(Luận văn thạc sĩ) AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF SEMIMODAL VERBS IN POLITICAL NEWS

However, a group of verbs which are placed between auxiliaries and main verbs can also function as modal verb in their semantic features.. Aim This study aims to investigate the uses of

NGUYỄN THỊ THẢO NGA

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF

SEMI-MODAL VERBS IN POLITICAL NEWS

NGUYỄN THỊ THẢO NGA

Đ ỀU TRA VỀ VIỆC SỬ DỤ ĐỘNG TỪ

BÁ P T ỨC TRONG TIN TỨC CHÍNH TRỊ

: : 8.22.02.01

: TS Bù T ị Đ o

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I hereby declare that this master thesis has been written by myself, and describes my own work that I have not used any sources other than those listed in the list of references

All references or sources of information have been specifically acknowledged, and are presented in the references Moreover, verbatim extracts also have been quoted in detail

This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any previous application for other degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Foremost, I would like to express my special thanks and gratitude to

my supervisor, Dr Bui Thi Dao for the continuous support of my MA thesis, for her patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge Her guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis

Beside my supervisor, I am extremely grateful to the lectures who gave

me valuable knowledge and experiences which have contributed to the foundation of my thesis

I express my thanks to my friends for encouraging me and providing

me with needed materials

I am very much thankful to my beloved family for their love, caring, understanding and nonstop support to complete this research work

of semi-modal verbs under investigation, semi-auxiliaries are the most commonly used category with a high rate, while modal idioms stand in the

lowest position In terms of semantic features, extrinsic modality and intrinsic modality are examined to recognize the speakers‘ attitude Extrinsic modality

is expressed by semi-modal verbs with 87 cases in total in order to reveal the speakers‘ judgement of the events With less frequency, intrinsic modality is presented in 67 times by semi-modal verbs so as to show the human control over the actions

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

Generally, political journalism is always the branch that gets people‘s attention over the world in general and in each country in particular because it provides the readers the political situation in every place around the world and the hottest political events Political reporters use their own languages to report the political news according to their knowledge and experience through observing and interviewing or they quote the politicians‘ speeches As Baym (Baym, 2005) stated, the lines between entertainment and factual news may seem faint while providing political updates According to Morrissey (Morrissey, 2016), political journalism frequently consists of opinion journalism, as current political events can be reported with their biased point

of view in their reporting

The reporters employed the language mechanisms to fulfil their attempts to initiate, construct and maximize newsworthiness of the news with the purpose of attracting the audience‘s attention According to Spolsky (Spolsky, 1998), ―language is regularly used in the exercise of political power‖ With the numerousness of political events and the development as well as the diversity of media channels, attracting the audience‘s attention and change their mind is becoming a highly hard mission of the news reporters With this regard, language seems to be a sufficiently effective method for the reporter in constructing the newsworthiness in their news Therefore, reading the political news requires the readers to have the knowledge not only about

political situation but also about the way how to organize the language in the news to have an overview and objective related to political news

The linguistic devices stand as the most appropriate means to make the news be newsworthy with the aim at attracting the audience and influence their minds One of the most popular ways the reporters use to fulfill their purpose is modality which, according to Palmer (Palmer, 1986), is the semantic information associated with the speaker‘s attitude or opinion toward what is said Modality is expressed by a lot of types of linguistic expressions such as verbs, adjectives, adverbs or lexical expressions Recently, modality markers, mainly modal verbs, have been investigated in a lot of research works of the linguists Historically, there have been a lot of studies on characteristics of English modal verbs or the use of modal verbs in articles

However, a group of verbs which are placed between auxiliaries and main verbs can also function as modal verb in their semantic features Quirk

et al.(Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985) define them as marginal auxiliaries consisting of four categories i.e marginal modals, modal idioms, semi-auxiliaries, and catenatives In this study, they are termed as semi-modal verbs Alternative names for semi-modal verbs are quasi-modals, periphrastic modals (Biber et al., 1999) as a combination of the marginal auxiliaries and

the multi-word verbs close to modal verbs in their meaning

Unfortunately, until now there has been little attention on semi-modal

verbs or only few semi-modal verbs have been under investigation such as have to, to be to Political discourse has been investigated by quite a number

of studies; for example, Mihas (Mihas, 2005), Bista (Bista, 2009), Fraser (Fraser, 2010), Nartey and Yankson (Nartey & Yankson, 2014) Nevertheless, they mainly concentrated on the elements such as metaphor, hedging in political communication or the modality in political discourse Accordingly,

gaps addressed in this research are about how semi-modal verbs are used in political news reports and what meanings constitute through using semi-

modal verbs that the political news reporters and the politicians hope to

transmit to the audiences

From the mentioned reasons, a study on semi-modal verbs and their

semantic aspects in the political news is conducted on the theme: An

Investigation into the Uses of Semi-Modal Verbs in Political News

1.2 Aim and Objectives

1.2.1 Aim

This study aims to investigate the uses of semi - modal auxiliary verbs

in terms of semantic meanings in the political news from CNN channel in order to recognize the speaker‘s attitude or view to the world

1.2.2 Objectives

To fulfil the aim of the study, the following objectives are to be

addressed:

 To describe the different types of semi-modal verbs and the frequencies

of usage of the types of semi - modal verbs in the political news collected from CNN website

