Modality in the Romance languages:

Modal verbs and modal particles

Benjamin Meisnitzer
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Abstract1

The aim of this paper is to approach modality in the Romance languages,

introducing the Theory of Mind (henceforth ToM) into the discussion.
This has not been done so far, although it is a very useful tool to decide
whether a verb or a particle is modal or not. Therefore, modal verbs as
well as modal particles will be focused on, due to their crucial role in the
speaker’s deixis and their higher rank in the speaker’s/addressee’s deixis,
when compared to seemingly equivalent adverbials.
Bearing in mind the defining criteria for modals proposed by modern
linguistics, it will be shown that in contrast to what is widely assumed in
the literature on the subject there is no paradigm of modal verbs in the
Romance languages. From a cross-linguistic perspective, it will be argued
that the only Romance modals that are polyfunctional, having both
epistemic and deontic readings, are Span./Port./Cat. poder, Fr. pouvoir,
It. potere, Rom. a putea. Regarding the emergence of modal particles it
will be made clear that the modal particle-like lexemes in the Romance
languages do not represent a specific paradigmatically ordered class of
words as they do in German.

1. I would like to thank E. Leiss (Munich) and W. Abraham (Munich/Vienna)

for the various pieces of advice and correction as well as for the inspiration
provided by a very challenging course on modality at LMU and insightful
corrections on earlier versions of this paper, as well as U. Detges (Munich)
for all the interesting ideas generated by his lectures on the subject in regard
to the Romance languages. Moreover, I would like to thank P. M. Bertinetto
(Pisa), J. Grimshaw (Rutgers), M. Coniglio (Venice), M. Squartini (Torino)
and P. Ramat (Padova) for the interesting discussions and feedbacks during
the SLE-workshop. For additional comments and discussion I would like to
thank C. Knels (Hamburg), M. Arden (Eichstätt), T. Scharinger (Erlangen)
and especially W. Oesterreicher (Munich).
336 Benjamin Meisnitzer

1. Modal verbs in the Romance languages

1.1. Current research and findings

Despite the overwhelming number of investigations on modality, the
notion of modality is still very controversial. Recent studies assume a link
between the child’s development of the ability to assess other people’s
mental states about a state of a¤airs (ToM) and the use of epistemic
modality (cf. Papafragou 2002: 185). According to a ToM based approach,
modal verbs and modal particles are di¤erent techniques to negotiate shared
knowledge.
Few Romance scholars have devoted their research to modal verbs2
and their categorization, mainly due to the fact that there is still no gener-
ally accepted definition of the term modal verb. In correspondence to the
rather clear-cut paradigm of genuine modal verbs in German, one usually
encounters the following list of modal verbs for the Romance languages:
It. potere ‘can’, dovere ‘must’/‘have to’, volere ‘want to’, Fr. devoir
‘must’/‘have to’, pouvoir ‘can’, vouloir ‘want to’ and sometimes savoir 3 ‘to
know how to’, Span. deber ‘must’/‘have to’, poder ‘can’, tener (que) ‘must’/
‘have to’ and desear ‘wish to’; Port. dever ‘must’/‘have to’, poder ‘can’, ter
(de/que) ‘must’/‘have to’, haver de ‘will’4 and querer ‘want to’ and Rom. a
putea ‘can’, a şti ‘to know how to’, a trebui ‘must’/‘have to’ and a vrea
‘want to’ (cf. Beldarraı́n Jiménez 1979: 272; Engel/Stănescu et al. 1993:
412; Milan 2001: 7¤.). Still some scholars criticize such a list as an in-
accurate reduction of modals, arguing that there are many more verbs
used to express modality in the di¤erent Romance languages (cf. Beldarraı́n
Jiménez 1979: 272; Sctrick 1971: 118). Some scholars extend the concept
of modal verbs to what they call a semantic subsystem of modals in the

2. For a detailed overview of papers on modals in Romance languages, see Milan

(2001: 4) and Johnen (2003: 11; 33–52).
3. Although savoir can be combined with verbs expressing physical abilities, it is
mainly combined with verbs denoting intellectual capacities. The remaining
semantic component suggests an uncompleted semantic bleaching and a low
degree of grammaticalization compared with Fr. pouvoir and devoir. savoir ex-
presses mere evidentiality, and not speaker’s appraisals or judgments. Unlike
modals, savoir cannot be combined with other modals and it has no epistemic
reading. Hence, it is not a prototypical modal and will not be discussed in this
paper.
4. Port. haver de is essentially a future marker. Still, we sometimes find it classi-
fied as a modal verb, because it can express the speaker’s will, his conviction
or his appraisal of how probable he considers the verbal event.
 Modality in the Romance languages 337

Romance languages, leading to expansive inventories (of modal forms)

like the one suggested by Johnen (2003: 471) with 84 core modals and 24
peripheral modals.
Nevertheless, there seems to be broad consensus that the Romance
languages have fewer genuine modal verbs than the Germanic languages
(Milan 2001: 10; Leiss 2008: 16). Although Johnen lists more than 230
modals for Portuguese (cf. Johnen 2003: 11), most linguists agree that
only two or three of them are genuine modal verbs, according to the defin-
ing criteria for modals in modern linguistics. The largest consensus in the
literature on modal verbs in Romance languages concerns the forms that
derive from Latin posse and debe#re. According to Abraham (2002), the
criteria used to determine genuine modal verbs (in German[ic]) are: 1.
Modal verbs/MVs have to be polyfunctional, that is supporting both epis-
temic and deontic readings5 (Abraham 2002: 27¤.), 2. MVs, as they may
have the syntactic status of a full verb, may stand in (albeit highly con-
strained) combination with each other (Abraham 2002: 28f.), 3. They
must derive from an independent lexical verb (Abraham 2002: 25f.), 4.
MVs have no imperative form (Abraham 2002: 25) and 5. Non-finite
forms do not allow epistemic readings (Abraham 2008a: 333).6 These
criteria are met by all derivatives of Latin posse in the Romance languages
and by most derivatives of Lat. debe#re.

