Modality in Spanish and Combinations of Modal Meanings

With a focus on Spanish modality, this book presents Bohumil Zavadil’s theoretical approach—the first such presentation in English—to this category and, consequently, analyzes its possible application to Spanish. Concentrating on specific areas of the Spanish modal system where two modal meanings combine, Dana Kratochvílová integrates theoretical analyses with corpus-based studies from the InterCorp corpus on the choice of mood and the contextual interpretation of selected constructions. Her approachs verifies that areas where two modal meanings meet are a natural part of the Spanish modal system and that the combination of modal meanings has consequences on mood selection, thus shedding new light on the use of the subjunctive in Spanish.