Can / Could and Will / Would

Dear CJ,

Do you think the deontic modal is marked/stylistic, too? "I asked if I might sit beside the mayor."

Not as marked as the dynamic ones, but not as neutral as the epistemic ones. Deontic modals apply modality in the context of the law of the world in question. So in your sentence, the modal still reflects the possibility operator. The connotation of "permission to sit" comes from it being deontic (hence stylistic) and not from it being a modal in the sense of the possibility operator.

I know I am just plaguing you with questions, but your ideas are so novel and unorthodox (for me, anyway) that I'd like to understand better what you're saying.

It's my job to defend my analysis. The more challenges there are the more loopholes can be uncovered.

What does "external knowledge of the use" of a word mean? Are we to infer that there is also "internal knowledge" of the use of a word? If so, maybe you could explain what that means, too?

I will begin with the "internal knowledge". Every word has a meaning (well almost every word, arguably). The "internal knowlegde" is the pure epistemic reading, the minimum amount of information for the word to mean what it does. For example, if I say "kill the lights" the verb's use is stylistic. So for me, to "kill" would be to do something which causes a living object to stop being alive. All other information extracted out of context is extraneous.

Returning the "might" example, might(P) means that there is a possibility that P. That's it. All other information gleaned from the discourse, e.g. permission, negative/positive bias is extraneous. This extraneous information is the "external" information.

So you are saying there's a difference between the grammatical use of language and the stylistic use of language? Sorry, but I don't get it! Do you mean something like idioms when you say stylistic?

Idioms are just but one bit of stylistic usage but stylistics spreads across a broad range of linguistic devices. Think of it as a subset of pragmatics if you will. For example:

1. Can you pass me the salt?

This is not really a question. It's actually an imperative trying to be polite. Even passive constructions are marked in my opinion: that is to say that there is no reason to construct a passive if there is an active counterpart unless for focussing reasons: you want to bring attention to the semantic object perhaps. Topic constructions, echo questions etc. These are all marked constructions which involve language stylistics (the style and variation of usage) but grammatical in the sense of that it is recognised as a legal utterance in the speech community, not in the sense of its fundamental grammar.

I believe the most fundamental of fundamental of sentences is an active constuction and this resides in the fundamental grammar. The fundamental grammar is a set of basic rules in the language, preferably without transformation that yield all possible unmarked utterances in the language. It's abit more complicated than that though, but I can't really talk about it in great detail though until the work is published, it's still in progress.

eq

Hello eq

Grammar is a set of rules which generate all possible utterances of the language and none of the illegal ones.
I would not wholly disagree with this statement; but I would suggest that the set of rules has first to be inferred; and it can only be inferred from context – e.g. if the verbal prefix ²Q¹ always accompanies a reference to past time, and occurs in no other context, we may tentatively pencil in the possibility that ²Q¹ relates to a past tense of some kind.

Which is to say, I don't believe we can discount the possibility that the meaning of a word is the way in which it is used.

On the question of may/might, I'm still not quite sure how your analysis would distinguish between

1. 'I may have gone sailing last week'

and

2. 'I might have gone sailing last week'.

I have a sense of positive meaning in the first of these, and negative meaning in the second. Or to put it another way: #1 does indeed suggest forgetfulness, and #2 does indeed suggest reproach; and I'm not sure how this can be explained by your earlier models.

MrP

Hi, eq,

So are you saying that in your way of looking at it, a word only and always (fundamentally) has only one meaning? -- Because it seems that this is what you are saying.

And are you saying that any other meanings we come to associate with that word are sort of acquired "after the fact", as if we learned the meanings of words in order from most fundamental meaning to secondary meanings?

Another question: It sounds as if you are building some kind of theory of the semantics of the modals on the purely logical (epistemic) uses, always explaining other uses in terms of the epistemic ones. Yes?

Jim

It's neither to ask something nor to argue against anybody. It's just to summarize what I was taught in school about modals.

English modals can be sorted into three groups by their tense bearingness and senses.

stating facts (semantically tense bearing)
will be able to/can/could (physical, sensual, mental) ability/capability
(1) Can you drive a car? Yes I can.
(2) I couldn't swim when I was a boy.
will have to/must/had to obligation/necessity
will/would/used to habit

asking hearer's current mood (semantically present tense)
can/could/will/would/may/might
(1) Can you help me? (2) Could you help me?
(3) May I borrow your umbrella? (4) Might I borrow your umbrella? (more hesitant)

expressing speaker's current mood (semantically present tense)
will/would speaker's liking or tendency
might/may/could/can/should/ought to/should/would/will/must/(fact) speaker's judgment on the dgree of possibility/certainty

The modals used in combination with the if-clause subjunctive mood seem to belong mostly to the 3rd group. The time implied by the sentences using these kind of modals is expressed by the form of the following infinite verbals (bare infinitive or have + past participle). All of these modals themselves are taken semantically in present tense but 'would', 'should', 'might', and 'could' are syntactically treated as in past tense.

paco

Intriguing, eq.

Would you regard 'concept', 'logical level', etc as functions of different areas of the human brain?

MrP