1.2. The Romance MV-derivatives of Latin posse and debe#re

When we look at modal verbs in the Romance languages in a geographical
perspective from west to east, in Portuguese we find poder ‘can’/‘to be able
to’ and dever ‘must’/‘have to’, both of which allow deontic and epistemic
readings. Whether a deontic (DM) or an epistemic reading (EM) can be
inferred, depends mainly on the specific semantic features of the accom-
panying full verb.

5. In German and Italian, perfective aspect converges strongly with root modality
and imperfective aspect with epistemic modality (Abraham 2008a: 344; Leiss
2009: 7; Pietrandrea 2005, chapters 7–8). In Spanish and French there is no
connection between modal readings and aspect (cf. Abraham 2008b: 77). The
same holds for Catalan and Portuguese.
6. These criteria are deduced from German modal verbs, because they are con-
sidered prototypical modals (cf. Hammerich 1960: 66; Abraham 2002: 22 and
Abraham 2009: 297), illustrating the di¤erence between grammatical and
lexical modality.
338 Benjamin Meisnitzer

(1) Ele pode estar em casa.7

p pr 3rd pers. m s MV 3rd pers s pres ‘to be’ inf prep N ‘home’
DM – ‘He can be at home.’ (¼‘He is allowed to be at home.’)
(t s < t e )8
EM – ‘He may be at home.’ (¼According to the speaker’s
assessment) (ts ¼ t e )
(example from Oliveira 2001: 175)
In contrast to German, the simple present in Portuguese triggers an epistemic
reading. In the epistemic reading mood, tense and aspect are specified in
the epistemic modal, this being in sharp contrast to the Germanic lan-
guages where it is the main verb that establishes a reference to the event
(cf. Abraham 2008b). To express deontic modality the speaker would opt
for ficar ‘to stay’, which does not permit an epistemic reading. The modal
verb dever also allows both readings, but with a stronger a‰nity to the
epistemic reading than poder.
(2) Ele deve ganhar (cerca de)9
p pr 3rd pers m s MV ‘has to/must’ ‘to earn’ inf ‘about/around’
3rd pers. s. pres.
5000 Euros por mês.
5000 N ‘euro’ prep N ‘month’
DM – ‘He has to/must earn 5000 euros a month.’ (t s < t e )
EM – ‘He must earn (about) 5000 euros a month.’ (t s ¼ t e )

7. Abbreviations used in this paper: acc – accusative, adj – adjective, adv –

adverb, adv conj – adversative conjunction, adv neg – adverb of negation,
aux – auxiliary, CP – compound perfect, def art – definite article, dem –
demonstrative, dir obj – direct object, f – feminine, fut – future, imperat –
imperative, imp – imperfect, ind obj – indirect object, inf – infinitive, int –
interrogative, m – masculine, MP – modal particle, MV – modal verb, N –
noun, nom – nominative, p part – past participle, p pr – personal pronoun,
pers – person, poss – possessive, pr. – pronoun, pred adj – predicative adjec-
tive, prep – preposition, pres – simple present, subj – subjunctive, subj m –
subjunctive marker, unstr. – unstressed, V – verb.
8. In the following, the notation of event tensing according to Reichenbach
(1960: 288) is used, with the symbols ts and te referring to the point of speech
(ts) and the point of the event (te).
9. The speaker would use this phrase to express an epistemic reading, unless the
context clearly favoured a deontic reading.
 Modality in the Romance languages 339

According to the ToM approach, in (1) and (2) the speaker assumes the
roles of assessor and source of information (double deixis), while the
addressee does not participate in the assessment of the truth-value. The
same examples with both readings can be found in Spanish ( poder, deber),
French ( pouvoir, devoir) and Italian ( potere, dovere). Therefore these
verbs qualify as modals in these languages.
As mentioned above, in Portuguese (cf. (1)) the speaker would use dif-
ferent main verbs to express either a deontic ( ficar) or an epistemic read-
ing (estar). The same holds true for speakers of other Romance languages:
For expressing deontic modality, in Spanish quedarse ‘to stay’ and in
French rester ‘to stay’ would be preferred (instead of Span. estar and Fr.
être). Apart from the fact that the main verb can bias towards a deontic or
an epistemic reading, the readings are strongly contextual. In Italian, for
instance, due to the semantic di¤erence between essere and stare, the first
triggers an epistemic reading (3) and the second a deontic reading (4).
(3) Può essere a casa.
MV ‘can’ 3rd pers s pres ‘to be’ inf. prep N ‘home’
EM – ‘He can be at home.’ (¼‘It is possible according to the
speaker’s assessment’) (ts ¼ te)
(4) Può stare a casa.
MV ‘can’ 3rd pers s pres ‘to be’ inf prep N ‘home’
DM – ‘He can be at home.’ (¼‘He is allowed to be at home.’)
(ts < te)
When looking at epistemic modality in the various Romance languages,
attention can be drawn to the fact that many utterances which in Italian
and Romanian express both an EM and a DM almost exclusively allow
a deontic reading (5) in the other Romance languages.10
(5) Gli può scrivere.
p pr 3rd pers s dative MV 3rd pers s pres inf ‘to write’
DM – ‘He can write him.’ (ts < te)
EM – ‘He may write him.’ (ts ¼ te)

