Modal Pragmatics analyzes and systematizes differences among our uses of modal expressions in ordinary language which have not been adequately explained elsewhere.
We say such things as: “By necessity, John Tylor was not Jewish; no US-president ever was”; “The rooks cannot move diagonally”; “It is still possible for you to catch the train”; “I am necessarily only in one place at a time”; “Necessarily, that apple accelerates at 9.8 m/s2”; “Peter will inevitably die; there is no antidote to the venom of the snake that bit him”. These differences are not sufficiently...