Prediction? Prescription? an analysis of Chinese and English modalities: a comparative approach

Abstract

Modality, known as "Qing Tai Ci" in Mandarin, is one of the most important parts in a natural language. Failure to properly grasp the use of modality may cause unexpected misunderstandings. This paper, firstly, uses the definitions of the concept of modality proposed by western linguists, and then makes a syntactic and semantic comparison of modal expressions in both Mandarin and English. In view that modal expressions are a large inventory in these two languages, this paper, in Mandarin, selects and focuses on the analysis of modal auxiliaries hui, neng, keyi, yao, dei, and modal adverbs yiding, yinggai, kenengldagailyexu. In English, it includes WILL (BE GOING TO), CAN, MAY, MUST, and OUGHT TO with its variant, SHOULD. The negated modal expressions are discussed under the wide and the narrow scopes of the negation. The Klima (1964) tests, mainly used for Indo-European languages, are applied to Mandarin modals in Chapter Five of this paper. Aside from the comparison of Mandarin and English modal expressions, Chapter Six, utilizing corpora linguistic study, compares the negated modal usages in Taiwan Mandarin and Beijing Mandarin. This paper only concentrates on the linguistic features of the selected modals. It is definitely necessary to have an integrated analysis on all the modal expressions in both Mandarin and English from the pedagogical prospective. It is the ambition of the author to continue studying modality with a symbiotic approach of Linguistics and Pedagogy.