Modal constructions with deber Morphosyntactic choice and meaning making in Salamanca (Spain) media discourse

The use of the modal constructions with deber 'must' - the one where it is directly followed by an infinitive vs. the one where the particle de is inserted between them - proves relevant to a cognitive-functional approach to grammatical choice as the creation of meanings. In this study, the use of both constructions is quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed in a corpus of written-press and radio discourse from a Peninsular Spanish community. Deber-o is by far the dominant choice, usually appearing in deontic-modality utterances. Its sporadic use in epistemic contexts helps emphasize the speaker's certainty about the content, presenting it as a logical inference based on contextual premises. For its part, deber-de usually contributes to the mitigation of deontic utterances, favoring their interpretation as hypotheses or suggestions. The latter construction is strongly associated with conversational contexts and is rather infrequent in journalists' and radio broadcasters' discourse. The results show the usefulness of combining the study of quantitative patterns with that of contextual usage in order to reach a scientific explanation of morphosyntactic choice.