De Gruyter Mouton Modality in Germanic Languages: Historical and Comparative Perspectives: 99 (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM], 99)

Modality has become a much-discussed concept in recent years. However, more often than not, work in this area is carried out on an exclusively one-language basis, to the detriment both of theory and description. This volume contains papers from the 1993 International Symposium of Linguistics, held in Tromso, which was devoted to questions of Germanic linguistics, where modality lends itself particularly well to comparative study. The papers represent a wide interpreation of of the term modality, including discourse modality, subjectivity, various types of speaker-orientation, and pragmatic aspects.