A Sign-Based Analysis of Must, May and Could

Abstract

This paper analyzes the English forms must, may and could using a Columbia School framework. As with previous sign-based analyses of the modals, must, may and could are considered members of a grammatical system; this paper posits a grammatical system of Likelihood, whereby the meanings of must, may and could are relative to one another. These signs are first examined in a text from Malcolm Gladwell [2019. Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know. Boston, MA: Little, Brown] which provides rich context for meaning analysis, and later, the hypothesized meanings are tested in a large corpus, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) [Davies, Mark. 2008. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/]. Through the testing of the observed occurrence patterns within COCA, must, may and could show a general pattern of usage which supports the proposed meaning hypotheses.

Keywords:

• must
• may
• could
• modal system
• sign-based
• corpus-driven
• monosemy

Acknowledgements

The Columbia School Linguistic Society awarded a graduate research fellowship for research that led to this paper. Lauren is grateful to Wallis Reid and Nadav Sabar for their invaluable feedback which enhanced this manuscript and provided continuous learning opportunities for Lauren.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Merriam-Webster includes four explanations for “if” (“If,” 2020): “a : in the event that; b : allowing that; c : on the assumption that d : on condition that”.