Modal verbs in South Asian Online Englishes: Exploring the use of ᴍᴜsᴛ, (ʜᴀᴠᴇ) ɢᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ, ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴛᴏ and ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ

Shakir, Muhammad

Abstract

This research article presents an analysis of four (semi-)modals of necessity/obligation (must, (have) got to, have to and need to) in four CMC registers (comments, tweets, web forums and websites) originating from four South Asian countries (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) along with the United Kingdom and United States. The data are annotated for various factors like lexical verb association, source of obligation, subject person, genericity etc. The analysis is performed using multinomial logistic regression. The results show that verb association, source of obligation and register category are among the most significant predictors of modal choice. Regional patterns show that must is preferred in the South Asian data where the source of obligation is discourse internal (i.e. expressing opinion or speaker-imposed obligation) in the registers of comments and tweets.