The deontic modal construction necesitar+infinitivo: a discursive-functional analysis in the Spanish language

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the behavior of the construction necesitar+infinitive as a way of expressing the deontic modality in Spanish, considering that the modal operator needs to express obligation (deontic need). In this sense, we use the Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) of Hengeveld and Mackenzie (2008), in order to identify the performance of this construction in the layers that make up the Representational Level, in which the modal distinctions are allocated. For this, different uses of this periphrasis structure are analyzed in language samples that were taken from the Internet, such as news, blogs, discussion forums, college and university websites, etc., and produced by native Spanish speakers. The selection by the samples was made, specifically, based on contexts of establishment of deontic modality, which, according to Hengeveld (2004), concerns what is morally, legally and socially accepted in terms of rules and standards of conduct. The analysis of the occurrences, supported by the GDF, reveals that the construction necesitar+infinitive can act, in the establishment of the deontic modality, in the layers of Configurational Property and the State-of-Affairs, establishing the modal values of obligation (positive polarity) and derogation (negative polarity), whose syntactic subjects can be animated or inanimate. In addition to what is predisposed by the FDG, it was found that this peripheral construction can also operate in the Episode layer, in which the speaker makes a subjective assessment of the obligation to hold an event located before the enunciation, which can be event to be updated by the participant on whom the established obligation falls.