10. Cf. Span. Puede escribirle ‘He/She can write him/her’ (DM/*EM), Fr. Il lui
peut écrire ‘He can write him.’ (DM/*EM), but Rom. Îi poate scrie with the
readings: DM – ‘He can write him’ (ts < te) and EM – ‘He may write him’
(ts ¼ te).
340 Benjamin Meisnitzer

In Romanian and Catalan, only Rom. a putea and Cat. poder can be
considered modal verbs due to the distinctive features of Rom. a trebui
‘have to’ and Cat. deure ‘have to’ (cf. 1.3). Like in the other Romance
languages, to express deontic modality the speaker would prefer a fi ‘to
stay’ in Romanian (6) and quedar-se ‘to stay’ in Catalan in the utterances
equivalent to (1).11 A general trend in the Romance languages seems to be
that the deontic meaning is expressed by the full verb.
It has to be pointed out that in Romanian a modal verb can be com-
bined with an infinitive complement (6) or a subjunctive complement (7)
(cf. Motapanyane/Avram 2001: 159f.). The use of a subjunctive com-
plement, which is more common in spoken language, is typical of Balkan
languages, while the infinitive complement is typical of the Romance
languages. There is no di¤erence in meaning.
(6) Maria-l poate vizita.
N-p pr 3rd pers s m ac MV 3rd pers s pres inf ‘to visit’
(7) Maria poate să-l
N MV 3rd pers s pres subj m-p pr 3rd pers s m acc
viziteze.
V 3rd pers s subj
DM/EM – ‘Maria can visit him.’
(examples from Motapanyane/Avram 2001: 149)

1.3. Distinctive features in the use of Latin debe#re in Romanian and

Catalan

In Romanian, due to Slavic influence, a trebui ‘have to’/‘must’ is only used

in the 3rd person singular, and therefore has no full inflectional paradigm.
Furthermore, it allows only a deontic reading:
(8) Ea trebuie să caştige
p pr 3rd pers f s MV 3rd pers s pres sub m V ‘to earn’ 3rd pers s subj
5000 de euro.
5000 prep N ‘euro’
DM – ‘She has to/must earn 5000 euros a month.’ (ts < te)
EM? – ‘For sure she earns 5000 euros a month.’? (ts ¼ te)

11. In a diachronic perspective this shows an increasing a‰nity of the modal verb
to an epistemic reading, as is also the case for may, must and can in American
English (cf. Abraham 2002: 22).
 Modality in the Romance languages 341

By contrast, in Catalan deure þ infinitive can only express epistemic

modality (10) and has no deontic meaning (9).
(9) *El nou director ha dit que
def art m s poss adj m s N m s ‘director’ V ‘to say’ 3rd pers s CP conj
tothom deu arribar a l’hora.
‘everybody’ MV 3rd pers s pres inf ‘arrive’ ‘on time’
*‘Our director told us that everybody should be punctual.’ *(ts < te)
(10) Ja deu haver entrat
‘Already’ MV 3rd pers s pres. inf. ‘to have’ P.Part ‘get in’
tothom.
‘everybody’
‘Everybody should already be inside.’ (ts ¼ te) EM
To express deontic modality the modal has to be replaced by a verbal
periphrasis: El nou director ha dit que tothom ha d’arribar a l’hora. (ha
d’ – ‘has to’) (ts < te) (‘Our director told us that everybody should be
punctual.’).

1.4. Conclusion: Are there modal verbs in the Romance languages?

In the Romance languages only the reflexes of Latin posse ‘can’ fulfill the
criteria to be classified as prototypical modals. debe#re meets the criteria
of a modal in Portuguese (dever), Spanish (deber), French (devoir), and
Italian (dovere), whereas Rom. a trebui and Cat. deure lack the aspect of
polyfunctionality. It is important to note that in the Romance languages
the readings often seem to be restricted by semantic features of the embedded
full verb. There are no aspectual constraints for deontic and epistemic
modality in the Iberian Romance languages and in French.
Modals in the Romance languages do not constitute a proper closed
paradigm, but rather resemble open word-classes. Nevertheless, the Romance
derivatives of Latin posse and – at least in some Romance languages – the
derivatives of debe#re are comparable to modal verbs for the following
reasons: They (1) allow deontic as well as epistemic readings, (2) They
can stand in combination with each other, (3) They have no imperative
forms, and (4) Their infinitival forms do not allow an epistemic reading.
On the syntagmatic level they have both lost syntagmatic variability, since
they occur at fixed syntactic positions closely bound to the main verb.
342 Benjamin Meisnitzer

According to a cognitive ToM approach, both modal verbs and modal

particles imply the displacement factor12 as well as the reference to the
source of the asserted information (cf. Abraham 2002: 295). Therefore
they can be subsumed as techniques for negotiating shared knowledge.
In the following chapter I will discuss the existence and the status of
modal particles in the Romance languages.

