Mood and modality in finite noun complement clauses
The present paper presents a corpus-based contrastive analysis of modality in English and French finite noun complement clauses. On the one hand, we claim on the basis of cross-linguistic and semantic evidence that modality is a common intrinsic feature of nouns that license that/que
complement clauses, and, as a consequence, that head nouns are modal stance markers. On the other hand, this paper shows that indicative-subjunctive alternation in that/que noun complement clauses is determined by the modality type of the governing noun. Contrastive analysis of French
and English provides evidence to substantiate these claims.
Keywords: contrastive analysis; head noun; mandative subjunctive; modal noun; modality; that-clause
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 21 May 2010
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