Chapter 2. An Overview of the Ways of Expressing Modality

When talking about the means of expressing modality, we come across different classifications of means among the scholars. The founder of the English study in Russia B. A. Ilysh says: “Modality can be expressed in the sentence with the help of different means: modal words, modal verbs, sometimes just with the help of mere verbiage, intonation and mood. In English modality is transferred with the help of all meanings and shades, which are expressed with the help of synthetic and analytical forms of moods and verbs. Combinations of modal verbs with infinitive render the attitude of the subject of the action”. Accordingly, most of the scholars such as Vinogradov, Khlebnikova point out that as an extra-linguistic category modality in speech is realized by:

1. Phonological means – intonation and stress: Phonetic means are very important and have an essential role in expressing modality. As mentioned above modality expresses the attitude of the speaker, it does everything to have a powerful impact on the listener. The next chapter gives a proper and detailed description of phonological means.

2. Lexico-grammatical means – modal verbs: Lexico-grammatical means are represented with modal verbs or their equivalents and quasi words. The construction with modal verbs carry the function of compound modal verbal predicate and express different meanings, which depends on the modal verb. Modal verbs are called 'modals', 'modal auxiliary'. 'Modal auxiliary verb' is a type of verb that is used to indicate modality, it does not indicate an action or state, but it shows the attitude of the speaker to the action. In English, modal verbs express likelihood, ability, permission and obligation.

3. Lexical means – modal words and expressions (subjective modality). One of the most important aspects of modality is lexical modality, which is expressed with modal words and expressions. Modal words comprise a large range of words which belong to different parts of speech, but their meanings allow to express modality.

Due to their unchangeable form, modal words fall under the category of adverbs. But the special meaning and syntactical function expressed by modal words make foreign authors pay attention to them and classify modal words into special groups defining them as ‘sentence-modifying adverbs’, ‘modal adverbs’, ‘sentence adverbials’ or ‘independent adverbs’, ‘disjuncts’ and so on. There have been discussions on wether modal words should be considered a separate part of speech or not. Thus, it is worth mentioning that such scholars as B. Ilysh, M. Blokh in their works treat modal words as a separate part of speech. Blokh mentions that modal words occupy in the sentence a detached position. They express the speaker’s attitude to the situation with all its attributes.

B. Ilyish grounds his view according to three principles of differentiation of parts of speech: meaning, form, function. By meaning, modal words express the speaker’s evaluation of the relation between an action and reality. By form, modal words are invariable. In the case of function, modal words usually do not enter any phrases but stand outside them. Besides, Ilish assumes that modal words may carry the function of parenthesis and he also states that modal words may be a sentence of their own right.

However, the linguists did not reach a final and definite conclusion concerning this problem. One thing is for sure, sometimes the only criterion of distinguishing the part of speech the word belongs to is its place in the sentence.

4. Grammatical means – mood forms of the verb: Grammatical means of expressing modality is described as a group of different verb-forms (inflections) which express modality. Modality is expressed not only with modal verbs, modal words or expressions but also with three grammatical moods. Mood is the form of the verb that shows the manner in which a thought is expressed. Mood is that grammatical category which is intimately connected with the phenomenon of modality. Mood is as important to modality as for instance tense to time.

English has a great variety of means to express modality. Some of those means were studied, and some of them are still being studied. Among those means there are some (intonation, modal verbs, mood and modal adverbs) which are to be paid special attention. Therefore the next chapter is totally devoted to that.