2. Modal particles in the Romance languages

Over the last decades, linguistic research in the study of German has led to
the identification of a small class of words which are generally referred to
as modal particles, whereas grammarians and lexicographers of Romance
languages usually have ignored the existence of such particles13 (cf. Franco
1989: 240). However, a number of lexemes in the various Romance lan-
guages might qualify as modal particles in view of their syntactic behavior
and semantic-pragmatic function, as will be shown in this chapter. The
identification and categorization of modal particles is often di‰cult due
to the existence of homonymous lexemes, generally adverbs. This, how-
ever, also holds for German modal particles.
Functionally, modal particles and epistemic modal verbs can be put on
one level, since they are used to ‘‘express the speaker’s mental attitude
toward, or belief about, what he or she is saying’’ (Coniglio 2006: 57).
Both position the speaker’s origo in relation to the statement (Diewald
1991: 250). However, modal particles, in contrast to epistemic modals,
include the position of the addressee (threefold deixis) (Abraham 2009:
284). If the complex ToM process is taken into consideration modal
particles allow the speaker to negotiate the truth-appreciation of his/her
utterance. Truth-appreciation is located in two di¤erent persons: the speaker
and the hearer (cf. Leiss, this volume). While they are similar to speaker-
oriented adverbials, they display a higher degree of grammaticalization
and have peculiar characteristics that distinguish them from this class of
adverbials. We can resort to the following criteria for defining modal
particles/MPs: 1. MPs have a homonymous full semantic correspondent;

12. Partition of the speaker into two di¤erent persons assuming two viewpoints
(double origo).
13. It has only been sporadically observed that some lexemes (such as It. mai and
poi) present peculiar phonetic, semantic and syntactic characteristics distin-
guishing them from the traditional class of adverbs (cf. Burkhardt 1985: 265).
 Modality in the Romance languages 343

in other words, they are polyfunctional (cf. Abraham 2009: 296), 2. MPs
occur in specific positions in the clause (contrary to the source lexicals they
are derived from; they have lost syntactic variability14) (Franco 1989:
248f.), 3. MPs may occur in restricted illocutionary contexts (cf. Abraham
2009: 296), 4. MPs are essentially restricted to root clauses (cf. Thurmair
1989: 44f.).15
We conclude that modal particles are full lexemes and that they are the
result of a grammaticalization process in which they have lost syntactic
mobility in comparison to the source lexemes (Wegener 1998: 37). On the
pragmatic level they can strengthen or modify the illocutionary type of
clauses and speech act operators (cf. Coniglio 2007: 138; Thurmair 1989:
49). They can primarily be found in spoken language and in what Koch &
Oesterreicher call ‘‘communicative immediacy’’ (Nähebereich) (cf. Weydt
1969: 95f.; Koch/Oesterreicher 2007: 96f.). On the pragmatic level, modal
particles have a communicative function, which is considered to be more
important than their semantic value. As we have already noted, semantic
bleaching goes hand in hand with any grammaticalization process. The
process of semantic bleaching makes modal particles lose their denotative
and referential meanwhile increasing their meta-communicative, pragmatic
and illocutionary force (Wegener 1998: 43). Verbalization strategies deter-
mine the use and the pragmatics of modal particles (cf. López Serena/
Borreguero Zuloaga 2010: 431).
The aim of this chapter is to test potential candidates according to the
criteria identified by modern research on modality. It will be tested whether
they are restricted to root sentences. Furthermore, the range of illocutionary
contexts will be specified.

2.1. Modal particles in the Iberian Romance languages

In the Iberian Romance languages there seems to be a significant di¤erence
between Spanish, Galician and Catalan, which exhibit very few modal

14. With regard to their syntactic behavior, the only generally accepted criterion
to distinguish modal particles from adverbs in German is that they are con-
fined to the middle field of the clause (Abraham 1988: 457). Since there is no
middle field in Romance languages, this criterion cannot be adopted to detect
potential modal particles.
15. Modal particles are root phenomena that are licensed in a matrix clause.
There are a few exceptions where modal particles can occur in full-embedded
clauses (cf. Coniglio 2007: 110). In this case modal particles are limited to
clauses displaying root properties and constituting independent speech acts
(Coniglio 2008: 106).
344 Benjamin Meisnitzer

particles, and Portuguese, which features several highly grammaticalized

modal particles (cf. I).
In Portuguese we can find several candidates for modal particles (cf. I),
which have homonymous lexemes, and are used by the speaker to negotiate
the truth-value with the addressee. In view of the classificatory criteria,
all these particles occur in restricted positions, in root sentences and have
illocutionary restrictions.

(I) Portuguese modal particles

Modal particle Homonymous lexeme
afinal ‘after all’ ‘although it was not expected’ Adverb ‘at last’; ‘all in all’
bem ‘so’; ‘indeed’ Adverb ‘well’
lá ‘all along’; ‘after all’ Adverb ‘there’
sempre ‘all along’ Adverb ‘always’

(11) Ele sempre/afinal vem a Lisboa.

