POMD_ALL Possibility modals

Biber L52 Xiao B30 MFTE MDPOSSCall composite

Definition

Modals expressing possibility: can, could, may, might.

Children (composite)

Detection Rules

Sum of MDCA + MDCO + MDMM

combine: MDCA | MDCO | MDMM

Requires: pos

pybiber

cql[word={words} & pos="MD"]
Word list (5 items)
ca can could may might

Requires: word, pos

Normalization

Per finite_verbs

Sources

  • biber_1988 — Biber, Douglas (1988) : Variation across Speech and Writing
  • pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis
  • xiao_2009 — Xiao, Richard (2009) : Multidimensional analysis and the study of world Englishes
  • grieve_2023 — Grieve, Jack (2023) : Register variation explains stylometric authorship analysis

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