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Description:
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The main topics pursued in this volume are based on empirical insights
derived from Germanic: logical and typological dispositions about
aspect-modality links. These are probed in a variety of non-related
languages. The logically establishable links are the following: Modal verbs
are aspect sensitive in the selection of their infinitival complements -
embedded infinitival perfectivity implies root modal reading, whereas
embedded infinitival imperfectivity triggers epistemic readings. However,
in marked contexts such as negated ones, the aspectual affinities of modal
verbs are neutralized or even subject to markedness inversion. All of this
suggests that languages that do not, or only partially, bestow upon full
modal verb paradigms seek to express modal variations in terms of their
aspect oppositions. This typological tenet is investigated in a variety of
languages from Indo-European (German, Slavic, Armenian), African, Asian,
Amerindian, and Creoles. Seeming deviations and idiosyncrasies in the
interaction between aspect and modality turn out to be highly rule-based.
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