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some examples) should help the students to get a general view on modality and the details will be discussed separately for each modal concept. We will further offer an example of how we can deal with one concept of modality at a time. We have chosen possibility and its negative counterpart, impossibility. Theoretical Background English modal verbs (can, may, could, might) may give the sentence in which they occur the value of a cautious rather than confident statement suggesting that the speaker would not be surprised if the event did not occur. There are two types of possibility 5 : a. Possibility of the fact (factual): e.g. “The railways may be improved.” e.g. “It is possible that the railways will be improved.” e.g. “Perhaps/ possibly/ maybe the railways will be improved.” b. Possibility of the idea (theoretical): e.g. “The railways can be improved.”/ “It is possible/likely for the railways to be improved.” Theoretical possibility (can) is weaker than factual possibility (may). In the first sentence, may suggests that perhaps the railways will be improved, there are definite plans for improvement. Can, in the fourth sentence expresses the idea that in theory the railways are “improvable,” that they are not perfect. Can may also be understood as equivalent of “sometimes” in general statements. e.g. “Hiking can be boring.”/” Hiking is sometimes boring.” Can and may express both present and future possibility. May very often replaces can, except in questions and negations: e.g. “Dorian can be reading for the exam.”/“Dorian may be reading for the exam.” Might and could express a tentative possibility. 6 They show that something is possible but unlikely: e.g. “She might/ could have left yesterday.” (It is just possible that she left yesterday.) Past possibility is usually expressed by could followed by perfect infinitive but this possibility is of a smaller degree than that expressed by can and a perfect infinitive. e.g. “He could have attended the meeting although nobody saw him there.”/“He can have attended the meeting although nobody saw him there.” Could followed by perfect infinitive can also show that something was possible, but it did not happen. 7 e.g. “You were driving like a mad man! You could have had an accident.” (but luckily you didn’t) May followed by simple infinitive expresses present and future possibility and when followed by perfect infinitive, it expresses past possibility: e.g. “We must leave at once, he may be here any minute now.” e.g. “He may have already bought the car; I’ll ask him tomorrow.” 5 Geoffrey Leech, Jan Svartvik, A Communicative Grammar of English. (London: Longman, 1994), 128. 6 Ibid., 129. 7 Bob Obee, Virginia Evans, Upstream Upper-Intermediate. (Newbury: Express Publishing, 2005), 205. 25