Skip to content

Booksellers & Trade Customers: Sign up for online bulk buying at trade.atlanticbooks.com for wholesale discounts

Booksellers: Create Account on our B2B Portal for wholesale discounts

The Semantic Field of Modal Certainty

by Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen , Karin Aijmer
Save 17% Save 17%
Current price ₹17,973.00
Original price ₹21,568.00
Original price ₹21,568.00
Original price ₹21,568.00
(-17%)
₹17,973.00
Current price ₹17,973.00

Imported Edition - Ships in 18-21 Days

Free Shipping in India on orders above Rs. 500

Request Bulk Quantity Quote
+91
Book cover type: Hardcover
  • ISBN13: 9783110196177
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: de Gruyter Mouton
  • Publisher Imprint: de Gruyter Mouton
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 405
  • Original Price: GBP 141.5
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 699 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): Linguistics / Semantics

In spite of the vast literature on modality in English, very little research has been done on modal adverbs as a group. While there are studies of individual adverbs, the semantic and pragmatic relations between them have been left largely unexplored. This book takes a close look at the whole field of modal certainty as expressed by adverbs in English. On the basis of corpus data the most frequent adverbs of certainty, including certainly, indeed, and no doubt, are examined from the point of view of their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics. The corpus used is the International Corpus of English - Great Britain, supplemented by data from other present-day English corpora, and questionnaires testing native speakers' intuitions on fine-grained similarities and differences between closely related adverbs. The methodology also includes the study of cross-linguistic equivalents as indicators of semantic-pragmatic relations between adverbs. Translation corpora yield correspondences in Swedish, Dutch, French and German. A detailed study of those correspondences adds useful information for setting up a semantic-pragmatic profile of each adverb, showing where their meanings overlap and where the boundaries are. The concept of semantic maps is relied on for plotting these relations.

The book not only provides a thorough empirical study of English adverbs expressing certainty, it also contributes to a better theoretical understanding of the complexity of modal certainty, how it is related to speakers' goals and to other semantic areas. It is the first in-depth study of this kind, combining rich information on English as well as opening up perspectives for further empirical and theoretical research into modality.

Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, Ghent University, Belgium; Karin Aijmer, Göteborg University, Sweden.

Trusted for over 49 years

Family Owned Company

Secure Payment

All Major Credit Cards/Debit Cards/UPI & More Accepted

New & Authentic Products

India's Largest Distributor

Need Support?

Whatsapp Us