POSSIBILITY TREND OF 'CAN' AND 'MAY' AS MODALS: A SEMANTIC ORIENTED STUDY
This article tackles the notion of possibility of the two central modal verbs 'can' and 'may' in English. It starts to introduce 'can' concentrating on its possibility sense. It sheds light on how linguists present the various aspects of meanings of 'can' especially Palmer (1990). It also introduces 'may' as a polysemous modal verb. So 'may' could be regarded as an epistemic and root possibility verb at the same time. There is involvement of certain steps to distinguish the ambiguous senses of 'may'. In negation, 'may' affects the proposition. Ultimately, it shows that both 'can' and 'may' share a feature of similarity and certain features of difference especially the theoretical and factual possibility difference where 'can' expresses 'theoretical possibility' and 'may' indicates 'factual possibility' sense .
Keywords: Possibility Trend of 'Can' and 'May'.