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nominal modality. branching from my dissertation work on
cross-categorial modal expressions, this is a project investigating nouns
which express (or compose with other things to express) modal notions.
particularly i focus on nouns like possibility which seem not be
modals themselves but compose with quantificational determiners to create a
modal meaning. i will present work on this topic at
the workshop on modality across categories in barcelona in
november.
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optional and obligatory modal subordination.
(proceedings of
SUB 15,
2011) while modal subordination has been much discussed, one overlooked fact
is that various modals behave differently with respect to whether modal
subordination is obligatory or not. this paper addresses that issue. part of
this was presented at lsa 2010 (long abstract).
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focus-related verb repetition and nominalization in luganda. my
second qualifying paper. in luganda, focus on the inflected verb is realized
by a nominalized copy of the verb which has none of the inflectional
morphology of the main verb; moreover the morphology varies depending on the
inclusion or exclusion of the verb's object in the domain of focus.