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The United Nations Security Council has issued forty-seven United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs) on counter-terrorism since the establishment of the Counter-Terrorism Committee in the wake of September 11th terrorist attacks. This study aims to unveil the positioning of the Security Council towards terrorism in all its forms and manifestations through the exploration of the distribution patterns, frequency and functions of nine central modal markers in the forty-seven resolutions against terrorism that have been released to date. To this end, the study follows a corpus-based methodology as well as a combined qualitative and quantitative approach. Results contribute to underlying the double positioning of the Council towards deciding on the measures to be taken against perpetrators of terrorist acts.

This contribution discusses pragmatic linguistic aspects that indicate professional credibility in three popular digital knowledge dissemination platforms. Credibility here does not refer to the correspondence of platform content to ‘reality’, but to the pragmatic metalanguage interaction of researchers and platforms. Whereas Wikipedia is only a platform for distributing (multi-modal) information, Academia.edu and ResearchGate include a messaging system. Given their millions of users, all three systems include automated replies by (programmed) agents (bots), which can be classified as share, profit, and vanity agents – and only the first is usually perceived as a credible communication partner by a (linguistic) researcher. An analysis of pragmatic metalanguage (incl. interactive pronouns and reader address) makes this clear. Whereas Wikipedia only addresses its readers collectively in Wikipedia community style, Academia.edu and ResearchGate address their users individually; thus the first mentioned uses few personal pronouns, the latter many of them. For Academia.edu and ResearchGate, the internal platform structures and agents' email messages can be compared. A pragmatic corpus-linguistic evaluation of their (automated) language shows partly contrasting functions: some linguistic cues (e.g. modal auxiliaries) enhance the “sharing” community, others profit and vanity. For successful academic interaction, persuasive polite cooperation language contributes to the impression of credibility and professionalism.

Situated within the field of developmental interlanguage pragmatics, this cross-sectional study examines pragmalinguistic development in the request production of two groups of young English learners: Greek Cypriot and Norwegian, aged roughly 9, 11 and 13. Specifically, it focuses on learners' request head acts and modification across the three proficiency levels within the Greek and Norwegian groups, and across the two L1 contexts. Eighty-eight Greek and 79 Norwegian learners participated in the study. The data was elicited through a video-based oral discourse completion task, performed in groups of 3–5. Overall, a clearer developmental path was observed in the Norwegian learners' pragmatic performance, whose requests displayed significant differences between the age groups regarding head act sub-strategies, use of modal verbs, lexical downgrading and supportive moves. While also showing a clear linear development in head act sub-strategies, Greek Cypriot learners' only other area of development was the head act directness. A comparison of corresponding age groups from the two contexts revealed both areas of convergence (head act strategies and modal verbs) and divergence (lexical downgraders and supportive moves) with increasing age and proficiency, as well as areas that remained similar throughout (syntactic downgraders), suggesting different underlying influences on young learners’ request development.

The present study investigates the locally situated interactional functions of so-called epistemic modals, daroo and deshoo, in Japanese conversation. Although the two forms are generally considered plain and polite variants of the same epistemic modal, both forms frequently appear in the present casual conversational data. A detailed sequential analysis demonstrates that daroo and deshoo are used to perform various social actions rather than simply expressing the speaker's conjecture. Deshoo has a rather fixed function of soliciting alignment or confirmation from the interlocutor. On the other hand, daroo works as part of larger constructions for various actions, including (i) displaying spontaneity, (ii) expressing neutral or uninvolved stance, (iii) displaying alignment, (iv) qualifying one's assertion, and (v) challenging the interlocutor's assertion. The findings suggest that linguistic categories such as ‘epistemic modals’ are epiphenomena of social interaction ( Ford et al., 2013 ), which are not themselves interactionally relevant to the conversational participants.

In this paper, we explore how future actions are nominated as well as how agents (performers) of future actions are targeted in Finnish conversational directive sequences. The question of agency is particularly worth exploring in Finnish, where subjects need not always be expressed and where special constructions, e.g. with zero-person forms, exist for leaving personal reference open. When used in directive action sequences, the zero-person construction has consequences for the degree of certainty with which the action is nominated, because a modal verb of necessity or desirability is typically involved. Modal constructions in first-position turns have the property that they can be interpreted either as directives, i.e. as having consequences for the behavior of the interlocutor, or as epistemic judgments. Recipients of modal-construction turns with zero-person forms thus have the option of treating the prior turn as a directive by nominating themselves as agents, or as an epistemic judgment by co-evaluating the necessity/desirability of the nominated action. Zero-person forms and modal constructions in both initiating and responsive positions serve as resources for Finnish speakers to locally negotiate the distribution of deontic rights and agency.