 To investigate the semantic values expressed by semi - modal verbs used in the political news from CNN website

1.4 Scope of the Study

This study aims to focus on types and semantic features of semi -

modal verbs including marginal modals, modal idioms, semi-auxiliaries, and

catenatives used in the political news reports collected from CNN website in

2018 For the purpose of describing, semi-modal devices are collected from a corpus-based method with the help of the software: TexSTAT-2 that has been widely used by famous researchers in this field (Facchinetti & Palmer (Facchinetti, Krug, & Palmer, 2003), McCarthy (McCarthy, 2007)) The main criteria to recognize semantic features of these semi modals are based on the

theory of Quirk et al., (1985) The research is then limited to the investigation

of types and semantic features of semi - modal verbs in English political news reports only

CNN stands for Cable News Network is an American news-based paid television channel and was the first all-news television channel in the United States The numbers of political news thereby are extremely diverse and multi-style However, within the limit of time and the rapid update of the website, the researcher cannot cover all the political news from the website Consequently, only 30 newsletters of political news by the time from November 2018 to January 2019 have been collected and investigated in the thesis

1.5 Significant of the Study

Regarding theoretical values, this thesis is the first study into the modals expressions as well as their semantic properties used in the political news collected from CNN This study will make a substantial contribution to recognize and understand semantic meanings of the semi-modals in the political news in particular and in English language in general

semi-With respect to practical targets, a detailed description on the types of the semi-modals and their semantic meanings is conducted in order to achieve the main purpose that the semi-modals are used effectively Also, it provides the methods that help people to explore the various semantic meanings of the semi-modals to express their speech expected to transmit Furthermore, the findings of the research would enable the learners use proficiently the semi - modal verbs to express different meanings and the trend how to use semi - modal verbs in the political news In addition, this study will help teachers, learners of English and those who are really interested in the linguistic field understand more thoroughly the language they deal with

1.6 Organization of the Study

The thesis is organized into five chapters as follows:

Chapter 1 Introduction: introduces the rationale, aims and

objectives, the scope of the study, the research questions, and the design of the study

Chapter 2 Literature Review and Theoretical Background: deals

with the literature review, presents the previous studies related to the work, and the theoretical background related to this study

Chapter 3 Research Method: mentions on the research methodology,

research procedures, data collection, data analysis, reliability and validity

Chapter 4 Finding and Discussion: gives the findings of the study

and discussion is made based on the research results

Chapter 5 Conclusions and Implications: summarizes the

conclusions and some implications of the research, gives the limitations and suggestions for the further study

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter is regarding to the definition of the terms which are directly related to the study and the detailed classification of semi-modal verbs Furthermore, some previous studies which provide the scholarly setting

in the thesis are also reviewed

2.1 Literature Review

Like most of theoretically-based historical studies, semi-modal verbs have been investigated from the perspectives of both semantic and grammatical theories of linguistics In the latest years, modality in political discourse has not been strange subject because there has been the development of the study on political discourse in pragmatic perspectives in which many researches concerned with the different perspectives of the modals especially the semantic aspect

Boicu (Boicu, 2007) analyzes one of Mote‘s political speeches in 2006

by examining the speaker‘s use of the modal verbs in their semantic and pragmatic meanings In the Mote‘s speech, the modal verbs belonging to the two main semantic groups, deontic and epistemic are used to perform the mitigation - that soften both the illocutionary force and the propositional content of an act sequence and intensifying - that increase the act illocutionary force and propositional content - politeness strategies The use of possibility

‗might’ in the speeches indicates mitigation politeness strategy is indicated by the very use, instead of certainty ‗must’ or stronger possibility ‗may’ ‗Must‘

considered as the strongest on the deontic scale is used to express the obligation or prohibition in Mote‘s speech can indicate his unambiguous

mitigating or aggravating force The mitigating softer ‗should’ and ‗need to’

prevail over the occurrences of other modal verbs Furthermore, on the

epistemic meaning scale, only ‗can’t’ is used obviously The mitigation

politeness strategy helps to protect Mote‘s political allies faces, while the aggravating politeness strategy is used to damage his political opponents‘ faces

Shayegh (Shayegh, 2012) states that there are two dimensions to modality - relational modality and expressive modality-depending on what direction authority is oriented The relational modality is used when the authority of one participant relates to other; meanwhile, the term of the expressive modality is concerned with the authority of the speaker/writer to the truth or probability of reality Basing on the statistics, in King‘s speech (1967), through the relational modality dimension expressed prominently by a

range of modal auxiliary verbs with the prevalence of MUST, King tries to

seek the approval, support and cooperation of hearers to act together with him

in his succeeding actions while regarding the expressive modality through

mostly WILL, he evaluates the events as truth Relating to Obama‘s speech which selected from his interviews (2010), WILL is used with the most

common frequency in order to manifest the expressive modality which considers different events as the fact matters

