Page 69 - Bhojpuri Verb Morphology

4.3.2 Modality

Modality is a term used in grammatical and semantic analysis to refer to contrasts in

mood signalled by the verb and associated categories (Crystal 2003: 295). The
categories of the modality code the speaker's judgements, which are concerned with

the propositional information indicated by special grammatical marking in the verb.
Modality interacts with any tenses. Modality system in Bhojpuri can be categorized in
two ways: Epistemic and evaluative. These main categories can be further

subcategorized.

a.Epistemic modality

The epistemic modality indicates the degree of commitment of the speaker to the truth

or future truth of the proposition. In Bhojpuri epistemic modality includes probability,
certainty and negation.

(i) Probability

This modality indicates the situation, that is described in the proposition is probably

true. It is marked by adding future markers to the auxiliary - 'be'. The following are
the examples:

(46)

a. 

--

I eat-DUR AUX-FUT.1

'I may be eating.'

b.

--

He home go-PERF AUX-FUT.3(NH)
'He may have gone home.'

c. 

---

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