A Study on Deontic Modality Expressing Means in English and Vietnamese Declarative and Interrogative Sentences.pdf

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
  
BÙI THỊ ĐÀO
A STUDY ON DEONTIC MODALITY EXPRESSING
MEANS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE DECLARATIVE
AND INTERROGATIVE SENTENCES
(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC PHƯƠNG TIỆN DIỂN ĐẠT TÌNH THÁI CHỨC PHẬN
TRONG CÂU TƯỜNG THUẬT VÀ CÂU HỎI TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)
Field: English Linguistics
Code: 62.22.15.01
A dissertation submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics at Vietnam National University, Hanoi
Supervisors: 1. Prof. Dr. Tran Huu Manh
2. Dr. Nguyen Duc Hoat
HANOI, February 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
  
BÙI THỊ ĐÀO
A STUDY ON DEONTIC MODALITY EXPRESSING
MEANS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE DECLARATIVE
AND INTERROGATIVE SENTENCES
(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC PHƯƠNG TIỆN DIỂN ĐẠT TÌNH THÁI CHỨC PHẬN
TRONG CÂU TƯỜNG THUẬT VÀ CÂU HỎI TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)
Field: English Linguistics
Code: 62.22.15.01
A dissertation submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics at Vietnam National University, Hanoi
HANOI, February 2014

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CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY
A dissertation submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy in Linguistics at Vietnam National University, Hanoi
Hanoi, February 2014
Bùi Thị Đào

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my thanks to Prof. Dr Nguyễn Hòa, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lê Hùng Tiến who
awoke in me the interest in language, provided me with a basic knowledge of linguistics and
advised me to take it seriously in my academic study.
To my supervisors, Prof. Dr. Trần Hữu Mạnh and Dr. Nguyễn Đức Hoạt, I gratefully
acknowledge a special indebtedness and sincere thanks for their insightful comments, kind-
hearted guidance and knowledgeable suggestions.
My deepest gratitude also goes to Prof. Dr. Hoàng Vân Vân, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Văn Quế,
Dr. Đỗ Tuấn Minh, Dr. Kiều Thị Thu Hương, Dr. Đỗ Thanh Hà, Dr. Hà Cẩm Tâm for their
enthusiastic support and invaluable remarks on my initial proposal. Their comments
significantly contributed to improving the quality of this research.
I am particularly indebted to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vũ Thị Thanh Hương, Prof. Dr. Nguyễn Văn
Hiệp, Assoc. Prof. Tôn Nữ Mỹ Nhật, Dr. Nguyễn Huy Kỷ, who generously shared the views
and materials during the process of preparing this research. I have also greatly benefited from
discussions with them.
I take this opportunity to thank all the lecturers and members at CFL - VNU, Hanoi for their
whole hearted support and guidance. Thanks are also due to my colleagues, friends for their
great support and encouragement throughout my study.
My special thanks and love go to my parents, my husband, my daughter and son, my brother
and sisters who have supported me in the completion of this dissertation.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
1. Background to the study 2
2. Aim of the study 3
3. Scope of the study 3
4. Methodology 5
4.1. Methods of the study 5
4.2. Data collection procedures 6
4.2.1. Description of corpus 6
4.2.2. Compilation of a corpus procedure 7
4.3. Data analysis 9
4.3.1. Describing the data 9
4.3.2. Comparing the two sources of data 9
5. Structure of the study 11
CHAPTER I 12
LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Historical perspectives of modality 12
1.2. Modality 16
1.2.1. Definitions and different viewpoints 16
1.2.2. Types of modality 21
1.3. Deontic modality 24
1.3.1. Definitions and various viewpoints 24
1.3.2. Types of deontic modality 26
1.4. Types of deontic modality in English 28
1.4.1. Commissives 28
1.4.2. Directives 29
1.4.2.1. Deliberatives 29
1.4.2.2. Imperatives 30
1.4.2.3. Jussives 31
1.4.2.4. Obligatives 32
1.4.2.5. Permissives 33
1.4.2.6. Precatives 34
1.4.2.7. Prohibitives 34
1.4.3. Volitives 36
1.4.3.1. Imprecatives 36
1.4.3.2. Optatives 37
1.5. Types of deontic modality in Vietnamese 37
1.5.1. Commissives (tình thái cam kết/ hứa hẹn) 38
1.5.2. Directives (tình thái cầu khiến) 38
1.5.2.1. Deliberatives (yêu cầu) 38
1.5.2.2. Imperatives (mệnh lệnh) 39
1.5.2.3. Jussives (khuyến lệnh) 40
1.5.2.4. Obligatives (ép buộc) 40
1.5.2.5. Permissives (cho phép) 41

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1.5.2.6. Precatives (khẩn cầu) 41
1.5.2.7. Prohibitives (cấm đoán) 41
1.5.3. Volitives (tình thái ý nguyện) 42
1.5.3.1. Imprecatives (không mong muốn/nguyền rủa) 42
1.5.3.2. Optatives (ước vọng/ mong mỏi) 42
1.6. Contrastive framework 43
1.7. Summary 45
CHAPTER 2
COMMISSIVES AND VOLITIVES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 46
2.1. Commissives in English and Vietnamese 47
2.1.1. Modal verbs in English and Vietnamese commisives 47
2.1.1.1. Syntactic features 48
2.1.1.2. Semantic features 50
2.1.2. Hedge verbs in English and Vietnamese commissives 53
2.1.3. Performative verbs in English and Vietnamese commisives 56
2.1.4. Modal adverbs in English and Vietnamese commisives 60
2.1.5. Modal adjectives in English and Vietnamese commisives 63
2.1.6. Expletives in English and Vietnamese commisives 66
2.1.7. Modal conditionals in English and Vietnamese commisives 68
2.2. Volitives in English and Vietnamese 73
2.2.1. Syntactic features 73
2.2.2. Semantic features 74
2.3. Summary 77
CHAPTER 3 DIRECTIVES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 80
3.1. Modal verbs in English and Vietnamese directives 80
3.2. Hedge verbs in English and Vietnamese directives 102

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3.3. Performative verbs in English and Vietnamese directives 104
3.4. Modal words 109
3.5. Modal adverbs in English and Vietnamese directives 116
3.6. Modal adjectives in English and Vietnamese directives 118
3.7. Modal nouns in English and Vietnamese directives 120
3.8. Particles 123
3.9. Modal idioms in English and Vietnamese directives 129
3.10. Expletives in English and Vietnamese directives 133
3.11. Modal conditionals in English and Vietnamese directives 135
3.12. Summary 139
CHAPTER
CONCLUSIONS 142
6.1. Recapitulation 142
2. Contributions 146
3. Pedagogical implications 147
4. Limitations of the study 149
5. Suggestions for further research 150
REFERENCES i
APPENDIX A x
APPENDIX B xxv

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LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 1.1. Types of modality 12
Fig. 1.2. A spatial model tense, aspect and modality 17
Fig. 1.3. Description of modality 19
Fig. 2.1. Set model for modal verbs, auxiliary verbs and verbs 47
Fig. 2.2. String matching of WILL in the English corpus 50
Fig. 2.3. String matching of SHALL in the English corpus 51
Fig. 2.4. String matching of WOULD in the English corpus 52
Fig. 2.5. String matching of SẼ in the Vietnamese corpus 53
Fig. 2.6. String matching of THINK in the English corpus 56
Fig. 2.7. String matching of PROMISE in the English corpus 59
Fig. 2.8. String matching of CERTAINLY in the English corpus 62
Fig. 2.9. String matching of PROBABLE in the English corpus 65
Fig. 2.10. String matching of SURE in the English corpus 65
Fig. 2.11. String matching of IT in the English corpus 67
Fig. 2.12. String matching of IF in the English corpus 70
Fig. 2.13. A distribution of linguistic means of expressing commisives in English 71
Fig. 2.14. A distribution of linguistic means of expressing commisives in Vietnamese 72
Fig. 2.15. A contrastive analysis of commissives in English and Vietnamese 72
Fig. 2.16. A distribution of linguistic means of expressing volitives in English 74
Fig. 2.17. String matching of HOPE in the English corpus 75
Fig. 2.18. String matching of WISH in the English corpus 75
Fig. 2.19. A contrastive analysis of volitives in English and Vietnamese 76
Fig. 3.1. String matching of MUST in the English corpus 86
Fig. 3.2. String matching of HAVE TO in the English corpus 86
Fig. 3.3. String matching of HAD TO in the English corpus 86
Fig. 3.4. String matching of PHẢI in the Vietnamese corpus 88
Fig. 3.5. String matching of WOULD in the English corpus 89
Fig. 3.6. String matching of MUỐN in the Vietnamese corpus 90
Fig. 3.7. String matching of MAY in the English corpus 91
Fig. 3.8. String matching of MIGHT in the English corpus 91
Fig. 3.9. String matching of CÓ LẼ in the Vietnamese corpus 92
Fig. 3.10. String matching of SHOULD in the English corpus 94
Fig. 3.11. String matching of OUGHT TO in the English corpus 94
Fig. 3.12. String matching of NÊN in the Vietnamese corpus 95
Fig. 3.13. String matching of CAN in the English corpus 96
Fig. 3.14. String matching of COULD in the English corpus 97
Fig. 3.15. String matching of CÓ THỂ in the Vietnamese corpus 98
Fig. 3.16. String matching of NEED in the English corpus 98
Fig. 3.17. String matching of CẦN in the Vietnamese corpus 99
Fig. 3.18. A distribution of linguistic means of expressing directives in English 137
Fig. 3.19. A distribution of linguistic means of expressing directives in Vietnamese 138
Fig. 3.20. A contrastive analysis of directive expressions in English and Vietnamese 139

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1.1. Types of modality 23
Table 1.2. Palmer’s theoretical framework for deontic modality 27
Table 1.3. Means of expressing deontic modality in English and Vietnamese 44
Table 3.1. Types of English modal verbs 81
Table 3.2. Directives in the interrogatives in English and Vietnamese 84
Table 3.3. Directives in the declaratives in English and Vietnamese 84
Table 3.4. The distribution of modal verbs in English and Vietnamese 100
Table 3.5. The distribution of hedge verbs in English and Vietnamese 102
Table 3.6. The distribution of performative verbs in English and Vietnamese 106
Table 3.7. Distribution of Vietnamese modal words 114
Table 3.8. The distribution of modal adverbs in English and Vietnamese 117
Table 3.9. The distribution of modal adjectives in English and Vietnamese 119
Table 3.10. Distribution of Vietnamese particles 126
Table 3.11. The distribution of modal idioms in English and Vietnamese 132
Table 3.12. The distribution of Expletives in English and Vietnamese 134
Table 3.13. The distribution of modal conditionals in English and Vietnamese 135

