The questions of semantics in general and modality in particular are
matters of special interest in linguistics during last few decades. This
subject was undeservedly neglected in the Indological literature. Lavish
amount of works on the subject was devoted almost exclusively to the
European languages. The purpose of the study was to fill, even though
partly, the empty niche.
‘Modality’ is a term which is used in linguistics for marking a wide range
of notions expressing attitudes of the speaker to the content of sentence.
Among the aims of the study was to find out the main modal devices of Hindi
and classify them. The semantic approach for defining modal mechanisms in
language proves to be the most reliable. That was the reason why the system
elaborated by F.R. Palmer in his research “Mood and modality” (1986) was
chosen as a framework for the study. His principles with some additions
were successfully applied to the analysis of Hindi language.
All the totality of the modal devices was divided into three subclasses –
inherent epistemic and deontic. Each subclass has primary and secondary
devices, grammatical and lexical means, which were scrutinized and
classified. The “Modality in Hindi” abounds in examples taken from a vast
literary corpus which may be useful for every student of Hindi.
The author is a lecturer in Hindi at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He
has been teaching Hindi and Urdu languages for twenty years, eight of them
in Israel. The range of his professional interests covers the applied
linguistics and language teaching. He has translated and published a number
of literary works from Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi languages, and has published
a course of Hindi language for the Hebrew speakers, and a Hindi-Hebrew