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BETWEEN EPISTEMIC AND DEONTIC: THE USE OF MODAL VERBS IN A CORPUS OF ROMANIAN SCIENTIFIC TEXTS ON ECONOMICS

Teodora Ghiviriga, Livia Codruta Baciu

Abstract

Modality in scientific texts has been investigated from various angles and has been found to be indicative of stance and dependent on various factors, such as discipline, culture and context. Cross disciplinary studies point out that, in English, the epistemic use of modals in scientific texts exceeds the deontic use, given the communicative purposes of such texts, i.e. the production and transfer of knowledge. The present paper explores the use of modal verbs in a corpus of scientific texts on Economics written in Romanian. Quantitative data are extracted related to the two main modal verbs in Romanian, a trebui (must) and a putea (can), with their respective modal values, as well as the patterns in which these verbs occur and the lexical verbs they co-occur with. The modal a putea has the highest nominal values, with a trebui the second. Epistemic meanings, expressed mainly by a putea, are found to be the most frequent in the corpus, often in repetitive structures. Deontic expressions – mainly forms of a trebui, though comparatively fewer, have high counts for a scientific text expected to be descriptive and reflective rather than normative, possibly indicating an epistemological orientation towards the normative position.

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