Chapter published in:
Processes of Change: Studies in Late Modern and Present-Day English
Edited by Sandra Jansen and Lucia Siebers
[Studies in Language Variation 21] 2019
► pp. 183–202

The modal auxiliary verb may and change in Irish English

This paper presents an analysis of the modal auxiliary verb may using data from the International Corpus of English: Ireland Component (the ICE-Ireland Corpus and from other corpora for comparison. The analysis is focused on the semantic functions of may, especially root and epistemic uses. The analysis shows that root uses of may predominate overall but epistemic uses predominate in spoken data, in both parts of Ireland. It uncovers a further instance of mild obligation may, which may be considered an Irishism.
Keywords: may , modal auxiliary verb, root, epistemic, corpora, ICE-Ireland, ICE-GB, standardised English, spoken and written varieties
Published online: 13 August 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.21.10kir
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