Title: A preliminary synergetic account of English modal verbs
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to offer a preliminary description of the changes affecting the category of English modal verbs throughout its history, adopting the perspective of the Theory of Synergetics or Self- Regulation. In the first place, the paper shows how the features of complex systems can be recognised in many linguistic phenomena such as the grammatical ization of English modal verbs. In the second place, the notion of prototypical ity is used as a kind of regulating mechanism for the category. Finally, by using the conceptual tools of Synergetics, a preliminary description and 'modelisation' of the interaction of different semantic and syntactic parameters which have triggered the changes from 'deontic' to 'epistemic' is presented.
Publication Year: 2000
Publication Date: 2000-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
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