声明
List of Abbreviations
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background Information
1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study
1.3 Research Questions
1.4 Layout of the Thesis
Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Study on Epistemic Modal Verbs
2.2 Modality in Systemic Functional Grammar
2.3 Discourse Analysis on Modality
2.4 Previous Studies on Epistemic Modality
Chapter 3 Research Methodology
3.1 A Corpus-based Research
3.2 Instruments Used for Statistical Analysis
3.3 Data Collection and Procedure of Analysis
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion
4.1 Distributions of Epistemic Modal Verbs across the Two Corpora
4.2 Syntactic Features of Epistemic Modal Verbs
4.3 Modality Value of Epistemic Modal Verbs
4.4 Functions of Epistemic Modal Verbs
4.5 Summary
Chapter 5 Conclusion
5.1 Major Findings of the Study
5.2 Implications
5.3 Limitations and Suggestions for the Future Research
参考文献
Appendices
致谢
Résumé
Publication
大连海事大学;