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ABBREVIATIONS
The following abbreviations are used chiefly in glossed language data examples:
Ibid the same author/ resources
Aux auxiliary
S subject
Mod modal verb
V verb
O object
MW modal word
HV hedge verb
VP verb phrase
MN modal noun
C commissive
D directive
V volitive
ECMAux1 English commissive modal auxiliary in English story 1
ECMAux4 English commissive modal auxiliary in English story 2
ECPV18 English performative verbs in English story 8
CADV23 English modal adverbs in English story 23
ECADJ34 English commissive adjective in English story 34
ECE15 English commissive expletives in English story 15
ECMC34 English commissive modal conditionals in English story 34
EDMAux4 English directive modal auxiliary in English story 4
EDHV4 English directive hedge verbs in English story 4
EDPV31 English directive performative verbs in English story 31
EDAdv25 English directive modal adverbs in English story 25
EDAdj23 English directive modal adjective in English story 23
EDMN35 English directive modal nouns in English story 35
EDP18 English directive particles in English story 18
EDMI12 English directive modal idioms in English story 12
EDMC23 English directive modal conditionals English story 23
EV2 English volitives in English story 2
VCMAux1 Vietnamese commissive modal auxiliary in Vietnamese story 1
VCPV1 Vietnamese commissive performative verbs in Vietnamese story 1
VCMC1 Vietnamese commissive modal conditionals in Vietnamese story 11
VDMAux5 Vietnamese directive modal auxiliary in Vietnamese story 5
VDPV8 Vietnamese directive performative verbs in Vietnamese story 8
VDMW42 Vietnamese directive modal words in Vietnamese story 42
VDAdv22 Vietnamese directive modal adverbs in Vietnamese story 22
(VDMN10) Vietnamese directive modal nouns in Vietnamese story 10
VDP8 Vietnamese directive particles in Vietnamese story 8
VDMI14 Vietnamese directive modal idioms in Vietnamese story 14
VDE17 Vietnamese directive expletives in Vietnamese story 17
VDMC36 Vietnamese Directive Modal Conditionals in Vietnamese story 36
EV26 Vietnamese Volitive in Vietnamese story 26

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ABSTRACT
This research is an attempt to identify, describe, compare and contrast various linguistic means
of expressing deontic modality in English and Vietnamese within the theoretical frameworks
and typological studies by pioneering linguists, both foreign and Vietnamese, on deontic
modality. This study is both descriptive and contrastive in nature. Its main aims are to identify,
describe and compare the various linguistic resources available in English and Vietnamese in
indicating deontic modality and its three main types i.e. commissives, volitives, directives, and
their sub-types.
The main data used in this research are taken from the two corpora (421 declarative and
interrogative sentences in English), built on 50 English stories, a total of 2.060.389 words and
(422 declarative and interrogative sentences in Vietnamese) in 50 Vietnamese stories, a total of
2.003.486 words. The data collected are then qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed to show
similarities and differences in terms of syntactic - semantic features and equivalences and non-
equivalences in the use of linguistic means to express deontic modality in English as a source
language and Vietnamese as a language of reference. Statistics also show the frequencies of
occurrences of various linguistic means in the respective languages to show their relative
importance in expressing deontic modality in the two languages under study.
Research findings show that while English and Vietnamese share some main linguistic devices
i.e., modal verbs, adjectives, adverbs, hedge verbs, etc. in the declaratives, the two languages
also show major differences and non-equivalences in the interrogatives in the availability and
the extent of the usage of various means to indicate deontic modality. While English relies more
on modal verbs, modal auxiliaries and moods, among others, Vietnamese relies more on its
system of sentence particles (mood words), modal words to indicate different meanings of
deontic modality.
It is hoped that the findings from this study will contribute to further understanding linguistic
resources available in English compared to Vietnamese and their shared and unshared features
in the use of linguistic devices in expressing modality in general and deontic modality in
particular.

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INTRODUCTION
1. Background to the study
Modality as an important component of linguistics has been extensively studied from syntactic,
grammatical, semantic and pragmatic perspectives. The study of modality expressions within
linguistics is one of the complicated problems. As Palmer (2003: 4) says “modality is realized
by linguistic terms from a wide range of grammatical classes, covering not only modal
auxiliaries and lexical verbs, but also nouns, adjectives, adverbs, idioms, particles, mood, and
prosody in speech.”
There are three types of modality that can be distinguished in the modal system of English. i.e.,
epistemic, deontic and dynamic that can be interpreted in terms of possibility and necessity
(Palmer, 2003: 7). This research will focus on one important type of modality i.e. deontic
modality. The term deontic modality “is a cover term for a range of semantic notions such as
ability, possibility, hypotheticality, obligation, and imperatives” (van der Auwera & Plungian,
1998: 81). In Vietnamese, deontic modality is rendered as “tình thái chức phận/ đạo nghĩa”
(Nguyễn Văn Hiệp, 2008: 103) denoting obligations, duties, necessity and the need for actions
which is also chosen as the working definition for this research.
A large number of studies have focused on theories of modality in general and deontic modality
in particular such as the works by Chung & Temberlake (1985), Palmer (1979, 1986, 1990,
1994, 2003, 2004, 2005) who have studied on modality both theoretical and corpus-based:
syntactic and semantic theory figured in various contributions. Palmer’s theory is applied
widely in linguistics and in many languages. Lyons (1977) also has a great concern with
semantic related to deontic modality. Lyons’ theoretical discussion finds ample confirmation in
various examples mostly from subjective and objective modality. Still within the field of
modality, van der Auwera & Plungian (1998) identify and describe the two types of modality
i.e., participant - internal modality and participant - external modality. This classification is seen
as a significant contribution to linguistics.

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So far, many comparative studies on modality have been carried out in different languages other
than English such as those in Korean and Japanese (Wymann. A.T, 1994), and in Chinese (Li,
2004). In Vietnam, many scholars have also studied modality in general and types of modality
in particular such as Nguyễn Thị Lương (1996), Cao Xuân Hạo (1999), Nguyễn Văn Hiệp
(2001, 2008), Ngũ Thiện Hùng (2003), Phạm Thị Ly (2003), Nguyễn Thị Cẩm Thanh (2003),
Bùi Trọng Ngoãn (2004), Võ Đại Quang (2009), who have studied modality in the Vietnamese
language.
However, no attempt has been made to conduct a contrastive study on linguistic means of
indicating deontic modality in English and Vietnamese. Therefore, this study is carried out to
address that research gap in order to provide a more articulate insight into similarities and
differences of deontic expressing means in the two languages, and to serve as a framework for
implicational purposes, which can be both theoretical and practical.
Regarding theoretical values, this dissertation is the first research into three types of deontic
modality in the English language compared with the Vietnamese language. Though deontic
expressing means have been touched upon by many reputed linguists, the description and
application of the three types of deontic modality in the study of Vietnamese have rarely been
found in the works by Vietnamese linguists.
With respect to practical purposes, a contrastive analysis on the three types of deontic modality
in English and Vietnamese helps teachers, students of English and those who are interested in
the field of linguistics understand deeply the language they deal with as well as the speakers’
attitudes or contexts that they refer to. In other words, this contrastive analysis will help EFL
(English as a Foreign Language) learners better understand of the similarities and differences in
the use of deontic expressing means in both languages. The insignts gained from the study,
hopefully, will help to find out error analysis in the English language teaching and learning.
2. Aim of the study
This study is aimed at finding the similarities and differences in deontic expressing means in
English and Vietnamese.

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In order to achieve the proposed aim, the objectives of the study are set as follows:
 To analyze and describe linguistic means of expressing deontic modality in English and
Vietnamese.
 To compare and contrast linguistic means of expressing deontic modality in terms of
grammatical and lexical features and frequencies of usage in expressing deontic
meanings in English and Vietnamese.
To achieve the above objectives, the following research questions are to be addressed:
1. What are the linguistic means of expressing deontic modality in English and in
Vietnamese?
2. What are the similarities and differences in linguistic means used in the three types
of deontic modality in terms of the syntactic and semantic features and the
frequencies of usage in English and Vietnamese?
3. Scope of the study
This study is focused on the descriptive account of syntactic and semantic features of linguistic
means of indicating three types of deontic modality in English and Vietnamese based on the
classification of Palmer (1994). They are commissives, directives and volitives with the seven
sub-types of directives (deliberatives, imperatives, jussives, obligatives, permissives, precatives,
prohibitives) and the two sub-types of volitives (imprecatives and optatives).
According to Chung & Temberlake (1985: 25), modality in English may be expressed
grammatically or semantically by auxiliaries, verbs, adjectives, nouns or adverbs. Nguyễn Văn
Hiệp (2008: 128) states that means of expressing modality can be categorized into grammatical
and lexical means. Prosody is said to have played a role in expressing modality in languages.
However, as Palmer (1986: 6) states, “prosody is a separate study and only rarely interacts in a
systematic way with grammatical systems of modality”, and modality or linguistic means of
indicating modality can be studied separately from prosody elements. Furthermore, in this
study, due to the nature of the data taken from the short stories and the usage of devices of a

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corpus-based method, prosody elements are not covered. This is also the limitations to the
scope for this study.
Modality is realized either by lexical or semantic means such as modal auxiliaries, adverbs,
adjectives, nouns, modal words, particles, etc. In terms of semantic features, the author will
describe and analyze deontic expressing means in English and Vietnamese i.e. modal
auxiliaries, hedge verbs, performative verbs, modal words, adverbs, adjectives, nouns,
particles, modal idioms, expletives, and modal conditionals.
In English, mood (indicative, imperative, interrogative … moods) is an important means of
expressing deontic modality. It also means that, to some extents, sentence types including the
declaratives and interrogatives can also be considered means of expressing modality in general
and deontic modality in particular. Therefore, the main focus of this research is not on
comparing and contrasting how linguistic means of expressing deontic modality operate in the
two sentence types: declaratives vs interrogatives. Declarative and interrogative sentences are
then used to provide samples of linguistic means used within these two sentence types.
In this research, the author compares and contrasts deontic expressing means taken from 421
declarative and interrogative sentences found in 50 English stories and 422 declarative and
interrogative sentences found in 50 Vietnamese stories. Based on the identification and the
descriptive accounts of deontic expressing means in the two languages, a comparative and
contrastive study on the similarities and differences of deontic expressing means in 421
declaratives and interrogatives in English and 422 declaratives and interrogatives in Vietnamese
will be conducted.
In this study, the main criteria to recognize declarative and interrogative sentences in English
are based on the theory of Palmer (1986: 26- 30). i.e., English sentences are the major
grammatical units used by speakers to make statements or ask questions. The exchange of
information is characteristically expressed by the indicative mood or the imperative mood.
Within the indicatives, making a statement is typically concerned with the declaratives, and
asking a question is associated with the interrogatives. More exactly, it is one part of the
structures concluding the subject and the finite element. In declarative structures, the subject

