MOBILE AFFIX

1. (Morphology) Affix whose place in the string is not fixed but rather determined from without. | Rolf Noyer, 1994
2. (Morphology) Cross-linguistically, affixes are usually stable and always on the same edge of the word: a prefix (suffix) is always a prefix (suffix). The rare exceptions are "mobile affixes" which switch between a prefix and suffix based on their base's phonological or lexical properties, e.g. Huave (Noyer 1994, Kim 2010, 2015) and Afar (Fulmer 1991, 1997), but these are controversial (Paster 2006, 2009). | Nikita Bezrukov and Hossep Dolatian, 2020
3. (Morphology) If an affix is unspecified as to whether it is underlyingly a prefix or a suffix, phonological considerations could determine which side of the stem the affix attaches to. This type of phonologically governed mobile affixation has been claimed to exist in Huave (Kim [2010], Noyer 1994), where some affixes can occur either as prefixes or suffixes depending on a phonological property of the stem of affixation.
    A few cases of phonologically conditioned mobile affixation are discussed in the literature. Mobile affixation is a phenomenon in which one affix can occur as either a prefix or a suffix; in the phonologically conditioned type, the edge of attachment depends on some phonological property of the stem. Probably the most well-known case is found in Huave (isolate, Mexico; Noyer 1994, Kim [2010]), where certain affixes can occur as either prefixes or suffixes, apparently in order to create CV sequences. As shown in (1-4), the first person marker š/s can be a prefix (1) or a suffix (3,4), the first person subject marker n can be a prefix (1) or a suffix (2), and the completive marker t can be a prefix (3) or a suffix (4) (examples are from Kim [2010]; italicized vowels are analyzed as epenthetic).
   1. š-i-n-a-ndjak
      1-FUT-1SUB-TV-speak
      'I will speak'
   2. čut-un
      sit-1SUB
      '(that) I sit'
   3. t-a-ndjak-as
      CPL-TV-speak-1
      'I spoke'
   4. čut-ut-u-s
      sit-CPL-ITR-1
      'I sat down'
    According to Kim ([2010]), these mobile affixes occur as prefixes when the base is vowel-initial but as suffixes when the base is consonant-initial, in which case a vowel may be epenthesized since non-final syllables cannot have codas. | Mary Paster, 2009

MODAL COMPLEMENT ELLIPSIS

1. (Syntax) Verb-phrase ellipsis that occurs in context of modal verbs, as in (1a). Following Aelbrecht (2008), I will refer to this phenomenon as modal complement ellipsis (MCE) in order to distinguish it from a well-known phenomenon of VP ellipsis in (1b) (Ross 1969, Sag 1976, Merchant 2001, a.o.).
    When it comes to other languages than English, it seems relevant to set apart ellipsis after auxiliary verbs and ellipsis after modal verbs, because the former is not always available in languages that display the latter, as e.g. Romance languages (Busquets and Denis 2001, Depiante 2001, Dagnac 2008, 2010, a.o.), except for Portuguese (Cyrino and Matos 2002), and Germanic languages like German or Dutch (Lobeck 1995, Aelbrecht 2008), see (2) and (3) respectively. The contrast between English on the one hand and Romance and other Germanic languages on the other has been argued to follow from the properties of modal verbs.

   1. English
      a. John helped them, but Mary could not.
      b. John helped them, but I did not.
   2. French
      
      a.
       

      Jean
      J.

      les
      them

      a
      has

      aidés,
      helped.PL

      mais
      but

      Marie
      M.

      n'a
      NEG.has

      pas
      NEG

      pu.
      could

        'Jean helped them, but Marie could not.'
      b.
       

      * Jean
       J.

      les
      them

      a
      has

      aidés,
      helped.PL

      mais
      but

      je
      I

      n'ai
      NEG.have

      pas.
      NEG

        Intended: 'Jean helped them, but I did not.'
   3. Dutch
      
      a.
       

