Although his work did not receive much attention at the time, it is generally accepted nowadays that Stig Kanger played a crucial role in the development of model-theoretic semantics for modal logic. The precise nature of his contribution is, yhowever, not so widely appreciated. It is cometimes said that Kanger was the true originator of the so-called possible words or Kripke semantics for modal logic. Such an assimilation of Kanger-type semantics to standard possible worlds semantics could, howvere, be misleading. There are, I shall argue, important differences, both of a conceptual and a technical nature, between Kanger's appraoch to modal semantics and the possible worlds approach. In this connections, one should distinguish between: (I) possible worlds semantics as a particular type of model-theoretic semantics for modal logic; and (ii) the possible worlds interpretation of modal concepts. Accordingly, we may pose the two questions: "Is Kanger's semantics a kind of possible worlds semantics?" and "Is Kanger's interpretations of modal notions a 'possible worlds interpretation'?". In the talk I shall argue that both questions should be answered in the negative.

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