We develop the mereological property of distance to explain the aspect and Aktionsart contingency of modal verbs. While the link between perfective-resultative aspect and root modality seems to be solid, aspectual imperfectivity is in no such solid connection with epistemic modality. The question is why this is so.

The ubiquitous notion of subjectivity (or subjectification) is critically scrutinized. It will be shown that a certain class of discourse particles and a solid class of modal verbs in German are specific carriers of a wide set of modalities: intransitive ones with root and epistemic modalities expressed by verbs, and transitive modalities as emanating from and the speaker to the hearer and back.

Modal verbs form a closed class of verbs in German(ic) to the extent that have a very particular origin and property: they come from a preterit stem, have ablaut, and behave correspondingly in modern contexts. Their shift of interpretation between root and epistemicity is due to aspectual contexts. In contrast to all other verbs, verbal clusters (modal verb embedding another verb) are built without the preposition TO. Modal verbs with an epistemic reading have a syntax radically different from that of roots: they cannot be embedded, but appear only as heads of clusters.

Conversational and conventional implicatures prevalent in the usage of modal particles explain deeper commonalities between modal particles, topic/thema, illocutionary force, and focus. As modal particles occur between free focus and verum focus, mirative unexpectedness is enacted. We discuss mirative import specified by the legacy of modal particle sources.

This chapter revolves around the context dependent shifts between root and epistemic modality. Perfective contextual aspect triggers modal root (deontic) readings, imperfect contextual aspect elicits epistemic or evidential readings. Different scopes of negation are considered. It is shown with material from German that epistemic and evidential interpretations are different on several criteria. Person origo is responsible for an epistemic differential.

Be/have+v trigger covert modality in root (but not epistemic) terms: necessity and probability. They do this in several distributional forms the main being subject relative infinitives and object relative infinitives. In addition. Gerundial forms as substitutes for the infinitive enter the modal construction in german. As epistemic readings of xp is to v and xp has to v are excluded, the nonfinite epis-temic gap hypothesis is taken up again and brought (again) to a conclusion: the non-finite status of complements does not lend itself for epistemic readings.

This chapter introduces to theoretical concepts of modality: von Wright’s modal logic and its modifications in terms of what languages provide to give expression to modality. It is shown that modality is a future oriented notion, something that is wished, feared, forbidden, and allowed to happen in the future. Interestingly, modal verbs are highly aspect sensitive such that certain connections with lexical verbs are impossible or shifting between root modality and epistemic modality. perfective-imperfective embedding choice of modal verbs.

As modal particles are not restricted to clausal finiteness and assertive contexts, they have a strong contingency in terms of speech acts allowing their occurrence outside of clausal finiteness: on infinitival clusters, with past participles, and attributive modifications. In these selections, the speech act force is invariably connected with their original lexical, pregrammaticalized source.

German (and Dutch) modal particles are distinct discourse particles separate from other discourse elements on account of their specific grammatical status: they look like lexical items, but behave like grammatical morphemes and thus are true end results of grammaticalizing processes. As such their modern function still reflects semantic and syntactic properties of their etymological origins. Modal particles have the syntactic status of the about-topic category. Compared to their lexical pregrammaticalized origin, their modern semantics is highly underspecified.

This chapter sets the issues, i.e. that what we think we see, hear, and think is fake as long as the perspectives under origo calculation and the ranges of simple and double displacement options are not taken into account. This is what in principle is captured by theory of mind, or foreign consciousness alignment, and the constellation of the viewpoint and deixis. and is run through lexicals and grammar, i.e. through aspect, tense, mood, and modality/ATMM. We show how it works and how the four modules, ATMM, are connected in a hierarchical fashion from aspect to (Guilleaume, Peirce).