PREFACE
All price due to Allah SWT, by the grace of him, this working paper, entitled “MODALITY” has been finished.
Semantics is generally defined as the study of meaning. Certain of the meaning (or senses) can be distinguished by the technique of substituting other words in the same context and enquiring wether the resulting sentences are equivalent.
Modality is expressed in different ways by different languages. Modality can be expressed via grammaticized element such as auxiliary verbs or verbs ending, via indirect mean such as a prepositional phrase or a clause, or in other ways, such as via adverbs.
Tasikmalaya, October 2010
The writter
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE i
TABLE OF CONTENTS ii
INTRODUCTION
A. Background 1
B. Set of problem 1
MODALITY
A. Necessity and Possibility 2
B. Epistemic modality and Factivity 2
C. Tense as a Modality 3
D. Deontic Modality 5
E. Obligation,Permission,Prohibition, and Exemtion. 7
F. A Tentative synthesis. 8
CONCLUSION 10
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
In semiotics a modality is a particular way in which the information is to be encoded for presentation to humans, I, e, to the type of sign and to the status of reality ascribed to or claimed by a sign, text or genre. It is more closely associated with the semiotics of Charles pierce (1839-1914) than Saussure (1857-1913) because meaning is conceived as an effect of a set of sign. In the peircean model, a reference is made to an object hen the sign (or representamen ) is interpreted recursively by another sign (which becomes its interpretant), a conception of meaning that does in fact imply a classification of sign types.
In linguistics. Modality refers to the attitude of the speaker to action indicated by a verb, especially with regard to necessity / desirability or probability. Modality can be expressed lexically or grammatically. Grammatical modality may be expressed either analytically with the use of separate word-modals-or morphologically using inflection. Morphological expression of modality is called mood.
Modal have a wide variety of interpretation which depend not only upon the particular modal used, but also upon where the modal occurs in a sentence, the meaning of sentence independent of the modal, the conversational context, and a variety of other factors. For example, the interpretation of an English sentence containing the modal ‘must’ can be that of a statement of inference or knowledge (roughly, epistemic) or a statement of how something ought to be (roughly, deontic).
B. Set Of Problem
1. What is necessity and possibility
2. What is epistemic modality and factivity
3. How we learn tense as a modality
4. What is a deontic modality
5. What is obligation, permission, prohibition and exemtion
6. What is tentative syntetis
Modality
A. Necessity and possibility
Necessity and possibility are the central nations of traditional modal logic; and they are related, like universal and existential quantification (cf. 6. 3), in terms of negation. If p is necessarily true, then its negation, ˜p, cannot possibly be true; and if p is possibly true; then its negation is not necessarily true.
The sentences containing such modal *verb as’ must’ and may’ are ambiguous; and furthermore that their ambiguity is not satisfactorily accounted for by saying that each of the modal verb happens to have two ore more meaning. There is an intuitively obvious connexion, on the one hand, between the nations of necessity and obligation, which are relevant to the semantics analysis of sentence containing ‘must’, and, on the other, between the nation of possibility and permission, which are relevant to the semantics analysis of sentences containing ‘may. Moreover, the ambiguity found in English sentences containing ‘must’ and ‘may’ is also found, in comparable sentences, in other languages.
Two other kind of necessity and possibility are recognized and formalized, in various way, by logicians: epistemic*and deontic*. The significance of these term will be explained presently. But here it may be simply mentioned that it is epistemic necessity that is involved in (15) and deontic necessity in (16).epistemic necessity is intuitively closer to alethic necessity than deontic necessity is.
B. Epistemic modality and factifity
Main article: epistemic modality
Epistemic modals are used to indicate the possibility or necessity of some piece of knowledge. In the epistemic use, modals can be interpreted as indicating inference or some other process of reasoning involved in coming ti the conclusion stated in the sentence containing the modal. However, epistemic modals do not necessarily require inference, reasoning, or evidence. One effect of using an epistemic modal (as opposed to not using one) is a general weakening of the speaker’s commitment, or whether the weakening is a by-product of some other aspect of the modals meaning.
Whereas epistemology is concerned with the nature and source of knowledge, epistemic logic deals with the logical structure of statement which assert or imply that a particular proposition, or set of propositions, is known or believed.
Factivity is what we will call non-factivity and contra-factifity. They use of a non-factive*predicator, like ‘believe’ or ‘think’, commits the speaker to neither the truth nor the falsity of the proposition expressed by its complement clause in such statement as he believes/ think that Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland.
The most obvious examples of contra-factive utterances (and they are recognized as such in traditional grammer) are wishes*and so-called unreal* (or counter-factual) conditionals (which past-time reference), such as
(4) I wish he had been to paris
And
(5) if he had been to paris, he would have visited Montmartre.
