There has been much lively discussion about the diachrony of modality since the 1980s (Ziegeler 2016). The investigation conducted on modal verbs in the Germanic languages, especially English, has shown beyond any doubt that languages with a good amount of available written history are fundamental in reconstructing the diachronic pathways of modality and support the panchronic approach adopted for less well-documented or less studied languages (e.g. Bybee - Perkins - Pagliuca 1994). Nevertheless, diachronic research needs to open to other lexical markers (cf. Van linden 2012 for English modal adjectives) as well as to other possible benchmarks of comparison by taking advantage of well-documented languages. The main aim of my project is to perform the first large-scope analysis of modalisation paths in Latin, a language whose documented history spans over many centuries and offers a wide-ranging variety of written sources. In contrast with mainstream research on lexical markers expressing modality, my project focuses not only on verbs (e.g. possum ‘have power, be able’) but also on adjectives (e.g. the adjectives in -bilis), nouns (e.g. necessitas ‘unavoidableness’) and adverbs (e.g. sentence adverbs such as certe ‘certainly’) offering a comprehensive approach to the Latin lexical modal system. Since the diachronic study of lexical modality is an emerging field of contemporary linguistic research, the absence of monograph-length studies on the evolution of the Latin lexical modal system and the inadequacy of most Latin dictionaries in tracing the polysemy of modal forms are by no way surprising. The only feasible way to reconstruct modal pathways and concurrence mechanisms among modal forms in the history of Latin is therefore to adopt a corpus-based approach. In order to gain a broad overview of the evolution of modality based on a thorough description of modal readings and uses at the synchronic level, a corpus of texts chosen according to sociolinguistic criteria is mandatory. The relevant passages are being analysed and then annotated using the XML-TEI language: dedicated annotation schemes have been developed. Teamwork allows not only the collection of a valuable amount of data, but also the interaction of interdisciplinary competences. The team is composed of a principal investigator with the function of supervisor and coordinator, a doctoral student in Latin linguistics and an expert in Computational Linguistics at post-doctoral level. Our main tasks is the analysis and annotation of the corpus as well as the dissemination and updating of data and results through an online database. This effort is making a huge amount of data on lexical modal markers and their uses manageable. We glean first-hand material from this data for collaborative and/or personal research. Currently, the focus is on the preparation of a cutting-edge study, opening new perspectives for describing and explaining the diachronic paths of modality and the notion of the 'participant of modality'. The PhD candidate is finishing her thesis. The open access database, working on annotation schemes elaborated to guarantee maximum interoperability, permits discussion at international level with teams working on modality in other languages. Part of it has already been released. In the investigation of pre-modal and post-modal meanings, Indo-Europeanists and Romance linguists are privileged interlocutors. The results are being disseminated through several international workshops and conferences. Once completed, this project will offer a model for analysing the diachrony of modality in other languages.
