A Semantic Study of Polysemy of CAN/COULD
in English Journalism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26750/paperKeywords:
Polysemy, Possibility, Ability, Permission, ModalsAbstract
The polysemous phenomenon exposes the diversity of meanings within the same lexeme, English modals auxiliaries have more than one interrelated meanings (i.e. they are polysemous). This paper describes three meanings of CAN (plus its derived form COULD) : possibility, ability and permission. The flexibility of meanings in CAN/COULD has been applied on English journals in different fields (i.e. politics, literary criticism, science-tech, sport and health).The paper concludes that the meaning of CAN/COULD denotes possibility is more frequent in the Science-Tech than in the other fields.
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Bouma, L., 1975. On Contrasting the Semantics of the Modal Auxilaries of German and English. Lingua, 37(4), pp. pp. 313-339.
Coates, J., 2015. The Semantics of the Modal Auxilaries. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Collins, P., 2009. Modals and Quasi-modals in English. Netherlands: Rodopi.
Hong, J., 2015. Verb Sense Discovery in Mandarin Chinese—A Corpus based Knowledge-Intensive Approach. New York: Springer.
Huddleston, R., 1976. Some Theoretical Issues in the Description of the English Verb. Lingua, 40(4), pp. 331-383.
Hykes, J. M., 2000. 'A Comparison of the Use of Modal Verbs in Research Articles by Professionals and Non-native Speaking Graduate Students' MA thesis,. Iowa State University: Ames.
Klepousniotou, E., 2001. The Processing of Lexical Ambiguity: Homonymy and Polysemy in the Mental Lexicon.. Brain and Language, 20 Nov, Issue 81, pp. pp. 205-223.
Leech, G., 2013. Meaning and The English Verb. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge.
Naziha, H., 2009. 'The Role of Context in Translating Polysemy. Case Study: First Year Master'. PhD Dissertation.. s.l.:Mentouri University-Constantine.
Palmer, F. R., 1987. The Englsih Verb. 2nd ed. Singapore: Longman Singapore Publishers.
Preda, A., 2013. Lexical Ambiguity Revisited: On Homonymy And Polysemy. In: I. e. Boldea, ed. The Proceeeding of the International Conferance Literature, Discourse and Multicultural Dialogue, section: Language and Discourse,. Tirgu-Mures: Arhipelag XXI Press, pp. pp. 1047-1054.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J., 1985. A Comperhensive Grammar of the English Language. New York: Longman Group Limited.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J., 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. New York: Longman Group Limited.
Viebahn, E. & Vetter, B., 2006. How Many Meanings Mor ‘May’? The Case For Modal Polysemy. Philosophers' Imprint, 16(10), pp. pp. 4-6.
Wen, H., 2013. A Semantic Analysis Of Modal Verbs In Barack Obama’s 2012 Presidential Campaign Speeches. MA Thesis.. University of Malaya.: Available at: http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/5703/ (Accessed: 15 Feb 2019)..
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Published
2019-10-23
How to Cite
Najim, S. H., & Sabir, A. M. (2019). A Semantic Study of Polysemy of CAN/COULD: in English Journalism. Journal of University of Raparin, 6(2), 86–100. https://doi.org/10.26750/paper
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Humanities & Social Sciences
