Formal and semantic aspects of Persian modal elements in embedded sentences

From a certain aspect، the sentences used in daily interactions can be divided into two classes. First are sentences which convey the non-conditional realization of events. Next come sentences in which make the occurrence of the event conditional upon the realization of some condition. The present study terms the former group as free and the latter as modal. Speakers react differently in response to free and modal sentences. The present study focuses on the latter which may be expressed through modal elements such as modal auxiliaries، sentence adverbs and certain lexical verbs. It seeks an analysis of different modal elements and their roles in modern Persian as well as a distinction between formal and semantic aspects of the modal category. While Rahimiyan (1995 &1999) argues that Persian lacks modal auxiliaries used to express the strong degree of the modal element، the present paper illustrates for the first time that the verb khah is not only used in the formation of future tense، but also a proper means to express the strong degree of the modal element. This verb، by itself، can imply the occurrence of the event، what has been ignored by former studies. It is concluded that Persian has all the three degrees of modal element i. e. weak، moderate and strong. As for the types of the modal element، it can be said that based on the evidence extracted from Persian newspapers، all the three types including inference، necessity and power auxiliaries are commonly used in modern Persian.