Modality in Saami-speaking kindergarten and school children
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7557/sda.6707Keywords:
modality, child language, North Saami language, kindergartenAbstract
This article examines modal expressions in Saami-speaking kindergarten and
school children aged 4-8 years. The aim is to explore the ways in which children
use language to express different types of modality, and to investigate whether
there are similarities and/or differences between kindergarten children and school
children with regard to modal expressions. The study is based on transcripts of
conversations between children and adults about stories containing ethical and
moral dilemmas. The conversations lasted a total of ninety minutes.
The results show that the children expressed agent-oriented (deontic and
dynamic) modality slightly more than propositional (epistemic and evidential)
modality. Modality was generally expressed by verbs; the most frequent verbs
were the evidential diehtit (‘to know’) and the deontic, dynamic and epistemical
sáhttit ‘may, can’. Most other verbs were deontic, such as fertet ‘must’, galgat ‘to
have to’ and oažžut ‘to be allowed to’. Particles and adverbs, such as the emphatic
gal and oainnat ‘you see’, were commonly used to express epistemic and evidential
modality. In addition, the children used the construction (ii) leat + lohpi ‘[it] is
(not) allowed’ and the imperative mode, both of which express deontic modality,
and the evidential noun phrase mu mielas ‘in my opinion’.
The data from the school children contained slightly more expressions of modality than the data from the kindergarten children, and the school children also had a few more different ways of expressing modality than the kindergarten children.
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