Download or read book Understatements and Hedges in English written by Axel Hübler and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1983-01-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of this monograph is a comprehensive analysis of understatements and other forms of non-direct speech (hedges) in modern English. It is based on a multi-level approach, including philosophical, cultural, and socio-psychological arguments. The main part consists of an investigation of the linguistic restrictions for understatements and hedges to be formed by means of the following grammatical categories: negation of predicates, gradation of predicates, modalization of affirmative sentences by means of parenthetical verbs, modal adverbs, modal verbs, and questions.