Slovak Modal Verbs Polysemy in Political Discourse

Authors:

Pages: 185-194

Abstract:

The paper deals with the polysemy of grammaticalized modal verbs in Slovak political discourse from the point of view of cognitive linguistics. The aim of the study is to approach the process of conceptualization of modal meanings of possibility, necessity, certainty and evidentiality in Slovak political discourse via the source domain (natural category) of grammaticalized modal verbs môcť (can), musieť (must), mať (to have). In contrast to traditional linguistics, we show the semantic relations (one meaning is derived from the other) and the motivation of a number of modal meanings.

Keywords:

cognitive linguistics, grammaticalization, political discourse, modality, polysemy

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