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precedes the finite, and in the interrogative structures, the positions of finite operator and
subject are reversed. The finite is the element which associates with the content of the sentence
relating to time, tense, or attitudes of the speaker.
The criteria to recognize declaratives and interrogatives in Vietnamese are based on the work of
Cao Xuân Hạo (1991: 128) i.e., the basic word order of a declarative sentence in Vietnamese is
subject - verb - object. Also, a declarative can be expressed by a number of final particles đi/
nghen/ nhé. An interrogative can be expressed by a noun/ noun phrase; or an adjective/
adjective phrases; or a verb/ verb phrases or a sentence, which is realized by question marks có/
đã…… không/ chưa, có phải (là)….. không?, ( có) phải không?, or question with particles
à,chứ, nhé, nào,hả,…
For the purpose of describing, comparing and contrasting the use of linguistic means for
expressing deontic modality in the declarative and interrogative sentences in English (as a
source language) and Vietnamese (as a reference language), the data are collected from two
main sources. For descriptive purposes, the samples of deontic sentences used by linguists are
used alongside the samples collected from stories. For comparative and contrastive purposes, a
corpus is built with the aim of collecting modal samples from two types of sentences:
declaratives and interrogatives in 50 English stories and 50 Vietnamese stories with the help of
the software: TexSTAT-2 that has been extensively used by reputed researchers in this field
(McEnery & Wilson (1996), Palmer & Facchinetti (2003), McCarthy (2005), and McCarthy
(2007)).
4. Methodology
4.1. Methods of the study
According to Saville-Troike (1982), one of the best methods of getting to know one’s own
“ways of speaking” is by comparing and contrasting with those of others. This process will
reveal the shared and unshared features of linguistic patterns and their meanings. Thus,
contrastive linguistics with its associated research method - Contrastive analysis (CA) - will be
used as the primary research framework for this study.

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Fisiak (1981: 1) defines contrastive linguistics as “a sub-discipline of linguistics concerned with
the comparison of two or more languages or subsystems of languages in order to determine both
the differences and similarities between them”. Johansson and Hofland (1994: 25-37) states that
“contrastive linguistics is the systematic comparison of two or more languages, with the aim of
describing their similarities and differences”. Thus, a combination of descriptive, comparative
and contrastive methods is used in this research.
For the comparison of the frequencies of usage in the two languages under study, a quantitative
analysis of the corpus is adopted. Corpus means “a collection of texts held in electronic form,
capable of being analyzed automatically or semi-automatically rather than manually” (Baker,
1996: 225). A corpus-based method emerged in the years of 1990s and 2000s as a new area of
research in the discipline of studies. It is informed by a specific area of linguistics known as
corpus linguistics which involves the analysis of the corpora of authentic running text by means
of computer software. According to Steinberger et al. (2005: 529), a corpus can be used to
count occurrences and frequencies for machine translation, cross-lingual information retrieval,
multilingual lexical extraction, and sense disambiguation.
Corpus based methods prove to be very effective in cross-language comparative study. It allows
us to access to a large sample of texts and compare various syntactic as well as semantic
features and frequencies of usage. Therefore, a corpus based method is also used in this study
for comparative and contrastive purposes.
4.2. Data collection procedures
4.2.1. Description of corpus
The corpora used in this study are built on the following general principles regarding size,
number of languages, sources:
 The size of the corpus: The two corpora used in this research consist of 50 English
stories, a total of 2060389 words and 50 Vietnamese stories, a total of 2003486
words. Thus, the corpus includes 50 English stories and 50 Vietnamese stories. This
corpus size is viewed as not too large or too small so that a close reading of the
whole texts can be undertaken.

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 The number of languages: The corpus in this research is considered as a bilingual
corpus; hence it contains the two languages: English and Vietnamese. This corpus is
specialized in that it includes only written records and its samples only are
declarative and interrogative sentences found in the included English and
Vietnamese stories.
 The sources of the corpus: As mentioned in the scope of the study, the
comparisons which will be made in this study are linguistic means of expressing
deontic modality in English and Vietnamese stories. The reason, the researcher
assumes, is that conversations in stories are too frequent a way of expressing deontic
modality. Moreover, according to Van Dijk (1988), famous stories present a factual
account of events that typically contain an element of comments. Lexical choices,
for example, can reflect the attitudes towards the events described and the actors
involved. For these reasons, stories are considered as the main source of the data
used in the present study.
The stories in this research are taken from e-books of contemporary works on different sources
(see appendix A & B). One of the criteria for the selection of stories is that they were written
by native speakers. These stories were published in the years of 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. It,
therefore, assumes that the use of deontic expressions in stories may have changed over the
time.
4.2.2. Corpus compilation procedure
In this section, the author conducts a process of extracting the data from a 2060389 - word
corpus in English and a 2003486 - word corpus in Vietnamese as follows:
As clarified in details the eleven types of deontic linguistic means in the theoretical framework,
the author lists all the devices used in those means, such as can, could, may, might, shall, will,
etc. belonged to the first means (modal auxiliaries); think, believe, know, etc. is the second
means (hedge verbs), etc. Then, the author uses a tool for doing lexical analysis named
TexSTAT-2 program. This program can show the string matching and the concordance to count
the frequency of a certain device in the whole 50 stories and also find related collocation of
other words together with a certain device in English or Vietnamese.

8
The corpus supplies the number of words in each means, in each category of sorted devices and
shows a general overview of the distribution of modal linguistic means quickly and accurately
so that the researcher can extract all of the declaratives and interrogatives used in each means as
well as all of the means used in the stories. An illustrated example of a means of modal
auxiliary is shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 below:
Fig. 1. String matching of CAN in the English corpus
Fig. 2. String matching of CÓ THỂ in the Vietnamese corpus
The results of data processing are stored in the database for sorting and analyzing. From the
corpus, the researcher can collect 378 declaratives and 43 interrogatives expressing deontic
meanings in 50 English stories and 382 declaratives and 40 interrogatives conveying deontic
expressions in 50 Vietnamese stories.

9
4.3. Data analysis
4.3.1. Describing the data
After extracting the data from the corpus, a descriptive method will be used at first to exploit all
means and expressions of deontic modality used in English and Vietnamese declarative and
interrogative sentences in terms of categories in the theoretical framework. Basing on devices
processed in the corpus, the author distinguishes eleven means of deontic modality within 421
declaratives and interrogatives in English and 422 declaratives and interrogatives in Vietnamese
and then, categorizes them at three different types of meanings: commissives, directives and
volitives. This type of analysis is emphasized throughout the contextual translation in the stories
with various types of illocutionary forces.
The researcher labels examples of declaratives and interrogatives in English and Vietnamese
with the different forms. Letters and numbers signal the meanings of deontic expressions and
numbers indicate the story. For example, ECMAux1 stands for English modal auxiliary
denoting commissive meanings of the story one of 50 English stories. Vietnamese examples
comprise texts labeled VCMAux1 (Vietnamese modal auxiliary expressing commissive
meanings of the story one of 50 Vietnamese stories.). All the stories will be clearly specified in
each case in the appendixes such as the writer’s name of the stories and the year of publication.
4.3.2. Comparing the two sources of data
Fisiak (1981: 2-3) explains “drawing on the findings of theoretical contrastive studies they
provide a framework for the comparison of languages, selecting whatever information is
necessary for a specific purpose.” According to Johansson and Hofland (1994: 25), “language
comparison is of great interest in theoretical as well as applied perspectives”. It reveals what is
general, what is specific and what is important both for the understanding of language in
general and for the study of the individual languages compared. They further explain that a
comparative linguistic analysis differs considerably from a contrastive linguistic analysis. “A
comparative study is a diachronic comparison of two or more linguistic systems with a view to
classifying languages into families”. It is related to the history and evolution of languages, and
involves in establishing the similarities or correspondences between languages. “A contrastive
linguistic analysis is the comparison and contrast of the linguistic systems of two or more

10
individual languages in order to bring out points of contrast as well as points of similarity
between them,” and they also argue that “a contrastive linguistic study is a synchronic
comparison that studies languages belonging to the same period, without paying much attention
to their histories or language families.” It is more concerned with dissimilarities than
similarities.
Fisiak (1981: 2) also states that contrastive analysis was used extensively in the field of second
language acquisition in the 1960s and early 1970s, as a method of explaining an exhaustive
account of the differences and similarities between two or more languages, providing an
adequate model for the comparison, and determining how and which elements are comparable.
It is expected that once the areas of potential difficulty have been mapped out through
contrastive analysis, it would be possible to design language courses more efficiently.
In this study, therefore, a contrastive analysis is carried out together with a qualitative analysis
in the analytical framework and a quantitative analysis from the corpus in an effort to
understand how contextual variables of this corpus may influence deontic modal expressions in
order to determine the similarities and differences of deontic expressing means used in English
and Vietnamese stories.
To compare eleven means of deontic modality with regards to the three types of meanings:
commissives, directives and volitives, the author takes the English language as the base
language and Vietnamese as the comparative language. The reason for the choice is that deontic
linguistic means in English have been extensively studied from different linguistic approaches
by reputed linguists in the world. Thus, the researcher collects these deontic expressions in the
theoretical framework to compare with Vietnamese. The examples analyzed are taken from
declarative and interrogative sentences in English and Vietnamese stories.
The statistical calculations are made and classified by the figures for each pattern. The results in
English are then compared to those in Vietnamese basing on the computation of various
percentages in the corpus. The similarities or differences will be analyzed in details with
specific data and then to indicate any conclusions.

11
5. Structure of the study
Apart from the introduction and conclusion, the research consists of three chapters:
The introduction presents the background for the study, aim, objectives and the scope of this
work. An account of the methods and data collection is provided.
Chapter one provides the preliminaries to this study by giving a brief of previous research and
basic overview of the general concepts of modality and, in more details, the specific framework
of deontic modality with different types of deontic modality and deontic linguistic means in
English and Vietnamese under study.
Chapter two is concerned with a detailed description and comparative analysis on the two types
of deontic modality in English and Vietnamese i.e. commissives and volitives based on both the
semantic and the formal aspects of modal expressions, including a systematic inventory of
means available for expressing deontic attitudes in English and Vietnamese.
Chapter three explores the similarities and differences in terms of syntactic and semantic
features and frequencies of occurrences of various linguistic means of expressing directives in
English and Vietnamese basing on the theoretical framework and the results of corpus data
collection provided.
The conclusion provides the summary of the results of the study with research implications,
contributions and suggestions for future research.