Unreal conditional statement, like (5), contrast with so-called real* conditional statement such as
(8) if he went to paris, he visited Montmartre,
Which (construed in the sense in which it is not equivalent to whenever he went to paris, he visited montmartre) is neither factive nor contra-factive, but non-factive.
In principle, two kinds of epistemic modality can be distinguished: objective*and subjective*. This is not a distinction that can be drawn sharply I the everyday use of language; and its epistemological justification is, to say the least, uncertain. Its also difficult to draw a sharp distinction between what we are calling objective epistemic modality and alethic modality; both of them are subsumed by carnap’s nation of logical probability.
The important point is that objective epistemic modality is in principle quantifiable on a scale whose extremes are necessity and impossibility; and different language-system may well grammaticalize or lexicalige distinction along this scale in terms of more of fewer degrees.
There is somerevidence to suggest that, in English at least, epistemic mofality is possibility-based. The following utterances containing may or can are all acceptable as having either subjective or objective epistemic modality:
It may be raining
It may not be raining
It can’t be raining
It can’t not be raining (or it cannot but be raining)
And differ from another in that the former means “it is possible that it is not raining “ and the letter “it is not possible that it is raining”. Means (it is not possible that it is not raining).
C. Tense as modality
Tense-logic is a branch of modal logic which extend propositional calculus by in traducing into the system a set of tense-operators whose function and interpretation is similar t that of the operators of logical necessity and possibility in standard modal logic.
Every utterance establishes its own spatiotemporal point of reference the zero=point of the deictic system-in relation to which the entities, event and states-of-affairs referred to by the speaker may be identified.
1. It was raining
2. It will bw raining
Under this analysis of the meaning of (1) and (2), we have assigned the temporal reference or past and future tense, like objective epistemic modality, to the topic, rather than the pharastic . the distinction that we are operating with (which we have taken from hare and, in part, reinterpreted) is one that is not drawn in standard systems of logic.
What Augustine calls the “present of past things” can be described, in terms that linguists have often used in their discussion of tense, as a past embedded in a present. The sematic plausibility of this interpretation of tense is revealed in such utterances as the following:
It is a fact (in w) that is was raining(in w)
It is a fact (in w) that it will be raining(in w)
These sentence may not be exactly equivalent to ‘it was raining’ and ‘it will be raining’, but they do hold constant the present and the past or future point of reference; and they help us to see what is meant by “a present of past things” and “a present of future things”.
More commonly, however, in utterances in which the reference of is past in relation to t and the reference of t is future in relation to to, will be interpreted intensionally, rather than extantionaly; not as a word of fact and objective possibilities, but as a world that is composed of subjective expectations, predictions, and intentions. Jhon was coming tomorrow, under an intentional interpretation of w, might be held to have roughly the same meaning (as an utterance, thought not as a sentence) as jhon said that he as/ would be coming tomorrow, jhon intended coming tomorrow, I thought / was told that jhon was/ would be coming tomorrow, ect.
This distinction between an international and an extentional interpretation of futurity can also be drawn in relation to sentences like, it will be raining (tomorrow)’, ever since aristotle first raised the question, the factuality of statement descriptive, or predictive, of future events, or states-of-affairs, has been philosophically controversial and many philosophers would deny that we can make statement about the future at all, on the grounds that we cannot have knowledge, but only beliefs, about future world-states.
That there is a connexion is perhaps obvious enough, independently of any arguments that might be based upon the grammatical structure of particular language. But there is, in fact, ample linguistic evidence. What is conventionally regarded as the future tense (in languages that are said to have a future tense)is rarely if ever, used solely for marking statement or prediction, or posing and asking factual question, about the future. It is also used in a wider or narrower range of non-factive utterances involving supposition, inference, wish, intention and desire. Furthermore, the future, non-future distinction is frequently neutralized in subordinate or negative clauses, in participles and nominalization, in association with all mood othr than the indicative, and in various other constructions: the fact would suggest that the opposition of the future to the present is less central the structure of the languages than is the opposition of tge past to the present (which is, in any case, an opposition that is more widely grammaticalized throughout the language of the world ). So too would the fact that the so-called future tense is in many languages constructed according to different pattern of formation than is the past or the present tense.
In many languages throughout the world, the nation of possibility and obligation are associated with the same non-factive, or subjunctive, mood, and this is commonly also the mood of prediction, supposition, intention, and desire, as it is in many of the indo-european languages.
D. Deontic modality
The term deontic (from the greek deon : what is binding) is now quite widely used by philosophers to refer to a particular branch or extention of modal logic: the modal logic of obligation and permission. There are certain obvious differences between alethic and epistemic necessity, on the one hand, and what we might call denotic necessity., on the other. Logical and epistemic necessity, as we have seen, have to do with the truth of propositions, deontic modality is concered with the necessity or possibility of act performed by morally responsible agent.
