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GÜNTER RADDEN, Meaningful Grammar

(13b) My cat may be a real nuisance.
‘It is possibly the case that my cat is a real nuisance’.
[epistemic possibility]
(13c) My husband must be rich.
‘It is necessary for the man I marry to be rich’.
[intrinsic necessity]
‘It is necessarily the case that my husband is rich’.
[epistemic necessity]

The use of can in sentence (13a) signals intrinsic possibility because my
cat has a particular intrinsic quality. It has been a nuisance before and
can, therefore, potentially be a nuisance again. The use of may in (13b)
signals epistemic possibility because the state assessed by the speaker is
uncertain. To the speaker’s knowledge, the cat has never been a nuisance
and may never be one. Note also that can, due to its factuality, is un-
stressed while may could be stressed and have a fall-rise intonation con-
tour, thus reflecting the speaker’s thought given to the assessment.
both intrinsic necessity and epistemic necessity are expressed by
must. Sentence (13c) can, therefore, be interpreted in two ways. In its in-
trinsic interpretation, it refers to a man that needs to have the quality of
being rich in order to qualify as a prospective husband; in its epistemic
interpretation, the sentence refers to the speaker’s present husband who,
according to her deductive reasoning, is rich.
Disposition modality, in particular ability, is concerned with a
person’s or thing’s intrinsic potential of being actualized. Disposition
modality is thus closely related to intrinsic modality, and both are some-
times subsumed under “dynamic modality”, which is a misnomer be-
cause these modalities are no more dynamic than root modality. Dispo-
sitions may only lead to possible, not necessary, actualizations. They are,
therefore, only expressed by can. Thus, we can dance, can swim, can play
the piano, and can run a marathon.

3.3 Coherence of modality
We have distinguished four types of modality: epistemic modality, de-
ontic modality, intrinsic modality and disposition modality. Their usages
differ substantially from one another, involving the distinctly different
notions of assessment, directive attitude, potentiality and ability. As in

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