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The present paper aims to register the principal morphological and morphosyntactic items of the Manchu language that encode modal notions and to propose a functional and semantic classification for them. The inventory of items is classified according to three functional categories which are determined by their relationship to aspect within a hierarchy of scope. The position of a given modal item in the scope hierarchy is established by testing whether it is combinable with aspect, and if so, whether the modal item operates on aspect or forms part of the operandum of aspect. The three functional modal categories, which are also mutually distinct in terms of basic semantic properties, are investigated with regard to their internal semantic design. It will be suggested that while the domain of event modality can be adequately described with received theories of modality, the other semantic classes call for alternative approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]