Modality

Modals are generally treated as full verbs in the ParGram grammars (in contrast with Auxiliaries). Modals can be either control or raising verbs. Which is which needs to be determined by language internal tests.

There are two major strategies within ParGram with respect to modals to date. They are exemplified by the English and the Norwegian grammars.

In the English grammar, all modals are treated as raising verbs and no distinction is made between epistemic and deontic/root modals. This has the effect of abstracting away from a finer grained syntactic and semantic analysis and allows for the reduction of ambiguity in the grammar.

The Norwegian grammar, in contrast, divides modals up into two major categories. The central modals in Norwegian are the verbs ‘ville’, ‘kunne’, ‘måtte’ and ‘skulle’ (present tense: ‘vil’, ‘kan’, ‘må’, ‘skal’), etymologically related to the English ‘will’, ‘can’, ‘may’ and ‘shall’, respectively. ‘måtte’, however, has the meaning ‘must’ in Norwegian (unlike in Danish). The Norwegian grammar distinguishes between two kinds of readings of these verbs, labelled ‘epistemic’ and ‘root’. This is reflected in the predicate names (‘epist-ville‘ - ‘root-ville’ etc.), and in the value of the feature MODAL-TYPE, which can be either ‘epistemic’ or ‘root’. Some examples:

Han vil lese boken
‘He will read the book’ (epistemic (in this case temporal))/
‘He wants to read the book’ (root)

Han kan sv√∏mme
‘He may be swimming’ (epistemic)/
‘He can (is able to) swim’ (root)

Han må reise mye
‘He must be travelling a lot’ (epistemic)/
‘He is obliged to travel a lot’ (root)

While there is a scale of modal meanings involved here, the grammar only makes a binary distinction, which means that the term ‘root’ has an extended sense. The basic criterion of choice is the status of the subject as an argument, or not, of the modal verb (i.e. ‘equi’ vs. ‘raising’ readings). Thus the term ‘root’ will also comprise deontic meanings.

The reason for making this distinction in the grammar is that the two kinds of reading can be disambiguated by the syntax. Unlike the related English modals, the Norwegian modals are fully-fledged verbs with infinitive and participle forms. Hence they can enter into sequences of auxiliaries, and the order in which the auxiliaries occur have semantic consequences. The detailed rules are complex and vary to some extent between the modals, but a fairly robust generalization is that epistemic readings are strongly preferred if the modal occurs before the perfect auxiliary ‘ha’ (=‘have’), while root readings (in our wide sense) are strongly preferred if the modal occurs after the perfect auxiliary. Examples:

Han vil ha lest boken
‘He will have read the book’ (epistemic/temporal)

Han har villet lese boken
‘He has wanted to read the book’ (root)

Han kan ha forsvunnet
‘He may have disappeared’ (epistemic)

Han har kunnet forsvinne
‘He has been able to disappear’ (root)

Han må ha reist mye
‘He must have travelled a lot’ (epistemic)

Han har måttet reise mye
‘He has been obliged to travel a lot’ (root)

The feature MODAL-TYPE with its two values ‘epistemic’ and ‘root’ are referred to by other auxiliaries – e.g. the auxiliary ‘ha’ = ‘have’ only take modal complements with the value ‘root’.