Modal Verbs in Legal Documents

The theme of the course paper is ‘Modal verbs in Legal Documents.’ According to the written sources (Biber, 1999), modal verbs are used to build up verb phrases and cannot occur alone unless a lexical verb is a recoverable from the context. There are ten modal verbs such as can, could, may, might, must, ought to, shall, should, will and would. The modal verbs express a wide range of meanings, for example, ability, permission, necessity and obligation.

The aim:
To investigate how often and which modal verbs are used in legal documents.

The objectives:
1)to read and analyse the theory on modal verbs
2)to apply the theory to research question
3)to analyse frequency of the modal verbs in legal documents
4)to draw relevant conclusions

The research question:
Which modality words are used frequently in the legal documents?

The methods of research:
1) the analysis of the theoretical material on modal verbs
2) case study.…