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).

Modal particles occur exclusively in topical contexts. They are excluded in thetic contexts and non-asserted grammatical contexts. They create common ground properties of high speaker-hearer connecting attitudinality with all assets language can provide in terms of manipulation and hyperlinking effects. 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.

This introduces the reader, in brief and succinct terms, to the pillars of the edifice of thought that this book rests on. The general goal of this book-length discussion is to find a common umbrella term and notion for the four major verbal grammatical categories, aspect, tense, mood, and modality. The plan behind this set of four categories is to show that they are hierarchically interrelated, with modality forming the most complex bundle of features, and aspect the least complex, although still sharing with the rest the smallest subset of criterial features.

We look at the comparative properties of modal verbs in English, Romance and Slavic, and investigate whether modal verbs with their typical clustering property share something with auxiliaries. One main asset is that modals verbs in German (and Dutch, but not in English) can be used as full lexical verbs. Another main asset of German and Dutch modal verbs is their contingency upon aspect and Aktionsart embeddings. In this respect. Slavic , with its strong propensity to grammatical aspect, provides confirming evidence as complex aspectual properties often give rise to modal interpretations reflecting modal verbs of German.