Deontic modals are those that indicate how the world ought to be, according to the certain norms, expectations, speaker desire, etc. in other world, deontic uses indicate that the state of the world (where world is loosely defined here in terms of the circumstances surrounding the use of the modal) does not met some standard or ideal, whether yhat standard be social (such as laws) personal (desires), etc. the sentences containing the deontic modal generally indicates some action that would so that it becomes closer to the standard/ ideal.
Deontic modality is modality that connotes the speaker’s
• Degree of requirement of
• Desire for, or
• Commitment to the realization of.
The proposition expressed by the utterance
Example
• You may go at four o’clock
• All elections shall take place on schedule
A third characteristic of deontically modalized utterances which differentiates them, or appears to differentiate them, from logically and epistemically modalized utterance is that deontic necessary typically proceeds, or derives, from some sorce or couse.
Philosophers, in their discussion of deontic modality, have been mainly concerned wihtnthe notions of moral obligations, duty and right conduct.
The origin of deontic modality, it has often been suggested, is to be sought in the desiderative and instrumental function of language: that is to say, in yhe use of language, on the one hand, to express or indicate wants and desires and, on the other to get thing done by imposing one’s will on other agents.
Language, as the child soon realizes, is not only o instrument that he can use in other to impose his will onother and get them to do what he want.
The range of utterances whereby parents and those in authority over him regulate the behavior of the child and inculcate in him (if they are successful) a set of moral and social norms and patterns of behavior includes not only directivest, but also statement. The parent can say, not only
Don’t tell lies
But also
It’s wrong to tell lies
The difference between, as they would normally be understood, is that is (or may be) a directive, they utterance of which creates or bring intro existence , a certain obligation, whereas is a deontic statement to the effct that the obligation exist and the word wrong in specifies, in a fairly general way, the nature of this obligation.
Most of the diectivesthat are issued I everyday social interaction do not have as their function the creation of an obligation to behave in a certain wey or no refrain from behaving in a certain well for all time or on all occasions.
An obligation may also be restricted explicitly by means of an adverb or an adverbial clause of phrase of time, and this adverb or adverbial expression may have either singular or generic reference, and it may refer to either a point or period of time. For example, in turn up the thermostat when you get home the expression.’when you get home’ may refer to same single individual event of home-coming and it would normally, thought not necessarily be understood in this way, if it were supplemented with a phrase like ‘this evening’. But the same expression might also be employed with generic reference, in which case it would be more or less equipalent to ‘whenever you get home’. In certain language this difference between singular and generic temporal reference will e grammaticalized in terms of the category of aspect.
The important point is that both the person imposing the obligation and the person upon whom it is imposecd will normally be aware of what the implicit “immeiately” means on particular occasion and that is sufficient. Henceforth, e shall be concerned with directives which impose upon those to whom they are addressed the obligation to carry out immediately the act or course of action that is prescribed and we will refer to them whether they are conditional or unconditional, as temporally unrestricted directives.
E. Obligation, permission, prohibition, and exemtion
We have so far discussed deontic utterances both directives and statements in terms of the notion of obligation and we have seen that thereis least an intuitive relationship, which we have yet to explicate, between utterances such as
1. Open the door
2. Don’t open the door
Construed as commands and prohitions respectively, and statements to the effect that there exist an obligation to act or to refrain from acting in certain way. But we must nowbring in the notion of permission, which is related to possibility in the same way that obligation is related to necessity.
But first let us consider how (1) and (2) differ from,and how they are related to the following:
3. You must open the door
4. You musn’t open the door
5. You may open the door
6. You needn’t/ don’t have to open the door.
One important difference is that, whereas (1) and (2), would normally be uttered and taken as directives,(3)-(6) may be interpreted either as directives (e.g., as meaning “l hereby impose upon you the obligation to open the door”) or as statement (e.g as meaning “l hereby assert that you are obliged( by some unspecified authority) to open the the door”). In the either case it is an unqualified act of telling that is involved: and this is true also of (1) and (2). We cannot therefore account for the difference between the two interpretations in terms of the qualification of the l-say-so component. Furthermore, since(3)-(6) can be used as statements we must, for this interpretation at least, allow for their having an unqualified it is so tropic.
The fact that in many languages, and not only in english, the same sentences may be used either to report mands or to assert that an obligation exist is of considerable importance. It lends support to the view, put forward above, that our understanding of deontic statements is based upon an ontogenetically prior understanding of the illocutionary force of mands.
