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Modality in language development

Book information

Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
109 kB (111282 bytes)
Pages
\31
Library
twirpx
Time added
2017-08-07 07:01:42

Description

Статья из: UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 9 (1997)The set of English modal verbs is widely recognised to communicate two broad clusters ofmeanings: epistemic and root modal meanings. A number of researchers have claimed thatroot meanings are acquired earlier than epistemic ones; this claim has subsequently beenemployed in the linguistics literature as an argument for the position that English modal verbsare polysemous (Sweetser 1990). In this paper I offer an alternative explanation for the lateremergence of epistemic interpretations by liniking them to the development of the child'stheory of mind (Wellman 1990). If correct, this hypothesis might have important implicationsfor the shape of the semantics of modal verbs.

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