L2 Acquisition of Deontic and Epistemic Must and Should

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Sabrina Mossman 
Indiana University

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Abstract

L2 learners of English frequently have difficulty producing modals such as should and must appropriately, even at fairly advanced levels. Though there has been some exploration of modal production in L2 writing (Hinkle, 1995; Aijmer, 2002; Chen, 2010), modals in spoken English have received far less attention.  Reinhardt (2010) investigated the pragmatic use of modals by TAs, and there have been some studies dealing with functional aspects of language carried out through modal verbs (Bardovi-Harlig, 2005, Salsbury, 2000, inter alia), but as of yet there has not been an attempt to determine wherein the acquisitional difficulty lies, given that both semantics and pragmatics play a role in modal production. 

                Assuming a monosemous view of English modals (Kratzer, 1977, 2012; Papfragou, 1997, 2000), this study investigates whether learners’ acquisitional issues are due to difficulty in acquiring the semantics, or if it lies within the semantics-pragmatics interface (Papafragou, 200; Wilson & Sperber, 2004). Under this view, all modals have a primary meaning of possibility and necessity, and they derive their multi-functionality outside their core meaning, through pragmatics.

                The current study explores the production of deontic and epistemic uses of must and should by learners from beginning through advanced proficiency levels. Pairs of participants played a game, The Prisoner’s Dilemma, against a computer.  The game naturally gives rise to contexts requiring expressions of deontic and epistemic modality (Kagel & McGee, 2013). 

                Thirty-eight learners (nineteen dyads) from thirteen L1 languages and eight native speakers (4 dyads) played the game.  Oral interactions and onscreen game play were recorded. Five minutes of game play were extracted from the recordings and transcribed and coded according to speech acts, sentence complexity, and modal production. 

                The results revealed that learners did not produce must in either deontic or epistemic contexts.  Learners produced should in deontic contexts, but not in epistemic contexts. The findings suggest that learners acquire the basic semantics of modals early, but they have difficulty using them effectively because (a) they do not interpret the contexts appropriately and (b) they lack the pragmatic knowledge to mitigate effectively.  Learners at lower levels lack the linguistic proficiency and the ability to produce complex syntactic structures necessary to create the context required for modal production; more advanced learners with greater linguistic proficiency were better at using modals, but pragmatic issues constrained their use of epistemic modals.

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