A study on can could, may, might mistakes made by second year students at faculty of english, hanoi open university

For example the English language has at its disposal modal verbs and some other lexical devices such as modal adverbs, modal adjectives… and the Vietnamese language has modal verbs and m

Learning to express and interpret epistemic modality is not an easy task for leaners of English as a foreign language The fact shows that most of the utterances produced by Vietnamese learners of English in a formal classroom situation tend to be declarative in form and informative in function The information asserted by learners in classrooms often consists of barely descriptive facts which the speaker is completely confident about and accordingly, it is in any case above challenge, leaving little room for cooperation in conversations

In everyday life, language is used for a wide variety of functions Simple unmodified declaratives are inadequate for such subtle and significant functions as expressing feelings and judgments; making promises and rules The speaker who is confined to bare assertions is likely to be considered

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communicatively incompetent, overbearing, aggressive and rude As mentioned above, native speakers qualify their commitment to assertions They also soften and hedge their judgments and orders, boost and strengthen the expressions of their feelings and opinions in a variety of ways to reflect their perceptions of their relationship to those listening

Vietnamese learners of English need to develop this ability to express the extent of their commitment to an assertion, as well as conveying their attitudes to their listeners in a variety of social contexts All languages provide strategies for expressing these aspects of meaning, through the precise devices used differ from one to another For example the English language has at its disposal modal verbs and some other lexical devices such

as modal adverbs, modal adjectives… and the Vietnamese language has modal verbs and modal adverbs…

A number of writers have investigated the linguistic devices to express epistemic modality Palmer’s (18) study of epistemic modality is restricted to what is “systematized and organized” within the grammatical systems of languages

Palmer also excludes intonation and other prosodic on the grounds that they rarely interact with grammatical system in a systematic way/ There is, however a boarder conception of grammaticality grounded in the so-called modular view of the human mind, and in the particular, in the distinction between those aspects of meaning that are encoded by the grammar and those which are derived pragmatically through the interaction of pragmatic principles and inference According to this view the range of the grammatical devices used to indicate epistemic modality or evidence the speaker has for what he says must include a whole range of phenomena – syntactic, morphological, lexical, and prosodic Since a far greater range of

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propositional attitudes are lexicalized than are marked syntactically this conception allows not only for the study of a wider range of linguistic phenomena but also a wider range of meaning This view virtually is shared

by Holmes who identifies the full range of lexical devices used to express epistemic modality in a variety of written and spoken texts Lyons (16) also

mentions modal adverbs such as certainty, possibly as lexical devices

expressing subjective modality

This field study discusses some aspects of what is involved for learners

of English as a foreign language in mastering strategies for expressing degrees of certainty, or more technically, epistemic modality, in English versus Vietnamese

A classroom surveys show that learning to express and interpret modal meaning may present problems for Vietnamese learners of English Firstly the learners may have difficulty of accurately translating modal markers Secondly, many learners of English show the inability to appropriately hedging their utterances in a variety of contexts, and that they do not make use of full range of linguistic forms in expressing epistemic modality

There are a variety of reasons why learners of English might find this a difficult area of meaning to acquire competence For one thing, the distinction between epistemic and deontic modality is by no means clear – cut, which causes difficulty for the learners in interpreting particular uses of modal verbs

in contexts For another thing, defining the precise point on the scale of certainty which is signaled by a particular linguistic device may not be easy, particularly for a non-native speaker Moreover, all linguistic forms may simultaneously convey a variety of types of meaning The linguistic devices used to express epistemic modality also serve to express aspects of affective

or communicative meaning in a variety of different social situations In

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different contexts, a modal marker may signal a reassurance or a disagreement with the previous speaker, and at the same time it can strengthen or soften the illocutionary force of the assertion

Though earlier researches have made great contributions in helping acquire English modality usage, it is still considered as one of the most difficult aspects of learning English The topic of this study was prompt by the fact that second-year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University, especially those who majored in Translating, still have problems

in interpreting the writer’s opinion and attitude expressed by such typical

modal verbs as can, could, may, might

With the reason above, I have decided to choose to research on the topic

A study on “can, could, may, might” mistakes made by second-year students

at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University

2 Aims and objectives of the study

This study - A study on “can, could, may, might” mistakes made by

second-year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University – is focused on researching the semantic analysis of modal verbs expressed by

can , could, may, might in English and common mistakes made by English

majored students, especially the second-year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University It is aimed at:

- Studying some preliminaries and features of modal auxiliaries in English

- Indicating some common “can, could, may, might” mistakes made by second-year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University

- Offering some suggestions for the application of the study to the

teaching and learning of English modal verbs

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3 Scope of the study

There are many modal verbs in English For example: must, have

to…etc It would be interesting to research the uses of them all However, so

as to make our tasks manageable in keeping the aims of this study, within the

time allowance, it is intended that the most attention is paid to investigate can,

could , may, might

4 Research questions

To achieve the aims, the thesis is going to answer the following questions:

- What are the preliminaries and features of modal auxiliaries in English?

