Re: "can" "able to" mood

On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:08:23 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:

>Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:
>
>> I think the difference is syntactic rather than semantic.  In English
>> et sim, you construct it with helper verb + inf, so it's clearly not a
>> mood.  But logically, the function seems more moodlike than aspectual,
>> so I see no reason why it couldn't be a mood in some other lang...
>
>I don't see why analytic construction would exclude moodhood?
I'd say it's similar to the distinction between aspect and aktionsart: All
languages will have means
of expressing aktionsart, but not all languages have a morpho-syntactic category of aspect.
Likewise, all languages will have means of expressing "semantic moodhood", but not all
languages will have a morpho-syntactic category of mood.

---
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