On account of objections to its use in legislation raised by experts and Plain Language advocates, shall has disappeared from legislative texts in some jurisdictions and is used ever more sparsely in others, triggering a “modal revolution” in legislative drafting. This paper presents a corpus-based study which outlines a chronologically detailed picture of the frequency of shall in U.K. legislation since the 1970s, showing that it is now approximating zero, and that its decline started in the 1990s, earlier than usually indicated in the literature. It then examines the reasons for this gradual abandonment, and the problems involved in the use of shall in legislative texts, arguing that some of the criticisms levelled at it are based on a limited idea of its meaning, also due to a neglect of studies produced in other neighbouring disciplines, i.e. philosophy of language and philosophy of law, which have shown that shall can legitimately perform both a deontic and a performative function. The discussion of the forms used to replace shall leads to the conclusion that in most cases they are not totally free from the problems for which shall is blamed. Therefore, its suppression and replacement with other forms do not appear to be as effective as usually believed.

This paper investigates the uses of epistemic must and its Dutch and German cognates moeten and mussen . Starting point is the observation that epistemic must occurs remarkably more often in English than its immediate counterparts in the two other languages. By means of a detailed comparison on the basis of a self-compiled English–Dutch–German translation corpus of fictional texts, this paper identifies the factors determining these frequency differences. First, it appears that English must covers a wider inferential ground than its Dutch and German counterparts, as it can also code highly subjective ‘conjectural’ inferences apart from the typical must -inferences based on observable evidence and general knowledge. Second, epistemic must is often used to appeal to the addressee, to invoke the addressee's sympathy among other things. Such intersubjective uses of epistemic must seem to be rare with the German and Dutch cognates. Third, general communicative preferences in English promote the use of hedging devices (like epistemic modal verbs), as they contribute to an indirect and addressee-oriented way of interaction that is more valued in English than in German.

In 1 Colloquial Singapore English (CSE), the default usage of the word can is congruent with that in Standard English. It functions as a modal auxiliary marking epistemic, deontic, and ability meanings. Additionally, the word can is used as a pragmatic marker in sentence final position in CSE. One such function of can represents a pseudo-tag question marker, as in the sentence, ‘Borrow me $5 can?’, which translates to Standard English, ‘Can you lend me $5?’ 2 Another pragmatic function of can is as a discourse marker. Discourse markers are a highly noticeable feature of CSE, with its rich inventory of available particles including lah, lor, leh, wat, hor, meh, and mah, on which a number of scholars have reported. This paper investigates the pragmatic uses of sentence final can in these two functions. Because the positions of pseudo-tag can and discourse marker can overlap, it is at times ambiguous whether can is behaving as pseudo-tag or a discourse marker. I suggest that (1) pseudo-tag question use of can is a type of a calque transferred from CSE's Chinese substrate languages, and (2) discourse particle can is an innovative feature that developed from semantic expansion of the word ‘can’ in CSE under the influence of ‘can’-equivalent terms in the Chinese and Malay substrate languages.

By conducting a synchronic comparison between Chinese and British statutes and a diachronic comparison between the original and current versions of Chinese statutes on intellectual property rights, this paper presents a matrix of legislative speech acts in Chinese and British statutes. The results show that legislative speech acts in Chinese statutes are made at two levels: (1) performatives carrying legislative force; and (2) legislative sentences containing modals. Modals far outnumber performatives in materialization of legislative speech acts, which is believed to be the socio-pragmatic characteristics of the legislative discourse. This coincides with British statutes. There are discrepancies among the three in terms of materialization and occurring frequencies, which are suggested to be rooted in the cultural traditions and social development stage of a particular country. Theoretically, when transplanting law, it is necessary to take language and its materialization into consideration in legislation and revision of existing legislation.

English floated quantifiers (FQs) all , both , and each , although associated with a subject nominal, occur after modals, have , and be . This paper argues that these expressions serve as exhaustive discourse partitives, evoking a universal representation of an accessible discourse group, usually central to the discussion, and that in FQ position, this function is localized to the predicate. Evidence includes: distributional parallels with overt partitives and intensive reflexives and interpretive patterns for nonfloated and floated all and the interpretation of FQs with indefinite conjoined hosts, etc. The localized interpretation of FQs, triggering a re-evaluation of the subject with respect to the predicate, is shared by overt partitives and intensive reflexives in float position.

