Mood and modality

Terms such as subjunctive and the modal verbs can, may and must are routine in linguistics, yet no earlier study had tried to treat mood and modality together as one grammatical category, covering many languages in a principled way. Scholars have offered many competing accounts of modality, and these often tie it to speaker attitude, speech acts, subjectivity, non-factivity, non-assertion, possibility or necessity. Such accounts have frequently been built around a single language.

F. R. Palmer takes a wider view by drawing on evidence from numerous languages. These include indigenous languages of North America and Australia, alongside Latin, Greek and English, and the book also considers evidentiality. Palmer examines how modality is grammaticalized, what functions it serves, and how it relates to other grammatical categories, comparing the patterns across languages.

The typological method produces generalisations and theoretical conclusions meant for specialists and advanced students alike, and the book is a substantial contribution to the study of a fundamental topic in language.