Modality in Hindi

The questions of semantics in general and modality in particular are matters of special interest in linguistics during last few decades. This subject was undeservedly neglected in the Indological literature. Lavish amount of works on the subject was devoted almost exclusively to the European languages. The purpose of the study was to fill, even though partly, the empty niche.

'Modality' is a term which is used in linguistics for marking a wide range of notions expressing attitudes of the speaker to the content of sentence. Among the aims of the study was to find out the main modal devices of Hindi and classify them. The semantic approach for defining modal mechanisms in language proves to be the most reliable. That was the reason why the system elaborated by F.R. Palmer in his research "Mood and modality" (1986) was chosen as a framework for the study. His principles with some additions were successfully applied to the analysis of Hindi language.

All the totality of the modal devices was divided into three subclasses - inherent epistemic and deontic. Each subclass has primary and secondary devices, grammatical and lexical means, which were scrutinized and classified. The "Modality in Hindi" abounds in examples taken from a vast literary corpus which may be useful for every student of Hindi.