Khalid and Zhang (Khalid & Zhang, 2013) illustrate the frequency of modal verbs as they occurred in the political speech delivered by the President Obama and then attempt to explore the speech acts of request of political

speech The modal verbs ―Can‖, ―Will‖, and ―Must‖ are selected to analyze as

a tool used by the speaker in to realize the speech act of request when he focuses on them to interact with his interlocutors The modal verbs are used mainly in two kinds of sentences, the declarative and interrogative; and the

aim of two different sentences is contrary to the internal meaning; therefore, the illocutionary forces appeared as a request said in an indirect speech This indirect speech act is essential in the political speech due to the characteristics

of the political situations and the sake of international significance and has been said by the speaker in a politeness with illocutionary speech acts

Milkovich and Sitarica (Milkovich & Sitarica, 2017) conclude that epistemic modality is used as the means for explaining the politics concerning the situation by the politicians, without taking full responsibility for the situation and their own claims Epistemic modality is used to persuade the hearers or the voters that what the speakers/politicians is right and reasonable, even though there are not often firm evidences which would support their claims The term epistemic modality is related to the use of modal verbs and modal auxiliaries, when a speaker expresses an opinion about a statement Epistemic modality is used as a hedging device when the speakers often do not make a firm assertion about the views expressed and avoid having to give

an outright answer to a question put forward by the interviewer, especially in political discourses

Regarding Vietnamese researchers, there have been a number of researches studying modality and modal markers as well as the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic aspects of modal expressions in different genres such

as political speeches, short stories, conversations, etc

Pham Khac Thu (Thu, 2010) examines the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of modal expressions in political speech by US presidents The analysis of modality markers is performed in syntactic, semantic and pragmatic perspectives The semantic characteristics of modality markers used in US presidents‘ political speech is indicated in which different degree

of certainty or engagement is expressed by the use of wide range of modality

markers About the pragmatic characteristics, the use of modality markers in

US presidents‘ speeches indicates their interpersonal roles in the dimensional message realized with the actualization of person subject in the syntactic patterns to target at one of these orientations: Speaker-oriented Messages, Content-oriented Messages and Hearer-oriented Messages

multi-Ho Van Han (Hận, 2015) has an analysis of semantics and pragmatics

of modality In his paper, he notices two notions of modality-epistemic and deontic Epistemic modality is the speaker‘s judgement of his statement or the speaker‘s evaluation of his commitment in an utterance While deontic modality is due to the obligation or the permission that the speaker hopes himself or the hearer to do

In the work of Bui Thi Dao ( ào, 2015), deontic modality expressing directive of research articles has been analyzed She has conducted an investigation into 100 e-book stories in English and Vietnamese and a contrastive analysis has been carried out in order to find out the similarities and differences of deontic modality expressing directive in English and Vietnamese Her finding shows that linguistic means used to express deontic modality expressing directive may differ in different languages, for instance, there have been no equivalences in the system of sentence or utterance particles which used in Vietnamese and English languages

So far, the modal verbs and the modality have been investigated in the variety of researches; however, there has been no research exclusively

focusing on semi-modal verbs in terms of semantic features in political news

Thus, this thesis is an attempt to meet such research need

2.2 Theoretical Background

2.2.1 An overview of modality

There have been some views on modality which are defined based on points of view of the linguists Bybee (Bybee, 1985) presents that modality is what the speaker is doing with the whole proposition and according to Halliday (Halliday, 1985), modality refers to the speaker‘s judgment of the probabilities, the obligations or so on, involving in what he/she is saying

Quirk et al., (1985, p 219) affirm that modality can be defined as ―the

manner in which the meaning of a clause is qualified so as to reflect the speaker‘s judgment of the likelihood of the proposition it expresses being true‖

According to Palmer (Palmer, 1986), modality is pointed out as

―semantic information associated with the speaker‘s attitude or opinion about

what is said‖ Meanwhile, Frawley and Charles (Frawley & Charles, 1992)

state that modality is a semantic phenomenon, expressing the attitude and state of knowledge about a proposition

In general, from the linguists‘ viewpoints, the notions of modality are not different Modality is understood as a semantic category associated with the speaker‘s attitude or opinion towards the worlds

Regarding the classification of modality, the categorization criteria also differ according to the linguists

According to Perkins (Perkin, 1983), modality is defined as the representation of either rational, social or natural laws referring to respectively (1) epistemic, (2) deontic, and (3) dynamic modality

Huddleston (Huddleston, 1984) classifies modality into three different types: epistemic modality, deontic modality and dynamic modality

(1) Epistemic modality expresses the knowledge of the speaker about the world

(2) Deontic modality calls for an action to be taken

(3) Dynamic modality indicates that the capable of an individual is to

do a certain action when the particular circumstances arise

Palmer (Palmer, 1990) distinguishes three types of modality in modal systems:

(1) Epistemic modality concerns essentially the speaker‘s judgment involving the truth of a proposition based on evidence and knowledge Thus epistemic modality can be seen as expressing the speaker‘s attitude toward propositions

(2) Deontic modality involves expressing the speaker‘s attitude toward the actions, namely what is obligatory, permitted or forbidden (3) Dynamic modality refers to the ability and the volition of the subject of the sentence

Radden et al., (Radden, Kopcke, Berg, & Siemund, 2007) distinguish

two major categories of modality:

(1) Root modality which comprises three types: disposition, intrinsic and deontic modality Intrinsic modality is concerned with intrinsic necessity and intrinsic possibility involving intrinsic qualities of a thing and circumstances, disposition modality, in contrast, includes

