Modality in Mind

Modality – the ways in which language can express grades of reality or truth – is the subject of a vast and long-established body of research. In this book, field-leader Jan Nuyts brings together twenty years of his research to offer a comprehensive, fully integrated view on areas of contentious debate within modality, from a functional and cognitive perspective. The book provides an empirically grounded, conceptual reanalysis of modality and related categories including evidentiality, volition, intention, directivity, subjectivity and mirativity. It argues for the dissolution of the category of modality and for an alternative division of the wider field of semantic notions at stake. The analysis also reflects on how to model the language faculty, and on the issue of language and thought. It is essential reading for researchers interested in the semantics of modality and in the implications of this domain for understanding the cognitive infrastructure for language and thought.

• Introduces and carefully defines all the important semantic notions in the wide field of modality and related categories
• Provides a comprehensive and integrated analysis of the field of modal and related notions, showing the interconnections and relations between categories
• Offers an elaborate theoretical grounding, rooted in the cognitive and functionalist traditions in linguistics, motivating the way the semantic domains at stake are analyzed, and drawing consequences from the analyses for these traditions