Abstract

Traditionally, modality has been almost exclusively investigated with modal auxiliaries. I will illustrate the role of modality in producing microvariation in all areas of semantics. Modality with its many different flavors is not linked to any particular syntactic category. In the verbal domain it can be found sublexically, with voice, aspect, tense, mood, and complementizers. In the nominal domain, it provides crucial parameters of variation for indefinites. And it's a key player for sentential complementation. I ask: why is that? What is it about modality that lets it play all those different roles?