- What are the common mistakes often made by second-year students at

Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University?

- What can be done to improve the teaching of English modal verbs?

5 Methods of the study

To catch all above aims of the study completely, I decide to choose descriptive method and error analysis as the main methods for my study The following steps are employed in my studying process:

- Researching and collecting materials from reference books, internet, researcher’s experiences…

- Interviewing and conducting the survey questionnaires for the year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University with determination to discover their learning attitude and the difficulties have existed up to now

second Basing on personal experiences gained when I was the first major students, too

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6 Design of the study

The study is composed of three parts

Part A is the introduction which presents rationales, literature review, aims, scope of the study as well as methodology for the research

Part B is the main part which consists of three chapters

Chapter one is about the theoretical background for the research This chapter is aimed at establishing the framework of investigation It is chiefly deals with modality and modal verbs in English

Chapter two is focused on investigating the meanings expressed by can,

could, may, might and the common can, could, may, might mistakes made by

second year students at Hanoi Open University

Chapter three deals with the suggested methods and techniques for teachers and students to improve teaching and learning modal verbs/

The final part is the conclusion which presents a recapitulations of the study and provides possible concluding remarks and suggestions for further research

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PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 ENGLISH VERBS

1.1.1 Definition of English verbs

A verb is a word or part of speech whereby something or someone is represented as existing, processing, acting, or being acted upon, at some particular time: past, present or future, and this is expressed by various manners i.e progressive, perfective, etc

A verb is also a part of speech that joins the significance of other words together It does not have case-inflections, but it has tense, number and person

Unlike many other widely-spoken Indo-European languages such as Spanish and French, the English verb system is largely periphrastic Periphrastic, in contrast to inflection, is “a phrase of two or more words used

to express a grammatical relationship that could otherwise be expressed by the inflection of a single word” All English verb forms except for the simple present and simple past are periphrastic

In order to give a full description of English verbs system, it is necessary first to classify them into smaller categories

1.1.2 Classification

English verbs, according to Quirk et.al (1972) are classified into

Auxiliary verb and Lexical verb

Auxiliary Verb is divided into Primary Auxiliary Verb and Modal

Auxiliary Verb Primary Auxiliary Verb is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it appears—for example, to

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express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc Auxiliary verbs usually accompany a main verb The main verb provides the main semantic content of the clause An example is the verb have in the sentence I have finished my dinner Here, the main verb is finish, and the auxiliary have helps to express

the perfect aspect Some sentences contain a chain of two or more auxiliary verbs Auxiliary verbs are also called helping verbs, helper verbs, or (verbal) auxiliaries The primary auxiliary verbs in English are be, do, and have Modal Auxiliary Verb (also “modal”, “modal auxiliary verb”, “modal

auxiliary”) is a type of verb that is used to indicate modality-that is, likelihood, ability, permission and obligation In English and other Germanic languages, modal verbs are often distinguished as a class based on certain grammatical properties A modal verb gives information about the function of the main verb that it governs Modals have a wide variety of communicative functions, but these functions can generally be related to a scale ranging from

possibility "may" to necessity "must"

Lexical Verbs from semantic perspectives, are divided into Action Verb and Stative Verb

Action Verbs are verbs that specifically describe what the subject of the

sentence is doing These types of verbs carry a great deal of information in a sentence and can convey emotion and a sense of purpose that extends beyond

the literal meanings of the words A sentence like "The band appeared on the

scene " sounds much less impressive than the sentence "The band erupted

onto the scene." The power of the action verb lies in the meaning and

intention that they contain and how they bring direction and force to the

sentence

In linguistics, a stative verb is one that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb which describes an action The difference can be

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categorized by saying that stative verbs are static or unchanging throughout their entire duration, whereas dynamic verbs describe a process that changes over time Many languages distinguish between these two types in terms of how they can be used grammatically

In terms of their complementations, English Lexical Verbs include Intensive Verbs and Extensive Verbs which are further classified into Intransitive Verbs and Transitive Verbs

Transitive Verbs are verbs that take one or more objects Transitive

verbs can be classified by the number of objects they take Verbs that require only two arguments, a subject and a single direct object, are mono-transitive Verbs that taketwo objects, a direct object and an indirect object, are ditransitive, or less commonly "bitransitive" An example of a ditransitive

verb in English is the verb to give, which may feature a subject, an indirect object, and a direct object: “John gave Mary the book.”

