%0 Journal Article 
%A Berbeira Gardón, José Luis
%T Relevance and modality
%D 1998
%@ 0214-4808
%U http://hdl.handle.net/10498/15242
%X This paper sets out to reasess some relevance-theoretic analyses of the English modals, in particular Walton (1988), Groefsema (1995), Klinge (1993) and Berbeira Gardón (1996a), and show how a unified treatment of modal verbs is possible within the framework of Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory. Before going through each of these proposals one by one, a summary is offered of the main theoretical assumptions common to all of them. In the last two sections, it is argued that a unified account of the English modals can be given if we assume that they encode that the state of affairs described in the proposition expressed is located in a potential world. This proposal draws heavily on Wilson and Sperber's (1988) account of non-declarative sentences.
%K relevance theory
%K modality
%K English modal verbs
%K semantics
%K pragmatics
%~ Universidad de Cádiz