29.3336, FYI: 2nd Call for Papers (Edited Volume) Modalising Expressions

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3336. Thu Aug 30 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3336, FYI: 2nd Call for Papers (Edited Volume) Modalising Expressions

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Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2018 00:56:00
From: Pascal Hohaus [pascal.hohaus at engsem.uni-hannover.de]
Subject: 2nd Call for Papers (Edited Volume) Modalising Expressions

 
‘Not here – not now’: Re-assessing Modalising Expressions in the Light of
Converging Evidence

It may be taken for granted that ‘modalising expressions’ (a term borrowed
from Simpson 1993) have never ceased to be a highly topical issue in
linguistics, the main general rationale being the central position of this
particular notion of evaluation fundamental to language. As a consequence,
formal means for expressing obligation or necessity, of possibility and of
desirability or volition in natural languages commonly form an essential part
of descriptive grammars (Quirk et al 1985; Biber et al. 1999; Huddleston and
Pullum 2002), with reference to evaluative meanings representing an important
subfield. Similar to a number of related languages, chiefly lexical and
grammatical structures are used, for example in English, to encode obligation,
possibility or volition, including the use of core modal auxiliaries, phrasal
modals, one-word and two-word adverbs, verbs of knowledge and prediction,
clauses, tag questions, generic sentences, categorical assertions, etc.
(Stubbs 1986; Simpson 1993).
  
It does not come as a surprise that debates on the theoretical status as a
grammatical category and on the core and/or potential semantic
interpretations, and of modal auxiliaries in particular, have a longstanding
tradition (Perkins 1983; Mitchell 1988; Palmer 1990; Mindt 1995; Hoye 1997;
Kennedy 2002; Nuyts and van der Auwera 2016). A contested ground is the issue
of how many semantic interpretations or ‘readings’ can be assigned to
modalising expressions including modal auxiliaries. In general, we can broadly
distinguish between deontic (or situational, as suggested by van der Auwera
and Ammann 2005) and epistemic readings (with various different shades of
meaning being claimed for each type), while recent assessments of the
applicability of these predominantly introspective approaches have been
critical (Hunston 2011). The starting point of re-assessments of the notion of
modalising expressions was linked to wider availability of corpora and the
technical opportunities to access and analyze these electronic data from the
1990s onwards. Stubbs (1986) is an early proponent of a first wave of
re-assessment in studying the correlation between modalising expressions and
various co-textual units. In another corpus-based analysis of American and
British material, Collins (2009) argues that modal auxiliaries are unevenly
distributed and finds that emerging patterns in AmE and BrE are mostly
dissimilar.

What has been neglected in corpus-based studies of modalising expressions so
far is the issue of converging evidence (Schönefeld 2011), i.e. how
corpus-based methodology may be combined with a formalist paradigm or an
experimental research design. We therefore invite contributions that make use
of a mixed-method approach to modalising expressions or that critically
reflect methodological issues that are specific to the investigation of
modality. Individual contributions can be from different linguistic
backgrounds and linguistic fields (semantics, pragmatics, text linguistic
etc.) and should address the following or additional aspects:

- How can modalised expressions be distinguished from each other?
- Are there 'basic', 'primary' or 'cognitively salient' modalised expressions
and what are they?
- What is the relationship between lexical and grammatical forms or patterns
of modality and the experience of modality?
- Should particular modalising expressions be seen as a receding form or
rather as one increasing its functional scope, as selected modal auxiliaries
seem to be losing ground in some varieties?
- How pervasive are alternative surface realizations in the modality space?
Which role do register effects and lexical effects play?
- How are modalising expressions expressed in different genres and/or
registers?
- How do modalising expressions interact with other non-modalised units in or
beyond the clause?
- Are there any changing functional roles of modalising expressions and if so,
what are the historical factors that determine their evolution?
- What is the role of modalising expressions in first and second-language
acquisition?
- How to account for graded modality?
- What is the role of modalising expressions in standard and non-standard
varieties of English (including localized varieties such as Singaporean
English, Aboriginal English, Hong Kong English, Cameroon English, etc.),
German, Italian, Polish, Russian, etc.?
- What does a cross-linguistic analysis of modalising expressions reveal about
their functional load in the respective varieties?

Please submit abstracts (300-500 words) for an edited volume and a short bio
note by 31 October 2018 to

Pascal Hohaus (pascal.hohaus at engsem.uni-hannover.de)

Rainer Schulze (rainer.schulze at engsem.uni-hannover.de)
 



Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis
                     General Linguistics
                     Language Acquisition
                     Linguistic Theories
                     Pragmatics
                     Psycholinguistics
                     Semantics
                     Sociolinguistics
                     Syntax
                     Text/Corpus Linguistics





 



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