P.pr 3rd pers s MP V pres. 3rd pers s prep N ‘Lisbon’
‘He is going to come to Lisbon.’
(12) Ele vem sempre a Lisboa.
P.pr 3rd pers s V pres. 3rd pers s adv ‘always’ prep N ‘Lisbon’
‘He always comes to Lisbon.’
(examples (24) and (25) from Franco 1989: 248)
(13) Ele lá foi para casa.
P.pr. 3rd pers s MP V SP 3rd pers s prep N f s ‘home’
‘He ended up going home.’
The Portuguese modal particles are restricted to declarative clauses and
interrogative clauses maintaining the same word order (e.g. – Ele sempre
vem para Lisboa?). They occur preceding the negative adverb or the finite
verb. A change in the syntactic position implies a change of the lexeme’s
function and of its word class (cf. (11) vs. (12)). sempre, afinal, bem and
lá express a contradiction between the speaker’s and the addressee’s
appraisal/expectation (cf. ToM), and the truth-value of the proposition is
located in both, as in (11). In both examples (11 and 13), the speaker
is unsure about what he is saying and gives the addressee a chance to
negotiate the truth-value of the proposition. The assessment of truth is
 Modality in the Romance languages 345

therefore transitive. Example (13) can also express the idea that the
speaker was not expecting the subject of the sentence to go home, thus
reacting extremely surprised or having doubts about him really going
home. The speaker wants to discuss the apparent evidentiality with the
addressee, and gives him the chance to contradict him, or to negotiate the
speaker’s astonishment about the fact that he is going home.
In Spanish we find modal particles that are root phenomena and which
always precede the main verb. They can be coordinated with each other.
(14) Yo bien te lo
p pr 1st pers s MP p pr ind obj p pr dir obj
habı́a dicho.
V past perfect 1st pers s ‘to say’
‘I told you.’
By using the modal particle (14), the speaker wants to emphasize that he
presumes the addressee’s awareness about the content of his proposition.
The modal particle bien can only occur in declarative emphatic clauses
and syntactically, it precedes the verb. The particle also functions as an
adverb (‘well’). The same criteria can be established for the corresponding
forms in Portuguese (bem) and Catalan (bé).
Contrary to Beerbom’s classification (cf. Beerbom 1992: 460), Spanish
pues is a highly frequent modal particle in imperative clauses (15), with a
homonymous causal conjunction, used in the same syntactic and illocu-
tionary context as French donc (cf. 2.2).
(15) Siéntate pues!
V imp 2nd pers s ‘to sit’ MP
‘Do sit down.’
The modal particle highlights the speaker’s surprise or impatience with
regard to the fact that the addressee has not yet carried out the proposi-
tional action, since the speaker’s assessment is that the addressee knows
what the speaker expects from him. In other words, pues can enforce the
order, but it can also be used as a politeness strategy to weaken the im-
perative aspect implied in the clause, depending on the intonation. This
use of pues is peculiar to Spanish. A similar use of the equivalents in
Catalan, Galician or Portuguese is not possible.

2.2. Modal particles in French

In French there seem to be fewer elements that might be regarded as
modal particles than in Portuguese or Italian. Only bien, donc, and quand
346 Benjamin Meisnitzer

même are used to negotiate shared knowledge or assumptions. bien as a

modal particle occurs mainly in interrogative clauses:
(16) Vous prendrez bien un
P pr 2 pers pl V fut 2 pers pl ‘to take’ MP ind art m s
petit apéritif ?
adj m s N m s
‘Would you like an aperitif?’ (example from Dalmas 1989: 232)
With the use of bien the speaker expresses his assumption of the addressee
wanting an aperitif, while giving him the opportunity to negate the speaker’s
assessment. The modal particle quand même is used to increase the expec-
tation of possible objections from the addressee, as the truth-value of the
shared knowledge has to be negotiated with the hearer and is located in
both hearer and speaker.
(17) J’ ai quand même dormi.
p pr 1st pers s aux V 1st pers s MP V p part
pres (¼passé composé [CP])
‘I did sleep.’
(18) J’ ai dormi quand même.
p pr 1st pers s aux V 1st pers s pres V p part (¼CP) concessive adv
‘I slept anyway.’ (examples from Waltereit 2006: 81)
Whereas quand même is a concessive adverb in (18), it functions as a
modal particle in (17), being syntactically restricted to the position between
auxiliary and the main verb, preceding the comment or rheme of the clause.
The use of the modal particle expresses the speaker’s conviction that the
addressee did not expect him to sleep under the given circumstances, thus
giving the addressee the chance to contradict the speaker’s assessment.
In example (17) there is an explicit reference to the knowledge of the
addressee (ToM), who, according to the speaker’s appraisal, has a con-
trary expectation. The contradiction here lies in the illocutionary act.
While in (18) the source of the truth-value is the speaker only, in (17) he
leaves a margin for the addressee to disagree and negotiate whether the
circumstances would lead the addressee to think that the speaker did sleep
or not. Unlike in (17), in (18) there is reference to a causal sequence that is
canceled.
 Modality in the Romance languages 347

Examples (17) and (18) demonstrate the subtle di¤erences between

adverb and modal particle and therefore make a definite classification a
di‰cult matter. However, the illocutionary and the syntactic restrictions
in the use of quand même as well as the assessment of the truth-value,
located in two di¤erent people (ToM), allow us to define it as a modal
particle.
In imperative and in emphatic declarative clauses we can find the
modal particle donc, which has a homonymous form functioning as a con-
junction. donc is syntactically restricted to the position after the finite verb
and is used to emphasize the speaker’s expectation that the addressee
should take action:
(19) Regardez donc!
V imperat 2nd pers pl ‘to watch’ MP
‘(Well,) Look (out)!’ (example from Koch/Oesterreicher 2007: 99)
At the same time the speaker gives the addressee a chance to contradict
the speaker’s proposition, i.e. in (19) the addressee could explain why he
is not looking. The addressee is given the chance to negotiate whether he
is going to take action or not.

