Modal adjective

Last updated

Modal adjectives are adjectives, such as likely, probable and necessary, that express modality, i.e., possibility, necessity, or contingency. [1] [2]

Contents

In English

Modal adjectives can express modality regarding a situation or a participant in that situation. With situations, some usual syntactic patterns include an extraposed subject, [3] such as the underlined elements in the following examples with the modal adjective in bold. Here the modal adjective is analyzed semantically as a sentential modal operator. [3]

  1. It's possiblethat some of them are broken.
  2. It's likelythat they will come.
  3. It is necessary(for us) to make a choice.

For participants, however, the usual syntactic construction has the adjective phrase in attributive modifier function, [3] as in the following examples, where the modal adjective is again in bold and this time the participant in underlined.

  1. We've found a potentialreplacement.
  2. They need to file the necessarypapers.
  3. We took the obligatoryphoto.

Other constructions are also possible. For example, contingency may be expressed as We've made an offer contingent on the sale of our house, which can be paraphrased as Our offer stands if and only if we sell our house.

In Japanese

In Japanese, possibility is often expressed with the adjectives 可能 (kanou 'possible') and 不可能 (fukanou 'impossible'), as in 目標を実現することは不可能です (Mokuhyou o jitsugen suru koto wa fukanoudesu 'It's impossible to realize that goal'). Impossibility can also be expressed with the modal adjective 無理 (muri 'impossible') as in, 円を7で等分することは無理です (en o nana de toubun suru koto ha muri desu 'a circle cannot be divided into seven equal parts').

The modern Japanese particle べき (beki 'should') derives from the traditional modal adjective べし (beshi) but no longer inflects. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech is a category of words that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assigned to the same part of speech generally display similar syntactic behavior, sometimes similar morphological behavior in that they undergo inflection for similar properties and even similar semantic behavior. Commonly listed English parts of speech are noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, interjection, numeral, article, and determiner.

A noun phrase – or NP or nominal (phrase) – is a phrase that usually has a noun or pronoun as its head, and has the same grammatical functions as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently occurring phrase type.

Japanese is an agglutinative, synthetic, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment. Its phrases are exclusively head-final and compound sentences are exclusively left-branching. Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or make questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person. Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned.

A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their metaphysical status has been a subject of controversy in philosophy, with modal realists such as David Lewis arguing that they are literally existing alternate realities, and others such as Robert Stalnaker arguing that they are not.

In linguistics, an adverbial phrase ("AdvP") is a multi-word expression operating adverbially: its syntactic function is to modify other expressions, including verbs, adjectives, adverbs, adverbials, and sentences. Adverbial phrases can be divided into two types: complement adverbs and modifier adverbs. For example, in the sentence She sang very well, the expression very well is an adverbial phrase, as it modifies the verb to sing. More specifically, the adverbial phrase very well contains two adverbs, very and well: while well modifies the verb to convey information about the manner of singing, very is a degree modifier that conveys information about the degree to which the action of singing well was accomplished.

In linguistics, nominalization or nominalisation is the use of a word that is not a noun as a noun, or as the head of a noun phrase. This change in functional category can occur through morphological transformation, but it does not always. Nominalization can refer, for instance, to the process of producing a noun from another part of speech by adding a derivational affix, but it can also refer to the complex noun that is formed as a result.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Japanese conjugation</span> Overview of how Japanese verbs conjugate

Japanese verbs, like the verbs of many other languages, can be morphologically modified to change their meaning or grammatical function – a process known as conjugation. In Japanese, the beginning of a word is preserved during conjugation, while the ending of the word is altered in some way to change the meaning. Japanese verb conjugations are independent of person, number and gender ; the conjugated forms can express meanings such as negation, present and past tense, volition, passive voice, causation, imperative and conditional mood, and ability. There are also special forms for conjunction with other verbs, and for combination with particles for additional meanings.

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. Quintessential modal expressions include modal auxiliaries such as "could", "should", or "must"; modal adverbs such as "possibly" or "necessarily"; and modal adjectives such as "conceivable" or "probable". However, modal components have been identified in the meanings of countless natural language expressions, including counterfactuals, propositional attitudes, evidentials, habituals, and generics.

This article deals with Japanese equivalents of English adjectives.

Japanese particles, joshi (助詞) or tenioha (てにをは), are suffixes or short words in Japanese grammar that immediately follow the modified noun, verb, adjective, or sentence. Their grammatical range can indicate various meanings and functions, such as speaker affect and assertiveness.

