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Modality packaging in Japanese : the encoding of modal meanings and subjectivity

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Author

  • Lars Larm

Summary, in English

This paper focuses on the grammatical expression or ‘packaging’ of modality in Japanese. I consider two aspects: (1) the grammatical encoding of epistemic, deontic, and evidential notions with English as a point of comparison, and (2) the co-encoding of modality and subjectivity. As for the former aspect, the comparison between Japanese and English exemplifies how languages can take different strategies for grammatical modality packaging, linking and encoding cognitive categories in language-specific ways. Regarding the latter aspect, I discuss how modal markers exhibit different degrees of subjectivity. Not only epistemic modality, whose subjective character is often mentioned in the literature, but also deontic and evidential modality can be subjective or objective. I also consider the broader implications for linguistic theory.

Department/s

Publishing year

2014

Language

English

Pages

20-46

Publication/Series

Studies in Pragmatics

Volume

16

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Brill

Topic

  • General Language Studies and Linguistics

Keywords

  • modality packaging
  • epistemic
  • deontic
  • evidential
  • subjectivity

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1750-368X