ABSTRACT
Force dynamics is a notion developed by Leonard Talmy to designate a schematic conceptual system grounding not only the meaning of causatives, but also that of other verbs and expressions which all express in some way the exertion and interaction of forces or have meanings that can be analyzed as such, be it metaphorically (Talmy 1976, 1981, 1985, 1988, 2000, 2018). In this contribution, we will first sketch the overall structure of Talmy’s “overlapping system of cognitive organization”, before presenting the basic Force Dynamic system and its (metaphoric and other) extensions to express force relations, amongst others in the psychological and the social domain. What we especially look into is to analyze the meanings of verbs constituting the greater modal system. Subsequently, we describe the way Talmy’s theory has been integrated in more experimental research on causality by Wolff (2007) and present an overview of the comments on Talmy’s and Sweetser’s approaches to the senses of modal verbs, as formulated in formal and cognitive semantics, as well as in historical approaches to language. We end by suggesting some possible future research topics.
