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Chapter One Literature Review

1.1 Key terms
This section provides some key terms which will be used in thisstudy. The definitions of modality put forward by different linguists willbe introduced and the definitions, classifications and characteristics ofmodal verbs will be discussed in detail. Modality has been one of the enduring concerns of Westernphilosophy since Plato. Different scholars always hold different views inrespect of modality. Lyons defines modality as “opinion or attitudetowards the proposition that the sentence expresses or the situation thatthe proposition describes” (Lyons, 1977:452). Quirk states that “modalitymay be defined as the manner in which the meaning of a clause isqualified so as to reflect the speaker’s judgment of the likelihood of theproposition it expresses being true” (Quirk, 1985:219). And modality,Palmer states that modality is “the grammaticalization of speakers’ (subjective) attitudes and opinions” (Palmer, 1986:16). With regard tomodality, Halliday puts it in this way: “polarity as the opposition betweenpositive and negative while modality as the speaker’s judgment, orrequest of the judgment of the listener, on the status of what is being said”(Halliday, 2008:143). And Saeed points out that “modality is a cover termfor devices which allow speakers to express varying degrees ofcommitment to, or belief in, a proposition”(Saeed, 2003:135).
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1.2Studies on Modal Verbs
This section is divided into two parts: the first part is related to thetheoretical studies on modal verbs and the second part is related to theempirical studies on modal verbs home and abroadCook (1978) points out “English modal verbs constitute a problemfor the student of English as a foreign language and the problem lies inthe recognition and proper use of the meaning underlying the Englishmodal verbs.” Cook studies the modals can, may, must, and have to, withtheir negative and past tense forms. Cook classified the modal verbs intoepistemic and root modals and distinguished the external negation andinternal negation. Cook also claims that present forms have presentmeanings, but past forms have either past or present meanings.Coates (1983) studied modal verbs based on LOB corpus for writtenEnglish and the SEU corpus for spoken English. Coates’ study recognizedthe indeterminacy and adopted fuzzy-set model significantly differentfrom those used in other analyses of the models. The use of corpus datahas meant that all findings of the study could be quantified. In her study,she used computer-files and discovered the associations betweensemantic and syntactic categories.
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Chapter Two Theoretical Framework and Research Methodology

2.1 Theoretical Foundations.
Lyons discusses two kinds of modality: epistemic modality anddeontic modality. Epistemic modality, as we have seen, has to do with thetruth of proposition whereas deontic modality is concerned with thenecessity or possibility of acts performed by morally responsible agents(Lyons, 1977:823). Cook (1978) claims that modal verbs may be classifiedaccording to their meaning into epistemic and root modals. Epistemicmodals modify a sentence and deal with the truth value of that sentence;root modals relate an agent to an activity and deal with permission,obligation and abilit本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。