A central topic in the study of pragmatics is how language contributes to the socialization of culturally shared values, skills, and practices. This paper employs a language socialization approach in order to investigate how the modal verb want is being used in two middle school dance classes as a tool for socializing students into becoming what their teacher describes as “better people” as well as “better dancers.” Data collection and analysis includes ethnographic observation and the video recording, transcription, and linguistic and pragmatic analysis of how participants use want within the context of pivotal sequences of classroom interaction. The findings of this paper support the theory, which has been developed in several fields but including especially cognitive psychology, that the use of mental state language in general, and the verb want in particular, plays an important role in making transparent the kinds of thought processes central to a number of socially valued competencies, including imitative, instructional and collaborative learning and the exercise of social, and thus also moral responsibility.

This paper reports on the second phase of a cross-sectional study of pragmatic development in Hong Kong. The first phase (Rose, 2000) involved primary school students ages 7, 9 and 11. Participants in the present study were secondary school students in Forms 2, 4, and 6 (ages 13, 15 and 17). A questionnaire was designed to elicit requests, with scenarios derived through exemplar generation and variable values arrived at through two rounds of metapragmatic assessment. The variable values were therefore determined by the participants, not the researcher. The questionnaire was administered in Chinese, with participants instructed to record their responses in English using a recording device provided to them. Data were transcribed and analyzed by the author and a research assistant using the coding categories for requests developed in the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989). Results indicated ample evidence of pragmalinguistic development, particularly in what appeared to be the onset of pragmatic expansion in the Form 6 group's wider range of modals and the appearance of supportive moves. However, there was little evidence of sociopragmatic development, other than the increased occurrence of please in requests to higher status hearers.

This paper compares the use of query preparatory modals in conventionally indirect requests made by native speakers of English (NS-Es), native speakers of Chinese (NS-Cs), and Chinese learners of English-as-a-Foreign Language (EFLs). A total of 3600 expressions of request were elicited from 180 college students (60 in each group—NS-E, NS-C and EFL) using the Discourse Completion Task (DCT). An in-depth comparison of the use of the requestive modals, substrategies, and the actual pragmalinguistic expressions among the three participant groups across different situations revealed cross-linguistic and interlanguage patterns which cannot be captured by considering only the main strategies used to perform the speech act. It is suggested that future ILP studies should pay more attention to details of substrategies (their form, function and distribution) in order to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the learners’ language and provide effective guidelines for courseware designers and language teachers.

This study analyzes modal verb use in a small corpus of L1 and L2 writing (718 essays/201,601 words) on five topics written by speakers of English, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. The results demonstrate that median frequency rates of modal verbs in L2 essays are significantly affected by the writing topic, depending on the writers’ L1s and the contextual meanings and functions of obligation and necessity modals. On the whole, the frequency rates of possibility and ability modals appear to be less topic-dependent than obligation and necessity modals in the L2 writing of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean speakers. In many cases, writing prompts/topics are generally designed to be accessible to young adults of any cultural and linguistic background. However, broad-based topic accessibility also implies reliance on writers’ personal experiences and socio-cultural background knowledge that can lead to a greater topic-effect on L2 writing and overuse of such language features as obligation and necessity modals. The study concludes that more personally distant topics elicit fewer disparities between L1 and L2 prose than topics in which the student writers are expected to draw on their personal experiences.

Verb meaning in semantic memory contains both core and peripheral knowledge. This consists of specific representations of the verb's possible thematic roles, in particular possible agents and possible patients. Each is linked to the verb core with a particular degree of typicality. The primary source of thematic knowledge and its typicality lies in the real world. Another source may be discourse. Is the specific information about possible patients for verbs available in discourse? And if so, is it accompanied by the same detailed statistical properties as thematic knowledge in semantic memories? Possible patients for verbs were collected in an experiment and their production frequencies were recorded. Co-occurrences of these verbs with their possible patients were searched in Internet texts using an automatic mechanism. They were found to be present with a linguistic frequency paralleling the production frequency in the experiment. Relevant distributional information concerning verbs and their patients is thus available in texts. It can contribute, through incidental learning and repetition, to the integration of verb/possible patient links and degrees of typicality into verb meanings.

