Bělíková Zuzana The Modal Verb Could and its Equivalents in Translation

6.4
 
State Cognitive Verbs 
As it is mentioned in the theory, some state cognitive verbs in connection with could 
usually carry the meaning of the whole sentence and the function of could is dropped. I 
want to study this argument in the subcorpus to confirm or disprove it.
State cognitive verbs express mental or cognitive processes of an agent and the verbs like 
know, remember, perceive, prefer, want, forget and understand belong to this group.
After I searched for the examples in the subcorpus, I found out that there is not any 
occurrence of could perceive and could prefer there. There is only one utterance of could 
want and it proves the argument above: 
(240) Because you're everything I could want in a woman, Danny, so why wouldn't I want 
to marry you? (LLS) 
 
Protože máš všechno, co po ženě chci. Tak proč bych si tě nevzal? 
 
[Because you're everything I want in a woman, Danny ...] 
6.4.1
 
Could Know 
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The subcorpus: American Fiction after 1950 
•
The occurrences of could know: 5 
There are only 5 sentences with could know. Two of them drop could in translation and 
three of them carry modality expressed by the primary meaning of could or can. 
Unfortunately, this is overly a small amount of examples to prove or disprove the argument 

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Philosophical Faculty, Palacký University Olomouc 
69 
above but the occurrences that imply modality are more frequent and that is why they 
disprove it.
(241) But … there's no way you could know that! (BDC) 
 
Ale … to přece nemůžeš vědět ! 
 
[But ... there’s no way you can know that!] 
(242) That’s one way he could know. (HSL)