This volume brings together a collection of 18 papers that look into the expression of modality in the grammars of natural languages, with an emphasis on its manifestations in naturally occurring discourse.

1. Introduction; 2. I. Agent-Oriented and Epistemic Modality; 3. Agent-Oriented vs. Epistemic Modality: Some Observations on German Modals (by Heine, Bernd); 4. The Expression of Root and Epistemic Possibility in English (by Coates, Jennifer); 5. Contextuel Conditions for the Interpretation of poder and deber in Spanish (by Silva-Corvalan, Carmen); 6. The Obligation Modality in Western Nilotic Languages (by Bavin, Edith L.); 7. The Gestural Expression of Modality in ASL (by Wilcox, Sherman); 8. II. The Interactional Basis of Modality; 9. The Development of Epistemic Sentence-ending Modal Forms and Functions in Korean Children (by Choi, Soonja); 10. The Interactional Basis of the Mandarin Modal neng 'can' (by Guo, Jiansheng); 11. The Discourse and Interactive Functions of Obligation Expressions (by Myhill, John); 12. Apprehensional Epistemics (by Lichtenberk, Frantisek); 13. Moods and MetaMessages: Alienation as a Mood (by Haiman, John); 14. III. Irrealis Modality and Subjunctive; 15. The Realis-Irrealis Distinction in Caddo, the Northern Iroquoian Languages, and English (by Chafe, Wallace); 16. On the Relativity of Irreality (by Mithun, Marianne); 17. The Grammaticalization of Irrealis in Tik Pisin (by Romaine, Suzanne); 18. The Evaluative Function of the Spanish Subjunctive (by Lunn, Patricia V.); 19. IV. Modality and Other Categories of Grammar; 20. Negation and the Modals of Possibility and Necessity (by Palmer, Frank Robert); 21. A Functional Theory of Complementizers (by Frajzyngier, Zygmunt); 22. The Semantic Development of Past Tense Modals in English (by Bybee, Joan L.); 23. Imperfective and Irrealis (by Fleischman, Suzanne); 24. Subject index; 25. Language index; 26. Author index