A Note on Can and May

Authors

  • Choon-Kyu Oh
  • Charles Seibel

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17161/KWPL.1808.535

Keywords:

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.

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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