      Jan
      J.

      heeft
      has

      ze
      them

      geholpen,
      helped

      maar
      but

      Maria
      M.

      mocht
      could

      niet.
      not

        'Jan helped them, but Maria could not.'
      b.
       

      * Jan
       J.

      heeft
      has

      ze
      them

      geholpen,
      helped

      maar
      but

      Ik
      I

      heb
      have

      niet.
      not

        Intended: 'Jan helped them, but I did not.'

    | Hana Gruet-Skrabalova, 2017
2. (Syntax) Dutch displays a limited kind of VP ellipsis in the complement of deontic modal verbs (modal complement ellipsis, or MCE), as in (1).

   1. A:
       

      Wie
      who

      wast
      washes

      er
      there

      vanavond
      tonight

      af?
      off

        'Who is doing the dishes tonight?'
      B:
       

      Ik
      I

      kan
      can

      niet
      not

      afwassen vanavond.
      off.wash tonight

        'I can't.'

    | Lobke Aelbrecht, 2008

MODAL LOGIC
MODAL OPERATOR
(Logic; Semantics) Narrowly construed, modal logic studies reasoning that involves the use of the expressions necessarily and possibly. However, the term modal logic is used more broadly to cover a family of logics with similar rules and a variety of different symbols.
 A list describing the best known of these logics follows.

Logic	Symbols	Expressions Symbolized
Modal Logic	□	It is necessary that ...
	◊	It is possible that ...
Deontic Logic	O	It is obligatory that ...
	P	It is permitted that ...
	F	It is forbidden that ...
Temporal Logic	G	It will always be the case that ...
	F	It will be the case that ...
	H	It has always been the case that ...
	P	It was the case that ...
Doxastic Logic	Bx	x believes that ...

MODAL PARTICLE

1. (Pragmatics) Both discourse markers and modal particles are multifunctional linguistic expressions "functioning in cognitive, expressive, social, and textual domains" (Schiffrin 2001). But modal particles have often been described in a more restricted sense, i.e. as specifying "the relationship between speaker and hearer" (Hansen 1998) or "to signal one's understanding of what the situation is all about with respect to the argumentative relations built up in the current situation" (Fischer 2007), or as "referring back to a communicatively given propositional or illocutionary entity" (Diewald 2006). | Bert Cornillie, Liesbeth Degand, and Paola Pietrandrea, 2013
2. (Examples)
   • (Pragmatics) Based on corpus data from the British component of the International Corpus of English, an analysis shows that two different uses of final then need to be distinguished: a discourse marker then, which is used to link the utterance it accompanies to a preceding utterance that is retrospectively converted into a conditional protasis, and a modal particle then, which links an utterance to a pragmatic, i.e. non-verbalized, pretext and thus to a proposition outside the discourse. | Alexander Haselow, 2011
   • (Pragmatics) What kindled my interest in I think was that the phrase seemed to function in the same way as modal particles in languages like German or Swedish (cf. Fillmore 1984, Doherty 1978).
      Spoken language is rich in recurrent phrases such as I think which are sensitive to speakers' communicative needs. I argue that I think has "gone one step further" and developed into a discourse marker or modal particle which is syntactically a speech-act adverbial. In order to explain such an incomplete discourse marker it will be shown that we need a scale of pragmaticalization where one of the end-points is a pragmatic element or modal particle. | Karin Aijmer, 1997

MODAL PHONATION
(Phonetics) Phonation in which a mostly full glottal closure occurs during the closed phase of a phonatory cycle (Titze 1995). The glottal flow derivative contains a discontinuity at the moment of glottal closure and its spectrum is rich in harmonics. On the other hand, non-modal phonation is a very broad term for any phonation style that deviates from modal, e.g., breathy, strained, rough. | Michal Borsky, Daryush D. Mehta, Jarrad H. Van Stan, and Jon Gudnason, 2017