12
CHAPTER I
LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Historical perspectives of modality
Like most of theoretically-based historical studies, modality has been pursued from the
perspectives of both semantic and grammatical theories of linguistics. The term “modality”
derives from the postclassical Latin words modalitas or modus in more than one sense that was
used by scholars in the Middle Ages. However, this Latin term was very rare, and its current
linguistic use was the earliest attestation in 1907. The history of English modal auxiliaries in
general and of modality in particular had prestigious place in studies since the nineteenth
century.
Chomsky (1957) devotes much of his research to syntactic structures of modality. He has
researched the grounding in different perspectives on syntax more than semantics. Functionally-
oriented views of syntactic aspects of English modality include works by Denison (1993),
Hopper and Traugott (2003), Peyraube (1999) in Chinese, Beninca and Poletto (1997) in Italian.
In these works, the study of modality has mainly focused on grammaticalization.
Van der Auwera & Plungian (1998) come up with the semantic map including an account of
connections between lexical and grammatical categories with the aim to represent an entire
semantic area of modality and main types of modality and their relationships. This is illustrated
in Fig. 1.1 below:
Fig. 1.1. Types of modality. (Van der Auwera & Plungian, 1998: 111)

13
Still in the domain of modality, a distinction between “mood” and “modality” has been
proposed by Palmer (1979, 1986, 1990, 1994, 2003, 2005). Palmer’s work (1979) is regarded as
a “pioneer work on modality” related to the notions “epistemic’ and “deontic” modality which
is generally accepted as relevant linguistic categories. Palmer (1994) sets out a general
theoretical framework of the three types of deontic modality i.e. commissives, directives, and
volitives with its subtypes. However, he has not analyzed any deep insight these types of
deontic modality with regard to semantic and syntactic meanings. He only provides a brief
account of examples of these types in English.
Palmer & Facchinetti (2003) study and analyze the cross-linguistic features of modality in the
collection of evidence drawn from the corpus. Their works are the first one of a series fully
dedicated to corpus-based studies of languages. Corpora, in their study, have been widely
carried out in a great variety of fields, from the study of grammatical and lexical features to the
compilation of contrastive analysis and translation theory, from historical linguistics to
language acquisition. They state that the great amount of naturally occurring language applied
by the corpus shows clearly comparisons between different varieties of a language and between
languages as well. The corpus helps them count typical words and word patterns of a specific
genre.
The final paper in Palmer & Facchinetti’s work is an insightful study on the interaction of tense,
aspect and modality in English and Greek. The data are based on a corpus of written Greek (the
Hellenic National Corpus) concluding over 650 instances of modal verbs. They compare the
definitional properties of the modal system in English and Greek. From the corpus, they
examine the factors affecting the disambiguation of modal verbs in the two languages. (i) the
meanings of modal verbs. (ii) the form of modal verbs (interrogatives or negatives, present or
past. (iii) types of modal verbs (epistemic modality or agent-oriented modality). (iv) the
grammatical person of the subject. (an utterance interpreted in the third person in comparison
with the first person). Overall, studying of the Greek data from the corpus, Palmer &
Facchinetti (2003) analyze the similarities and differences as regards of semantic features of
modal verbs in English and Greek.

14
Van der Auwera et al. (2009) provide some of the papers presented at the Second International
Conference on Modality in English. There are three general themes described in their work: (i)
the definition of modality. (ii) the study of English modals. (iii) the analysis of modal
constructions. Discussing general approaches to modal notions, the authors argue that it is
important to distinguish between modality and modalization. The former is a modal system
based on the notions of possibility and necessity. The latter is divided into five types (non-
factuality vs factuality: might and may, existential modality such as “footballers can be sex
maniacs” (van der Auwera et al, 2009: 2), subjectivity vs objectivity (may, can, must, should).
In the analysis of modal constructions, they describe the structures of non-factual modality such
as until and before clauses. Authors conclude that subjective modals involve more pragmatic
than the objective uses.
For non-western languages, Wymann (1994) surveys modal constructions in Korean and
Japanese. He classifies modality using the parameters “possibility” versus “necessity” and
“situational” versus “epistemic”. Li (2004) compares modality types in terms of grammatical
features, semantic functions, pragmatic variation, logical representation, and diachronic
development in English under a typological perspective in comparison with Chinese. In his
thesis, the comparative analysis goes from lexical forms to syntactic features including
negation, voices, subjects, main verbs, aspects, tenses and styles. His research focuses on
various types of modality in general (i.e. epistemic, deontic and dynamic) in English and
Chinese.
In Vietnamese, Nguyễn Thị Lương (1996) describes the uses of particles in questions with
various illocutionary forces. It can be said that it is a research investigating particles on
semantic perspectives in questions. Based on the forms, she divides Vietnamese particles in
questions into three groups: particle à used to greet or ask for information, particles ư, hả, sao,
phỏng, chắc, chăng used to predict what will happen or express irony, and particles chứ, nhỉ,
nhé used to ask for affirmation or remind somebody of something. She uses a descriptive
method to describe examples taken from short stories, plays, novels and recorders. The criteria
to indentify the meanings of sentence particles in her research are based on Searle theory of
speech act (1975). i.e., (i) propositional content, (ii) preparatory content, (iii) sincerity content
and (iv) essential content. She concludes that the meanings of particles are generally formed
according to contexts and attitudes of the speakers in communicating.

15
Nguyễn Văn Hiệp (2001/ 2008) explores the semantics and syntax of modality and sentences in
Vietnamese. He discusses theoretical issues relating to main types of modality such as
subjective and objective, deontic and epistemic modality, factuality and non-factuality in
general. Discussing the different notions of modality, Nguyễn Văn Hiệp describes various
means of expressing modality in Vietnamese such as adverbs, modal verbs, modal expressions,
modal idioms, performative verbs, particles, modal words and modal conditionals. Nguyễn Văn
Hiệp’s work (2008) is a systematical study on modality and modal expressions in Vietnamese.
However, no comparative study is attempted.
A contrastive investigation of linguistic means expressing epistemic modality in English and
Vietnamese is carried out by Ngũ Thiện Hùng (2003). In his study, he establishes the
similarities and differences in syntactic and semantic features of linguistic means of expressing
epistemic modality such as nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and particles. Phạm Thị Ly (2003)
provides a contrastive analysis on some linguistic means of modality in Vietnamese with the
reference to English such as modal verbs, adverbs and particles. Her research is carried out to
investigate the similarities and differences of semantic meanings of modality in general through
modal verbs, adverbs and particles in English and Vietnamese. However, deontic modality is
not the main focus of her study.
Nguyễn Thị Cẩm Thanh (2003) also compares linguistic means of expressing non-factual
modality in English and Vietnamese. Her research focuses on establishing similarites and
differences between English and Vietnamese in terms of semantic meanings of non-factual
modality. Bùi Trọng Ngoãn (2004) surveys the role of modal verbs on expressing modality in
Vietnamese such as cần, phải, nên, dám, đành, nỡ in combination with sentence particles. Võ
Đại Quang (2009) also conducts a study on linguistic means of expressing modality in English
and Vietnamese in terms of semantic and syntactic features within various types of modality.
However, he does not focus on linguistic means of expressing deontic modality in terms of their
semantic and syntactic features
So far, there has been no research exclusively focusing on the contrastive study of linguistic
means of expressing deontic modality in English and Vietnamese. Thus, this dissertation is an
attempt to meet such research need. It is also the major contribution of this study at least at the
application level.

16
1.2. Modality
1.2.1. Definitions and different viewpoints
Several linguists have different viewpoints of modality and used several terms to distinguish
types of modality. According to Halliday (1970 a, b), modality is concerned with the expression
of necessity and possibility. He also claims that modality is “the speaker’s assessment of
probability and predictability. It is external to the content, being part of the attitude taken up by
the speaker.”
A rather different view is taken by Lyons (1977: 848, 452) who defines modality as “the
speaker’s opinion or attitude towards the proposition that the sentence expresses or the situation
that the proposition describes.” In traditional usage, modality is applied to subsets of inflected
form of verbs and is distinguished by means of term “indicative”, “imperative”, “subjunctive”,
etc. Lyons has chosen to respect this usage because as he says one of the advantages of doing so
is that it helps learners to draw a distinction, not only between utterances and sentences but also
between sentences that are sub-classified as declaratives, interrogatives, jussives, permissives,
etc. in terms of syntactic features and in terms of the mood of the main verbs. For examples:
(1.1) They may go tomorrow. (Lyons, 1977: 848)
(1.2) They must go tomorrow. (ibid.)
(1.3) They will go tomorrow. (ibid.)
As Lyons (1977: 848) describes, the declarative simply states what the speaker believes or
claims is a fact, but the three terms in the modal system simply are the speaker’s judgments.
These may be seen in terms of three types of conclusion, a possible conclusion with may, the
only possible conclusion with must and a reasonable conclusion with will. He further explains
that an important distinction among these examples is that modality is sometimes redundant in
the use of the subjunctive that is wholly determined by the grammar and is semantically
vacuous.
Chung & Temberlake (1985: 25) state that English sentences are categorical or modalized. In
modalized sentences, modality may be expressed grammatically or syntactically by means of
auxiliaries, or it may be expressed in various lexical ways (for example by full verbs,

17
adjectives, adverbs, …). However, they further argue that grammatically modality is expressed
in terms of mood. If mood is expressed morphologically, it is considered as synthetic. The
subcategory synthetic mood has two types, namely the subjunctive and the imperative. Both of
these are expressed by the “inflection” (in case of the subjunctive often by be instead of is), but
they can be told apart by their behavior with respect to subjects. If mood is expressed
syntactically by means of auxiliaries, it is considered as analytic. The subcategory analytic
mood has two factors as well, namely possibility and necessity, which are expressed by the
auxiliaries may, might, can, could, must, should, need respectively. This analysis can be
illustrated in Fig. 1.2 and in the following examples:
Modality
synthetic analytic
subjunctive imperative necessity permissive
(may/might (must/should/
can/could) have to/need)
Fig. 1.2. A spatial model tense, aspect and modality (Chung & Temberlake, 1985: 47)
(1.4) Stay as long as you like. (Chung & Temberlake, 1985: 47)
(1.5) This medicine may/might cure you. (bid.)
(1.6) You must lock the door before going out. (ibid.)
(1.7) They should take a rest. (ibid.)
Palmer (1986) states that “modality expresses the speaker’s attitude or opinion regarding the
contents of the sentence or the proposition that the sentence expresses”, and modality is
considered as a linguistic feature that is realized by a variety of linguistic means such as modal
auxiliaries. According to Quirk et al. (1985: 219), modality may be considered as “the manner
in which the meaning of a clause is qualified so as to reflect the speaker’s judgment of the
likelihood of the proposition it expressed being true.”

