Definitions of Modality

 Cambridge Dictionary (English Grammar Today)

“Modality is about a speaker’s or a writer’s attitude towards the world”.
 Wikipedia
“In linguistics, modality is a feature of language that allows for communicating things
about, or based on, situations which need to be actual”.
 Bell (1991): modality is a part of the mood system, which provides option for expressing
opinions on the probability of a proposition being true and its frequency (Jayanti, 2012:
27).
 de Figueiredo-Silva (2001, 1) and Salager-Meyer (1997, 105) consider modality to be
related to the assessment of probability and possibility (Laurinatyte, 2011: 32).
 Depraetere & Reed (2006: 269) claim that modality is “a cover term for a range of
semantic notions such as ability, possibility, hypotheticality, obligation, and imperative
meaning”.
 Downing and Locke (2002, 381) states that “modality is the category by which speakers
express attitudes towards the event contained in the proposition” (Laurinatyte, 2011: 32).
Downing & Locke (2002: 382) maintain that “modality is to be understood as a semantic
category which covers such notions as possibility, probability, necessity, volition,
obligation and permission”.
 Farhat (2016: xvi): modality is “a linguistic system which is a part of mood indicates the
degree of probability usuality in language proposition, and obligation and inclination in
proposals”.
 Fintel (2006: 1): modality is a category of linguistic meaning having to do with the
expression of possibility and necessity.
 Fowler (1991: 85): modality is a part of interpersonal elements that can be considered as
comment or attitude (Lestari, 2014: 1).
 Frawley (1992: 385): modality is a semantic phenomenon that concerns the factual status
of information. “It signals the relative actuality, validity and believability of the content of
an expression. It is the content of the expression that reflects the speaker’s attitude or state
of knowledge about a proposition” (Anicic).
 Halliday (2000: 356) says “modality refers to the areas of meaning that lies between yes
and no—the intermediate ground between positive and negative polarity.” Halliday (1994:
 434): modality is a broad expression of a speaker's attitude towards the situation or event
described by a sentence or about the proposition expressed by the sentence.
 Kiefer (1994: 2515): modality has been originally understood as the truth value of the
proposition logicians. It also might be construed as the relativization of the validity of
sentence meaning to a set of possible worlds or way in which people could conceive the
world to be different (Lestari, 2014: 3)
 Kreidler (1998:239): modality is people who talk about factual matters. Indeed, modality
gives the information about what is true and what is not true, what has happened and what
has not happened (Suryanata, 2016: 14).
 Lestari (2014: 7): “modality, in simplest sense, indicates a speaker’s or writer’s special
way of conceptualizing a world view”.
 Lyons (1977: 452): modality is related to the speaker's or writer's ‘‘opinion or attitude
towards the proposition that the sentence expresses or the situation that the proposition
describes’’ (Job, 2015: 13).
 Palmer (1986, cited in Frawley, 1992: 385) defines modality as semantic information
associated with the speaker’s attitude or opinion about what is said.
 Pham Khac Thu (2010: 5): “traditionally, modality is defined in terms of possibility and
necessity”.
 Simarmata (2007: 3): “modality refers to opinion or judgment of the speaker on the
content and speech function of the clause”.
 The University Course in English Grammar (Downing & Locke, 1992: 382 in Jayanti,
2012: 28), modality is one of the most important ways in which interpersonal meaning can
be expressed.
 Tonhauser (2006:22): modality is the relation between the actual world and the worlds of
evaluation (Suryanata, 2016: 14).