A Note on Can and May
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17161/KWPL.1808.535Keywords:
Modality (Linguistics)Abstract
This paper is an attempt to characterize the meaning difference between can and may as epistemic modals. Based on some interesting differences of these modals in their syntactic behavior, negation and past formation, the paper claims that the crucial difference lies in the interpretation bases. Only when the base set denotes the speaker's knowledge set may may be used. There is no such restriction for can.Downloads
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Copyright is held by the author.
How to Cite
Oh, . C.-K., & Seibel, . C. (1980). A Note on Can and May. Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics, 5, 67-70. https://doi.org/10.17161/KWPL.1808.535