Modality-Aspect Interfaces: Implications and Typological Solutions

by Abraham, Werner; Leiss, Elisabeth

• ISBN13: 9789027229922
• ISBN10: 9027229929
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-07-15
• Publisher: John Benjamins Pub Co

Summary

"The main topics pursued in this volume are based on empirical insights derived from Germanic: logical and typological dispositions about aspect-modality links. These are probed in a variety of non-related languages. The logically establishable links are the following: Modal verbs are aspect sensitive in the selection of their infinitival complements - embedded infinitival perfectivity implies root modal reading, whereas embedded infinitival imperfectivity triggers epistemic readings. However, in marked contexts such as negated ones, the aspectual affinities of modal verbs are neutralized or even subject to markedness inversion. All of this suggests that languages that do not, or only partially, bestow upon full modal verb paradigms seek to express modal variations in terms of their aspect oppositions. This typological tenet is investigated in a variety of languages from Indo-European (German, Slavic, Armenian), African, Asian, Amerindian, and Creoles. Seeming deviations and idiosyncrasies in the interaction between aspect and modality turn out to be highly rule-based."--BOOK JACKET.

Table of Contents

Introduction
General
On the logic of generalizations about cross-linguistic aspect-modality links	p. 3
The silent and aspect-driven patterns of deonticity and epistemicity: A chapter in diachronic typology	p. 15
Propositional aspect and the development of modal inferences in English	p. 43
Towards an understanding of the progressive form in English: The Imperative as a heuristic tool	p. 81
Epistemic modality and aspect contingency in Armenian, Russian, and German	p. 97
Slavic
Indefiniteness and imperfectivity as micro-grammatical contexts of epistemicity in German-Slovene translations	p. 119
The connections between modality, aspectuality, and temporality in Modern Russian	p. 147
Aspectual coercion in Bulgarian negative imperatives	p. 175
Russian medals mozet 'can and dolzen 'must' selecting the imperfective in negative contexts	p. 197
African
Tense, mood, and aspect in Gungbe (Kwa)	p. 215
The Modal System of the Igbo language	p. 241
Asian
The Aspect-Modality Link in the Japanese verbal complex and beyond	p. 279
The Aspect-Modality Link in Japanese: The case of the evaluating sentence	p. 309
Amerindian
The Lakota aspect/modality markers -kinica and tkha	p. 331
Creole
A note on modality and aspect in Saramaccan	p. 359
Diachronic
Aspects of a reconstruction of form and function of modal verbs in Germanic and other languages	p. 371
The autopsy of a modal - insights from the historical development of German	p. 385
Index of authors	p. 417
Index of subjects	p. 419
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