Modality at work. Cognitive, interactional and textual functions of modal markers

Bert Cornillie (1) , Paola Pietrandrea (2)

1 KU Leuven - Catholic University of Leuven = Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
2 Lattice - Lattice - Langues, Textes, Traitements informatiques, Cognition - UMR 8094

This paper constitutes the introduction to a special issue on modality and its coding beyond the level of proposition. After an overview of the most important definitions of modality, among which the authors choose the widest one, they focus i) on the one hand on the strategies encoding modal values across different layers, opposing grammatical to lexical and even discourse markers, and ii) on the other hand on the functions that modal markers may encode beyond deontic, evidential and epistemic values, discussing inter-subjective values rooted in the interactional functions of language and also textual/rhetorical values, having scope beyond the sentence. In general, the authors stress how a reassessment of the various modal values and their reciprocal (synchronic and diachronic) relations requires going beyond the sentence borders and widening the analysis so as to include discourse, together with the theoretical and methodological instruments of discourse analysis. As a result, the close connections between modal and discourse functions may emerge and modality may be examined under a new, more complex but certainly more comprehensive, perspective.

Mots clés: modalité; évidentialité; discours; interaction; texte

Domaines: Linguistique

Bert Cornillie, Paola Pietrandrea. Modality at work. Cognitive, interactional and textual functions of modal markers. 2012. ⟨hal-00665337⟩