The force-dynamic core meaning of Danish modal verbs

Abstract

In this paper I present a notion of modal core meaning in general and a corresponding analysis of the core meaning of the Danish modals. The approach to modal meaning presented may be seen as cognitive linguistic in the sense that to a great extent it rests on the notion of force dynamics developed in Talmy 1988 and Sweetser 1990. Elaborating this notion, I try to show that in addition to unifying the meanings of the Danish modals it provides a motivation for 1) the syntactic relations of the Danish modals, 2) specific, sofar unnoticed or unexplained, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic phenomena involving Danish modals, 3) the capability of the Danish modals of expressing future time meaning. First of all, however, the notion of force dynamics unifies the Danish modals in an economic semantic field. In the literature on the subject I pay special attention to Davidsen-Nielsen 1990 and Brandt 1999.

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