Distribution of modal expressions of possibility and necessity in three encyclopedias covering two diachronic spans (18th and 21st centuries)

The aim of this paper is to measure to what extent the modalities of possibility and necessity are represented in three French encyclopedic corpora covering two diachronic spans, the 18th and the 21st centuries, by applying a statistical approach to linguistic data. Using log-likelihood, we will measure over- and under-representation of morphological and lexical modal forms in those encyclopedias, as well as their association with other linguistic items. Correspondence analysis will then be used to give a more holistic view of these associations. It will be shown that the two types of modality studied are used differently in the 18th century encyclopedic corpus compared to the two corpora from the 21st century.

, 2020