- Here we ignore all the differences between verbs that express states, actions proper, relations, etc.; in other words, we are going to work on the syntactic level. Semantic considerations will be made on various occasions but for the moment they are left aside. For the sake of brevity, when actions are mentioned the word is to be understood as inclusive of all the other values of verbs.
- Strictly speaking, this sentence refers to the present only if it is uttered at 7 a.m.
- V. MATHESIUS, A Functional Analysis of Present Day English on a General Linguistic Basis, Prague, Academia, 1975, p. 74.
- Ibid.
- For a more detailed discussion, with more precise distinctions between modality in logic and modality in language, see F. R. PALMER, Mood and Modality, Cambridge University Press, 1986; F. R. PALMER, Modality and the English Modals, London, Longman, 19953.
- The most important are medicine and biology; the new science of Bioethics was born to cope with the moral issues of genetic manipulation, organ transplantation, euthanasia, etc.
- V. MATHESIUS, A Functional Analysis of Present Day English on a General Linguistic Basis, Prague, Academia, 1975, p. 172.
- R. QUIRK, S. GREENBAUM, G. LEECH, J. SVARTVIK, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, London, Longman, 1985.
- O. JESPERSEN, Essentials of English Grammar, London, Allen & Unwin, 1933, p. 287.
- J. LYONS, Introduzione alla linguistica teorica: II. La grammatica, Bari, Laterza, 1978, p. 408.
- J. McH. SINCLAIR (ed.), COBUILD: Collins Birmingham University International Language Database, London, Collins, 1987: "Con chi mi devo incontrare..."
- Ibid.: "E chi mi capita di incontrare in aereo se non..."
- R. Brooke (1887-1915), The Soldier. "Se morissi…" (but also: "se dovessi morire…" where dovere of course does not express an obligation but an unfavourable possibility).
- D. NUNAN, Language Teaching Methodology, New York, Prentice Hall, 1991, p. 1.
- M. IBBA, L'inglese della medicina, Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 1988, p. 128.
- M. IBBA, L'inglese della medicina, Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 1988, p. 128.
- M. IBBA, L'inglese delle scienze biomediche nel contesto accademico, Quaderno del CLUC n. 7, Brescia, La Scuola, 1994.
- The count of tokens is not totally reliable because the concordancer used does not make any distinction between a word and a letter used in a list; for example, the article a and the mark a) at the beginning of a list of points both count as <a>.
- The frequencies of the other modals in the corpus are: can/cannot 170; could 13; may 139; might 12; will 97; would 42; shall 5.
- This group of examples is numbered from 1s to 66s (where s stands for should).
- As is well known, vorrei usually corresponds to I should like: seldom is want used with should/would, and in those few cases want does not usually mean 'volere' but 'aver bisogno di, occorrere'.
- As we briefly saw above, alethic modality conveys an idea of necessity (or, in logic, of necessarily true).
- Collins COBUILD English Grammar, pp. 324-5.
- The abbreviations stand for English for Specific Purposes and English Language Teaching.
- The whole selection and further remarks are found in G. PORCELLI, "Il modale inglese should in un testo di Glottodidattica", in L'analisi linguistica e letteraria, 1, 2, 1993, pp. 409-431.