Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Relating to or expressing moral duty or obligation.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective ethics, linguistics Pertaining to
necessity ,duty orobligation , or expressionsconveying this.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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As with deontic quirks, you can see this in terms of rhetorical transformations.
Modality and Hamlet Hal Duncan 2010
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To explain what I mean a little better (hopefully,) I'd tend to put these in a similar terminology to that with which the base deontic quirks are articulated.
Modality and Hamlet Hal Duncan 2010
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In fact, just as “must not” can be read as deontic modality rather than epistemic, “should not” can be read as boulomaic modality rather than deontic — the “should not” of desire rather than duty.
Archive 2009-06-01 Hal Duncan 2009
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Actually, there is an alternative reading in which this modality can be read as honest prescriptivism, if we take “must” as a deontic rather than epistemic modality — the “must” of social obligation rather than theoretical possibility.
The Assumption of Authority 2 Hal Duncan 2009
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The disruption or absence of it — which is to say where what “can happen” carries uneven deontic and/or boulomaic modalities — is equilibrium warp.
Archive 2009-06-01 Hal Duncan 2009
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Equilibrium warp: Equilibrium can be considered the state of the substory at any point where what “can happen” carries deontic and/or boulomaic modalities that effectively neutralise each other — i.e. where it “may and/or may not happen” — or that dynamically counterbalance each other — i.e. where it “should and should not happen”.
Archive 2009-06-01 Hal Duncan 2009
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A broad division has been made into alethic (regarding theoretical possibility), epistemic (regarding actuality), deontic (regarding duty) and boulomaic (regarding desire).
Archive 2009-06-01 Hal Duncan 2009
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I would only add that both will and going to (like most modals or modal phrases) are used to express two kinds of meanings: 1. meanings related to how we see the likelihood of events (sometimes called extrinsic, or epistemic, modality); and meanings related to how we intervene in, or exert change on, events (intrinsic or deontic modality).
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In fact, just as “must not” can be read as deontic modality rather than epistemic, “should not” can be read as boulomaic modality rather than deontic — the “should not” of desire rather than duty.
The Assumption of Authority 2 Hal Duncan 2009
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Actually, there is an alternative reading in which this modality can be read as honest prescriptivism, if we take “must” as a deontic rather than epistemic modality — the “must” of social obligation rather than theoretical possibility.
Archive 2009-06-01 Hal Duncan 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word deontic
"They include the kinds of relationship this enunciation entertains with particular paths (or "statements") by according them a truth value ("alethic" modalities of the necessary, the impossible, the possible, or the contingent), an epistemological value ("epistemic" modalities of the certain, the excluded, the plausible, or the questionable) or finally an ethical or legal value ("deontic" modalities of the obligatory, the forbidden, the permitted, or the optional)."
The practice of everyday life by Michel de Certeau, p 99
March 25, 2011
mitch4 commented on the word deontic
I'm most used to the context "deontic logic". (Which is a form of "modal logic", so the citations with "deontic modality" or putting deontic in a list of modalities makes a lot of sense.
January 8, 2015