The Modal verb "galėti" "can
LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Akademinis diskursas; Lietuvių kalbos veiksmažodžiai; Modaliniai veiksmažodžiai; Modalinės funkcijos; Modalumas; Tarpdisciplininė analizė; Tekstynų lingvistika; Academic discourse, corpus-based analysis, cross-disciplinary analysis, modal verbs; Lithuanian verbs; Modal functions; Modality.
ENThe aim of the present paper is to investigate the frequency and distribution patterns as well as the spectrum of modal meanings conveyed by the Lithuanian modal verb of possibility "galėti" "can/could/may/might" in academic Lithuanian. The study is based on Corpus Academicum Lithuanicum (www.coralit.lt), a specialized synchronic corpus of written academic Lithuanian (roughly 9 million words). In order to allow a disciplinary comparison, the paper analyses the use of this modal verb in academic texts from three science fields: the humanities, the biomedical sciences and the technological sciences. Quantitative and qualitative approaches are employed alongside corpus-based analysis to reveal the ways in which this modal verb of possibility is used in academic language. The first part of the paper investigates the frequency patterns of various forms of "galėti" "can/could/may/might" in the three science fields. The second part looks at the variety of meanings this modal verb can convey in Lithuanian specialised language. The results show that there is a fairly similar distribution of this modal verb across different science fields. In terms of its semantic functional capacities, "galėti" "can/could/may/might" is used to convey all three types of modality (epistemic, deontic and dynamic), however, the most frequent use in Lithuanian academic discourse seems to be that of dynamic modality. [From the publication]
- Lithuanian academic phrase usage in bachelor’s theses of five main fields of science / Gintarė Judžentytė-Šinkūnienė, Vilma Zubaitienė. Valoda: nozīme un forma 2022, 13, p. 105-123.
- Realizations of deonticity in Lithuanian: the case of particles / Erika Jasionytė-Mikučionienė, Anna Ruskan. Studies in Baltic and other languages: a festschrift for Axel Holvoet on the occasion of his 65th birthday / Peter Arkadiev, Jurgis Pakerys, Inesa Šeškauskienė, Vaiva Žeimantienė (eds.). Vilnius : Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2021. P. 171-188.
