Talk:Modality (linguistics)

new introduction?
-- I drafted a new introduction, and would like to hear any comments any of you might have. Thanks.

In linguistics, modality is a feature of language that allows for communicating things about, or based on, situations which need not be actual. More precisely, modality is signaled by grammatical expressions (moods) that express a speaker's general intentions (or illocutionary point) as well as the speaker's commitment to how believable, obligatory, desirable, or actual an expressed proposition is.

Sometimes, the term mood is used to refer to both mood and modality, however, the two can be distinguished according to whether they refer to the grammatical expressions of various modalities (mood) or the meanings so expressed (modality). Modality can also be considered equivalent to the idea of illocutionary force if the kinds of expressions which can express modal meanings also include lexical items such as performative verbs.

Modality is closely intertwined with other linguistic phenomena such as tense and aspect, evidentiality, conditionals, and others. As with other areas of linguistics, modality has been studied extensively from typological as well as formal perspectives.

An important distinction within linguistic modality is the distinction between epistemic and deontic modality. Generally speaking, epistemic modality has to do with possibility and necessity with regard to knowledge, whereas deontic modality has to do with permission and obligation according to some system of rules. The difference between the two is illustrated in the English example below:


 * (1) Agatha must be the killer.
 * (2) Agatha must be killed.

The sentence in (1) might be spoken by someone who has decided that all of the relevant facts in a particular murder investigation point to the conclusion that Agatha is the killer, even though it may or may not actually be the case. In contrast, (2) might be spoken by someone who has decided that, according to some standard of conduct, Agatha has committed a vile crime, and therefore the correct course of action is to kill Agatha. Notice also that, although English must is ambiguous between these two interpretations, the form of the other elements in the sentences helps to disambiguate.

joo-yoon (talk) 02:31, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

This looks like a good introduction for a layman (am a layman reading the article.) Since it's gone six years without criticism, I'm going to assume that it's okay and put it in. Mattwillmarron (talk) 18:10, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

merge
The article Grammatical modality should be incorporated into this article. The reason is because some linguists make a distinction between semantic modality (a.k.a. sentence modality) and morphosyntactic modality (a.k.a. verbal modality). Grammatical is often used to mean morphosyntactic. Using linguistic modality, we can discuss both of these together. This seems better to me, especially because the articles are not very accurate or clear. – ishwar  (speak)  16:02, 5 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Looked at the link for the discussion on grammar: modality and it is really not clear how modality is achieved. There are any number of theories about language and grammar that think it is achieved in different or similar ways: Spech Act Theory, Systemic Grammar and Functional Grammar are three that come to mind. Malangthon 03:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

previous discussion
see: Talk:Grammatical modality

Mood versus modality
There are articles for Grammatical mood (basically a list of moods with brief explanations), Linguistic modality, and List of grammatical moods. There seems to be some redundancy here, but I'm not sure what should be merged into what... FilipeS 12:53, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * grammatical mood relates to modality in pretty much the same way that grammatical tense relates to time: Mood typically refers to a small, closed class of morphemes in a language which indicate certain modal categories such as possibility, necessity or counterfactuality. Since grammatical mood is one of the most important ways to express modality linguistically, I think it would be a good idea to merge the two chapters. Watasenia (talk) 11:29, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Qualify the 'definitions' given?
Kiefer's quote is a bit misleading. Firstly, I don't think modal claims always discuss ways THIS world might be, because there is (might be?) some possible world that contains properties which necessarily do not exist in the actual world. Second, if "conceivability" means kripkean "coherent conceivability," the friends of hill-mclaughlin 'type B materialism' (and presumably others) take it as a crucial premise of their argument that conceivability does not imply possibility. So, maybe some qualifications should be added, presumably by someone more qualified than myself.

Btbaron 00:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)LG

expert attention needed
The subject is not defined precisely, and "mood" and "modality" and "modals" are happily confused (I concede that this is also the case in much of the literature). Furthermore, the article is anglo-centric, which is nice for modal verbs, but less so for mood. It also leads to the blurring of semantic categories (modality) and their morphosyntactic expression(s) (mood, modal verbs). The article needs more text and less lists. Maybe the list could go some other articles, like List of moods or sth like that Jasy jatere 13:10, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * This is still the condition of the article, and also I perceived that confusion. The article tries to explain many things by some confused discourse. Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 20:58, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * There is a lot of confusion about the subject within the linguistic discussion itself. But I am offering my expertise on the subject to try and help provide as much clarity as possible. I'd like to hear your comments and discussions while working on the article. Watasenia (talk) 11:20, 20 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that a formal semantics analysis of modals is a good thing to start the article with. Perhaps it would be better to start off with a general definition (perhaps from SIL website?). Then, briefly go over the relationships between modality and the concepts of possibility/necessity, obligation/permission -- I believe these, at least, are things that formal people and typological people can agree on (I say this while looking at the chapter on modality in Bybee et al (1994), a typological work if I ever saw one!). Then, introduce the typological approach, then the formal one. I think the typological work should get priority. One reason is, without the typological work, the formal approach would have nothing to work with! Another reason is that I think the typological work is more accessible to a general audience. Also, I don't think there's a need to go too deeply into a semantic account here -- it can get its own page. joo-yoon (talk) 01:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

