Papafragou Anna. Modality in language development

Статья из:
UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 9 (1997)The set of English modal verbs is widely recognised to communicate two broad clusters of
meanings: epistemic and root modal meanings. A number of researchers have claimed that
root meanings are acquired earlier than epistemic ones; this claim has subsequently been
employed in the linguistics literature as an argument for the position that English modal verbs
are polysemous (Sweetser 1990). In this paper I offer an alternative explanation for the later
emergence of epistemic interpretations by liniking them to the development of the child's
theory of mind (Wellman 1990). If correct, this hypothesis might have important implications
for the shape of the semantics of modal verbs.