‗ability‘, ‗propensity‘, and ‗willingness‘ Deontic modality refers to obligation and permission

(2) Epistemic modality is defined as in tradition including necessity and possibility

In this study, the semantic characteristics are focused on the

categorization criterion of modality according to the work of Quirk et al.,

(1985); therefore, the other categories are not investigated further The authors distinguish two categories of modality

Quirk et al., (1985) state that all modal verbs have intrinsic modality

and extrinsic modality

(1) Intrinsic modality involves human control over events which concern with ‗permission‘, ‗obligation‘, and ‗volition‘ In other word, intrinsic modality maybe contributes to create the semantic content of the proposition ―Intrinsic modality refers to actions and events that humans (or other agents) directly control: meanings relating to permission, obligation, or volition (or intention)‖ (Biber

et al., 1999)

(2) Extrinsic modality does not primarily concern with human control, but rather human judgment of what is or is not likely to occur It refers to ‗possibility‘, ‗necessity‘, and ‗prediction‘ Extrinsic modality expresses the speaker's attitude towards the content of a proposition; therefore it is considered as extra-propositional

modality Biber et al., (1999, p 485) says that extrinsic modality

―refers to the logical status of events or states, usually relating to assessments of likelihood: possibility, necessity, or prediction‖

2.2.2 Definition and types of semi-modal verbs

According to Huddleston and Pullum (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002), verbs in English are divided into two main classes-lexical verbs and auxiliary verbs based on the main criterion of the inflectional morphology and their syntax They divide auxiliary verbs into two classes The first verb class is

modal auxiliary verbs such as “can, may, will, shall, could, must, ought to,

need” The second verb class is a non-modal auxiliary verb which includes

“be, have, and do”

Alexander (Alexander, 1988) defines that semi - modal auxiliary verbs, also known as marginal modal verbs, are those verbs that can function as modal auxiliary verbs Semi - modal verbs consisting of dare, need, used to, and ought to are always followed by the bare form of the main verb They are

used with main verbs, but they cannot be used as main verbs by themselves

The term 'marginal verbs' is used to refer those verbs that have the

same functions by Palmer (Palmer, 1987) These verbs are divided into two

classes, the first one is the primary verbs (have, do, be) and the second one is semi-modal such as (dare, need, ought to, used to) Both of them have a

function as auxiliaries and also as main verbs Primary verbs occur as full verbs in sentences once they are not followed by any other verbs

According to Quirk et al., (1985, p.96), verbs can be divided into three

major categories-full verbs, primary verbs and modal auxiliary verbs based on their function within the verb phrases On a gradient between modal auxiliaries at one end and full verbs which take a non-finite clause as object at the other, a set of categories of verbs whose status is in some degree intermediate between auxiliaries and main verbs are placed

The following table illustrates this gradient scale The focus of this study will be on the verbs including which are semantically closest to the central modals

Table 2.1 The auxiliary verb-main verb scale (Quirk et al., 1985)

(one

verb

phrase)

(a) CENTRAL MODALS

can, could, may, might, shall

should, will/’ll, would/’d, must

(e) CATENATIVES

appear to, happen to, seem to, get+ -ed participle, keep + -

ing participle, etc

(f) MAIN VERB + nonfinite clause

hope + to - infinitive begin + -ing participle, etc

According to the above table, the groups of verbs behave similarly to

modal verbs but also share some characteristics with main verbs includes four

categories -, marginal modals, modal idioms semi-auxiliaries, and

catenatives Quirk et al., (1985, p 236) use the expression ‗marginal

auxiliaries’ to apply all four categories In this work, these categories of verbs

are examined and grouped into the term ‗semi-modal verbs‘

2.2.2.1 Marginal modals

Marginal modal (verb) is defined as ―a verb that is, formally, partly like

a modal verb and partly like a lexical verb, also called semi-modal auxiliary‖

(Aarts, Chalker, & Weiner, 2014)

Quirk et al (1985, p.138) state that marginal modals are verbs which

closely resemble the central modal auxiliaries Marginal modal verbs that can

be regarded as the central modals in each verb have also a homophonic verb constructed as a main verb

Dare has a jumble of forms It can be used as a main verb occasionally

and in other conditions, it can be constructed as an auxiliary verb It has one

infinitive with or without 'to', for example:

1 He dared to escape (Quirk et al., 1985, p.138)

2 No one dare predict the result (ibid )

Dare can be used mostly more in negatives and interrogatives than in

positives As a main verb, the negative cases of dare are do not, does not, did

not dare but dare not or dared not as auxiliary verbs In interrogatives, do or did can be used with dare, as the following examples:

3 He daren’t escape (ibid)

4 They do not dare ask for more (ibid)

5 Do they dare ask for more? (ibid)

When dare is used as a main verb, it has all the characteristics of a main verb Dare therefore requires an object It can be followed by to-

infinitive or an infinitive without to As a main verb, it has to be replaced by

do in reduced clause constructions, for instance:

6 They didn’t dare to attack us, did they? (Quirk et al, 1985, p.139)

Also, it can occur in idiomatic construction in order to express a threatening rebuke, such as:

7 How dare you do such a thing? (ibid)

Need is a semi-modal verb because in some ways it likes a modal verb

and in other ways a main verb

When need comes as a main verb, it has -s third person singular; and questions and negatives are made with do It is usually followed by to, as the

examples:

