This paper aims to establish the contextual mechanism for the disambiguation of English modality.After elucidating the categorizations of English modality,views on the ambiguity of modality,and the sources of and reasons for the ambiguity,the paper focuses on the disambiguation of English modality by context.It is found that the tenor of discourse,the power relationship in particular,and such messages in co-text as the source of modality,modal co-occurrence and the semantic orientation all play an important role in disambiguating English modality.
ambiguity of modalitydisambiguationmodality categorizationcontext
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
