Univerzita PardubiceFakulta filozofická

Univerzita Pardubice

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English

Publikace detail

Exploring Modal Verbs Conveying Possibility in Academic Discourse

Autoři: Huschová Petra

Rok: 2014

Druh publikace: ostatní - přednáška nebo poster

Strana od-do: nestránkováno

Tituly:

Jazyk	Název	Abstrakt	Klíčová slova
eng	Exploring Modal Verbs Conveying Possibility in Academic Discourse	The presentation is concerned with the English modal verbs conveying possibility meanings and their occurrence in written academic discourse. It explores the contextualized occurrences of CAN/COULD and MAY/MIGHT in order to reveal the most significant contextual factors determining their interpretation and to demonstrate the wide semantic range covered by these modal verbs. Among the questions that the presentation addresses are those concerning the semantic components of possibility meanings of the examined modal verbs in relation to syntactic co-occurrence patterns, stylistic variation and the concept of hedging. Special attention is paid to examining the relation between the modals and other domains of grammar, above all, aspect, negation, time reference or hypothetical marking, which are generally considered to be the crucial factors disambiguating the intended reading, i.e. distinguishing epistemic and root possibility meaning. The presentation also discusses the factors governing the distribution and usage of epistemic and root possibility readings of CAN/COULD and MAY/MIGHT in written academic discourse, focusing primarily on their occurrence in non-past contexts. Finally, it attempts to integrate the epistemic and root possibility senses into an overall framework of hedging and to identify those modal possibility uses that are commonly employed as hedging devices in academic texts.	modal verbs; CAN/COULD; MAY/MIGHT; epistemic possibility; root possibility; hedging; academic discourse