2.3. Modal particles in Italian

In Italian, particles that could qualify as modals, such as poi, mai, pur and
ben, can only occur in clauses that display the typical features of matrix
clauses, i.e. in root contexts as in German or Dutch (see also Coniglio
2011). They occur at fixed syntactic positions in the clause. The only
exception is mai, being situated between the auxiliary and the main verb
like the other modal particles or following the inflected (main) verb. It
can also occupy the position adjacent to the wh-element without changing
the meaning of the utterance. Italian modal particles have homonymous
lexemes (mai – temporal adverb ‘never’; poi – temporal adverb ‘then’;
ben(e)16 – adverb ‘good’; pur(e) – adverb ‘also’). The particle mai only
occurs in interrogative contexts, mainly in wh-questions and its function
is to signal the speaker’s incapacity to answer the question as well as his
assumption that the addressee will not be able to answer either:

16. In contrast to pur(e), ben only has a phonologically reduced form (cf. Coniglio
2008: 123).
348 Benjamin Meisnitzer

(20) Cosa significheranno mai

Int pr ‘what’ V ‘to signify’ 3rd pers p MP
Future
quelle parole?
dem.adj f pl N f pl ‘word’
‘distance to the speaker’ and the addressee’
‘What will those words mean?’ (example from Coniglio 2008: 108)

poi is mainly found in wh-questions, but also in declaratives. Similar to

mai it signals the speaker’s as well as the addressee’s inability to find an
answer to the posed question, according to the speaker’s assessment:

(21) Chi avrà poi telefonato?

Int pr ‘who’ aux. V 3rd pers s fut MP V p part ‘to call’
‘Who might have called?’ (example from Coniglio 2008: 112)

It can also make the speaker’s concern or interest with respect to the in-
quired information explicit. In both cases, there is a transitive assessment
of the truth-value (cf. ToM). The particle pur(e) occurs in declarative
clauses to signal that the speaker, although convinced of its truthfulness,
has no evidence to prove that the assertion is in fact true (22). In conces-
sive and imperative clauses we find the full form (23).

(22) Deve aver pur letto il

mod v 3rd pers s pres inf ‘to have’ MP V p part ‘to read’
libro.
def art s m N
‘book’ ‘He/ She must have read the book.’
(23) Lascialo pure sul
V imperat 2nd pers s þ p pr dir obj m (lo) MP prepþdef art m s
tavolo!
N s m ‘table’
‘Leave it on the table!’ (examples from Coniglio 2008: 115–116)

In the imperative sentence (23) the modal particle attenuates the order,
providing the addressee with space for negotiation. In emphatic declara-
tive clauses the modal particles ben and pur can be combined:
 Modality in the Romance languages 349

(24) Lui aveva pur ben detto

P pr 3rd pers s V imp 3rd pers s MP MP p part ‘to say’
Nom ‘to have’
che non voleva andare al cine.
conj adv neg V imp 3rd pers s V inf ‘to go’ prep N m s ‘cinema’
‘want to’ [aprep þil def.art m s]
‘He insisted that he did not want to come to the cinema.’ (example
from Coniglio 2011: 93)
According to Coniglio (2011: 93), in such a case of coordinated syntactic
structure, a change in the linear order does not result in a change of mean-
ing ( pur ben ¼ ben pur in example (24)). Nevertheless, if both particles are
unstressed, the order pur ben is favored.

2.4. Modal particles in Romanian

In Romanian the majority of the candidates for modal particles found
in grammars (cf. Engel/Stănescu et al. 1993: 947–950) and in linguistic
literature on modality (cf. Stănescu 1989: 272 ¤.) are modal adverbs, since
they unfold a simple deixis and do not indicate the source of evidence on
which the inferential process in the speaker is based on. Moreover, there
are interjections which are used at the beginning of sentences only. They
influence the intonation and subsequently the reading of the sentence.
The only candidates for modal particles in Romanian are păi, măi and
possibly doar. They all have homonymous adverbs: doar ‘only’, măi ‘to a
greater extent’ and the temporal păi ‘later’ (from apăi < apoi).
The modal particle măi is used in imperative, interrogative and
emphatic declarative clauses preceding the finite verb. By using the modal
particle măi, the speaker in (25) expresses that there is a contradiction
between the speaker’s and the addressee’s will, according to the speaker’s
assessment. According to the ToM approach, by using the modal particle
the speaker gives the addressee a chance to negotiate the order:
(25) Dar măi lăsa-mă ı̂n pace!
Adv Conj MP V imperat ‘to leave’-P.pr. unstr ac Prep N m s ‘peace’
‘Please, leave me alone!’
The modal particle păi is restricted to emphatic declarative and interro-
gative clauses. Like măi it occurs clause-initially. It is used to express the
rhetorical character of the question and emphasizes the appraisal of the
350 Benjamin Meisnitzer

speaker as opposed to a di¤erent opinion of the addressee (cf. Thun 1984:

