Modality: Usuality As Obligation

Wishful Thinking

Modulation smuggles desideration into cognition.

eg They think science should aggrandise humanity.

Why The Explicit Forms Of Modality Are Metaphorical

	implicit (congruent)	explicit (metaphorical)
subjective	modal operator may	mental clause I think
objective	modal Adjunct probably	relational clause it is probable

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 624):

The explicitly subjective and explicitly objective forms of modality are all strictly speaking metaphorical, since all of them represent the modality as being the substantive proposition. Modality represents the speaker’s angle, either on the validity of the assertion or on the rights and wrongs of the proposal; in its congruent form, it is an adjunct to a proposition rather than a proposition in its own right.

Reconstruing Biological Evolution Through The Interpersonal Metafunction

variation = chance (Jacques Monod) = probability = modalisation

selection = necessity (Jacques Monod) = obligation = modulation

Transgrammatical Semantic Domains

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 592):

… there are semantic domains that range over more than a single grammatical unit. Thus the semantic domain of modality is construed in more than one place in the grammar; for example, it is construed by clauses such as I suppose and it is possible, by verbal groups with finite modal operators such as may and by adverbial groups and modal adverbs such as perhaps. These modal patterns within different grammatical units are not interchangeable/synonyms; they have distinct values within the overall semantic system of modality. … This means that the semantic system of modality is more extensive than the modal features of any one given grammatical unit would suggest; it is realised not by a single grammatical unit but by a range of units: semantic unit a ➘ grammatical units m, n and o.