Semantic Dimensions of Modal Verb Can in English

Effective communication involves not only the exchange of information between people, but also the expression of the speaker’s attitude towards the proposition. Accordingly, modality represents a fundamental component of linguistic communication. One of the modal verbs which encompasses a wide variety of modality meanings is can. Can1 is the easiest modal verb, since it is the first type of modal verb learned and used by a child, at the same time it is the most ambiguous modal verb as it can have different interpretations. The ambiguous nature of modal verb can was approached from different perspectives; however, much uncertainty still exists about the semantics of can. Most studies in the field have accounted for the semantics of can along with other modal verbs in English, thereby subsuming all modal verbs under a broader modal category. Unlike previous works, this study considers the semantics of can solely. Hence, the present paper employs qualitative and quantitative analyses of utterances containing can drawn from fiction, with the aim of identifying the range of meanings expressed by can and examining its functions. The analysis of the data has shown that ‘can’ covers a broad range of modality meanings including participant-internal possibility modality, participant-external possibility modality, deontic modality and epistemic modality. The most frequent use of can was found to be as a marker of participant-internal possibility, whereas its deontic reading was the least frequent. Furthermore, the present study demonstrates the crucial role of context and cotext in determining the interpretation of can and distinguishing between its different modal readings.

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