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In:Possibility and Necessity: Concepts and expressions of modality
Edited by Jean Albrespit, Christelle Lacassain and Tracey Simpson
[Studies in Language Companion Series 237] 2025
► pp. 87–116

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The argumentative anchoring of possibility and necessity indications in French, Italian and Slovak

ORCiD logo with link | University of Neuchâtel
 | University of Neuchâtel
 | University of Neuchâtel
Published online: 4 November 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.237.04ros
Abstract
The aim of the present study is to examine the modality expressed by forms giving an indication of necessity or of possibility, in two related languages (French and Italian) and in a language belonging to another family (Slovak), in a perspective that combines quantitative and qualitative analyses. We hypothesise that modal forms are sensitive to the argumentative status of the utterances in which they appear. Our intent is to understand whether and how their semantic feature and the values they can take enable to use them in different utterances according to their respective argumentative status. The selected modal forms will thus be analysed in relation to these different argumentative sequences in order to determine whether they display a preference for some of them. To do so, we will use statistical methods and computations to evaluate the significance of the association of a form with a given sequence.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Initial observations
  • 3.Argumentative sequences
  • 4.Identification of significant [connector + modal form] associations in a French contemporary journalistic corpus
    • 4.1Automatic search for “modal form and connector” sequences
    • 4.2Log-likelihood measure
    • 4.3Correspondence analysis
  • 5.Identification of significant [connector + modal form] associations in an Italian contemporary journalistic corpus
    • 5.1Automatic search for “modal form and connector” sequences
    • 5.2Log-likelihood measure
    • 5.3Correspondence analysis
  • 6.Identification of significant [connector + modal form] associations in a Slovak contemporary journalistic corpus
    • 6.1Automatic search for “modal form and connector” sequences
    • 6.2Correspondence analysis
  • 7.Interpretation of the results of the quantitative analysis in the three languages in relation to hypothesis 1 and 2
  • 8.Theoretical framework for the representation of the meanings and values of MFs
  • 9.Conclusions: Articulation of the qualitative and quantitative approaches and opening on cognitive hypotheses
  • Notes
  • References
  • Corpora
References (26)
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Corpora
All the French and Italian corpora used were supplied by the platform BTLC (Base Textuelle Lexico- statistique de Cologne — [URL]), and were constituted within the French-German projects Presto ([URL]) and Emolex ([URL]). The following corpora have been used:
Le Monde 2008 (20’410’766 tokens), La Stampa 2002(31’369’484 tokens), The Slovak corpus was built by extracting one year of the daily newspaper Hospodárske noviny 2008 (15’399’911 tokens) within the corpus prim-8.0-public-all provided by the platform Slovenský národný korpus ([URL]).
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