Chapter One Literature Review
1.1 Definitions of Modality
Aristotle is the first scholar who probes into modality. His logic of modality mainly concerns about likelihood and necessity as well as the relationship between them. In Collins Dictionary, the term modality used in logic means “the qualification in a proposition that indicates that what is affirmed or denied is possible, impossible, necessary, contingent, etc.” For many years, modality is no more than a domain in philosophy and logic. It is not until modern linguistics treats modality as a vital grammar research object that scholars make efforts to write about it. Hundreds of academic works on modality have emerged in the last century.
In English, Palmer & Blandford (1955) divides the verbs into main verbs and auxiliary verbs. Further, the latter are separated as primary auxiliaries (be/have/do) and modal auxiliaries. There are some commonly known definitions of modality in linguistics: (1) Lyons (1977: 452) proposes that “modality is a means used by a speaker to express his opinion or attitude towards the proposition that the sentence expresses or the situation that the proposition describes”. (2) Palmer (1979: 36-37) does not entirely agree with Lyons and defines modality as the meanings of modal verbs. (3) Quirk et al. (1985: 219) defines modality as “the manner in which the meaning of a clause is qualified so as to reflect the speaker?s judgment of the likelihood of the proposition it expresses being true”. (4) Coates (1983) defines modality as the degree of probability or frequency between positive and negative polar. (5) According to Halliday (2004: 146), “Modality is the range of likelihood lying between positive polarity and negative polarity.” Their definitions have common points, namely, speaker and likelihood. All of them approve that modality is closely related to the speaker?s opinion or attitude, which makes it a relatively subjective grammar category in English. Besides, they agree that modality covers the semantic meanings of possibility and necessity. Among all these definitions, Lyons? theory is widely accepted by most linguistic scholars.
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1.2 Types of Modality
Modality occupies an important position in human language. It directly reflects human beings? attitudes, opinions and ideas, which makes it an indispensable information carrier for language expression. In modern language, modal auxiliaries are the central forms of modality. It reveals people?s potential attitudes and involves their complicated cognitive and emotional activities. Due to different study perspectives of modality, scholars have disparate criteria of its classification. Generally speaking, the evolution of modal verbs is from non-modal verbs to deontic modal verbs, finally epistemic modal verbs. In the consequence, the numbers and names of modality types are entirely different. There are three generally accepted types of modality which are deontic modality, epistemic modality and dynamic modality (Palmer 2001). Palmer proposes that deontic modality refers to the speaker?s responsibility or social conventions which are closely related with the actions. Epistemic modality refers to the speaker?s judgement of the truth value of the proposition—their “modes of knowing” (Palmer 2007: 22). Both of them are speaker-oriented. Dynamic modality is subject-oriented, because it only concerns about the ability or volition of the subject of the clause. Notionally, they seem to have little in common. Epistemic modality is only concerned with the speaker?s attitude to the truth value or factual status of certain proposition. (Palmer also calls it “propositional modality”) whereas deontic and dynamic modality refer to events that are not actualized, events that have not taken place but are merely potential (Palmer also gives it a name “event modality”) (Palmer 2001: 86).
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Chapter Two Theoretical Foundation
2.1 Conceptual Blending Theory
Conceptual Blending Theory is based on the conceptual projection and blending between mental spaces. The blending space uses and develops the counterparts between input spaces, thus blends the simple things into complicated things. The generated blending space is dynamic and owns an emergent structure which is not possessed by any input spaces. By this way, Conceptual Blending Theory can help explain many complicated linguistic facts which cannot be explained by Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Metonymy Theory.
2.1.1 Definitions of Conceptual Blending
The Conceptual Blending Theory is first formally put forward by Fauconnier in 1994. It is based on Mental Space Theory. Fauconnier and Turner (2002) define mental spaces as small conceptual packets constructed as we think and talk, for purposes of understanding and action. Mental spaces can construct a series of concepts like time, belief, wish, possibility, counterfactuality, position and reality. Conceptual Blending Theory studies the different mental spaces which are activated during the process of cognition and how these mental spaces interact with each other. Therefore, it can expound how people conduct cognitive operation toward a wide variety of languages and other phenomena in different mental spaces.