Intransitive Verbs are action verbs that always express doable

activities No direct object follows an intransitive verb

In terms of morphogoly, English Lexical Verbs maybe refined as

Phrasal Verbs The term phrasal verb is commonly applied to two or three distinct but related constructions in English: a verb and a particle and/or a preposition co-occur forming a single semantic unit This semantic unit cannot be understood based upon the meanings of the individual parts in isolation, but rather it can be taken as a whole In other words, the meaning

is non-compositional and thus unpredictable Phrasal verbs that include a preposition are known as prepositional verbs and phrasal verbs that include a particle are also known as particle verbs Additional alternative terms

for phrasal verb are compound verb, verb-adverb combination, verb-particle

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construction , two-part word/verb, and three-part word/verb (depending on the

number of particles), and multi-word verb

English Lexical Verbs can be Regular Verbs and Irregular Verbs

Regular Verb is any verb whose conjugation follows the typical pattern,

or one of the typical patterns, of the language to which it belongs

A verb whose conjugation follows a different pattern is called

an Irregular Verb (This is one instance of the distinction between regular

and irregular inflection, which can also apply to other word classes, such as nouns and adjectives) In English, for example, verbs such as play, enter,

and like are regular, since they form their inflected parts by adding the typical endings -s, -ing and -ed, to give forms such as plays, entering, and liked On the other hand, verbs such as drink, hit and have are irregular, since some of

their parts are not made according to the typical pattern -

drank and drunk (not "drinked"); hit (as past tense and past participle, not

"hitted") and has and had (not "haves" and "haved")

The classification of verbs as regular or irregular is to some extent a subjective matter If some conjugational paradigm in a language is followed

by a limited number of verbs, or requires the specification of more than one principal part (as with the German strong verbs), views may differ as to whether the verbs in question should be considered irregular Most inflectional irregularities arise as a result of series of fairly uniform historical changes, so forms that appear to be irregular from

a synchronic (contemporary) point of view may be seen as following more regular patterns when analyzed from a diachronic (historical linguistic) viewpoint

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1.2.1 Modality in the utterance

In an utterance, apart from the content or proposition which conveys the information about fact, event or state, there is a component expressing the relation between the speaker with the content and the relation between the content and the reality This is known as the modality of the utterance

The English utterances

(1a) Paul is right

(1b) Paul may be right

have the same content or proposition “Paul – right” but different modal meanings that convey the speaker’s attitude to the information

In (1a) the speaker makes a strong assertion and in (1b) he makes a tentative assertion

Do Huu Chau (5: 12, 27) states that there are two semantic components

in a sentence on which an utterance in formed They are proposition and modality which can be formulated as Mod – P

Mod: Modality P: proposition

He also points out that P can remain unchanged though Mod can change, which is exemplified in the examples mentioned above

1.2.2 Definition of modality

From the Latin word “modalitas”, the definition of modality relates to manners (a way of acting or speaking), forms (shape, structure) and limits (something that restrains) The term is used to cover the linguistic expression

of these concepts other than through the modal auxiliaries:

- It will possibly snow later this afternoon

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- I am sure the plane has taken off by now

- You have my permission to come in now

Although there are many modal principles have been researched, there is hardly any unified treatment in logic, in (western) philosophy and in linguistics In modern logic, for example, one generally analyses a single

semantic value for modal verbs such as can, could, may, might in English As

these verbs are included in different contexts and are sensitive to various kinds of interactions, they can receive different values

The modal value of a statement is the way, or “mode”, in which it is

true or false Example: certainly so, currently so, necessarily so In logic,

modality usually means “logical modality”, which is the logical necessity or possibility of a statement’s truth or falsity

