The manner of expression în the phrase structure of modality

Modality as part of language is an extremely complex phenomenon whose definition and description have been one of the most persistent problems for linguists. The concept of modality in ordinary language includes attitudes which are similar to, but not identical with the logical, epistemic and deontic modalities.

It includes feelings and emotions as well as other concepts that do not exist in modal logic. Therefore, natural language modality should not be confused with logical modality.

The complexity of this phenomenon is so great that there is little agreement in the literature as to how modality should be defined. But we all agree that modality expresses the attitude of the speaker towards what he is saying. (T. Dutescu and Coliban, Gramatical Categories of English, p. 275). In other words, as Loreto Todd and Ian Hancock say, modality refers to the attitudes expressed by a speaker towards the statement or proposition being made. (Loreto Todd / Ian Hancock, International English Usage, p. 22). They also add that such attitudes may express ability, compulsion, desire, insistence, obligation, permission, possibility, willingness and uncertainty.

Certain grammar postulate a modality component in their organization. In Filmore s Case Grammar, for example, every sentence is decomposed into a modality constituent and a preposition, that is a set of relationship involving verb phrases and noun phrases, not different in essence from the logical notion of proposition.

What is important in this view point is the idea of separating modal meaning from the basic meaning.

Although modality is often characterized as a verbal category, since it is at the level of the verb phrase, modality applies to the whole statement.

So, it should be taken as a sentence category.

It is relevant to say that modality can be seen semantic point of view.

Wilfried Rathay tries to understand whether modality constitutes a grammatical category, i.

e. a (morpho-syntactic category, or whether it should be looked upon as a semantic phenomenon. He considers that modality has to be regarded as one of the main features of sentence or, as some linguists maintain, as an obligatory characteristic of every sentence.

(cf. Gordon /Krilova, Pantilov, Muhlner). There are, however, divergent opinions about what be included under this term. In some cases only the general feature is taken to be essential: the relationship between the statement affirmed in the sentence and reality as established by the speaker.

Other linguists emphasize the twofold aspect of the notion modality and differentiate between: a) the relationship of the content of the sentence to reality (as regarded by the speaker) and b) the attitude of the speaker towards the content of the sentence.

(cf. Achmanova). Sometimes a third aspect is mentioned which is supposed to specify the relationship of the subject of an action, process or state towards this action, process or state. (modality expressed by modal verbs: He ...

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