The present study investigates how advice writers employ move sequences and modal verbs to achieve intended discourse functions. This paper aims to testify two research hypotheses: 1. Advice writers of different topics employ different moves and modal verbs to achieve discourse function, and 2. The differences may imply writers’ intentions, emotion and expectancy of effects on the readers to in...

This paper describes ongoing work on the choice of modal expressions in the generation of recommendations about courses of study within the B.A.-program of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. We focus our work on the German modal verbs müssen (must), können (can), the subjunctive form sollte (should), and dürfen (may). The idea is to combine insights from formal semantics into the meaning of modal ver...

In this paper I look at light verb, serial verb and auxiliary constructions crosslinguistically and try to set up criteria to distinguish these constructions. I argue that while a coherent set of properties can be found to distinguish light verbs from auxiliaries, it is more difficult to find crosslinguistic criteria which set serial verbs apart from light verbs and auxiliaries. This is because...

This paper extends a previous claim that auxiliary selection in the present perfect of monadic verbs reflects a pattern grounded in lexico-aspectual properties of individual verbs though mediated through their syntax. A novel argument in support of this conclusion is made, based on the cross-contextual typology of auxiliaries, showing that the cross-linguistic distribution of auxiliaries in the...

Abstract This paper examines the use of modal auxiliaries can and could in speech acts produced by university students English. Its aim is to explore syntactic patterns, semantic features pragmatic functions utterances containing / Corpus Czech Students’ Spoken English . Taking account factors, including broader linguistic extralinguistic context, analysis attempts identify illocutionary forces...

This paper aims at investigating the acquisition of English modality among Arab learners of English as a foreign language. Specifically, the study limits itself to the perception of modal verbs as a means of expressing modality. The productive use of modal verbs were analyzed by examining written texts made by 26 fourth-year students majoring in Applied English at the University of Jordan. More...