The cabins (can) sleep four — possibility in the capacitive structure in English

This paper focuses on the expression of possibility in the capacitive structure, which can be found in sentences such as The tent sleeps four or The bench seats two. The complementation pattern predicates a quantified capacity of the referent of the subject. The modality expressed here is root, dynamic possibility, and it can be linked to permission (in a broad sense) — the location allows the event to happen. Possibility is presented as emanating directly from the properties of the referent of the subject. Therefore, it is an internal possibility stemming from an inanimate entity. This type of possibility is at the crossroads of two major semantic domains: circumstantial possibility, which originates from the outside world, and ability, whose source is the internal faculties and knowledge of the referent of the subject. When using the capacitive structure, the speaker topicalises the locative constituent and presents it as the sole source of possibility. This must be linked to the genres in which the capacitive structure is generally used (magazines, manuals, Internet reviews). In such specific contexts, the main topic is the inanimate entity denoted by the subject. In the great majority of occurrences, no modal auxiliary is used to denote possibility explicitly. It is suggested that the modal interpretation comes from the relationship between the nominal constituents of the pattern, i.e. the subject and the measure complement. The verb is only present to instantiate the operation of predication in the structure. More precisely, it is the congruence of the relationship between a container and its content that allows for the capacitive interpretation to emerge at sentence level.