PhiN - Beiheft 9 / 2016 : 6

This paper reports the results of an eye-tracking during reading experiment carried out in order to investigate the online processing of the French modal verbs devoir ("must") and pouvoir ("can/may"). The nature – ambiguous/homonymic, polysemous or monosemic/under-specified – of the modals is tested through the manipulation in sentences of the root or epistemic meaning of the modal as well as the neutral or meaning supportive nature of the context preceding it. The reading of the sentences containing devoir is facilitated when the modal is used in its root meaning. This effect of relative frequency (the root meaning being indeed the dominant meaning of the French modal verbs) fits with the polysemy hypothesis: if the meanings or senses are stored in memory, we therefore expect the most frequent one to be the easiest to access and process. On the contrary, the first pass reading of pouvoir is facilitated when it appears in its epistemic meaning, in other words its non-dominant meaning, and the reading of the sentences containing pouvoir is facilitated by the supportive contexts. These results better fit with the under-specification (monosemy) hypothesis with an under-specified meaning represented in memory close to the epistemic meaning, epistemic meaning in reality better described as alethic as we demonstrate. The two French modal verbs are traditionally examined together since it is assumed that one matches the other in its own modal domain – possibility or necessity. This study casts doubt on this assumption.