ABSTRACT
Up to this point, we have looked almost exclusively at the semantic structures found in straightforward, positive assertions of fact. But such statements are only a small portion of the entire picture of linguistic expression. Speakers often qualify their statements with respect to believability, reliability, and general compatibility with accepted fact. The area of semantics that concerns the factual status of statements is modality. The goal of this chapter is to survey the meanings associated with modality and the resources that languages have to express modal information.