This article examines the forms and functions of directive speech acts uttered by Greek-speaking children, drawing from the frameworks of Speech Act Theory, Conversation Analysis, and Interactional Sociolinguistics (Searle, 1975a,b; Schegloff, 1988; Brown and Levinson, 1987). My goal is to exhibit the distinct strategies applied by speakers of nursery school age concerning three parameters: the choice of form, the negotiation of communicative goals within conversation, and the protection of face. Also, children's strategies are contrasted to the preferences exhibited by adult speakers of Greek (Sifianou, 1992). The analysis is based on actual conversational exchanges that were audio-recorded in six nursery school classes during classroom work and play time activities. The children involved are of both sexes and various social backgrounds. I will show that (1) Greek children's preferences confirm the fact that nursery school children exhibit awareness of the social parameters of talk (Andersen-Slosberg, 1990; Ervin-Tripp et al., 1990); (2) they make distinct linguistic choices that differ considerably from the conventional politeness markers applied by adult speakers of Greek, such as modals, polite 2nd plural subject-agreement on the verb, “please” and “thank you” words; (3) they mark relative distance by using declaratives with directive illocutionary force (Georgalidou, 2001).

Manner-of-motion verbs are frequently used in English narratives to portray motion events in vivid terms. This use of motion verbs contrasts with their use in non-narrative texts where the verbs are used to qualify static entities, and often instantiate figurative phenomena. The present paper explores the use of motion verbs in the descriptive-plus-evaluative genre of the wine tasting note. The discussion draws upon the results of an ongoing research project dealing with figurative language in wine discourse, and is theoretically anchored in research done in cognitive linguistics. My goals in this paper are two: on the one hand, I describe the way the expressions are used in the genre and the reasons underlying this use; on the other, I discuss the figurative motivation of the motion verbs in the genre under analysis, particularly their reliance on synesthetic metaphor and metonymy, respectively.

This two-part article critically reviews eight recent works in the field of mood and modality. Part I explores three different theoretical approaches – generative, cognitive–pragmatic, and typological – with the main focus on languages other than English. Within the framework of generative grammar, research issues include: the epistemic-root interpretations of modal verbs; transitive–intransitive (dyadic–monadic) alternations; modal verb complementation, and the interaction of the modals with other systems, including negation, and alternate ways of encoding modality. The cognitive–pragmatic approach hones in on epistemic modality, and focuses on the cognitive mechanisms that become activated once speakers express evaluations of given states of affairs, involving various modal expression types. Reflecting mounting interest in grammatical typology as a whole, typological approaches to modality recognize this domain as a valid cross-language grammatical category, similar to tense and aspect, and establish a range of typological categories, which include propositional modality (epistemic and evidential) and event modality (deontic and dynamic). Part I also includes a descriptive account of the modal verb system in Danish. In Part II, the emphasis is on work in relation to (primarily) English, much of which is corpus-driven, and on non-verbal as well as verbal carriers of modal meanings. Thus, description and analysis move purposefully towards a more comprehensive account of the field, to embrace modal expressions such as modal lexical verbs, modal adverbs, and modal adjectives. The pragmatics of modality; the discursive functions of modal expressions, especially modal adverbs; and the treatment of modality in modern descriptive grammars of English are also covered. The article reflects mounting interest in recent years in modality studies. Whilst broadening the scope of modality studies to include treatment of non-verbal modal expressions is to be welcomed, comparatively little attention has so far been given to how different types of modal expression may combine in text to create modal synergy. Following a case study investigation into pragmatics and modality in Part II, the paper outlines an agenda for further research within a discourse and pragmatic perspective.

Despite the superficial similarity of verb tense forms in English and Portuguese, semantic aspect often plays a critical role in the translation of one to the other; hence, the translator may be required to specify information or make explicit certain elements of meaning which are only implicitly present in the original Portuguese. Moreover, numerous verbs require an English-speaking translator to interpret multivariate forms in Portuguese in order to render the text into English. In the text analyzed, over 70% of the inflected verb forms required careful interpretation of the context and situation to choose an appropriate translation, and 67% of these “problematic” verbs have more than one possible option, depending on the aspect(s) to be emphasized. These results emphasize the link between semantic competence (aspect) and pragmatic competence (the ability to match form and function within context) in the composition of a general translation competence.

