The commonwealth and The U.N.

The Relevance of Constructions for the Interpretation of Modal Meaning: The Case ofMust

“…35 Ibid., 44-5. 36 This is in line with the figures from Biber et al,[497][498][499][500][501] Coates,44. The conclusions from the Switchboard data are that some constructions are genuinely ambiguous, most notably the must V construction. The only construction that is predominately deontic is the must be V-ed construction, but there are only a handful of examples.…”

“…Based on a random sample of about 200 occurrences of must in the 1920s, 1960s and 2000s, Millar shows that the percentage of deontic must has decreased from 83 per cent in the 1920s and 81 per cent in the 1960s to 67 per cent in the 2000s. 44 Epistemic must has increased from 14 per cent in the 1920s and 17 per cent in the 1960s to 29 per cent in the 2000s. While a concrete answer to the question of why must is decreasing in its deontic sense is beyond the scope of the present paper, based on the data of must-constructions it seems that the answer must be sought in a closer examination of the interactions of must and its syntactic environments.…”