Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of contributors -- Abbreviations used in glossing -- 1. Introduction -- A. Modals in Indo-European languages (Western branch) -- 2. Modals in the Germanic languages -- 3. Modals in Irish -- 4. Modals in the Romance languages -- 5. Modals in Greek -- B. Modals in Indo-European languages (Eastern branch) -- 6. Modals in the Slavonic languages -- 7. Modals in Baltic -- 8. Modals in Albanian -- 9. Modality in Romani -- C. Modals in Non-Indo-European languages -- 10. The grammaticalisation of modal auxiliaries in Maltese and Arabic vernaculars of the Mediterranean area -- 11. Modal verbs in Balto-Finnic -- 12. Modals in Hungarian -- 13. Mood and modality in Berber -- 14. Modality in Basque -- 15. Modals in Turkic -- 16. Concluding chapter: modal constructions in the languages of Europe -- Backmatter