8 He needed to escape (ibid, p.138)

9 Do we need to write that? (Swan, 2005, p 342)

But when need is used as a modal auxiliary, it does not have –s; and

questions and negatives are made without do Also, it is not followed by an

infinitive with to As an auxiliary verb, it can be used without the inflected -ed

form, illustrated by the examples:

10 He needn’t escape (ibid)

11 Need we escape? (ibid)

As a modal auxiliary, need has no tense contrast To express past time,

however, need can be placed before the perfective aspects This is then approximately equivalent to the past tense of need as a main verb, for

instance:

12 You need not have done it (ibid, p.139)

13 You did not need to do it (ibid)

When need comes as a main verb, it has to be replaced by do in

reduced clause constructions such as:

12 She needs to practice and so do I (ibid)

Ought to is a verb from of a marginal modal that can be used as an

auxiliary verb or a full verb, for examples:

13 You ought to stop smoking (Quirk et al., 1985, p.139)

14 Ought you to smoke so much? (ibid)

When ought to is used as an auxiliary, it can be negated with the uncontracted negative ought not to and the contracted negative oughtn’t to as

the example:

15 You oughtn’t to smoke so much (ibid)

The particle to that follows ought is also optional and can be omitted, in

assertive contexts; however, the to- less form is unacceptable For example:

16 Ought we (to) have done it? (ibid)

Once ought to is considered as a main verb, in this case, it may require

a complement such as an infinitive with to or a noun expression as the

following examples:

17 They didn’t ought to do that sort of thing (ibid, p.140)

18 Did we ought to have done the job? (ibid)

According to Quirk et al., (1985, p 140) used to can be used as a full

verb and an auxiliary verb It is used to discuss things which happened in the past and denote a habit or state that existed in the past It is therefore semantically not so much a modal auxiliary as an auxiliary of tense and aspect

in category It usually comes with -to infinitive and only happens in the past

tense For instance:

19 She used to attend regularly (ibid)

Used to is used both as an operator and with Do-support In the latter

case, the spellings use to and used to both occur Uncertainty of the status of

this verb is as to whether it is to be treated as an invariable form, like a modal auxiliary, or as a form with an infinitive like a full verb, such as:

20 He didn't use to smoke (ibid)

21 He used not to smoke (ibid)

2.2.2.2 Modal idioms

―Modal idioms are idiosyncratic verbal formations which consist of

more than one word and which have modal meanings that are not predictable

from the constituent parts (compare the non-modal idiom kick the bucket)

Under this heading we include have got (to), had better/best, would

rather/sooner/as soon, and be (to).‖ ((Aarts, 2011)

According to Quirk, modal idioms consist of four multi-word verbs as

well as some less common verbal constructions: had better, would rather,

have got to, be to

All four modal idioms begin with an auxiliary verb, and are followed

by an infinitive, sometimes preceded by to as illustrated by following

examples:

22 We had better leave soon (Quirk et al., 1985, p 141)

23 I‘d rather not say anything (ibid)

24 They‘ve got to leave immediately (ibid)

25 The conference is to take place in Athens (ibid)

They are not like main verbs because none of them has non-finite forms; therefore, they cannot follow other verbs in the verb phrase

They are not entirely like auxiliaries, since they do not behave as operators Only the first word alone acts as operator (for example) negative and interrogative sentences such as the following examples:

26 Hadn’t we better lock the door? (ibid)

27 Would you rather eat in hotel? (ibid)

28 We haven’t got to pay already, have we? (ibid)

29 I wasn’t to know that you were waiting (ibid)

However, had better and would rather have two kinds of negation Firstly, there is a negation in which not follows the whole expressions as the

examples:

30 I‘d rather not stay here alone (Quirk et al., 1985, p 141)

31 You‘d better not lock the door (ibid)

A second type of negation, in which not follows the first word,

especially in negative questions where an earlier statement or assumption is being challenged, for example:

32 A: Wouldn‘t you rather live in the country?

: No, I would not I‘d rather live here (ibid)

Would rather differs from central modals and marginal modals in that it

is incapable of showing active-passive synonymy

On the other hand, have got to and be to are more like main verbs in

that they have an –s form and normal present/past tense contrast as in examples 33 and 34:

33 The committee is to meet today (ibid, p 142)

34 She has got to leave by tomorrow (ibid)

2.2.2.3 Semi -auxiliaries

According Richard (Richard, 2018), in English grammar, a semi - auxiliary is a multi-word construction based on an auxiliary verb and having some of the same grammatical characteristics

Quirk et al., (1985, p.143) define that the semi-auxiliaries consist of a

set of verb idioms which express modals or aspectual meanings and which are

introduced by one of the primary verb HAVE and BE; eg: be able to, be about

to, be apt to, be bound to, be due to, be going to, be likely to, be meant to, be obliged to, be supposed to, be willing to, have to

This category doesn‘t have the clear boundaries: they might be

extended, for example, to include the negative be unable to, be unwilling to, etc

These constructions are resemble to auxiliaries rather than to main verb constructions because the first word can function as an operator in negation

and inversion rather than having do-support, for instances:

