语义学可选材料.doc

Deontic modality has to do with influencing actions, states or events and expressing what Searle calls directives.Epistemic modality is about how the speaker makes a judgment about the truth of the proposition. Modality is defined as semantic category which expresses the attitude of the speaker towards that expressed in the sentence (Bussmann, 1996: 307)” Evidentiality, as a linguistic phenomenon, is pervasive in all languages? The semantic categories of evidentiality are hypothesized to be universal and language-independent. The only difference lies in the fact that evidential markers are language-specific.( 房红梅 2)in some languages like Wintu, evidentiality is grammaticalized in its grammatical system; in others like English and Chinese, evidentiality is lexically marked, and there are still some languages like Japanese that have both grammatical and lexical evidential markers. (16) as far as the current evidential studies are concerned, there are no unified agreements on the definitions, scope, and classifications of evidentiality and evidentials? Scholars of evidentiality show great enthusiasm for the specific descriptions of evidential markers and evidential systems in languages? This somehow has hindered evidential studies from developing onto a more theoretical level. We will investigate to see if epistemic meaning tends to become increasingly situated in the speakers subjective belief state or attitude toward the proposition. The classification between epistemic and deontic modality is one of the most fundamental issue in discussion of modality. deontic modality is involved with the necessity or possibility of acts performed by morally responsible agents, wherears epistemic modality is concerned with matters of knowledge and belief (Lyons 1977). Palmer (1990) distinguished the three types of modality with the following definitions. Dynamic modality is related with the ability your volition of the subject of the sentence? Deontic modality has to do with influ