On deontic modality, directivity, and mood: The case of Dutch mogen and moeten

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2009.05.012

Journal of Pragmatics

Volume 42, Issue 1, January 2010, Pages 16-34

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.05.012 Get rights and content

Abstract

This article aims to achieve a better understanding of the nature of deontic modality, and of its relationship with the imperative mood, through a corpus-based analysis of the Dutch modals mogen ‘may’ and moeten ‘must’. We argue that (i) one should distinguish between ‘deontic’ and ‘directive’ uses of the(se) modals, (ii) deontic modality should be defined, not in the traditional terms of permission and obligation, but in terms of the notions of (degrees of) moral acceptability or necessity, and (iii) the ‘directive uses’ of the modals (permission and obligation) do not belong under the label of deontic modality, but should be analyzed in speech act terms. The analysis of mogen and moeten also indicates that there is a division of labor between the directive use of the modals and the imperative mood, the choice between them being predominantly a matter of the performativity vs. descriptivity of the directive.

Section snippets

Jan Nuyts (PhD 1988, Habilitation 1994) is professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). Major research area: (cognitive-functional) semantics. His current focus of attention concerns the functional and cognitive structure of ‘tense-aspect-modality’ markers and the semantic dimensions behind them (synchronically and diachronically), and its implications for the ‘language and thought’ issue. Most important book publications: Aspects of a cognitive-pragmatic

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Pieter Byloo (MA University of Antwerp 2002, MPhil University of Amsterdam 2003) is a researcher in the Center for Grammar, Cognition and Typology at the Linguistics Department of the University of Antwerp (Belgium). His main research interests include corpus linguistics and cognitive-functional semantics. He is currently preparing a PhD dissertation on the role of negation in the expression of epistemic and deontic modality in spoken Dutch and French.

Janneke Diepeveen (MA University of Antwerp 2002) is currently a researcher at the Dutch Department of the Free University Berlin (Germany). Her main research domain is Dutch historical linguistics from a contrastive Germanic perspective. She is currently preparing a PhD dissertation on adverbial morphology in Dutch, German and English. During the research for the present paper she was a researcher in the Center for Grammar, Cognition and Typology at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), working on modal expressions in Dutch.

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On deontic modality, directivity, and mood: The case of Dutch mogen and moeten

Abstract

Section snippets

Journal of Pragmatics

Journal of Pragmatics

Modale verschillen tussen België en Nederland in het CGN

Nederlandse Taalkunde

Politeness

The Evolution of Grammar

On certainly and zeker

Belgian Journal of Linguistics

Discourse, Consciousness, and Time

The Semantics of the Modal Auxiliaries

Modale Uitdrukkingen in Belgisch-Nederlands en Nederlands-Nederlands

The Theory of Functional Grammar

Modality and the modals

Layers and operators in functional grammar

Journal of Linguistics

Semantik der Rede

Aspects of a Cognitive-Pragmatic Theory of Language

Epistemic Modality, Language, and Conceptualization

The modal confusion: on terminology and the concepts behind it