18
Downing and Locke (1995) have set forth modality as “semantic category by which speakers
express their attitudes towards the event contained in the proposition as possibility, necessity,
volition, obligation, permission, doubt, wish, regret, desire, and temporal notions such as
usuality.”
Van der Auwera (2001: 1) states “modality has traditionally been dealt with in relation to the
analysis of semantic features associated with the speaker’s attitude and/or opinion about what is
said”. According to Palmer (2001: 1), “modality is a valid cross language grammatical category
that can be the subject of a typology study”. Palmer’s definition of modality is the same as the
view point of Matthews (2005: 228). He defines the term modality as “category covering either
of a kind of a typology study”.
The definition of modality applied in this study is used most widely, agreeing with the view of
Huddleston & Geoffrey (2002: 172) and Palmer (2003: 4): “modality is as a category of
meanings which, in the verbal system, is grammaticalized by mood”. In their usages, mood
comprises modal auxiliaries. However, expressions of modality are not limited to the verbal
system. There are other linguistic means of expressing modal meanings such as modal
auxiliaries and lexical verbs, as well as nouns, adjectives, adverbs, idioms, particles, mood and
prosody in speech.
In analyzing the different meanings associated with modality linguistic means, Huddleston &
Geoffrey (2002: 175-180) suggests the different expressing means of modality that have been
described in flexible ways, and have been given various meanings, i.e., model of description:
any given expression of modality will have a value on each of the three factors: kind (epistemic
to deontic), strength and degree (the latter two both on a scale from weak to strong). These are
shown in Fig. 1.3 as following:

19
Fig. 1.3. Description of modality (Huddleston & Geoffrey, 2002: 175-177)
Huddleston & Geoffrey (2002: 175-177) explain that the group of strength expresses the
speaker's strength of commitment to the truth value of a proposition and the semantic strength
of an utterance. For instance, a strong modal may be weakened semantically in its context,
becoming a polite offer. Their description allows for strong (1.8), medium (1.9) and weak (1.10)
expressions of modality. For instance:
(1.8) It must be some kind of joke. (Huddleston & Geoffrey, 2002: 179)
(1.9) It should be somewhere near here. (ibid.)
(1.10) It may be some conscious or subconscious nutritional knowledge at work. (ibid.)
Kind is also the area of modal research that differs from descriptions. The three most frequently
recognized categories are epistemic (1.11), deontic (1.12) and dynamic (1.13) modality, as in
the following examples:
(1.11) You must be joking. (ibid.)
(1.12) You may go now. (ibid.)
(1.13) Details are easily gained if you can speak and read French. (ibid.)

20
The third group of modality described by Huddleston & Geoffrey (2002) is degree where they
discuss the problem of identifying modal meaning clearly. A modal element may be difficult to
recognize because it does not necessarily change the meaning of an expression greatly. For
example (1.14) is unmodalized, (1.15) expresses low degree modality.
(1.14) She is one year old tomorrow. (ibid.)
(1.15) She will be one year old tomorrow. (ibid.)
Like strength, degree of modality can also be expressed on a scale from strong to weak. These
categories are often subdivided further into possibilities, inference and necessity for epistemic;
volitions, necessity, predictions and possibilities for deontic; and abilities, possibilities,
predictions, necessity and habits for dynamic. However, since this research focuses on deontic
expressing means, other classifications of modality (epistemic, dynamic) perhaps informed by
cross-linguistic thinking, may be needed when looking at a wider range of modal expressions
and beyond the scope of the study.
So far, many different definitions and viewpoints of modality have been mentioned in English.
However, until now there have not been any definitions of modality proposed in Vietnamese.
According to Nguyễn Văn Hiệp (2008: 86), most Vietnamese researchers set out definition of
modality basing on theory of modality in English, and most of them define modality in
Vietnamese from Lyons’ definition of modality (i.e. “quan điểm hoặc thái độ của người nói đối
với mệnh đề mà câu nói biểu thị hoặc các tình huống mà mệnh đề miêu tả” (the speaker’s
opinion or attitude towards the proposition that the sentence expresses or the situation that the
proposition describes.)
Vietnamese researchers like Nguyễn Văn Hiệp (2001, 2008), Ngũ Thiện Hùng (2003), Phạm
Thị Ly (2003), Nguyễn Thị Cẩm Thanh (2003) have chosen to use this definition because in
Vietnamese, the modal meanings are expressed with a system of modal verbs or particles that
are always meaningful, as shown in the following examples:
(1.16) Nam sẽ lấy vợ. (Nguyễn Văn Hiệp, 2008: 87)
(1.17) Có lẽ Nam sẽ lấy vợ. (ibid.)
(1.18) Nam, lấy vợ đi! (ibid.)
(1.19) Gì thì gì, Nam cũng sẽ lấy vợ. (ibid.)
(1.20) Nam sẽ lấy vợ à? (ibid.)

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In declarative (1.16), the speaker wants to inform what he believes or claims as a fact (i.e. Nam
will get married). Example (1.17) is considered as the speakers’ judgment (i.e. whether Nam
will get married or not). The declarative (1.18) expresses the speaker's strength of commitment
to the truth value of an utterance as a suggestion that Nam should get married. Example (1.19)
declares an obvious fact that Nam will get married regardless of other agents, and (1.20)
expresses the speaker’s attitude with a surprise. An important distinction among these examples
is that modal expressions are wholly determined by the speaker’s meanings or subjunctive
attitudes in the use of the modal auxiliaries, modal words, etc. with particles.
1.2.2. Types of modality
A modality type is a set of modal meanings attributed to an identical semantic basis. In the
studies of modality, linguists have identified epistemic modality, deontic modality (Lyons,
1977), dynamic modality (Palmer, 1986, 2001, 1990), and agent-oriented modality (Bybee et
al., 1994), etc. The last two types of modality have been reformed and renamed by van der
Auwera & Plungian (1998) as participant-internal modality and participant-external modality.
Lyons (1977) uses the term ‘epistemic modality’ to refer to the type of knowledge the speaker
is going to say, and ‘deontic modality’ to indicate the speaker’s views or stance towards what
he/she is saying. Coates (1983) states that the term ‘attitude’ has been expanded into that of
‘subjectivity’ understood as “subject or speaker’s involvement” in order to emphasize both
types of modality:
“Subjectivity is a matter of speaker’s, or more generally, of the illocutionary agent’s
involvement of himself in the utterance. In the case of deontic modality it is his will
and authority that is involved. But it both cases it is the locutionary agent who is the
source of the modality”. (Coates, 1983: 111)
Thus, it can be said that modality is concerned with the expression of the speaker’s involvement
towards the propositional content of an utterance, whether in form of agency or subjective.
Quirk et al. (1985: 112) discuss modality as “constraining factors of meaning” namely in terms
of intrinsic and extrinsic modality. Intrinsic modality indicates ‘permission’, ‘obligation’ and
‘volition’ that refer to deontic (using according to Lyons’, Palmer’s and Downing & Locke’s
terminology). Extrinsic modality signifies ‘possibility’, ‘necessity’, and ‘prediction’ that imply
epistemic (using according to Lyons’, Palmer’s and Downing & Locke’s term).

22
Dik (1989), who bases his observations on previous work by Hengeveld (1987, 1988), suggests
three types of modality: (i) inherent modality, which denotes “relations like ‘ability’ and
‘willingness’ between a participant and the realization of the state of affairs in which he is
involved”; (ii) objective modality, which signals the speaker’s evaluation of the likelihood of
occurrence of a state of affairs (in terms of certainty or obligation); (iii) subjective modality,
which expresses the speaker’s personal commitment to the truth of what he says.
Halliday (1994: 357) differentiates modality types further. i.e., (i) epistemic modality (which he
labels modalization) conveys either probability or possibility; (ii) deontic modality (what he
calls modulation) expresses either obligation or inclination. Modalization is typically realized as
indicative, while modulation is considered as imperative; (iii) dynamic modality (what he calls
ability/ potentiality). However, he claims that ability/ potentiality is one further category that
lies outside the epistemic - deontic system and that corresponds to inherent modality in Dik’s
division.
The term ‘dynamic’ is from von Wright (1951: 28), who proposes it as a type of modality
concerned with ‘ability and disposition’. Nevertheless, many other linguists like Steele et al.
(198: 38), Lyons (1977: 452) and Halliday (1994: 357) do not agree with this viewpoint. Palmer
(1979: 36-37) takes an open attitude towards it. He argues that modality definition range far
beyond Lyons’ notion and suggests that it is reasonable to recognize the third type, dynamic
modality that “refers to events that are not actualized, events that have not taken place but are
merely potential.”
Palmer (1986: 102, 1990: 36, 2001: 10, 2003: 9) identifies dynamic modality as “what is
possible or necessary in the circumstance.” Therefore, it can be seen that Palmer’s terms of
dynamic modality covers a wide scope of meanings. However, in this study the researcher only
focuses on deontic modality.
The three main types of modality that will be discussed in this study are:
(1.21) Epistemic: They may/must be in the office. (Palmer, 2003: 9)
(1.22) Deontic: They can/must come in now. (ibid.)
(1.23) Dynamic: They can run very fast. (ibid.)

23
Table 1.1. below summaries the basic types of modality on which the distinctions are
principally drawn by Coat (1983), van der Auwera & Plungian (1998), Quirk et al. (1985),
Biber et al. (1999), Palmer (2001), and Huddleston & Geoffrey et al. (2002).
Epistemic
modality
Deontic
necessity
Deontic
possibility
Ability Obligation Permission Willingness
or Volition
Epistemic Deontic Coat (1983)
Extrinsic
Intrinsic Quirk et al.
(1985)
Epistemic
non-
epistemic van der
Auwera &
Plungian
(1998)
Participant-
internal
Participant-external Participant- internal Participant-
external
Non- deontic Deontic
Propositional modality Event modality
Palmer
(2001)
Evidental Epistemic Dynamic Deontic Dynamic
Epistemic
Dynamic Deontic Dynamic Huddleston
& Geoffrey
et al. (2002)
Table 1.1. Types of modality (Source: Depraetere & Reed, 2006: 280)
Based on the above classification, Vietnamese linguists (Nguyễn Văn Hiệp (2001, 2008), Ngũ
Thiện Hùng (2003), Phạm Thị Ly (2003), Nguyễn Thị Cẩm Thanh (2003), Bùi Trọng Ngoãn
(2004)) propose three main types of modality for Vietnamese as tình thái nhận thức
(epistemic modality) and tình thái chức phận/ đạo nghĩa (deontic modality) and tình thái
trạng huống (dynamic modality), as illustrated by (1.23), (1.24) and (1.25) below:
(1.23) Nó có thể uống rượu. (epistemic modality) (Nguyễn Văn Hiệp, 2008: 113)
(1.24) Nó được phép uống rượu. (deontic modality) (ibid.)
(1.25) Nó biết uống rượu. (dynamic modality) (ibid.)

