MODALITY MARKERS IN TEXT SEMANTICS OF THE RESEARCH PAPER ABSTRACT

Abstract

The paper studies modal semantics of the research paper abstract in Earth sciences. Modality is defined to be a means through which scientific knowledge is collectively perceived and objectivized in language. We claim primary scientific epistemes – truth and objectivity – to be categorized in the text of an abstract through aleatic (apodeictic and assertoric), and epistemic modalities.
We establish “informativeness” to constitute a hyperseme in the semantics of an abstract, with the semes of “evaluation”, “evidentiality”, “verification”, and “validation” to be its attributes. By themselves, the latter denote structural composition of an abstract and head the cognominal semantic classes of an abstract thesaurus.
Apodeictic aleatic modality is marked in the text of an abstract by a seme of causation of certainty, which explicates the meanings of logical operators of “necessarily true”, and “logically certain”. Assertoric aleatic modality is marked in the text of an abstract by semes of assertion and demonstration, which explicate the meanings of logical operators of “be/ exist”, “occur”, and “happen” as true. Apodeictic and assertoric judgments are found in the introductory part of an abstract forming its rhetorical topic.
In the text of an abstract, epistemic modality is noticed to vary in the degree of certainty, which made it possible to differentiate between epistemic modality of validation and hypothetical epistemic modality. Logical operators of epistemic modality of validation in the text of an abstract are “evidenced”, “proved”, and “demonstrated”. They are further explicated through the semes of “validation”, “evidentiality”, and “evaluation”. Epistemic judgments are found in the structural part of findings imparting the semantics of an abstract with focal rhetoric.
Hypothetical epistemic modality is marked in the text of an abstract by the semes of assumption, and hypothetization. Its logical operators are established to be “presumably”, “probably”, and “problematic”. The judgments of hypothetical epistemic modality are recurrent in the concluding part of an abstract building the semantics of rhetoric prospects.
Grammar markers of the established modalities are concluded to be the Present Simple, Past Simple, Present Perfect, and Future Simple tense forms, modals and parentheses of assumption, discourse connectors of precision, speculation, approximity, and logical sequence.