35 Ada isn’t going to win (Quirk et al., 1985, p 143)

36 Is Ada going to win? (ibid)

In one respect, these constructions, however, are much closer to main

verbs They have non-finite forms such as been going to and to be bound to,

and can therefore occur in combination with preceding auxiliaries such as in the following examples:

37 John will be obliged to resign (ibid, p 144)

38 We have always been willing to help (ibid)

Have to is the only semi-auxiliary beginning with HAVE rather than

BE, but Quirk et al., (1985, p.145) justify that have to occurs in the full range

of non-finite forms such as in modal, perfective, and progressive constructions illustrated by the instances:

39 I may have to leave early (ibid, p 145)

40 The administration has had to make unpopular decisions (ibid)

Have to can occur in modal construction and it is similar to must in

meaning It can stand in for must in past constructions when must cannot be

used For examples:

41 There must be some solution to the problem (ibid)

42 There had to be some solution to the problem (ibid.)

43 Do we have to get up early tomorrow? (ibid.)

Have to comes either as a main verb or as an auxiliary with respect to

operator constructions, such as the followings:

44 Do we have to get up early tomorrow? (ibid)

45 Have we to get up early tomorrow? (ibid)

2.2.2.4 Catenatives

Rizo (Rizo, 1992) claims that catenative verbs can be defined as lexical verbs which have a ―special capacity to combine with non-finite verbal forms according to certain fixed rules‖ This makes the catenative verbs different from the rest of lexical verbs because they are able to create catenative constructions

According to Palmer (1974, p 172), catenative verbs function in complex phrases which contain at least two full verbs; the first a catenative, the following clauses involve subordination

Quirk et al., (1985, p.146) state that the term CATENATIVE will in practice be used to denote verbs in such constructions as appear to, come to,

fail to, get to, happen to, manage to, seem to, tent to, and turn out to followed

by the infinitive, such as in the example 46:

no way syntactically related to transitive verb constructions in which the verb

is followed by a direct object or prepositional object

We may also include among catenative verbs certain verbs which resemble the auxiliary BE in combining either with the -ing participle in progressive constructions, or with the -ed participle in passive constructions, for example:

49 The girl started out/kept (on)/went on/ working

(Quirk et al., 1985, p.147)

2.2.3 The semantic characteristics of semi-modal verbs

Quirk, et al., (1985) claim that it is worth noting how closely

semi-modal verbs tend to follow the pattern of the auxiliary verbs in the kinds of meaning they convey The largest groups of semi-modal verbs are modal in their semantic function Therefore, the terminology of meanings here is the same as the one of modal verbs

According to Biber et al., (Biber et al., 1999), modality in English can

be expressed by nine central modal auxiliary verbs, i.e can, could, may,

might, shall, should, will, would and must, and a number of semi-modals, i.e

marginal auxiliary verbs and fixed idiomatic phrases that function as modals

(e.g need (to), ought (to), dare (to) and used (to) and (had) better, have to,

(have) got to, etc.)

Biber et al., (1999, p.485) formulate that these modal auxiliary verbs,

marginal auxiliary verbs and fixed idiomatic phrases ―can be grouped into three major categories according to their main meanings‖ Thus, modal

auxiliary verbs can, could, may, might denote permission, possibility and ability; modal auxiliary verbs must and should, marginal auxiliary verbs need

to and ought to and fixed idiomatic phrases had (better), have (got) to and be supposed to express obligation and necessity, while modal auxiliary verbs will, would and shall as well as the phrase be going to indicate volition and

prediction (ibid)

In this study, the semantic features expressing by semi-modal verbs are discussed based on the category of Quirk et al (1985) They consist of

extrinsic and intrinsic modality Between these two kinds of modality there is

a gradient; of course, there are areas of overlap and neutrality The extrinsic and intrinsic contrast is not only expressed by all modal verbs, but also by many of the marginal and catenative constructions

Semi-modal verbs express extrinsic modality in case they indicate

necessity, possibility, prediction meanings which are related to the likelihood

of happening of the events or human assessment of the status of the events as the following example:

50 The plan is bound to fail (necessity) (Quirk et al., 1985, p 237)

In opposite, intrinsic modality is expressed when semi-modal verbs

manifest obligation, volition, intention, and permission meanings which involving the actions under human control such as in example below:

51 You are bound to pay your debts (obligation) (ibid)

The meanings relating to those categories can be synthesized in Table 2.2

Table 2.2: Meanings relating to intrinsic modality and extrinsic modality

Intrinsic modality refers to actions

and events that human directly

control (Biber et al., 1999, p.485)

Extrinsic modality refers to the logical status of events or states, usually relating to assessments of likelihood (ibid)

Another meaning apart from modality expressed by semi-modal verbs are temporal and aspectual These constructions are used to, be going to, be

to, be about to, be due to and be destined to

The meanings of semi-modal verbs are displayed in Table 2.2, the modal meanings expressed by semi-modal verbs shown in the right hand part

of the table are remarkably similar as the meanings of the modal auxiliaries

2.3: Meanings of marginal auxiliaries (Quirk et al., 1985, p 237)

Past (Committed) (Committed)

used to need (to)

have to have got to

be bound to

be certain to

be sure to

need (to) have to have got to

sooner

be going to

dare (to) tend to

be liable to happen to

In Table 2.3, several verbal constructions appear more than once, since their semantic ranges tend to stretch across more than one category A semi-

modal verb can express either both extrinsic and intrinsic modality, like the modal verbs

