Abstract
Previous research on the development of modality, mood and aspect system has mainly drawn upon crosslinguistic data to reveal the general tendencies in semantic change (e.g. Bybee and Osten 1989; Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca 1994). These studies have shown that modality as a semantic domain is a small set of crosslinguistic gram-types identifiable by their semantic foci and manifested in language-specific grammatical morphemes. Similar paths of development of grammatical meaning from the same lexical source have also been observed in typologically unrelated languages.The present study aims to explore the grammaticalization process of modality, using the Tungshih Hakka dialect as a case study. Earlier research on Hakka dialect has focused on the phonological or historical aspects, with only a few studies (such as Hashimoto 1973; Lo (1988) [1984]) on the syntactic or semantic components of this language. Taking a corpus-based approach supplemented with informant tests, this investigation has identified sixteen modal verbs mapping out their complex form-meaning relationships. The syntactic and semantic-pragmatic behavior of the two most frequently occurring modal verbs oi and voi are then further examined in terms of their grammatical and thematic structures, subject agentivity, semantic foci and types of modality. Research results show that the polysemous usage of oi has five main types, meaning 'to like', 'volition', 'prediction', 'future', and 'obligation'. The other modal verb voi exhibits three main types, meaning 'ability', 'root possibility', and 'epistemic possibility'.Further semantic-pragmatic analysis reveals that the polysemous usage of oi involves different levels of meanings as proposed by Thomas (1995) and Levinson (1995), in which the utterance meaning ‘obligation’ of oi is made from the context. Applying Tregidgo’s (1982) notion of 'demand' in characterizing English modal auxiliaries must and may, the association of dynamic, deontic, epistemic and obligation usage of oi are explained by a single notion of 'demand'. The gradient nature of the ‘volition’, ‘prediction’, and ‘future’ meanings of oi is also illustrated. In addition, the pathway development of modal verb oi and voi is proposed in light of the unidirectionality hypothesis assumed in grammaticalization theory and the source determination found in crosslinguistic data.In the study of development of grammatical morphemes of future, I demonstrate that the apparently identical future meanings of Hakka modal verb oi and voi in earlier studies of Hakka grammar (Hashimoto 1973; Lo (1988) [1984]) have some different semantic constraints, which result from their different lexical sources and pathways of development. The complex relationship between modality and mood, both of them associated with the aspect system, has also been clarified by the comparison of different conceptualizations about modality and mood in relevant studies as well as my empirical results. However, the mood system in Chinese languages is not realized by the verbal paradigms as is the case in Indo-European languages. The evolutionary process of the modality, mood and aspect system in Chinese languages remains an unexplored territory. The results of the present study point to the following questions that merit further research: the comparative study of modal verbs in Chinese dialects, the interaction of negation and modality, lexical retention and the distribution of grammatical morphemes in present-day usage, and the interaction of constructions and grammaticalization.