ABSTRACT
Based on the spontaneously produced speech materials of three Mandarin-learning children during the ages of 1;07-4;06, this chapter investigates the early acquisition of degrees of modality. It utilizes materials from a corpus of spontaneous speech in order to conduct a diachronic investigation on the occurrence and development of early expressions of degrees of modality in Mandarin-speaking children. Expressions of degrees of modality not only consist of three typical words of degrees of modality; many monosyllabic polysemous modal verbs also express degrees of epistemic modality. The acquisition of degrees of modality and their expression may differ based on the distinctions among various languages. Chinese is a language with sentence-final particles. At least in regard to Chinese, modality and mood may be a continuum. From the modal verbs that only express modality to the modal adverbs that express both modality and mood and then to the sentence-final particles that include modality, they form a continuum from modality to mood.