some edits
I've tried made the article more accessible to a more general audience by providing a broader view of the subject. I've also tried to endow the article with a linguistic perspective, although as you guys have noted, its not so easy (maybe impossible?) to cleanly separate the linguistic parts. The cumbersome typology of moods, which was (anyhow) redundant with the article on moods, is gone, replaced by what I think is a useable high-level view of two broad distinctions in modality: epistemic and deontic. Again, my intent was to write for a general audience, so there are no doubt some parts which nitpicking linguists (like myself) may have quibbles with. I've also included some examples (English-only, sorry - will try to include some from other languages later). More updates to come. joo-yoon (talk) 00:25, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The article needs work and it's good to see that it's being improved. – ishwar  (speak)  12:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

interpretative difference example

 * (1) John didn't show up for work. He must be sick.
 * (2) John didn't show up for work. He must be fired.

That example is great, but the reasoning is not indicated (I thought for the second line that the speaker was a confused co-worker putting together the "why he didn't show". I don't want to mess up the awesome simplicity of the line but I'm think that if we add prepositions for each sentence indicating the reasoning / context, it will better articulate the hidden linguistic attributes of the statements.  For example, my would be edit:


 * (1) John didn't show up for work. He must be sick (given his tardieness).
 * (2) John didn't show up for work. He must be fired (for his tardieness).

Also, something interesting about the kinds of prepositions needed to further articulate the sentence correlative to the verbs used... not really sure, lol...  as in, you can 'must be made sick' to indicate this is an exacted punishment rather than the meaning of a given circumstance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xetxo (talk • contribs) 15:32, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I think Xetxo may have a point here that the examples are only quite clear after closer examination. What's worse, however, is that the articles in its introduction goes into the finer nuances of the word "must". That's interesting enough, but perhaps not exactly CLARIFYING to the casual user. The casual user is most likely wanting to know what a modal IS -- not to go into deep discussions of its overlap and interplay with uses of other functions. Bantaar (talk) 23:15, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the SIL article "What is mood and modality?" is the correct starting point. The definition therein
 * Modality is a facet of illocutionary force, signaled by grammatical devices (that is, moods), that expresses
 * the illocutionary point or general intent of a speaker, or
 * a speaker’s degree of commitment to the expressed proposition's believability, obligatoriness, desirability, or reality.
 * is the kernel of meaning, but must be expanded to be intelligible to less-than-linguist level knowledge. Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 21:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

"Verbal modality" written?
Why is it called "verbal modality" when all the examples are written? Okay, I know that's a stupid question, but can we please just change the word "verbal" to "verbial" to make it clear what we're talking about? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.102.65.42 (talk) 01:48, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Difference between "obligation" and "necessity"?
"An important distinction within linguistic modality is the distinction between epistemic and deontic modality. Generally speaking, epistemic modality has to do with possibility and necessity with regard to knowledge, whereas deontic modality has to do with permission and obligation according to some system of rules."

To me this is contradictory and really just confuses the difference between the two, which I am trying to understand. — Preceding unsigned comment added by B23Rich (talk • contribs) 19:39, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

In-line citations and circumstancial modality
I boldly added in-line citations mostly to the introductory section (I renamed it to 'Expressions of Modality' - for my reasoning see below) and possible world semantics but also throughout the text for consistency.

I also edited the introductory section - since it used Kratzer (1991) in the Bibliography anyway and since I added that as in-line citation, I figured I should include circumstantial modality as well. Kratzer is pretty much standard, but the concept of circumstatial modality isn't widely used in my opinion - so I'm happy for thoughts about this. We don't have an article on circ. modality - but we also don't have one on 'objective', 'dynamic' or alethic modality... so, that's further work I guess. --Mvbaron (talk) 16:23, 15 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Hey, are you still working on this article? Botterweg14 (talk) 03:44, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , hi, sorry for the late reply. No, not right now. Mvbaron (talk) 11:02, 27 July 2020 (UTC)