Modals and actuality

1 March 1977

journal article
research article
Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Journal of Linguistics

Vol. 13 (1) , 01-23
https://doi.org/10.1017/s002222670000517x

Abstract

Part of the meaning of a verb phrase containing a form of one of the English modal verbs CAN and WILL¹ is that the actions, events, etc., indicated by the following full verb took place, takes place and will take place. I shall use the term MODALITY to refer to the meaning of the modal verb and EVENT to refer to the meaning of the full verb and say that, in certain circumstances, there is ACTUALITY of the event or that the event is ACTUALIZED. I wish to discuss the circumstances in which this is so and attempt to provide explanations in terms of some of the characteristics of modality in general.

Keywords

This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit:

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Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1968
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