| Modality is an elusive concept and it plays an important role in grammatical category in human language and thought.It is concerned with the speaker’s assessment of,or attitude towards,the potentiality of a state of affairs.There are positive and negative semantic poles in judging the state of affairs in the real world,psychological world and the physical world.However,due to the limitations of human cognition and the need for pragmatic expression in the process of communication,it is necessary to add uncertain expressions in the language.In the English language system,modal verbs play a typical class representations role in characterizing uncertainty,responsibility,obligation,possibility,or necessity.Among the modality category,there are many modalizers that can be used to express different modal meanings.In these modalizers,English modal verbs are special set among the expressions of modality and English modal verbs also are prototypical modal expressions.But there are also peripheral members,like modal verb phrases,adverbs,adjectives and so on.Due to English modal verb is the most common form of expression of modality,so my thesis mainly talks about the semantics of typical English modal verbs from the perspective of the Talmy’s force dynamics in order to construct schema representatives on the three levels of physical force,psychological force and social force.The unique advantages of this research paradigm are:Firstly,it characterizes the semantics representation of intangible and abstract English modal verbs by using the form of concrete representation of physical force,psychological force and social force,and it constructs the semantic representation continuum of English modal verbs based on this model.Its significance is that it provides tangible and intuitive schema representation for English learners to judge the meaning of English modal verbs accurately.Secondly,in physical,psychological and social space,context,as a variable,it can adjust the deflection of modal semantics in the physical,psychological and social space in semantic processing,which can profile the focus of semantic features.And it also attempts to demonstrate the relationship among physical force,psychological force and social force.These thesis consists of five parts.The structure is as followed: Chapter One is the introduction,which briefly introduced the research background,purpose,significance and the organization of the thesis.Chapter Two is literature review,which from different schools of linguistics and different perspectives summarized the achievements and limitations of foreign and domestic studies on modality and force dynamics and their enlightenment for this study.Chapter Three is the theoretical foundation,which introduces the definitions and classifications of modality,the characteristics and meanings of English modal verbs and the polysemy of English modal verbs.It also focused on the Talmy’s force dynamics(i.e.physical force,psychological force,social force).Chapter Four is the main part,which is also the core of this thesis.The finding of the dissertation are displayed in the following statements:First of all,it mainly studies the semantic representation of typical deontic modal verbs from the perspective of physical force,and not only it attempts to construct the physical force constellations of deontic modality,but also constructs the physical force gradience of deontic modality from obligation to the permission.It is shown that in the semantics of deontic modal verbs,the source of force is a person who gives the permission or imposes the obligation to carry out the action,and the modal agent who is expected to carry out the action.The physical force is manifested by the using the deontic modal verbs.The physical force of obligation is higher than permission’s.Secondly,it analyzes the semantic representation of typical epistemic modal verbs from the perspective of psychological force,and not only it tries to construct the psychological force constellations of epistemic modality,but also constructs the psychological force gradience of epistemic modality from necessity to possibility.It shows that due to body-mind separation and agent-patient opposition,and their unequal force interactions produce psycho-dynamic modal patterns in natural languages.The psychological force of necessity is higher than possibility’s.Thirdly,it constructs the social force constellations of typical English modal verbs and the social force gradience of them.Finally,this paper talks about the relationship among the deontic modality,epistemic modality and dynamic modality from the perspective of the forces dynamics.And the relationship among the physical force,psychological force and the social force.This study shows that the semantics of deontic modality is the most prominent in physical force.Epistemic modal semantics is the most typical in psychological force.While the modal semantics is the most complex in social force.Since the boundaries of the three types of forces are not very clear,this paper attempts to analyze the performances of forces through the specific context of the sentence.Through the analysis,we can see that the context will adjust the deflection of modal semantics in the physical,psychological and social apace.In other words,the context can profile the focus of semantic features.Chapter Five is conclusion,which summarized the study of this thesis and proposed the contributions,deficiencies,and future improvement of the study.Modality is the primary means of assessing the reality and potential of the situation.It relates to the physical world,psychological world and the social world of human communication.This paper attempts to use Talmy’ s force dynamics as a reference point,and creates a schema representation of the semantics of the typical English modal verbs which are intangible and are difficult to quantify,so that language learners can have a more complete cognitive construal of the English modal verbs meanings,especially it can provide a useful reference point to grasp the polysemy of English modal verbs. |
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