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2.2 Sweetser’s Theory of Three Domains
As a cognitive linguist, Sweetser proposed Theory of Three Domains in the 1990s. In order to explain the whole linguistic facts in a general framework, he divides them into three domains which are the socio-physical domain, epistemic domain, and speech-act domain. His division of the three domains especially enriches the study of polysemy of English modals, conditionals and conjunctions, etc.
2.2.1 Definitions of Three Domains
There are both distinctions and relations among the three domains. Sweetser (1990) says that the socio-physical domain refers to the objective facts or reasons. It is the most basic and fundamental one and concerns about actions. The epistemic domain is related to speaker?s speculation about the likelihood of actions. The speech-act domain tries to explain performative sentences, defined as doing things by words.
The process from the socio-physical domain to the epistemic domain to speech-act domain is a process of increasingly semantic subjectivity or grammaticalization. And it is commonly acknowledged that the trigger of this process is metaphor. Cognitive linguistics treats language system as a dynamic entity. It will change due to the influence of language users. Language is not automatic, and it will be invested with new components according to people?s cognition and interaction with the external world.
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Chapter Three Grammatical Meanings of the Past Tense of English Verbs .................................... 33
3.1 Four Types of the Grammatical Meanings of the Past Tense of English Verbs ................................. 33
3.1.1 Referring to Past Time ............................. 35
3.1.2 Referring to an Anterior Time in the Future ........................... 37
Chapter Four Meaning Construction of the Grammatical Meanings of the Past Tense Forms of English Basic Modal Auxiliaries .. 45
4.1 Conceptual Blending of CAN and the Past Tense.......................... 47
4.1.1 Conceptual Blending of CAN and the Past Tense in the Socio-physical Domain .............................. 47
4.1.2 Conceptual Blending of CAN and the Past Tense in the Epistemic Domain .................................. 49
Chapter Five Pragmatic Functions of the Past Tense Forms of English Basic Modal Auxiliaries ............................... 85
5.1 Explanations for the Pragmatic Functions of the Past Tense Forms of English Basic Modal Auxiliaries ............................... 85
5.2 Relationship Between the Various Pragmatic Functions of the Past Tense Forms of English Basic Modal Auxiliaries ........................ 90
Chapter Five Pragmatic Functions of the Past Tense Forms of English Basic Modal Auxiliaries
5.1 Explanations for the Pragmatic Functions of the Past Tense Forms of English Basic Modal Auxiliaries
English basic Modal auxiliaries are performative in nature. (Palmer 2001). To understand the performative function of English basic modal auxiliaries, we have to introduce Speech Act Theory firstly. Austin (1962) proposes the Speech Act Theory which connects language meaning with human?s behaviors. With a standard of actual language usage, he divides sentences into constatives and performatives. In his analysis, there are no essential differences between the two types (“Speech itself is doing something” (Austin 1962: 73)). He classifies speech act into locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionay act according to its function in discourse. Searle (1969) creates a new standard of classification of speech acts. He (1969) thinks it is impossible to divide locutionary act and illocutionary act completely. He uses “propositional act” to replace the term “locutionary act”. And he is especially keen on the illocutionary act, for it relates to the speaker?s intention. Searle (2001) says, locutionary act refers to the act of “saying something” in the full normal sense. Illocutionary act is the performance of an act in saying something. Some words such as “order”, “warning” and “claiming” carry this force.
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Conclusion
1. Work Done in This Thesis
past tense forms of English basic modal auxiliaries. At the same time, we also probe into the various pragmatic functions of English basic modal auxiliaries and the relationship between them.
reference(omitted)