부산대학교 도서관

In English sentences, the subtle semantic differences that the sentences used modal auxiliaries connote are not easy to distinguish. This is likely to be true when the participants of conversation imply the speaker’s attitude as a pragmatic concept for a proposition in context. Of modal auxiliaries, it is obvious that can and may have similar meanings, but they have been separately treated in grammar. Though can and may are treated to be discrete modal auxiliaries, diverse articles remark that the overlapping phenomena of them appear in meaning. It may be due to the fact that there is no relationship theory established until now. I think that the semantic relationship between can and may is not only a partially matched sharing but also a theoretical possibility. To discuss these issues, I will scrutinize the overlapping phenomena and the inclusion relationships of can and may through the concept of ‘the possible world’. On the view that can has broader scopes than may as a modal expression, I will prove and explain the modality of can and may, respectively.