127), although it opens the possibility of negotiating the truth-value, which
is based on the viewpoint of the speaker and the hearer.
(26) A: Îti place
P.pr 2nd pers unstr dat V pres. 2nd pers s ‘to like’
carnea?
N s f ‘meat’ [carne noun þ a def. art. fem. sing.]
B: Păi cum nu?
MP adv ‘like’ adv ‘not’
‘A: Do you like meat? // B: Guess!?’
Finally, the modal particle doar is restricted to emphatic declarative
clauses and occurs clause-initially or after verbs of knowledge. The modal
particle is used to express the speaker’s conviction that the addressee
knows what he is asking and it can also be used to express a discrepancy
between what the speaker is saying and the expected or previously expressed
opinion of the hearer (cf. Thun 1984: 117).
(27) A: De ce spui asta?
int. adv. V pres 2nd pers s ‘to say’ dem.pron
B: Doar ştii prea bine! Ştii doar!
MP V pres 2nd pers s ‘to know’ adv ‘much’ adv ‘well’
‘A: Why do you say that? // B: You know it/why! You know
it/why!’
The speaker signals this di¤erence of opinion, giving the addressee the
chance to change his position or to contradict the speaker’s conviction
about the addressee’s assessment.

2.5. Di¤erent grammaticalization pathways and di¤erent levels of

grammaticalization of bien in Spanish and French
To conclude, in this section we will take a more detailed look at Fr. and
Span. bien in order to show that the same source lexeme can follow di¤erent
grammaticalization pathways (even within one language). Furthermore it
will be demonstrated that modal particles in di¤erent languages can be at
di¤erent levels of grammaticalization although they originate from the
same root lexeme.
 Modality in the Romance languages 351

Fr. bien can be an adverb meaning ‘a lot, to a large extent’ as well as

a homonymous modal particle. Span. bien apart from being an adverb
(source lexeme) and a modal particle (as shown previously, cf. 14), can
also function as a discourse marker (cf. 28). It is often used to structure
and arrange the discourse, for example, to close a topic addressed in the
preceding contribution (28) or to introduce a new topic, rather than as a
signal of approval of the speaker’s previous argumentation (cf. Detges/
Waltereit 2009: 44). In this function, it is a discourse marker and has to
be distinguished from modal particles, because according to the ToM
approach there is no shifting or displacement of the origo involved. At
the same time, it is not an adverb, because it does not modify the sentence
or the verb on a semantic level, like a sentence adverb, and it does not
modify the VP like a modal adverb.
(28) Bien discourse marker . . . creo que hubo un tema que no quedó demasiado
claro . . .
‘Well, I guess there was a subject that did not remain very clear . . .’
(example from Waltereit/Detges 2007: 62)
As a discourse marker bien has the function to ‘‘overtly indicate the rela-
tionship of a given chunk of discourse/text to a wider stretch of the same
discourse/text’’ (Detges/Waltereit 2009: 44). While modal particles are used
to assess and negotiate shared knowledge (cf. (14) and (29)), discourse
markers are techniques used by speakers to negotiate their further verbal
interaction (28) (cf. Detges/Waltereit 2009: 59).
In French, bien is situated on the boundary between modal particle and
focus particle. In (29), bien reçu builds a syntactic unit – a behavior typical
of modal particles – with bien accentuating the lexeme which it precedes,
like a focus particle. Bearing in mind the ToM-complex, bien opens the
possibility for the addressee to negotiate the truth-value.

(29) Vous avez bien reçu mon

p pr 2nd pers p aux V 2nd pers pl MP p part ‘to receive’ poss adj m s
pres ‘to have’ (¼passé composé [CP])
message?
N m s ‘message’
‘Have you received my message?’
(example from Waltereit/Detges 2007: 63)
352 Benjamin Meisnitzer

By using the modal particle bien the speaker expresses his expectation of
a positive answer and his conviction of the factuality of his utterance.
It occurs in assertive contexts as well as in yes/no-questions (cf. Detges/
Waltereit 2009: 45).
From the examples discussed above we can conclude that Span. bien
has followed two grammaticalization pathways: One leading to a dis-
course marker, and the other to a modal particle. Fr. bien became a modal
particle forming a tight syntactic unit with the main verb reçu and show-
ing less semantic integrity than its Spanish counterpart. Comparing exam-
ples (29) and (14) we notice that in French the semantic bleaching which
the source lexeme has undergone is more advanced than in Spanish. With
regard to Italian, we see that the modal particle ben has lost phonological
substance (cf. footnote 17), indicating an even more advanced grammat-
icalization process.