24
This is a traditional classification and it is commonly applied in linguistics as Palmer (2004)
states. This study is based on this classical classification with the main focus on deontic
modality. Therefore, my efforts only concentrate on deontic modality with the purpose to
describe and analyze the linguistic means of deontic modality throughout deontic modal verbs,
hedge verbs, performative verbs, etc. in English and Vietnamese. These will be mentioned in
details in the next Chapters.
1.3. Deontic modality
1.3.1. Definitions and various viewpoints
The term “deontic” is derived from the Greek word déon that means “binding or duty.” (Li,
2004: 13). According to van der Auwera & Plungian (1998: 81), the term deontic modality “is a
cover term for a range of semantic notions such as ability, possibility, hypothetically,
obligation, and imperative meaning.” It “refers to circumstances that are external to the
participant as some person(s), often the speaker, and/or as some social or ethical norms
permitting or obliging the participant to engage in the state of affairs”. As suggested by the
definition, deontic modality is “sub domain or special case of participant external modality.” It
is a hyponym and a participant external a super-ordinate or hyperonym. In the deontic domain,
permission is deontic possibility, as exemplified by (1.26) and obligation deontic necessity as
shown in (1.27) below:
(1.26) John may leave now. (van der Auwera & Plungian, 1998: 81)
(1.27) John must leave now. (ibid.)
Deontic modality, as Lyons (1977: 823) describes, “is concerned with the necessity or
possibility of acts performed by morally responsible agents”. Although the term “necessity” and
“possibility” appear in Lyons’ definition, “obligation” and “permission” are the main labels
used in his discussion. Deontic modality can be exemplified by (1.28), which can be interpreted
as “I (hereby) permit you to open the door” and (1.29) can be paraphrased as “I (hereby) impose
upon you the obligation to open the door.
(1.28) You may open the door. (Lyons 1977: 832)
(1.29) You must open the door. (ibid.)

25
According to Palmer (1986), “deontic” is used in a wide sense to include those types of
modality that are characterized by Jespersen (1909) as “containing an element of will”. It is
obvious, however, that the meanings associated with deontic modality are very different from
those of epistemic modality. The latter is concerned with belief, knowledge, truth, etc. in
relation to proposition, whereas the former is concerned with action, by others and by the
speaker himself. It might well be argued that there are two quite distinct categories. For
instance:
(1.30) In English He will come tomorrow. (Palmer, 1986: 96)
(1.31) In Vietnamese Anh ta sẽ đến trong ngày mai. (Nguyễn văn Hiệp 2008: 113)
These examples are understood as actions of obligations or promises that “he will come”.
As Nguyễn văn Hiệp (2008: 117) states, Vietnamese linguists consider deontic modality based
on Lyons’ definition: “deontic modality is concerned with the necessity or possibility of acts
performed by morally responsible agents.” According to Lyons’ definition, deontic modality
expresses obligatives or prohibitives and permissives or ability. For example:
(1.32) Chị có thể thức đến bao lâu tùy ý chị. (Nguyễn văn Hiệp 2008: 113)
(You can stay up as long as you want.)
(1.33) Con phải đi học. (ibid.)
(You must go to school.)
Example (1.32) implies that the hearer can do the action as she/he wants. Example (1.33) is a
request that expresses the obligative of a mother for a child with the utterance the hearer must
do the action “going to school”. This expresses the intention of the speaker to the hearer.
Discussing deontic modality in Vietnamese, Duffield (1999: 4-5) claims that it is important to
highlight one further distinction referring to the English modal auxiliary can that can be
understood in terms of deontic meanings i.e., được/ được phép. This is syntactically
distinguished: the deontic version appearing, like English, in preverbal position, the abilitative
version clause-finally, as illustrated in (1.33) below:
(1.33) Ông Quang được phép mua cái nhà. (Duffield, 1999: 4-5)
(Quang was allowed to buy a house.) - deontic modality (permission)

26
In summary, in this part, the author has discussed major viewpoints on the definitions of the
linguists. It can be said that their opinions are practical and meaningful, and it is indeed
necessary for our study on deontic modality. Judging from the various works on deontic
modality quoted throughout the research, deontic modality seems to be what one might consider
to be the truly basic type of modality. This is not surprising as Bybee et al. (1994: 195) states:
“Deontic modality is considered as a functional analysis of the communicative needs
language that fulfill as a tool of social interaction and, clearly shows the expression of
laying an obligation or granting a permission is the basis for formulating social norms
of various kinds, the existence of which is in turn the prerequisite for the survival and
well-being of a collective social entity. It thus seems extremely unlikely that a language
would not possess at least some sort of very basic deontic system, a claim to which
there is, to our knowledge, no counter-evidence.”
Hence, in this study, the author has attempted to provide a descriptive account of expressing
deontic means in terms of syntactic and semantic features basing on linguists’ theoretical
background proposed by Palmer (1994: 181) and Lyons (1977). Because as Nuyts (1993: 933-
969) states, their works are widely accepted and acknowledged as the most semantically
fundamental modality, and the most important factor is that Palmer’s and Lyons’ theoretical
framework for deontic modality (commissives, volitives and directives) have not been studied in
details in comparison with Vietnamese.
1.3.2. Types of deontic modality
Lyons (1977: 792-3) suggests the types of deontic modality as a distinction between subjective
and objective modality. Nevertheless, he has not pointed out any details about this distinction.
According to an early opinion of his, in terms of the source or cause of the obligation and
permission, it is possible to distinguish different types of deontic modality. This distinction is
called “deontic source” that is referred to the speaker. In this case, the deontic modality is
considered as subjective. In the cases of conveying to somebody else, an institution, moral or
social norms, the deontic modality is considered as objective. However, with the main purpose
of our study, and with the usage of corpus-based method, the applying Lyons’ classification can
not really be exploited all linguistic means on deontic modality. It is extremely difficult to
distinct subjective or objective deontic modality. In this study, the theoretical framework for

27
classification of deontic modality by Palmer (1986: 95-98, 1994: 181) is chosen because
Palmer’s classification of deontic modality is quite clear, varied, realistic and it can be applied
widely in linguistics in particular and over the world in general; and one of the most important
factors of this classification is that it has not been explored in details in previous works in both
English and Vietnamese languages. Thus, it would be helpful to exemplify them clearly here,
and a classification of Palmer on deontic modality can be divided into three types i.e.,
commissives, volitives with the two sub-types (imprecatives and optatives), and directives
with the seven sub-types (deliberatives, imperatives, jussives, obligatives, permissives,
precatives and prohibitives), as illustrated in Table 1.2 below:
Deontic modality
Commissives:
promises or threats
All elections shall take place on schedule.
Directives:
requests,
commands,
instructions
 Deliberative: asks whether something
should be done, e.g. Should we go to
the market?
 Imperative: expressing commands,
e.g. Pass me the salt!
 Jussive: indicates commands,
permission or agreement with a
request, e.g. Why don't you pass me
the salt.
 Obligative: signals the speaker’s
estimation of the necessity, e.g. You
must/have to come tomorrow
 Permissive: indicates that the action is
permitted, e.g. You may come inside.
 Precative: signifies requests, e.g. Will
you pass me the salt?
 Prohibitive: indicates that the action
of the verb is not permitted, e.g. You
can't come in! or Don’t you go?
Volitives:
desires, wishes or
fears
 Imprecative: indicates a desire for a
threatening event to occur, e.g. May he
lose the race.
 Optative: indicates wishing or hoping
for an event to occur, e.g. I hope I win
the race.
Table 1.2. Palmer’s theoretical framework for deontic modality (1986: 95-98, 1994: 181)

28
Some Vietnamese linguists (Nguyễn Văn Độ, 2004: 241-285, Nguyễn Văn Hiệp, 2008: 77-79)
also adopt the classification of Palmer and can apply effectively to account for Vietnamese
modality. They offer three most popular types of Vietnamese deontic modality basing on
Palmer’s theory i.e. tình thái cam kết/ hứa hẹn (commissive modality), tình thái cầu khiến
(directive modality) (with in the seven sub-types i.e. yêu cầu (deliberatives), mệnh lệnh
(imperatives), khích lệ (jussives), ép buộc (obligatives), cho phép (permissives), khẩn cầu
(precatives), cấm đoán (prohibitives) and tình thái ý nguyện (volitive modality) within the
two sub-types i.e. không mong muốn/ nguyền rủa (imprecatives) and ước vọng/ mong mỏi
(optatives). Types of deontic modality in English and Vietnamese are described and analyzed in
details in 1.4 and 1.5 as follows:
1.4. Types of deontic modality in English
1.4.1. Commissives
According to Palmer (1994: 181), commissives “connote the speaker's expressed commitment
such as a promise or a threat, to bring about the proposition expressed by the utterance”, as in
example (1.34) below:
(1.34) All elections shall take place on schedule. (Palmer, 1994: 181)
The above example is understood as the speaker own commitment to avoid delays. Thus, this
statement is considered as a commitment.
Commissives are defined by Searle (1983: 166) as “where we commit ourselves to doing
things”, i.e., promises and threats (and the only difference among hearer’s meanings seems to
be in what the hearer wants). These are rarely expressed by a specific grammatical form and are
not stricted with deontic, though in English shall with 2nd
and 3rd
forms are clear. For example:
(1.35) You shall go to the circus. (Searle, 1983: 166)
(1.36) John shall have the book tomorrow. (ibid.)
Here the speaker commits himself to ensuring that the event takes place: “he promises to
arrange that the person addressed will go to the circus and that John will receive the book.”

