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A Reanalysis of the Uses of Can and Could: A Corpus-Based Approach

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Abstract

This study offers an in-depth analysis of the English modal auxiliaries CAN and COULD, using both spoken and written components of the British National Corpus. An examination of previous corpus-based studies of the modal auxiliaries CAN and COULD highlights discrepancies in the terminology utilised and the main categories associated with CAN and COULD, as well as insufficient surrounding context for a confident categorisation and a lack of clarity in explanations for classification. Based on findings from a new investigation of these modal auxiliaries in the BNC, I argue for a wider range of usage categories for CAN and COULD. The categories identified here differ from those reported in previous studies, as the present study differentiates categories of use beyond the traditional distinction between ‘ability’, ‘possibility’ and ‘permission’. This study offers transparency on categorical criteria and the usage category assigned to individual tokens and demonstrates expanded context is an essential requirement in the semantic and pragmatic (re)analysis of corpus data.

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Notes

  1. CAN represents spoken and written can/can’t/can not/cannot. In the same way, COULD represents spoken and written could/could not/couldn’t.

  2. A reviewer of this paper notes a ‘dynamic’ interpretation (not ‘epistemic’) of the example instances from Coates (1983) and Collins (2009).

  3. For detailed weighting calculations, see Electronic Supplementary Materials.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I would also like to express a special thanks to Dr. Elaine Vine, Victoria University of Wellington, for her work reviewing an even earlier version of this paper.

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  1. Lauren Whitty

    Present address: City University of New York, Graduate Center, Linguistics Program, 365 Fifth Avenue, Room 7407, New York, NY, 10016, USA

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  1. Victoria University of Wellington, School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, PO Box 600, Wellington, 6140, New Zealand

    Lauren Whitty

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Whitty, L. A Reanalysis of the Uses of Can and Could: A Corpus-Based Approach. Corpus Pragmatics 3, 225–247 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-019-00058-9

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