This study examines how Australian learners of Indonesian perform requests in everyday situations compared to Indonesian native speakers. The data were collected by means of interactive roleplay. Results showed that both groups of subjects favour the same request type: query preparatory. However, learner subjects used a different modal verb to perform their requests, used Want statements and hint statements more than native Indonesians do, and used elided imperatives less often. The findings emphasise the potential importance of positive pragmatic transfer, of the negative effect of formal instruction, and of learners’ concern for clarity. The study also has developmental implications for L2 pragmatics. Most broadly, it supports the claim of Bialystok [Bialystok, Ellen, 1993. Symbolic representation and attentional control in pragmatic competence. In: Kasper, Gabriele, Blum-Kulka, Shoshana (Eds.), Pragmatic Interlanguage. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 43–57.] that the main task for adult learners of L2 pragmatics is to gain control over knowledge rather than knowledge itself. It also suggests that Want statements and hint statements will be used in inverse proportion to language proficiency, that competence in aspects of requesting linked to conversational management will develop in tandem with linguistic proficiency, and that a U-shaped curve of development is likely in the acquisition of request strategies realised by very short forms.

The unique usage of (imperfect) past tense verb forms in children's pretend play has been reported in studies on many Indo-European languages, for example Italian. Finnish children, however, do not express unreality or plan their pretend play via the past tense verb form. Instead, they tend to use the conditional verb form. The aim of this paper is to test the assumption that the discrepancy between Finnish and Italian in pretend speech need not be caused by differences in a cognitive approach. More probable reasons are the grammatical structures of the respective languages, and especially the labels given to the verb forms in grammars. The conventions of adults in talking to their children also are likely to exert an immediate influence. The Finnish conditional verb form seems to have much in common with the Italian indicativo imperfetto, though the former is categorized in grammars as a modal form and the latter as a tense.

In this article it is shown that in order to arrive at an adequate descriptive framework for modality in contracts, it is necessary to explicate the link between linguistic semantics and the special pragmatic setting of contracts. It is argued that the semantics of the modal auxiliaries is not as specific as it has been assumed by most traditional linguistic analyses. On the basis of an outline of the semantics of sentence types, the modal auxiliaries, and the pragmatics of contextual parameters, a framework is formulated which sheds light on the linguistic interpretation of utterances of modalised sentences in contracts.1

The paper attempts a comparative analysis of the Japanese complex verb forms V-te-i-ru and V-te-ar-u . It morphologically analyzes the forms as compound predicates consisting of a complex verb stem (a perfective verb stem adjoined to an imperfective verb stem /-i-/ or /-ar-/ by /-te-/) and the tense morpheme /-(r)u-/. It is argued that both forms characterize the duration of situations identified by the perfective verb stems and that the choice between the two forms is determined in terms of whether the subject entity is seen from the dynamic or from the static point of view. The diverse and versatile usage of these verb forms is thus accounted for in a principled manner.

This study attempts to investigate the meaning of the three modal-catenative forms HAFTA, NEEDTA and WANNA in the speech of two 3-year-olds. The analysis suggests that the children have organized the three forms in terms of a system of contrasts: HAFTA  ‘external’/‘compulsion’; NEEDTA ‘internal’/‘compulsion’; and WANNA  ‘internal’/‘volition’. Another result of this study is that different patterns of use have been identified for the modals of constraint (HAFTA and NEEDTA) which reflect variation in speaker attitude. That is, at times, the modals of constraint are used descriptively to represent a pre-existing condition. Other times, the same forms are used performatively as a means of bringing about a belief that a particular condition exists, i.e. that the situation should be viewed in terms of the meaning projected by the modal — whether or not there are independent grounds for this belief. To capture the differences in use-types the analysis provides an overarching framework for viewing the modals in terms of core uses vs. peripheral uses.

This paper describes several distinctive strategies of qualification reflected in the compositions of Eskimo students writing in English. The authors contend that such strategies, particularly those which extend the range of English modals, pertain to obligatory pragmatic perspectives of Eskimo culture.

Recent studies of the English modals focused on may and can seem to converge on notions of what is imposed from outside (another's will, or some other external power) and what is possessed by or vested in a person, thing, or situation. The first includes what is granted as possible: permissions and predictions, the latter including epistemics, which are past or present facts yet to be verified. The second adds the dimension of potentiality, or ability in the broadest sense. I define the opposition as extrinsic possibility versus intrinsic potentiality, or simply possibility versus potentiality.