29
Quirk et al. (1985: 230) also explain that shall is used with 2nd
or 3rd
person subjects
specifically signals a way of expressing the speaker’s promise as in (1.37), either in granting a
favour or a threat, as exemplified by (1.38) as follows:
(1.37) She shall get her money as soon as she has earned it. (Quirk et al., 1985: 230)
(1.38) He shall be punished if he disobeys. (ibid.)
Palmer (1986: 106) claims that English also uses shall in the interrogative. This is different
again, for although it is formally the interrogative of a commissive (where we commit ourselves
to do something), it neither asks for information nor a request, a commitment from the hearer:
Shall I come in? would not mean either “Is it the case that I promise to come in?” or “Do you
promise that I shall come in?”
1.4.2. Directives
Directives are defined as “attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do something.” (Palmer,
1986: 97). Directive modality “is deontic modality that connotes the speaker’s degree of
requirement of conformity to the proposition expressed by an utterance”. (Palmer, 2001: 71).
Longer lists of directive speech acts have been proposed by Searle (1976, 1979). However,
these lists are not particularly relevant to my purposes. The author will rather adopt the
definition and the classification of Palmer (1994: 181) as mentioned i.e., a directive “is a term
that covers a request, command, prohibition, instruction and the like.” And seven sub-types of
directives are described in details as follows:
1.4.2.1. Deliberatives
A deliberative is a type of directives that “asks whether the speaker should do something.” e.g.
“Should I go to the market?” (Palmer, 1994: 181). According to Bielsa (1988: 146), a
deliberative is “directive mood which signals the speaker’s request for instruction from the
addressee as to whether to do the proposition expressed in the utterance.” For instance:
(1.39) Shall I water the grass? (Bielsa, 1988: 146)

30
According to Quirk et al. (1985: 230), shall is also used together with will, in some dialects of
English at least, for future time reference. When used in statements, there is no difference in
meanings between these two modal verbs; however, in this use shall occurs only with 1st
person
subjects (shall I/ we) expressing the wishes of the addressee, as shown in (1.40) below:
(1.40) Shall I/ we deliver the goods to your home address? (Quirk et al., 1985: 230)
(It can be paraphrased as “Do you want me/us to …?”)
1.4.2.2. Imperatives
According to Palmer (2001: 80), “most languages have a specific form that can be
identified as imperatives”. In English, imperatives are quite independent of the modal
systems expressed by modal verbs, or denoted by the simple form of the verb, e.g. “Come
here." He defines “imperatives are clearly directives and usually portrayed as indicating
commands.” They are closely associated with deontic modals and often considered as the
strongest of the directives, one that indicate to someone’s authority.
As Palmer claims, there are two points to be noted about the relationships between
imperatives with the modal verbs. Firstly, they can be used not only to give commands, but
also simply to give permissions or advice. For examples:
(1.41) Come in!
(1.42) Don’t worry about it.
(Come in may be interpreted as either “You may come in’ or ‘You must come in.”)
Secondly, imperatives are performative and subjective in that the speaker actually gives the
“command” in the act of speaking. For instance:
(1.43) You must come.
This example can be understood that “I said that she must come.”
According to Huntley (1984), imperatives “are sentences whose main verbs are in the form
of imperatives”. Imperative mood that can express various illocutionary forces, such as

31
advice, suggestions, permissions, threats, dares, warnings and wishes as orders and
commands. For instance, “Get well soon” expresses its illocutionary force as a wish, or
“Take a number 3 bus” is considered as advice.
Lyons (1977: 747) argues that the imperative sentences can only be, strictly, the second person,
indicating to the hearer, and never the third or first person. They do not have subject or no
obvious noun phrase. The basic form of imperative sentences is based on the form of the verbs.
We use “don’t” to express negative meaning (e.g. Don’t be silly/ Don’t tell her about that.)
Rothstein & Thieroff (1999: 111) explain that the imperative is formed with the base of plain
form of the verb and also often indicated by a special syntactic configuration. The verb in the
imperative usually is sentence initial; in other words, in imperatives the subject is not
obligatory, as illustrated by the following examples:
(1.44) Stay diversified and mainly in blue chips. (Rothstein& Thieroff, 1999: 112)
(1.45) Shut up, dear. It was Disney World though that’s what it was. (ibid.)
The imperative in example (1.44) is referred to a straightforward command for the addressee to
actually look. Similarly, shut up in (1.45) is considered an imperative, but rather expresses the
speaker’s feelings, such as surprise and in this case also something like strong agreement.
Similarly, equally formulaic expressions based on imperatives include come on, get lost, tell me
about it.
1.4.2.3. Jussives
Jussives, as Palmer (1994: 81) states, “are directive mood that signal a speaker’s command,
permission, or agreement that the proposition expressed by his or her utterance”. Palmer also
argues that imperative and jussive sentences may belong to a modal system since first and third
person “imperatives” are often simply called “jussives”. As Lyons (1977: 747) describes,
jussives are defined as a class of sentences that are related to commands. Imperatives in
languages have a distinct of imperative mood that will be a subset of jussives, as exemplified by
the example below:
(1.46) Why don’t you pass me the salt? (Palmer, 1994: 81)

32
In Lyons’s opinion, if the super-ordinate verb is in the imperative, the jussive may be used. For
example:
(1.47) Order them to come. (Lyons, 1977: 747)
(This requires the imperative ‘come’ ‘order them- let them come’
The jussives are used in the sense of let, may, or permit, as shown in following examples:
(1.48) Let me drink milk. (ibid.)
(1.49) May you irrigate. (ibid.)
(1.50) I permit you to go. (ibid.)
To make jussives more polite, adding "please" or "will you? / won't you? / would you?" and
using rising intonation at the end, as shown in (1.51) below:
(1.51) Bring me that file, would you? (Quirk et al., 1985: 827- 833)
Beside, jussives are usually pronounced with falling intonation. Adding "please" or "will you?/
won't you?/ would you?" with rising intonation at the end of the sentence softens the command,
and are considered as requests (Quirk et al., 1985: 827-833), as exemplified by the following
examples:
(1.52) Please stay in the house today. (ibid.)
(1.53) Don't smoke here, please. (ibid.)
1.4.2.4. Obligatives
Obligatives are “directive mood that signal the speaker’s estimation of the necessity that the
proposition expressed in his or her utterance.” (Palmer,1994: 181). According to Palmer (1986:
97-98), as expressing deontic necessity, must and have to have been used for laying an
obligation. In saying “You must/have to come tomorrow”, the speaker imposes the necessity of
coming tomorrow upon his hearer.
According to van der Auwera & Plungian (1998: 81), obligatives are deontic necessity. They
use a synonymous term “compulsion” to refer obligatives. Bybee et al. (1994: 184) label

33
obligation as participant-external (non-deontic) necessity. The modal verbs involved in deontic
and/or participant-external necessity are must, have (got) to, shall, should, ought to, and need.
These features and examples will be described in details in the next Chapters.
1.4.2.5. Permissives
As Palmer (2001: 72) claims, permissives can be interpreted in terms of possibility. May is used
for giving permission. In saying “You may come tomorrow”, the speaker imposes the
possibility of coming tomorrow upon his hearer.
Sweetser, (1982: 105) argues that “permissives are used with an infinitive in a conditional
clause and may plus infinitive where it expresses wish and purpose.” He describes the uses of
these modals in the conditionals and permissives. Under conditionals, he proposes the usage of
would and should plus infinitive which do not have the tense-function of denoting future time.
For instance:
(1.54) If I were you, I would not do it. (Sweetser, 1982: 105)
(1.55) If we had started in proper time, we should have been there by this time. (ibid.)
Considering permissives, he claims that the modal auxiliary may in its full meanings refers to
possibility, especially in combinations with other elements conveying its frequent meanings as
‘have permission’, ‘be allowed to’…”. Moreover, Sweetser (1993) also explains that
permissives “may use with the anomalous verb can, which implies possibility as the result of
something in the subject of the statement, such as strength, capacity, or knowledge”, as shown
in (1.56) below
(1.56) May I climb that tree? (ibid.)
Yes: You may if you can.
According to van der Auwera & Plungian (1998: 81), permissives are deontic possibility and
are easily recognized. Participant-external possibility refers to a possibility which is non-
deontic, non-participant-internal, and non-epistemic. It involves Palmer’s (1990) neutral
possibility, circumstantial possibility, rational possibility, and part of Bybee et al.’s (1994) root
possibility. Both permissives and participant-external possibility can be indicated by may,
might, can, and could.

34
1.4.2.6. Precatives
A precative, as Palmer (1994: 181) defines, “is directive mood that signals the utterance as a
request.” The precative mood is used for humble requests (in 2nd person verbs) and requests for
permission (in 1st and 3rd person verbs). This can be illustrated by the example below:
(1.57) Would you please help me? (Palmer, 1994: 181)
or May I approach?
Palmer (2003: 276) states that where the action does not affect the addressee, the illocutionary
force of precative is a request for advice, especially when the sentence begins with a question
word (what, when, etc.), as in (1.58) below:
(1.58) What shall I do with this stuff? (Palmer, 2003: 276)
This can be paraphrased as “What would you advise me to do with this stuff?”
Palmer (2003: 276) further states that precatives are also expressed requests in form of can and
could with others. Could is more polite than can, but has the same function. For example:
(1.59) Can/ Could you pass me the salt? (ibid.)
Besides, the structures I would like, I would love, I would really like, I would enjoy, etc. are
used to express a precative. For instance:
(1.60) I would like another glass of water please. (ibid.)
1.4.2.7. Prohibitives
According to Palmer (1994: 181), a prohibitive is “directive mood that signals a prohibition.”
It is distinguished by “the use of a negated imperative sentence that conveys a negative marker
distinct from that used in declarative sentences, or a verb form different from that of the
imperative”. As van der Auwera & Lejeune (2005: 443) state, a prohibitive is a special case of
the imperative, i.e., the explicit command not to do something. In English, the prohibitive is
very similar to the negated form of the indicative. This means that do not or don’t is added in
initial position, as shown in the following examples:

35
(1.61) I wonder if there is a warning on the packet. Do not open this and drive at the same
time. (van der Auwera & Lejeune, 2005: 112- 113)
(1.62) Burn it tear it up or both. Don’t just put a line through it saying revoked. (ibid.)
Examples (1.61) and (1.62) express warnings, commands not to do something, to refrain from
doing something. The prohibitive is absolutely appreciated before the action when it is already
taking place i.e. in the sense of ‘stop doing something!’
Acorrding Rothstein & Thieroff (1999: 113), prohibitives can be found in the other structures as
positive imperatives. They can be used with and without overt subjects. Most common, perhaps,
are second person subjects, as in (1.63) below:
(1.63) One day she said, now then John, I want to go to other school to Mr, the
schoolmaster to get a book. Don’t you move from your seat? And she got about half a
dozen of the strongest boys from standard one to guard at the door. (ibid.)
Other person subjects are equally possible, as illustrated by the following examples:
(1.64) This is not me Swan song. Don’t think it’s me Swan song. (ibid.)
(1.65) “It’s a bust”, he said. Slipping a wedge of bank notes into the bed. A few seconds
later the cops were in the bedroom: “Police, nobody moves.” (ibid.)
In (1.64) we find the regular structure with negated auxiliary, while in (1.65) we have the
incorporated negative in the pronoun nobody.
Rothstein & Thieroff (1999: 113) also propose that must is used to express a prohibitive in form
of the negative. Must in this meaning does not have the past form. For example:
(1.66) You must not leave the house today. (ibid.)
“You are not allowed to leave the house today. It is prohibited.”
In addition, the phrase be to is close in meaning to must. In the negative, it can be used instead
of must not in the meaning that someone has serious grounds to expect another person not to do
something. The phrases be to and be not to are also used in the past tense. These phrases are not
very commonly used in everyday speech, as exemplified in the examples below:

