In a different article on this site entitled ”Modal verbs”, I described the core meanings of Danish modal verbs, when not used for exerting intentional force or for politeness. That is, the meanings of modal verbs in statements that have truth value in describing the world around us. In that article I mentioned, that those core meanings do not apply in the same way, when modal verbs are used to apply intentional force. This is what the present article will explain.
In order to instruct someone, in a polite way, to do something, Danish uses vil or kan. Let us briefly list the core meanings of these two modal verbs.
Vil Desire, plan or prediction
Jeg vil hjem ’I want to go home’
Vi vil bygge en garage ’We’re going to build a garage’
Flyet vil lande om 30 minutter ’The airplane is going to land in 30 minutes’.
Kan Ability, possibility
Min søster kan spille klaver ’My sister can play the piano’
Vi kan sove længe om søndagen ’We can sleep in on Sundays’
But none of these restrictions in meaning apply when the utterance is meant as an instruction as in (1) below.
(1) a. Kan du ikke lige åbne vinduet?
’Could you please open the window?’
b. Vil du ikke lige åbne vinduet?
’Would you please open the window?’
The two examples in (1) mean the same both in that they are meant to get the same reaction and in that there is no meaningful way in which you might say that the meaning of one is different that the other, even though they use different modal verbs.
A similar pair of examples is shown in (2) with må ’may’ and kan. Må has the core meaning of permission or obligation.
(2) a. Må jeg bede om regningen?
’May I please have the check?’
b. Kan jeg bede om regningen?
’Can I please have the check?’
Like the examples in (1), these are expected to elicit the exact same response from the listener, and there is no meaningful difference between their contents, and yet they use different modal verbs.
One of the reasons why the choice of modal verb is flexible in these types of questions, is that they are not real questions. They are what we call ”speech acts” designed to express intention and make others perform a specific task. They are often highly dependent upon the context in which they are said. For this same reason, the negation ikke ’not’ can be added at will for extra politeness but without the negating meaning. Turning an order into a question, makes it more polite already (3b). If you add a modal verb, it becomes even more polite (3c) and adding the negation ikke (3d) and modal particles like lige (3e) can turn up the levels of politeness even further, as in the examples in (3). Note that all of the examples could have used kan instaed of vil.
(3) a. Kom herover! Come over here!
b. Kommer du herover? Are you coming over here?
c. Vil du komme herover? Would you come over here?
d. Vil du ikke komme herover? Wouldn’t you come over here?
e. Vil du ikke lige komme herover? Wouldn’t you come over here (real quick)?
f. Vil du ikke godt lige komme herover? Wouldn’t you please come over here (real quick)?
Note also, that English behaves in a similar way to Danish in that it too can use different modal verbs to convey the same meaning in these types of situations.
While ikke can be combined with any modal verb without exception, certain central adverbs can limit the above mentioned flexibility. These are gerne and godt. As shown in (4) godt can be used with vil, kan and må, while gerne is limited to vil and må, while skal is not able to be combined with either of them. It is difficult to translate godt / gerne except for to say, that they are the opposite of the negation ikke so they underscore e.g. the willingness of vil or the permission of må.
(4) a. Vil du godt komme herover? Would you come over here?
b. Kan du godt komme herover? Could you come over here?
c. Må jeg godt sidde her? May I sit here?
But the examples in (5) are not possible:
d. *Kan du gerne komme herover? Can you come over here?
e. *Kan jeg gerne få en kop kaffe? May I have a cup of coffee?
f. *Skal jeg godt køre dig til stationen? Should I drive you to the station?