Nevertheless, the logic begins but does not end with the study of truth values Within truth, there are modes of truth, ways of being true: necessary truth and contingent truth When a proposition is true, we may say whether it could have been false If so, then it is contingent true If not, then it is necessarily true; it must be true; it could not have been false Falsity has modes as well: a false proposition that could not have been true is impossible

or necessarily false; one that could have been true is merely contingently

false The proposition “London is a rich city” is contingently true; the proposition that “One and one is two” is necessarily true; the proposition “Her

father is female ” is impossible and the proposition that “Women don’t give

births” is contingently false

In logic, modality is concerned with how what is said is related to the fact rather than what purpose, attitude or judgment a speaker has in uttering It

Modality in language is, then, concerned with subjectiveness of an utterance In subjective modality, speakers express the fact with their own intention or judgment The subjectivity is seen in different aspects: speakers’ commitment toward the factuality of what is said, speakers’ judgment toward

a proposition, whether it is positive or negative, advantageous or disadvantageous, etc It is modality that gives more meanings to utterances Together with fast development of semantics and pragmatics, modality has received more linguists’ concerns

Lyon (1977) says that modality is the speaker’s opinion or attitude towards “the proposition that the sentence expresses or the situation that the proposition describes”

Palmer (1986) defines modality as semantic information associated with the speaker’s attitude or opinion about what is said

Frawley (1992) claims that modality semantically reflects a speaker’s attitude or degrees of awareness of the content of a proposition

From the definition of modality mentioned above, we can see that extent linguists have one thing in common: They see that modality describes that speaker’s attitude or judgment toward the proposition and not the proposition itself

takes the entire proposition within its scope In the utterance “It may be

raining”, for example, the speaker is not committing himself wholeheartedly

to the truth of the proposition He is not making a categorical assertion, but rather modifying his commitment to some degree by expressing a judgment of the truth of the situation

1.2.3 Types of modality

John Lyons (16: 793, 825) observes that a sentence such as “He may

come next week” may mean at least two different things It may be

paraphrased by “Perhaps he will come next week” in which case it expresses the speaker’s beliefs concerning the state of affairs “He comes next week” But it may also be paraphrased by “He is permitted to come next week” when

it expresses the permission of performing an act The former is referred to as

“epistemic modality” and the latter as “deontic modality”

Epistemic modality is concerned with matters of knowledge and belief According to Givon, epistemic modality is the way a language expresses the relative validity of propositions, and this depends in turn on how the language and the culture that the language is embedded in interpreting a universal scale of epistemic choice

Givon argues that there are three kinds of propositions, typed by their inherent certainty and need for substantiation:

(i) Those with lowest certainty: These are doubtful hypotheses and are beneath challenge and substantiation

For type of proposition with high certainty, presupposition is mentioned

to refer to this epistemic modality The communicative contract treats presupposed information as assumed by the speaker to be known to, familiar

to or otherwise unlikely to be challenged be the hearer In some languages, given the contingencies of the culture, mystical or revealed knowledge is above challenge, as in traditional societies

Type of proposition with lowest certainty is known as irrealis Under this mode, information is weakly asserted, as hypothesis, possibility, probability, supposition or guess The source of the information is thus largely irrelevant, since the speaker does not intend to defend the information too vigorously against challenge In fact, often the speaker volunteers the information under the irealis mode precisely in order to solicit challenge, correction or corroboration

For those with medium certainty, Givon argues that evidential requirements are found only in the middle range of the scale, the realis – assertion Under this mode, information is strongly asserted, yet it remains open to challenge by the hearer The speaker must then be prepared to defend the information, by citing the source of evidence

Deontic modality, on the other hand, is concerned with the necessity or possibility of acts performed by morally responsible agents

Lyons (16:797) also suggests a distinction between objective modality and subjective modality

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In his words, under one interpretation of the sentence “Peter may be unmarried” the speaker may be understood as subjectively qualifying his commitment to the possibility of Peter’s being unmarried in term of his own certainty and the sentence is more or less equivalent to “perhaps Peter is unmarried” There are, however, situations in which the possibility of Peter’s being unmarried is presentable as an objective fact The speaker might reasonably say that he knows, and does not merely think or believe, that there

is a possibility of Peter’s being unmarried

Objective modality refers to reality, it is part of the description of the world

Subjective modality, on the other hand, is the expression of the speaker’s beliefs

These are two kinds of epistemic modality The semantic differences between subjective and objective epistemic modality are significant Objectively modalized sentences are statements of fact and as such they can

be denied and questioned Subjective epistemic sentences, on the other hand, express the speaker’s beliefs and not statement of fact; consequently they cannot be denied or questioned

From the approaches to modality mentioned above, a version of epistemic modality should be established on the ground of relations between the subjective modality and the objective one