MODALITY
(Semantics) Categories of modality:

1. Clausal Modality  Objective modality	Internal to the event a. Agent-oriented modality  – ability, desire, obligation
2. Subjective Modality  Relation between speaker and utterance	External to the event a. Epistemic modality  – Truth commitment: realis vs. irrealis  – Degrees of probability: certainty / doubt b. Evidential modality  – Source of the information c. Appreciative modality  – Evaluation based on speaker's feelings  – Moral judgment of the event
3. Speech Modality  Relation between speaker and hearer	a. Sentence Modality  – Assertion: supply of information  – Interrogation: asking for information  – Injunction: asking for action; wish, permit, order b. Illocutionary Acts

MONOLECTIC

1. (Grammar) In Greek, verbs are monolectic. In other words, the form of the verb not only contains information about the aspect, mood, and voice of the process, but it also contains information about the actor of the process. This means an actor does not have to be named explicitly in the clause to be understood; it may be inferred from previous co-text or extra-textual context. | James Dvorak, 2008
2. (Grammar) A first examination of periphrastic and monolectic verbs, as illustrated by (1-6) below, indicates that both verb forms can be used in the same contexts to describe identical situations and convey the same meaning.
   1. Periphrastic
      exo
      have-I

      megali
      big

      dipsa
      thirst

      'I am very thirsty'
   2. Monolectic
      dipsao
      thirst-I

      para
      very

      poli
      much

      'I am very thirsty'
   3. Periphrastic
      mia
      one

      dipsa
      thirst

      pu
      that

      exo!
      have-I

      'How thirsty I am!'
   4. Monolectic
      poso
      how

      poli
      much

      dipsao!
      thirst-I

      'How thirsty I am!'
   5. Periphrastic
      exo
      have-I

      mia
      one

      dipsa
      thirst

      pu
      that

      den
      not

      perigrafete
      describe-it-MID

      'I can't tell how thirsty I am.'
   6. Monolectic
      dipsao
      thirst-I

      toso
      so

      pu
      that

      den
      not

      perigrafete
      describe-it-MID

      'I can't tell how thirsty I am.'
    | Theodoros Skenderis, 1992

MONOTONICITY

1. (Semantics) Determiners (and quantifiers) can be classified according to their monotonicity properties. A determiner D in a sentence of the form

           S
         ╱╲
        ╱   ╲
       NP     VP
      ╱╲
     ╱    ╲
    D     CN

   establishes a relation between the interpretations of CN [common noun] and VP taken as sets of individuals. The monotonicity-properties of D can be found by extending or restricting the interpretations of CN and VP, and checking whether the resulting sentence is still true.
    Left upward/downward monotonicity deals with the extension/restriction of CN. Right upward/downward monotonicity deals with the extension/restriction of VP. Left upward monotonicity is often called Persistence and left downward monotonicity Antipersistence; right monotonicity is then simply called monotonicity. (Barwise and Cooper 1981, Gamut 1991) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001
2. (Semantics) In each example of a type of monotonicity, (a) entails (b):
   1. Right Upward Monotonic
      1. Every linguist is British.
      2. Every linguist is European.
   2. Right Downward Monotonic
      1. No semanticist is a musician.
      2. No semanticist is a violinist.
   3. Left Upward Monotonic
      1. Some phonologist is happy.
      2. Some linguist is happy.
   4. Left Downward Monotonic
      1. No animal is in the room.
      2. No cat is in the room.
    Here is a summary of the monotonicity properties of three quantificational determiners, every, some, no, and exactly two.

   	Left Upward	Left Downward	Right Upward	Right Downward
   Every	No	Yes	Yes	No
   Some	Yes	No	Yes	No
   No	No	Yes	No	Yes
   Exactly two	No	No	No	No

    | Yasutada Sodo, 2018

Page Last Modified April 6, 2024

 

B a c k   T o   I n d e x