The way speakers react towards modal structures basically differs from the way they treat independent constructions. The most common means of expressing modality are modal components such as modal verbs, sentence adverbs and certain lexical verbs. The present paper focuses on modal constructions and aims at analyzing modality, its functions, types and degrees in modern Persian. It also makes a distinction between formal and semantic dimensions of modality in this language.
This paper demonstrates, for the first time, that xâstan , in addition to its role as a future tense auxiliary , can be considered a modal auxiliary which entails a proposition. This means that the modal auxiliary xâstan is a proper means of expressing a strong degree of modality in Persian, a fact unnoticed in previous studies. Accordingly, one can claim that Persian benefits from all the three degrees of modality, i.e. weak, moderate and strong. As for types of modality, the paper provides examples of all the three types, i.e. epistemic, dynamic and deontic in sentences extracted from Iranian daily newspapers.
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