This chapter focuses on grammatical resources for enacting social relations – mood. A basic distinction is drawn between the systems of formal mood and addressee deference on the one hand and the systems of informal mood, stance and politeness on the other. Subsequently the systems of polarity, modality, participant deference, highlight, comment and expletion are outlined. For each system the relevant choices for meaning are consolidated in system networks and their realisation in structure at clause, group/phrase and word ranks is specified.

In Stage 5, the journey moves to meaning relations within sentences, introducing such topics of quantification (including generalized quantifiers), representing events and states, temporal, aspectual, and modal distinctions in semantics, and propositional attitude reports.

I ask how sensory models are established and operate across different cultures, including their variant ethnographical nuances. This problematises the interplay of the senses whereby sensory conjunctions or amalgams form part of everyday life and ritual practices in many societies, as opposed to the broader compartmentalisation of the senses in Western aesthetics. The chapter compares a range of categories that delineate different senses, as well as the varying modalities per sense. This is accomplished through an investigation of linguistic descriptors of senses as a starting point. How a particular culture names the senses that wield cultural importance is however not merely an exercise in description or enumeration. I analyse sensory nomenclatures in a three-fold manner to unveil the phenomenological epistemology of the senses. First, I engage with the numbers of modalities per sense in order to acknowledge alternate sensory models beyond the hegemonic Romano–Grecian five-sense categorisation. Second, I query the social significance of the nuances of each sense. Third, I raise examples of how two or more senses may be employed synaesthetically. By focusing on cultural interpretations of sensory practices, pairings, and intersections, this approach sheds analytical attention upon everyday orderings of sensory categories and their cultural significance.

Text comprehension and picture comprehension can be synthesized into a common conceptual framework which differentiates between external and internal descriptive and depictive representations. Combining this framework with the human cognitive architecture including sensory registers, working memory, and long-term memory leads to an integrated model of text and picture comprehension. The model consists of a descriptive branch and a depictive branch of processing. It includes multiple sensory modalities. Due to a flexible combination of sensory modalities and representational formats, the model covers listening comprehension, reading comprehension, visual picture comprehension, and sound comprehension. The model considers text comprehension and picture comprehension to be different routes for constructing mental models and propositional representations with the help of prior knowledge. It allows us to explain the effects of coherence, text modality, split attention, text–picture contiguity, redundancy, sequencing, and the effects of different types of visualization.

Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese) express modality in the verb through mood morphology. Mood morphology is most common in verbs appearing in subordinate clauses. The semantics of the verb of the main clause or the proposition can determine whether the verb of the subordinate clause takes subjunctive or indicative. For learners whose first language does not have subjunctive mood grammaticalized, acquisition of all the meanings and variable uses of subjunctive in Romance languages is a very difficult task. Chapter 6 discusses studies of second language acquisition showing that the meanings and uses of subjunctive are acquirable with very advanced proficiency. The second part presents instructed intervention studies of the subjunctive in Spanish and other languages that have targeted beginner and intermediate English-speaking learners. The vast majority of the intervention studies on the subjunctive have been conducted to test the effectiveness of the Input Processing approach to language teaching.

Gregoriou presents a study of characterisation in a crime fiction novel on child trafficking. Her choice of analytic tools (speech presentation, naming strategies, transitivity, modality and metaphor analysis) narrows the focus to an in-depth exploration of these selected five, bringing to light character Muna’s mind style.

Tabbert analyses a schizophrenic offender‘s own account of his crime. She uses the stylistic toolkit to identify patterns in his language use and links them with symptoms shown by people suffering from schizophrenia. The chapter illustrates how isolating this mental illness is, leading even to committing a crime while reaching out for social companionship.

What accounts for the fact that some physical events occur while others do not? This is a question of physical modality. Three models in contemporary analytic metaphysics have dominated the investigation of physical modality: the Neo-Humean Model, the Universals Model, and the Powers Model. Each model aims to explain, in ontologically conspicuous ways, the unfolding of possibilities in space and time. This chapter explains the Neo-Humean and Universals Models, then shows that while they explicitly deny a place for powers in their fundamental ontologies, they nonetheless implicate powers. That is, they subtly assume the reality of powers. As a result, the Powers Model is the way to go in explaining physical modality. However, there are different ways of conceiving powers. After describing variations of the Powers Model, the chapter returns to the main question posed in the introductory chapter: What is the nature of powers from the inside? Stricter attention to the internality of powers is necessary to better understand the Powers Model and its metaphysical commitments.

The principle of sufficient reason (PSR) says that every contingent truth has an explanation. It is widely thought that if one strengthens "explanation" to "contrastive explanation," then the PSR entails modal fatalism – the view that no proposition is contingent. In a theistic context, this would force full theological determinism: of creaturely behavior by God and of divine behavior by the divine nature. I discuss about a dozen accounts of what could be meant by “contrastive explanation.” Some of them support these arguments and some do not. I argue, however, that we should not extend the PSR to contrastive explanation in any of the senses given.

Aquinas thinks that not all instances of efficient causation are equivalent. Certain instances of efficient causation, namely per se cases, are the most fundamental and proper. Other instances of efficient causation happen in virtue of these cases. The chapter reconstructs Aquinas’s views on per se efficient causation. The chapter next examines Aquinas’s views on the temporal and modal relationship that obtains between per se natural efficient causes and their effects. The chapter shows that Aquinas thought that per se causes are simultaneous with their effects. Contemporary scholars debate whether Aquinas thought that natural efficient causes necessitate their effects. The chapter brings greater clarity to Aquinas’s views by examining his distinctions between different types of natural efficient causes and different types of necessity. Finally, the chapter considers Aquinas’s views on important relational conditions for efficient causation: the agent and the patient must be distinct and they must be in contact with each other. The chapter analyzes Aquinas’s arguments against self-motion and action at a distance.