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date: 13 December 2019

Abstract and Keywords

The chapter discusses a selection of major approaches to modality and mood in generative syntax. The primary focus lies on the representation of modal auxiliaries and verbs. Key issues relating to modal adverbs and a selection of aspects pertaining to mood are reviewed. Central points addressed are the structural options for different types of modality including the raising vs control debate and the possible structural correlates of epistemic modality addressed in the literature. The chapter incorporates a discussion of “coherent constructions” following a tradition established for German modals. The latter serves as an illustration of a different type of possible syntactic analysis and, in virtue of its data coverage, also of points of variation even between closely related languages like English and German.

Keywords: modals, modality, mood, aspect, auxiliaries, coherence, control, raising, verb, adverb

Katrin Axel-Tober

Katrin Axel-Tober (PhD 2005) is Professor of German Linguistics at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Her research focusses on the synchronic and diachronic syntax of German. She has published the books Studies on Old High German Syntax: Left Sentence Periphery, Verb Placement and Verb-Second (Benjamins, 2007) and (Nicht-)kanonische Nebensätze im Deutschen: synchrone und diachrone Aspekte (Walter de Gruyter, 2012) as well as several articles on sentence structure, complementizers, null subjects, and modal verbs.

Remus Gergel

Remus Gergel earned his doctorate from the University of Tübingen, Germany, with work on the interaction of modality and ellipsis (Mouton de Gruyter 2009). He has conducted work as a research fellow at the English Department in Tübingen and at the collaborative research centers 441 and 833 (both in Tübingen), as a post-doc researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, as a temporary professor at the university of Göttingen, Germany, and as full professor at the University of Graz, Austria. His current research includes issues of semantic change, modality, degree constructions, decomposition, contrastive studies, grammatical interfaces, and focus.

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