JENNEKE BRANTJES

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (HOLANDA)

Deontic modal constructions in Dutch with zou kunnen ‘could, may’

Morfología / Morphology

Deontic modality is best to be described in terms of acceptability or neccesity of a state of affairs on account of an authorative person (possibly the speaker), institute or a set of rules and regulations. Among other things, deontic modality can be expressed by means of modal verbs like may, can and could. An example is given in (1)

1) You may leave now.

In Dutch the verbal combination zou kunnen ‘could, may’ can be used to express deontic modality, though it is primarily used to express hypothetical ability and possibility, otherwise known as respectively dynamic and epistemic modality. Why do speakers choose this verbal combination to express deontic modality? How do hearers come to the intended reading? Construction grammar provides a helpful theorectical background when looking for answers to these questions. In construction grammar language is viewed as a network of constructions, units of form and functions consisting of lexical and/or syntactic information. Examples of deontic zou kunnen found in the Corpus Spoken Dutch will be examined in terms of construction grammar. Two types of deontic zou kunnen were found: a type designating acceptability and a type consisting of indirect speech acts. They may be assigned separate constructions: an acceptability construction and an indirect speech act construction both containing the verbal combination zou kunnen.




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