Obligation and Necessity

It would be hard to give a dictionary description of the semantic notion of obligation that could be used as the basis for comparing elements in the two languages. Obligation is associated with modality and with the modal auxiliaries. However, modality is a broad notion which is difficult to define. It has traditionally been subclassified into root (obligation, permission) and epistemic modality (eg Coates 1983). Van der Auwera and Plungian (1998: 83) start from a different perspective and suggest a division into four different semantic domains. Participant-internal modality (cf Nuyts 2016: 34 ‘participant-inherent dynamic modality’) refers to the speaker’s internal needs. It is illustrated by the verb need to:

Boris needs to sleep ten hours every night for him to function properly.

Participant-external modality refers to ‘circumstances that are external to the participant, if any, engaged in the state of affairs and that make this state of affairs either possible or necessary’ (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998: 80) (cf Nuyts 2016: 34 ‘participant-imposed dynamic modality’). In the example below the external circumstances making something necessary are referred to explicitly:

To get to the station, you have to take bus 66.

A special case of participant-external modality is deontic modality. The use of the term ‘deontic modality’ is ‘supposed to be fully unproblematic’ (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998: 83). Deontic modality ‘identifies the enabling or competing circumstances external to the participant as some person(s), often the speaker, and/ or as some social or ethical norm(s) permitting or obliging the participant to engage in the state of affairs’ (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998: 81). Must is for example deontic in the example below:

John must leave now

with the definition: ‘as far as the person with authority and /or the norm goes, John’s leaving is necessary’ (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998: 83). The norms here can be societal norms as well as moral assessments or judgements of desirability (Nuyts 2016: 37).

An additional semantic domain is epistemic modality. The epistemic meaning of must/maste has been defined in terms of a judgment by the speaker rather than in terms of obligation: ‘a proposition is judged to be uncertain or probable in relation to some judgment’ (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998: 81). The epistemic meaning is illustrated by:

John must have arrived

Must (and maste) are available in all the domains. However all the epistemic examples have been excluded from the investigation. They were less frequent than the examples with obligation meaning and are mainly restricted to fiction.

In the present study I will focus on the importance of genre for understanding the different frequencies and uses of the linguistic forms expressing obligation. Following Biber (1988: 68) I will use the term ‘genre’ ‘to refer to text categorizations made on the basis of external criteria relating to author/speaker purpose’. The genres used in the present study represent both fiction and non-fiction.