Modalized speech acts in a spoken learner corpus: The case of <i>can</i> and <i>could</i>

Abstract This paper examines the use of modal auxiliaries can and could in speech acts produced by university students English. Its aim is to explore syntactic patterns, semantic features pragmatic functions utterances containing / Corpus Czech Students’ Spoken English . Taking account factors, including broader linguistic extralinguistic context, analysis attempts identify illocutionary forces conveyed modalized excerpted from corpus dialogues. The findings indicate that verbs are commonly employed as a modifying device indirect acts, particularly conventionalized directives. As for their frequency occurrence, proves be widely used auxiliary spoken learner discourse, whereas more remote appears much less frequently it associated with higher degree diffidence.