a historical perspective
      • 3 Methodology
        • 3.1 The DC-HKE and its press news reports section
        • 3.2 Functionality of the core modals would and should
          • 3.2.1 The functionality of would
          • 3.2.2 The functionality of should
      • 4. Results
        • 4.1 Overall frequencies
        • 4.2 The functionality of would in the DC-HKE
        • 4.3 The functionality of should in the DC-HKE
        • 4.4 Discussion
      • 5. Conclusion
      • References
• Index