2.6. Conclusion: Are there modal particles in the Romance languages?

The aim of this section was to clarify which linguistic items in the Romance
languages fulfill the criteria in order to qualify as modal particles. Accor-
ding to ToM, modal particles are used to negotiate the truth-appreciation
of shared knowledge with the assessments of the truth located in two
di¤erent persons: speaker and hearer. The defining criteria were deduced
from studies on German modal particles, since German modal particles
are well developed and thus considered to be prototypical.
As shown in this paper, there are particle-like lexemes in the Romance
languages whose features are very similar to those of German modal par-
ticles. They can therefore be classified as modal particles. The following
characteristics are shared by all modal particles discussed in this paper:
On the pragmatic level they are used to negotiate truth-value in cases of
transitive assessments, they are root phenomena which hardly occur in
full embedded clauses, they occur in a restricted set of illocutions under
syntactic restrictions (cf. II below) and they all have a homonymous
lexeme, generally an adverb. Other features shared by the modal particles
discussed in this paper are the loss of scope and predicativity and the fact
that they have a very low degree of syntagmatic variability compared to
the source lexeme.
 Modality in the Romance languages 353

(II) Overview of modal particles in the Romance languages17

Language Modal particle Illocutionary restriction Syntactic restriction
afinal, sempre Declarative and inter-
rogative clauses main- Used preceding the
taining the word order negative adverb or the
Portuguese lá of the corresponding finite verb
declarative clause
bem
Emphatic declarative
Catalan bé Used preceding the verb
clauses
bien
Spanish
pues Imperative clauses Used sentence-finally
Emphatic declarative Used after the finite
bien and interrogative verb or between
clauses auxiliary and main verb
French preceding the comment
Emphatic declarative
quand même or rheme
clauses
donc Imperative clauses Used sentence-finally
Emphatic declarative
ben, pur
clauses
Used preceding the
mai Interrogative clauses
main verb (with
Italian
Mainly interrogative compound tenses after
clauses with some the finite verb)
poi
occurrences in declara-
tive clauses
Imperative, interroga-
măi tive and emphatic
declarative clauses Mainly used sentence-
initially and always
Emphatic declarative preceding the finite verb
Romanian păi and interrogative
clauses
Used sentence-initially
Emphatic declarative
doar or following verbs of
clauses
knowledge

17. This survey does not claim to give a complete overview of modal particles in
the Romance languages, because there are still other potential candidates. The
table contains only the modal particle-like lexemes discussed in this paper,
qualifying as modal particles according to the criteria outlined above.
354 Benjamin Meisnitzer

The number of modal particles varies considerably from language to

language, and they do not derive from the same source lexemes. More-
over, the same lexeme can follow di¤erent grammaticalization pathways,
and the same modal particle can be located at di¤erent stages of the
grammaticalization process, as the cross-linguistic perspective has shown
in the analysis of Fr. and Span. bien. As the modal particle-like lexemes
are rather rare in each of the Romance languages discussed in this paper,
they do not constitute a paradigmatically ordered word class like in
German. Nevertheless, there seems to be evidence of ‘undiscovered’ modal
particles (e.g. Port. cá, sim, pois; Span. sı́, ya; Fr. mais and It. sı̀, mica,
proprio, vai, ma, magari, appunto, certo among others), in the Romance
languages, making further research necessary to explain their semantic-
pragmatic function.

3. Conclusion and perspectives: Modality in the Romance languages

In this paper the ToM complex was introduced into the discussion of
modality, since it revealed to be a very useful tool to decide whether a
verb is modal or not and whether a lexeme qualifies as a modal particle
or not.
The first question we intended to answer was whether there are ‘real’
modal verbs in the Romance languages and whether they form a paradigm
like in the Germanic languages. We have shown that only the verbs that
derive from Latin posse (Port., Span. and Cat. poder, Fr. pouvoir, It.
potere and Rom. a putea) qualify as polyfunctional modal verbs that fulfill
the semantic, pragmatic and morphosyntactic criteria for defining modal
verbs. Nevertheless, the restrictions concerning the selection of DM and
EM readings show that even these modals are not as grammaticalized as
German modals. The modal derivative of Latin debe#re is polyfunctional
in Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian, but not in Romanian and
Catalan. Thus Rom. a trebui allows a deontic reading only (8), whereas
Cat. deure triggers an epistemic reading (cf. (9) and (10)). Compared to
the modals derived from Latin posse, there are fewer restrictions in the
selection of full verbs to express DM or EM. The occurrence at fixed syn-
tactic positions closely bound to the main verb, shows that both modals
have lost their syntagmatic variability and have undergone a reduction in
scope. According to Lehmann (1985: 306¤.), this results in a loss of predi-
cativity, which corresponds to a loss of integrity on the paradigmatic level.
However, one or two modal verbs are not enough to form a proper para-
digm. Thus we can confirm the assumption made by Leiss (2008: 16) that,
 Modality in the Romance languages 355

in contrast to the Germanic languages, the Romance languages do not

have a real paradigm, but rather some isolated modals (cf. ‘‘muss-kann-
Urmodalität’’ which is probably a cross-linguistic phenomenon (Abraham
2009: 296)).
In the second part of the paper we have discussed the existence of
modal particles in the Romance languages. In conclusion, it can be stated
that there are a few particle-like lexemes that can be considered as being
similar to German modal particles. However, they do not represent a spe-
cific paradigmatically ordered class of words in the Romance languages as
they do in the Germanic languages (cf. also Koch/Oesterreicher 2007: 97;
Stănescu 1989: 270). Speakers often use alternative strategies and techni-
ques to negotiate shared knowledge when the addressee’s opinion counts
for the truth-assessability (see Waltereit 2006). Nevertheless, it is desirable
to pursue the investigation of modal particle-like lexemes in the Romance
languages, since there are still several potential candidates (e.g. Port. cá,
sim, pois; Span. sı́, ya; Fr. mais and It. sı̀, mica, proprio, vai, ma, magari,
appunto, certo, among others), many of which are rarely, if ever, discussed
in literature on modality.

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