1.3 MODAL VERBS IN ENGLISH

1.3.1 Concept of modal verbs

Language is not always used just to exchange information by making statements and asking questions Sometimes, we want to make requests,

auxiliaries or modals for short are one of the most complicated problems of the English verbs, Michael Lewis (1986:99) quoted Palmer’s remarks about the modals:

“There is no doubt that the overall picture of the modals is extremely

“messy” and untidy and that most linguists can do is to impose some order, point some regularities, correspondences, parallelism… This subject is not one that lends itself to any simple explanation”

Semantically, modal auxiliaries allow the speaker to introduce a personal interpretation of the non-factual and non-temporal elements of the event In other words, modals are one way for a speaker to encode modality into what (s)he says – such as ideas as necessity, possibility, obligation, etc Some of the modals may also express the same kinds of sematic colorings in the subjunctive mood

1.3.2 Morphological and syntactic features of modal verbs

Below are some morphological and syntactic features of English modal verbs:

(i) Modals do not inflect This means they have no “-s” form in the third person singular of the present tense, or no “-ing” and “-ed” forms

E.g

She can sing very well

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(ii) They occupy the first place in a complex verb phrase and

followed by the base form of a verb They do not co-occur

E.g

They can speak a little Spanish

You could have helped me finish my homework this

morning

(iii) Both the present and past forms of modals can be used in past

tense sequence

E.g

I think she may/might sleep now

(iv) They are used as operators in the formation of, for example, questions and negatives

E.g

Questions: May I help you?

Negatives: I might not come to school until Friday

1.3.3 Semantic features of English modal verbs

The primary semantic characteristics of modal verbs is that they allow the speakers to express an attitude to the non-factual and non-temporal elements of the situation This means s/he can introduce elements of modality such as possibility, desirability, morality, doubt, certainty, etc For example,

in making such a statement as “Mr William must be the oldest person in the village”, the speaker not only gives the fact about Mr William, but also indicates how certain he is about the truth or correctness of the information

through the use of the modal “must” In the case of a question, the listener’s

opinion is involved, as well as the person obviously referred to by the

sentence “What can I do?” for example, is clearly about the speaker, but is

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also equally important about the listener’s judgment or opinion Verb phrases containing a modal, therefore, are not about the facts alone, but also express the speaker’s or listener’s judgment or opinion Generally speaking, each modal is fundamentally grounded in the moment of speaking, at the point

“Now” They are present form, not in the traditional sense, but because the meaning of each modal may be paraphrased “in the present circumstances, my judgment is that it is possible/necessary/desirable that …” This is different

from the conventional view that, for example could is the past tense of can

In the consideration of meanings of modals, Palmer (1979) assumes that this is a messy area While dismissing the idea of the search for a “basic meaning” attributed to each individual modal, he believes that it is possible to search for a set of closely related meanings: “(This) must not be taken to imply that we cannot look for a fairly generalized common meaning or a set

of closely related meanings for each modal It is only when precision is demanded or invariance postulated that the notion of a basic meaning becomes unrealistic”

In another approach to semantics, it is pointed out that each modal has a fair semantic range, extending far beyond the central meanings that are indicated There is in fact considerable overlap between modals For instance,

the central meaning of can refers to inherent ability, e.g Henry can swim 10

laps , and of may to the possibility of some specific event happening, e.g We

may get a Christmas bonus this year But both modals can and may refer to a

permitted activity, e.g Paul may/can stay out all night and to some possibility, e.g The verb “shout” can/may be used both transitively and

intransitively The best approach to meanings of modals, according to Lewis (1990:103) is to look for a single central meaning while at the same time accepting that this may involve recognizing a number of marginal examples

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1.4 SUMMARY

In conclusion, Chapter 1 has given a brief introduction about English verb system, especially about modal verbs It also referred to the notion of modality and some other notions related to this Modality in language is the speaker’s attitude to the proposition of the utterance, of the utterance context and to the reality There are generally two types of modality, epistemic and deontic modality Epistemic modality is concerned with matters as knowledge and beliefs, expressing judgments about states of affairs Deontic modality, on the other hand, is concerned with necessity or possibility of acts performed by morally responsible agents Moreover, modality can be expressed by verbs and by other linguistic and paralinguistic devices Also, in this chapter, basic knowledge about modal verbs in English is provided Finally, to consolidate the analysis and comments in the later chapters, some issues related to the study are taken into account