Bogumiła Pacyna Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań “Parallel and comparable corpora in investigating modal verbs in legal and literary discourse.”
ABSTRACT
This article offers a qualitative and quantitative analysis of modal verbs that were found in an online corpus, called the Lagun Corpus. The case of modal verbs has been the subject of much debate in the literature not limited only to one type of discourse. In this paper various texts are analysed; however, the primary focus is on legal and literary texts. The analysis developed in this paper shows the dominance of one modal and explains the rejection of others. It also gives an account of the usefulness of corpora in translation research and seeks to determine the most appropriate corpora for translators. In particular, the paper highlights parallel and comparable corpora as those most relevant to translators.