Nez Perce modals #

The modal vocabulary of Nez Perce (Sahaptian, ISO 639-3 nez) as [Dea11] §2 surveys it, divided into epistemic and nonepistemic expressions. The nonepistemic ones are the productive verbal suffix o'qa, with deontic, pure circumstantial and counterfactual readings; the participial construction in -(n/t)e's with a copula, expressing a circumstantial possibility akin to English -able and teleological modality; and the unproductive suffix 'ax̂, which the speakers who have it judge equivalent to o'qa. The epistemic ones are particles, o'qa never being epistemic.

Implementation notes #

Counterfactual and teleological readings count as circumstantial, the library's flavours drawing no finer line.
A modal's meaning records its uses in upward-entailing contexts, o'qa's spanning both forces as Gitksan ima('a)'s do.
Of the epistemic particles only pay's and páalwit 'maybe' are entered. 'éete 'surely, I guess', glossed as inferential, co-occurs with pay's for 'maybe', and ku'(nu) weet 'dunno whether' is an ignorance marker with the yes/no particle; neither has a settled force.

References #

[Dea11]

Nonepistemic modals #

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def NezPerce.oqa :

Modality.ModalItem

The suffix o'qa (allomorphs yo'qa, no'qa), read deontically, pure circumstantially and counterfactually, never epistemically or teleologically ([Dea11] §2.2–2.6). It is used where English uses a possibility modal and where it uses a necessity modal ([Dea11] §1), though only as a possibility modal outside upward-entailing contexts ([Dea11] §3).

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Instances For

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def NezPerce.participialEs :

Modality.ModalItem

The participial construction, the deverbalizing suffix -(n/t)e's with a copula: a circumstantial possibility akin to English -able, and teleological modality, never deontic or counterfactual ([Dea11] §2.6).

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