THE EPISTEMIC USE OF THE ENGLISH MODAL VERBS MAY AND MIGHT AND THE BULGARIAN МОЖЕ ДА CONSTRUCTION. A CASE STUDY BASED ON THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY BY OSCAR WILDE AND ANGELS AND DEMONS BY DAN BROWN

Abstract

The object of study in the paper is the epistemic use of the English modal verbs may and might, and the Bulgarian може да (mozhe da) construction. For the needs of the analysis I have adopted the cognitive framework of Günter Radden and Rene Dirven on the one hand, and on the other I have discussed the modal verbs’ semantic meaning as expression units of epistemic possibility. The latter analysis is based on the findings of F. R. Palmer. The analysis is further extended to establishing patterns of similarity and variation of usage via a corpus of examples excerpted from the novels The Picture of Dorian Gray and Angels and Demons and their translations into Bulgarian.