intentionmodality

Intention modality is a category of linguistic modality that encodes the speaker's intention to perform an action or to bring about a future state. It focuses on volitional commitment and planning rather than on the truth of a proposition or the speaker's evidence about it. In semantics and pragmatics, intention modality helps distinguish what the speaker aims to do from what is known or necessary.

Intention is commonly expressed through future-oriented forms and volitional predicates. English examples include will, be going to, intend to, plan to, and promise. For instance, "I will submit the report tomorrow" or "She plans to start the project next month" convey acts the speaker commits to carrying out. The nuances can reflect immediacy, certainty, or deliberation.

Intention modality is distinct from epistemic modality, which concerns evidence about truth, and from deontic modality, which concerns obligation. Some analyses treat intention as a context-dependent operator that modifies the commitment state associated with a proposition, often modeled in possible-world semantics as a speaker-held intention regarding the proposition's truth or realization. Cross-linguistically, intention can be encoded with future morphology, aspect, or dedicated verbs.

In discourse, intention modality interacts with communicative acts such as promises, commitments, or requests. It can influence speaker credibility and conversational alignment, particularly when plans fail or are revised. While related, intention modality remains a nuanced and sometimes overlapping area with other modal categories, inviting ongoing cross-linguistic and theoretical exploration.