영어의 가능성과 확실성의 양상표현에 관한 연구

Abstract

The modal auxiliaries MAY and CAN for the notion of possibility on the one hand, and MUST for that of certainty or necessity on the other, are the most fundamental of the modal expressions. The speaker uses the present or past tense forms of MAY, CAN and MUST in the context in which he wants to express his attitude about the degree of the truth-value of what he is saying (proposition). Versatile, either in the expression of meaning or in its position in the sentence, are such disjunctive adverbs as POSSIBLY, PROBABLY, PERHAPS, and MAYBE. They are used not only as super-ordinate forms modifying a whole sentence, but as modifierers of the information point of the sentence. Lastly such adjectives as POSSIBLE, PROBABLE, CERTAIN, and SURE are, more or less, modal expressions suitable for more formal speech or writing than the modal adverbs are.