It is true that semi-auxiliaries and catenative constructions have finite verb forms; therefore, two or even more modal concepts can be combined in a sequence of verb phrases And in such combination, it is normal for an extrinsic modality to precede an intrinsic one For examples:

non-52 We may have to play it again (Possibility + obligation)

53 She must have been willing to help (Necessity + volition)

2.2.4 Political news

Conley & Lamble (Conley & Lamble, 2006) state that news values determine whether stories are to be pursued New values help to determine whether the stories can be published after being pursued and then, if published, which news presentation the stories will be listed in

It is worth examining new values because of their information to the mediated world It is indicated that the news values are presented to news audiences and provide a shared shorthand operational understanding of what working journalists are required to produce to deadlines (Harcup & O‘Neill, 2001)

Shoemaker and Cohen (Shoemaker & Cohen, 2006) say that news often addresses aspects of reality which seem unusual, deviant, or out of the ordinary Hence the famous dictum that ―Dog Bites Man‖ is not news, but

―Man Bites Dog‖ is (Park, 1940)

It is difficult to say what exactly political signifies and there is no widely agreed upon definition of what is political Eugene (Eugene, 1980) states that ‗political‘ is a ubiquitous and seemingly indispensable term in the discussion of human affairs It is used to speak of quite different kinds of things-institutions, actions, conflicts, expenditures, a type of discourse, a

branch of science and such Thus, the term ‗political‘ is related to the life and thought of modern nations, ancient cities and primitive tribes, even the internal affairs of businesses, unions, schools, and churches

Accordingly, political news is the newest information containing newsworthy and the most expected content about all the aspects of political field of the world

2.3 Theoretical framework

Semi-modal verbs examined in this study are classified based on the

term of marginal auxiliaries in the work of Quirk et al., (1985) The illustrated

following types of verbs are considered as the main framework for analysis

Table 2.4: Types of semi-modal verbs in English (Quirk et al., 1985)

Types of semi-modal

verbs

Verbs

1 Marginal verbs dare, need, ought to, used to

2 Modal idioms had better, would rather, have got to, be to

3 Semi - auxiliaries be able to, be unable to, be bound to, be likely to,

be unlikely to, be supposed to, be about to, be due

to, be meant to, be willing to, be unwilling to, be apt to, be going to, be obliged to, have to

4 Catenative verb

constructions

appear to, come to, fail to, get to, happen to, manage to, seem to, tend to, turn out to, get + ed participle, keep + ing participle

2.4 Summary

This chapter has briefly reviewed the previous researches as well as definitions, classification of types and the semantic aspects of semi-modal verbs related to the present study The notions considered as the core of the

study are based on the theory of Quirk et al., (1985) The findings of the

theory-based analyze will be mentioned in details in Chapter 4

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Design

Following the objectives and the research questions addressed in sections 1.2 and 1.3 of chapter 1, this is a descriptive study designed to seek the qualitative information from the analysis of the data collected from the political news

Ethridge (2004, p.24) claims that a descriptive method is ―characterized

as simply the attempt to determine, describe or identify what is‖ Descriptive research is ―aimed at castling light on current issues or problems through a process of data collection that enables them to describe the situation more completely than was possible without employing this method.‖ Therefore, the descriptive method is one of the most powerful methods consumed to investigate the data A descriptive study can contain either the elements of qualitative and quantitative methods

This research was carried out with the following methods:

- The descriptive method in combination with qualitative and quantitative analysis was employed as the main method to apprehend and find out the different types of semi-modals basing on the theoretical framework presented in the theoretical background, then identify the appropriate samples and finally proceed to collect the valid and reliable data from the selected samples

- In this study, the qualitative analysis was manipulated to determine the different types of semi-modal verbs with their semantic meanings used in

the political news according to the classification of Quirk et al (1985)

- After the qualitative analysis, the data are then quantitatively analyzed

to identify the frequency of semi-modal verbs used in the political news

To sum up, in this research, the descriptive method helps the research get access to the political news, and deal with semi-modal verbs used in the data Basing on those findings, qualitative analysis will enable us to reveal the semantic values of semi-modal verbs Then, the quantitative approaches are used to give statistics in terms of the occurrence frequencies of semi-modal verbs

3.2 Data Collection

This study was conducted with a corpus-based analysis and employed

the theoretical framework of Quirk et al., (1985) in terms of the classification

and the semantic meanings of the semi-modal verbs

Baker (Baker, 1996) supposes that corpus means ―a collection of texts held in electronic form, capable of being analysed automatically or semi-automatically rather than manually‖ A corpus-based method is known as a new area of research which concerns analyzing the corpora of authentic running text by means of computer software

Based on the corpus based method, the researchers can access to a large sample of texts; therefore, it is also used in this study for counting occurrences and frequencies of usage

3.2.1 Description of corpus

The study was conducted with the analysis of the corpus consisting of

30 pieces of political news with a total of 32848 words All the thirty political news taken randomly from the website https://edition.cnn.com/politics at different points in the three months from November 2018 to January 2019

vary in length The size of corpus is considered not too large or too small so that the whole text can be read completely

