On the future of probability. Some conditions on the modal value of -ré

Authors

  • Guillermo Soto Departamento de Lingüística, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Universidad de Chile, Ignacio Carrera Pinto 1025, Tercer piso, Ñuñoa, Santiago

Abstract

The morpheme -ré has temporal and modal readings. In FunctionalGrammar (FG, Dik 1997) this contrast can be modelled using twooperators of different level (π2 and π3). This work proposes that modalreading needs a durative (non momentaneous) predication and thepragmatic inference that the time of utterance is contained in thatpredication. Direct and indirect interrogative constructions with ira + infi nitive are an exception in this respect, and deserve a specialtreatment. In the last section, some problems that those phenomenapose for FG are sketched.    

Keywords:

tense, modality, future, aspect, Spanish, Functional Grammar