This paper aims to show how a clear perspective on the cognitive systems and processes involved in language production can help to solve a number of persistent problems in the analysis of TAM and related categories, and particularly of the semantic categories of deontic modality, volition, intention and directivity, notions which raise the issue of the relationship between qualificational categories and illocutionary categories, and what these stand for/how these should be represented in a model of the human linguistic faculty.