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In linguistics and philosophy, modality refers to the ways language can express various relationships to reality or truth. For instance, a modal expression may convey that something is likely, desirable, or permissible.
- The Major Components of Communication
- Spoken and Signed Languages
- The Study of Modality
An act of communication between two people typically begins with one person constructing some intended message in their mind (step ❶ in Figure 3.1). This person can then give that message physical reality through various movements and configurations of their body parts, called articulation (step ❷). The physical linguistic signal (step ❸) can come ...
The modality of spoken languages, such as English and Cantonese, is vocal, because they are articulated with the vocal tract; acoustic, because they are transmitted by sound waves; and auditory, because they are received and processed by the auditory system. This modality is often shortened to vocal-auditory, leaving the acoustic nature of the sign...
Because spoken languages have long been the default object of study in linguistics, and because the vocal-auditory modality is centred on sound, the study of linguistic modality is called phonetics, a term derived from the Ancient Greek root φωνή (phōnḗ) ‘sound, voice’. However, all languages have many underlying similarities, so linguists have ...
Aug 12, 2018 · In grammar and semantics, modality refers to linguistic devices that indicate the degree to which an observation is possible, probable, likely, certain, permitted, or prohibited. In English, these notions are commonly (though not exclusively) expressed by modal auxiliaries, such as can, might, should, and will.
- Richard Nordquist
In linguistics, language modality is the medium or format through which language is conveyed. Human language shows up in at least four different modalities: Spoken language, also known as vocal-auditory language, is produced by making sounds with the vocal tract and is perceived through hearing.
Modality is a category of linguistic meaning having to do with the expression of possibility and necessity. A modalized sentence locates an underlying or preja-cent proposition in the space of possibilities (the term prejacent was introduced by medieval logicians). Sandy might be home says that there is a possibility that Sandy is home.
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From a linguistic point of view, modality is a semantic category expressing concepts such as ‘possibility’, ‘necessity’, ‘obligation’, ‘permission’, ‘intention’ and so on. The most important formal devices found in languages for expressing modality are: (1) modal verbs, whether main verbs or auxiliaries, e.g. may, can, must ...
In current linguistics, there are two major approaches to the definition of modality. One is in terms of ‘speaker attitudes’ or ‘subjectivity’, and the other in terms of ‘factuality’, ‘actuality’, or ‘reality’.