As clarified in the scope of the study, the investigating of different

types of semi-modal verbs as well as the analysis of their semantic meanings will be made in this study Moreover, choices of using which semi-modal

verbs can reflect the attitudes towards the events presented and the actors

involved For these reasons, political news is considered as the main source of the data used in the study

Table 3.1: The corpus of 30 pieces of political news

Trump, Obama square off in whirlwind

weekend before midterm elections

5 7 takeaways from election night 2018 November 7, 2018 1409

6 A divided Congress, a divided America November 7, 2018 1358 7

China makes opening bid to US on trade

ahead of Trump-Xi meeting

10 Yes, 2018 was a massive Democratic

wave Here's proof

November 27, 2018 448

1

11

Congress weighs two-week extension

ahead of government shutdown deadline

Trump signals US won't punish Saudi

crown prince over Khashoggi killing

December 10, 2018 1914

15

Trump sets 'terrible precedent' by

crossing red line on Huawei case

President Trump and first lady Melania

Trump make surprise visit to Iraq

December 26, 2018 1360

1

19

House Democrats scooping up staff,

lawyers to power Trump investigations

December 29, 2018 1727

2

20

Graham: Trump still wants to leave

Syria, but will revaluate plan to attack

ISIS

December 31, 2018 813

21 Brace yourself for an ugly political brawl January 1, 2019 1617

22 Federal employees prepare for a long January 2, 2019 1247

shutdown

2

23

Trump told lawmakers he prefers word

'strike' to government shutdown, sources

say

January 5, 2019 503

2

24

Millions could lose food assistance,

including school lunches, if shutdown

drags on

January 7, 2019 789

25 Mitch McConnell blocks Senate

Democrats' move to reopen government

January 10, 2019 1225

2

26

Trump says he had 'great conversation'

with Putin, calls media reports 'nonsense'

Pence, Ivanka, Kushner no-show as

Mattis gets standing ovation at elite DC

dinner

January 28, 2019 675

3

30

Hundreds of migrants cross Arizona

border after 'several busloads' dropped

off in Mexico

January 29, 2019 901

3.2.2 Corpus compilation procedure

In this section, a process is conducted to extract the data from a 32538 word corpus as follows:

All the verbs belonged to four types of semi-modal verbs clarified in

the theoretical framework are listed, such as dare, need, ought to, used to

classified into marginal verbs, etc Then, the author uses a tool named TexSTAT-2 program in order to do lexical analysis This program can perform the frequency counting of a certain device in the whole 30 political news by showing the string matching and the concordance of the examined device

The corpus provides the number of occurrences of each verb and shows the contexts of the usage of semi- modal verbs quickly and exactly Hence the researcher can extract all the speeches and statements containing the types of semi-modals An illustrated example of a semi-modal verb is performed in Figure 3.1 as follows:

Figure 3.1: String matching of HAVE TO in the corpus

After data processing finishes, the results are stored for classification and analysis From the corpus, the researcher can collect 156 cases using semi-modal verbs including 15 cases of marginal verbs, 7 positions of modal idioms, 103 uses of semi-auxiliaries, and 31 devices of catenative verbs

3.2.3 Procedure of Data Collection

To collect the data, the following steps are carried out:

- Identifying the appropriate data concerning to the semi-modal verbs

- Deciding the source of data comprising the political news collected from the website: https://edition.cnn.com/politics

- Selecting the source of data by using Google search engine

- Building the corpus consisting of 30 political news

- Identifying the different formality of the semi-modal verbs in the view

of comprehensive grammar of Quirk et al (1985)

- Extracting the data from a 32538-word corpus by using a tool for named TexSTAT-2 program

- Discussing the semantic features expressed by semi-modal verbs

3.2.4 Data analysis

The data was qualitatively analyzed following the theoretical background introduced chapter two The semantic features of the used semi-modal verbs were studied most clearly in the analysis The writer/speaker-reader relationship and the message of the use of the semi-modal verbs are the basis of demonstrating the pragmatic information

The qualitative approaches were used to interpret the semantic characteristics of the semi-modal verbs, illuminating that a semi-modal verb

is able to express in different contexts and vice versa in a certain context many semi-modal verbs are used

About the occurrence of each type of the semi-modal verbs used in the samples, the quantitative techniques were applied to calculate and describe the distributions of the semi-modal verbs

3.3 Reliability and Validity

The quality of the research is always maintained because in the process

of selecting from the data collection, the samples were compared with the theoretical background Above all, only linguistic expressions are found to

match the classifications of the semi-modal verb in terms of the framework are selected as the samples for the analysis

Furthermore, the data was considered to be reliable without much variation or deviation from the sample of the semi-modal verbs since they were collected by the way in which obeying the criteria of the theory background and the mentioned descriptive framework of the study The criteria were used to examine the linguistic features of the semi-modal verbs based on the theoretical framework presented in chapter two To guarantee the reliability and validity of the research, the investigation of the data were completely followed the principles in the theoretical background presented in chapter two

3.4 Summary

In the chapter, the research methodology and the ways to collect data including the ways how to get samples and procedure of data collection are presented clearly This chapter also mentioned the ways to analyze the data and stated reliability and validity of the thesis This is the chapter in which the detail essential preparations for further findings and discussions in chapter four were shown