Negative modality in Hindi

International audienceThe paper deals with different kinds of negative modality expressed through three negative markers in Hindi, namely, nahi, mat, and na. The paper rejects the idea of considering these markers in terms of the degree of the illocutionary strenght they are supposed to carry and proposes that they are employed by the speaker to express different kinds of epistemic and deontic negative modalities in Hindi. Hence they are not synonomous, Nahi is employed mainly to express negative epistemic necessity whereas mat is used exclusively to express negative deontic necessity. Na, on the other hand, is employed to express both the negative epistemic possibility as well as negative deontic possibility