Categorising Modality in Biomedical Texts

The accurate recognition of modal information is vital for the correct interpretation of statements. In this paper, we report on the collection a list of words and phrases that express modal information in biomedical texts, and propose a categorisation scheme according to the type of information conveyed. We have performed a small pilot study through the annotation of 202 MEDLINE abstracts according to our proposed scheme. Our initial results suggest that modality in biomedical statements can be predicted fairly reliably though the presence of particular lexical items, together with a small amount of contextual information.