Despite the intensive research carried out in recent years, modality remains an intriguing and challenging issue in linguistics. This book investigates modality from a syntactic viewpoint and with a bottom-up approach. A strong focus of the book is the interaction between the different linguistic tools that build modality (moods, modal verbs, modal adverbs, etc.), taking both the role of syntactic structure and the compositionality of modal meanings into account. The volume comprises corpus-based studies devoted to several syntactic aspects of modality in Ancient Greek, within different theoretical frameworks. The chapters shed new light on different modal categories (e.g. epistemicity, possibility, counterfactuality, evidentiality, subjectivity) and show how these modal meanings arise from the combination of different linguistic devices in specific syntactic contexts (e.g. combinations of modal elements, types of main and dependent clauses, types of illocutionary acts, etc.). By approaching modality from a different perspective and providing an up-to-date discussion of several aspects of modality, the book makes a significant contribution to current debates.

About the Author
Camille Denizot, Universite Paris Nanterre, France; Liana Tronci, Universita per Stranieri di Siena, Italy.


Book Information
ISBN 9783110778052
Author Camille Denizot
Format Hardback
Page Count 279
Imprint De Gruyter Mouton
Publisher De Gruyter
Weight(grams) 529g