Thai Learners’ Interpretation of English Modality

บทคัดย่อ

This research aimed to examine the frequency and percentage of Thai undergraduate-level learners’ accurate interpretation of the modality meanings and time references denoted by nine core modal verbs of English: can, could, will, would, shall, should, may, might, and must. Each of these auxiliaries serves not only semantic (e.g., ability, possibility, permission of “can”) but also pragmatic functions (e.g., request of “can”). Some of them are “basic or unmarked,” and others are “extended or marked” (e.g., formality, politeness). Meanwhile, Thai preverbal modals convey a subset of these modality meanings, so complication may occur during the English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) modal learning. Fifty multiple-choice questions with four choices representing the basic and extended modality meanings and time references were designed for the Thai participants to answer. It was found that the informants interpreted “can” the most successfully and “shall” the least successfully. Moreover, for each modal verb, some meanings were achieved more frequently than the others such as the meaning of “ability” of “can” over “possibility.” These findings were in line with the previous ones. With respect to time references, the Thai learners tended to associate tense with the modal forms, and the perfective forms of the verbal complements of the modal verbs caused interpretation challenges. The concepts “marked” and “unmarked” features under Markedness Theory were proposed to account for the EFL modality acquisition. The unmarked meanings were primarily acquired more successfully or earlier than the more marked ones, regardless of the first languages of the EFL learners.