It is worth noting also that commands and demands may be reported or transmitted by means of imperative sentences with an explicit acknowledgment of their sourse:
7. Come in and have your bath: mummy says so
In the situations in which 7 would normally be uttered, it would be more or less equivalent to
8. You have got to come in and have your bath: mummy says so
9. Mummy says you have got to come in and have your bath.
And in all three cases the person making the utterance would normally be understood to be transmitting a mand from someone whose authority to create an obligation he himself acknowledges. Situation of this kind we can think of as being models for the child’s understanding of the meaning of deontic statements.
Permission as we saw above, is related to obligation in standard systems of deontic logic in the same way that possibility is related t necessity. But a distinction can be drawn, intuitively at least between a passive or weaker sense of permission and an active, or stronger,sense. A course of action is permissible in the weak sense if, and only if, it is not explicity prohibited. Under this interpretation of permission, every possible course of action is the either permissible or prohibited, and permission is interdefinable with obligation.
As positive commands and demands are related to prohibiton, so permissions are related to what we will call exemtions. When we issue a permission, by means of a permission-granting utterance e.g you may open the door, we either cancel a pre-existing prohibition or determine the deontic status of some action whose deontic status was previously undetermined. When we issue an exemtion-granting utterance, for example you needn’t open the door, we cancel a pre-existing obligation or determine, by fiat, a deontically undetermined action.
The fisrt poin that must be made in this connexion is that, although imperative sentences are characteristcally ussed to issue mands, they may also be employed,in certain situations, to grant permission. For example, when we say Come in ! in response to a knock on the door, we are not normally understood to be issuing a command (or even a request), but to be granting to the person who has knocked permission to enter room; and his knock is, by convention, taken to be equivalent to a request for our permission; as meaning “ May l come in?”.
F. A Tentative Synthesis
It is a widely held view among linguists that there is a fundamental difference between the epistemic and the deontic uses of ‘may’ or ‘can’ and ‘must’ in english; and this difference has been accounted for in some recent transformational analyses by classifying the epistemic modal verb as intransitive and the deontic modals as transitive. The so-called intransitive modals, under this analysis of their meaning and function, would have a nominalized sentential subject; and the transitive modals would have as their subject an expression referring to the person who is the source of the obligation or permission and as their object a nominalized sentence referring to what is obligatory or permissible. Rougly speaking, under this analysis, ‘’jhon may come in’’ would mean “ that jhon will come in is possible” with the intransitive “may” and, under the permission-granting interpretation,” l make it possible that jhon will come in” with the transitive “may”.
There are several point that may be in relation to this analysis.First of all,like most treatments of epistemic modality it fails to acount for the diference between a subjective and an objective interpretation or epistemic modality. By comparing an objectively modalized epistemic interpretation with a permission – granting deontic interpretation it makes the transitive – intransitive distinction look semantically more plausible than it is. As soon as we gloss the allegedly intransitive sentence as “ i think – it – possible that Jhon will come in “ we see that there can be,inprinciple, a transitive analysis of epistemic modality.A|The transitive analysis of Jhon may come in , interpreted as a deontic statement,is on the other hand highly implausible: “ Jhon makes – it – possible that Jhon come in” is semantically inapppropriate, and such analyses as “ for Jhon it is possible that Jhon will come in”, event if they are interpretable in the appropriate way,depend upon some rather questionable syntactic proseses and an eccentric notion of what it mean for an expression to be the subject of a transitive verb.
A second general criticsm that can be made of the tranformasional,analysis of epistemic and deontic sentences outlined above is that it says nothing about the difference in the way in which we have interpret the nominalized sentence in the two different syntactic environments.One of the points that was made at the begining of this section was that deontic necessity and possibility are usually understood to originate in some casual source. If someone is obliged or permited to carry out some source of action, it is generally,though not necesserily, asumed that some person or insituation has created the obligation or permission.
If we look at the matter in this way , we can see way the same modal verbs and adjectives are used,in many languages, in what appear to be, and are often classified as,diffferent senses : the ‘ may’ of permission , the ‘ may’ of alethic possibility etc,in so far as they can be distinguished .In term of conceptual model within which the possibility or necessity of something being so is understood by analogy with our understanding of the deontic notions of granting permission and imposing obligation.
Conclusion
After we studied all about modality in the previous chapter, we can conclude it to some points.
The definition of modality in semiotics is a parcicular way in which the infomation is to be encoded for presentstion to humans, to the type of sign and to the status of reality ascribed to or climed by a sign text or genre. And the definition of modality in linguistic,modality refers to the attitude of the speaker.
The kind of modality is necessiti and possibility,epistemic modality and factivity,tense as a modality,deontic modality,obligation,permission,prohibition,exemption, a tentative synthesis.
Bibliography
Linguistic modality – Wikipedia,the free encyclopedia.
http: // www.sil.org./lingualinks/contents,htm.
Lyon,Jhon.(1978).Semantics.London and Newyork.Cambridge U
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