In linguistics, coordination is a complex syntactic structure that links together two or more elements; these elements are called conjuncts or conjoins. The presence of coordination is often signaled by the appearance of a coordinator, e.g. and, or, but. The totality of coordinator(s) and conjuncts forming an instance of coordination is called a coordinate structure. The unique properties of coordinate structures have motivated theoretical syntax to draw a broad distinction between coordination and subordination. It is also one of the many constituency tests in linguistics. Coordination is one of the most studied fields in theoretical syntax, but despite decades of intensive examination, theoretical accounts differ significantly and there is no consensus on the best analysis.

The Japanese language has different ways of expressing the possessive relation. There are several "verbal possessive" forms based on verbs with the sense of "to possess" or "to have" or "to own". An alternative is the use of the particle no (の) between two nouns or noun phrases.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Early Middle Japanese</span> Stage of the Japanese language

Early Middle Japanese is a stage of the Japanese language between 794 and 1185, which is known as the Heian period (平安時代). The successor to Old Japanese (上代日本語), it is also known as Late Old Japanese. However, the term "Early Middle Japanese" is preferred, as it is closer to Late Middle Japanese than to Old Japanese.

In logic, contingency is the feature of a statement making it neither necessary nor impossible. Contingency is a fundamental concept of modal logic. Modal logic concerns the manner, or mode, in which statements are true. Contingency is one of three basic modes alongside necessity and possibility. In modal logic, a contingent statement stands in the modal realm between what is necessary and what is impossible, never crossing into the territory of either status. Contingent and necessary statements form the complete set of possible statements. While this definition is widely accepted, the precise distinction between what is contingent and what is necessary has been challenged since antiquity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English adverbs</span>

English adverbs are words such as so, just, how, well, also, very, even, only, really, and why that head adverb phrases, and whose most typical members function as modifiers in verb phrases and clauses, along with adjective and adverb phrases. The category is highly heterogeneous, but a large number of the very typical members are derived from adjectives + the suffix -ly and modify any word, phrase or clause other than a noun. Adverbs form an open lexical category in English. They do not typically license or function as complements in other phrases. Semantically, they are again highly various, denoting manner, degree, duration, frequency, domain, modality, and much more.

Logical consequence is a fundamental concept in logic which describes the relationship between statements that hold true when one statement logically follows from one or more statements. A valid logical argument is one in which the conclusion is entailed by the premises, because the conclusion is the consequence of the premises. The philosophical analysis of logical consequence involves the questions: In what sense does a conclusion follow from its premises? and What does it mean for a conclusion to be a consequence of premises? All of philosophical logic is meant to provide accounts of the nature of logical consequence and the nature of logical truth.

Japanese verb conjugation is very regular, as is usual for an agglutinative language, but there are a number of exceptions. The best-known irregular verbs are the common verbs する suru "do" and 来る kuru "come", sometimes categorized as the two Group 3 verbs. As these are the only verbs frequently flagged as significantly irregular, they are sometimes misunderstood to be the only irregular verbs in Japanese. However, there are about a dozen irregular verbs in Japanese, depending on how one counts. The other irregular verbs encountered at the beginning level are ある aru "be (inanimate)" and 行く iku/yuku "go", with the copula behaving similarly to an irregular verb.

<i>Uchi</i> (Misono album) 2014 studio album by misono

Uchi is the fourth studio album released by Japanese artist misono. The album charted at #49 on the Oricon charts and remained on the charts for three weeks. The full title of the album is "Uchi: ※Album ga 1man-mai Urenakattara misono wa mou CD wo Hatsubai Suru Koto ga Dekimasen." The album only sold 2,856 and misono has yet to release another single or album.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nanbu dialect</span> Regional Japanese dialect

The Nanbudialect is a Japanese dialect spoken in an area corresponding to the former domains of Morioka and Hachinohe in northern Tohoku, governed by the Nanbu clan during the Edo period. It is classified as a Northern Tohoku dialect of the wider Tohoku dialect group.

Modal adverbs are adverbs, such as probably, necessarily, and possibly that express modality, i.e., possibility, necessity, or contingency.

References

  1. Matthews, Peter (2003). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  2. Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 117.
  3. 1 2 3 Frana, Ilaria (2017-04-20). Modality in the nominal domain: The case of adnominal conditionals. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198718208.003.0004.
  4. Tranter, Nicolas (2012). The Languages of Japan and Korea. Routledge. p. 293. ISBN   978-1-136-44658-0.