36
(1.67) You are not to step on the flower beds. (ibid.)
(1.68) You were not to tell anyone about it. (ibid.)
Quirk et al. (1985) claim that be supposed to is a popular non-categorical phrase and can be
used instead of must and be to in the present and past, while be not supposed to can be used
instead of must not or be not to, and can serve as a descriptive substitute for must not in the
present, future, and past, as shown in the following examples:
(1.69) She is not supposed to work on Saturday. (Quirk et al., 1985: 815)
(1.70) You were not supposed to leave the house today. (ibid.)
(1.71) He won't be allowed to do it. (ibid.)
1.4.3. Volitives
Volitives, as Palmer (1986: 152) claims, are deontic modality that expresses the speaker’s
attitudes of hopes, wishes, or fears concerning the proposition expressed by the utterance.
According to Palmer et al. (2003), the notion of volitives is essential to human experience and
also to communication. The meanings of volitives are usually discussed with reference to the
domain of modality. This will involve two aspects, which are interrelated i.e., the meanings of
volitives with reference to other modal meanings in the general categorizations of the field of
modality and the identification of important characteristics of the two types of volitives:
imprecatives and optatives.
1.4.3.1. Imprecatives
In Palmer (1986: 152) defines, an imprecative “is volitive mood that signals the speaker's wish
that an unfavorable proposition will come about”. Saying in another way, the imprecative is
used to wish misfortune upon others, as in “May he not see.” (Palmer et al., 2003: 116-125).
Palmer (1986, 2003, 2005) points out that in English it is rare to say about imprecative except
the using of the modal verbs may not, would not or phrases it is not possible to…, it may not be
able to…, I’m afraid …, or the use of prefixes before verbs such as, un, mis, … that indicates
some kind of negative belief that the event is unlikely or impossible. For instance:
[
(1.72) Fred may be unmarried. (Palmer et al., 2003: 116-125)
(1.73) I’m afraid he won’t find the road. (ibid.)

37
1.4.3.2. Optatives
According to Palmer (1986: 117-118), an optative is volitive mood that signals wishing or
hoping, as exemplified in the following examples:
(1.74) May he still be alive. (ibid.)
(1.75) Would he were still alive! (ibid.)
Palmer (1986: 152-158) explains that there is a relevant distinction between wish and hope.
This is essentially the same as that between “unreal” and “real” in conditional sentences. With
unreal conditionals and wishes, the speaker refers some kind of negative belief that the event is
unlikely or impossible, while with real conditionals and wishes, the speaker indicates the
possibility completely. Moreover, in subordinate clauses the grammatical distinction between
hope and wish is expressed in the same way as that of real and unreal conditionals by the use of
changes of tenses. This is clearly illustrated in the following examples, with the lexical items
hope and wish. “May for a hope and would for a wish.” For example:
(1.76) I hope John will come tomorrow. (Palmer, 1986: 152-158)
(1.77) I wish John would come tomorrow. (ibid.)
The distinction is valid the time relation for future as much as for the past and present.
Moreover, wishes do not relate only to what is unrealizable, or to what is “impossible”, but it
refers to the speakers’ opinion of the possibility of the event. Bybee (1985: 171) suggests that
where there is a full set of person and number forms, the term “optative” is used. Three forms
denote significant exponents of optatives in terms of volitives, especially in spoken language.
i.e., the uses of the modal auxiliary will and of the quasi-modal be going to (gonna), and want to
(wanna).
1.5. Types of deontic modality in Vietnamese
The types of deontic modality in English analysed in section 1.4 relate to the various types of
deontic modality in Vietnamese. Our classification bases on similar classifications by Nguyễn
Văn Hiệp (2008), Nguyễn Kim Thản (1999), Bùi Trọng Ngoãn (2004) who have adopted the
classification of Palmers and applied effectively to account for Vietnamese modality. There are
three most popular types of Vietnamese deontic modality: tình thái cam kết/ hứa hẹn

38
(commissives), tình thái cầu khiến (directives) and tình thái ý nguyện (volitives). In addition,
according to Cao Xuân Hạo (1991), Nguyễn Văn Độ (2004), the author adds new categories
with that in the seven sub-types of directives: yêu cầu (deliberative), mệnh lệnh (imperatives),
khuyến lệnh (jussives), ép buộc (obligatives), cho phép (permissives), khẩn cầu (precatives),
cấm đoán (prohibitives) and the two sub-types of volitives: không mong muốn/ nguyền rủa
(imprecatives) and ước vọng/ mong mỏi (optatives). These types of deontic modality will be
clarified in details as follows:
1.5.1. Commissives (tình thái cam kết/ hứa hẹn)
Commissives are also used to express a commitment as a promise or a threat with the usage of
modal verb “sẽ” (will/shall) to bring about the proposition expressed by the utterance, as
illustrated by (1.78) below:
(1.78) Anh sẽ làm tất cả những gì anh có thể làm được cho em.
(I will do all I can for you.) (Nguyễn Văn Độ, 2004: 258)
“Sẽ” in (1.78) is considered a promise from the speaker to the hearer that “he will do that act in
his ability.”
1.5.2. Directives (tình thái cầu khiến)
1.5.2.1. Deliberatives (yêu cầu)
The deliberative in Vietnamese is a very broad and general term. In comparison with that in
English, it also includes expressions such as giving requests, asking for information or a favor.
We use this type of modality when someone asks the other to do something such as “to open the
window”, the speaker can use different ways to convey their opinions such as “Tôi/ mình sẽ ….
nhé/ được không/ ngen/ nhạ/ nha/ hử/?”, “Tôi/ mình nên …. được không/ nhạ/ đi chứ/ nhỉ?”,
“Bạn sẽ …. được không/ được không nhạ/ nhé/ nghen/nha/nhá.” For example:
(1.79) Mình sẽ đi chung xe với bạn nhé?
(Shall I share a ride with you?)
(1.80) Tôi sẽ đưa Lan đi chơi tối nay được không?
(Shall I take Lan out tonight?)

39
Sometimes, according to Nguyễn Văn Độ (2004: 258), these expressions are based on the
system of personal pronouns. The speakers tend to use plural personal pronouns. For instance,
“chúng mình, chúng ta, chúng tôi, bọn mình” instead of “tôi, mình”. When we use “chúng tôi”,
the deliberative will be more objective because it is not just one person but a group to make an
utterance. If we utter “chúng ta, chúng mình” both the speakers and the hearers try to do things
mentioned in that utterance. This can be illustrated by the following examples:
(1.81) Chúng tôi sẽ đón anh tại sân bay nhé? (Nguyễn Văn Độ, 2004: 258)
(Will we pick you up at the station?)
(1.82) Sắp đến tết rồi, chúng ta nên dọn dẹp nhà cửa đi chứ. (ibid.)
(The Tet Festival is coming. Let’s clean up the house!)
1.5.2.2. Imperatives (mệnh lệnh)
Vietnamese speakers, as Nguyễn Văn Hiệp (2008: 179) states, can use empty words “hãy” or
“đi/nào” to express imperative meanings, as in “Hãy đứng yên!” (Stand still, please!) or “Làm
nhanh đi/ lên nào!” (Do quicky.) He also states that in informal language, the expletive hãy has
a phonic variant hẵng “hẵng từ từ!.” The expletive “hãy” can be used in combination with
many verbs at the same time expressing an encouragement with rising voice in combination
with đi, as in “Hãy trả lời em đi.” (Answer my questions, please!)
According to Nguyễn Kim Thản (2007: 142), the usage of expletives “nào, thôi, đi thôi, đi nào,
với, nhé” after the main verb would make the imperatives become more plentiful, and
illocutionary forces will become strong or weak depends on the different contexts. For example,
“Em đi đi!/ Em đi đi thôi/ Em đi đi nào! (Please! Leave now.)
As Nguyễn Kim Thản (2007: 142) claims, Vietnamese speakers, sometimes, use an addressing
term or a pronoun with particles to express an imperative, as in “Ăn cho xong đi con.” (Finish
your meal, please.) or “Nam, bắt bóng nè!” (Nam, pick the ball up!). In addition, Vietnamese
speakers have various ways to express the negative imperatives: “đừng, chớ, không, không
được” (don’t), as in “Đừng/ Không được hút thuốc lá” (Don’t smoke, please!) or “Chớ động
đậy!” (Don’t move).

40
1.5.2.3. Jussives (khuyến lệnh)
In Vietnamese, as Nguyễn Văn Hiệp (2008: 177, 184) has said, jussives are also considered as a
subtype of imperatives and used in respectful relationship in combination with expletives cứ,
hộ, giùm, xin, cho, ạ, as in “Xin đưa giúp tôi cái túi xách!” (Please, pass me the bag!) or “Cứ
ngồi xuống đã nào!” (Sit down, please!). He futher explains that, to make the jussive more
sentimental, suitable pronouns (bố, mẹ, anh, chị, cháu, etc.) have been used for the subject to
indicate the second person accompanied by expletive “hãy” with particles “đi, đã, thôi, với” or
expletives “đừng, chớ” with particles “đấy, chứ, nhé” at the end of the sentence, as illustrated
by (1.83) and (1.84) below:
(1.83) Anh hãy ngồi xuống đây đã. (Please sit down!) (Nguyễn Văn Hiệp, 2008: 177)
(1.84) Cô đừng có mà đến đây nữa nhé. (Don’t come here anymore, please!) (ibid.)
Both examples are considered as commands or orders, but in (1.83), the speaker wants that the
hearer must do an act while in (1.84), the speaker wants to forbid the hearer to do an act.
Besides, as Diệp Quang Ban (2005: 228) claims, intonational patterns of jussives vary with the
attitudes of the speakers. Rising intonation at the end and stress on words can convey the
contents of orders (as in “Đi” (Go) or “Đọc to lên!” (Read louder, please!).
Diệp Quang Ban (2005: 228) also suggests that a common thing with the forms of jussives in
Vietnamese under discussion is the fact that cấm (not allowed) used to show directions or
instructions, as in ‘Cấm hút thuốc!’ (No smoking). This example can be paraphrased as “You
are not allowed to smoke here”.
1.5.2.4. Obligatives (ép buộc)
As described in English, according to Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (2000), obligatives in Vietnamese
also express deontic necessity which refer to “the action or state obliged to happen by social
conventions” or “the action which should be performed out of morality” Deontic modal verbs
which express obligatives in Vietnamese are phải (must), cần (need), nên (should/ought to).
Semantically, the utterance with these modals often functions as directives, urges, and acts of
persuasion. These modal verbs will be clarified in details in section 3.1.1 in Chapter three.

A Study on Deontic Modality Expressing Means in English and Vietnamese Declarative and Interrogative Sentences.pdf

A Study on Deontic Modality Expressing Means in English and Vietnamese Declarative and Interrogative Sentences.pdf

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