Consider this sentence, please:
Is there any possibility that I could use these words in writing?
Can I use the above sentence to take advice/suggestion or does it sound like the speaker's asking permission?
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Sign up to join this communityConsider this sentence, please:
Is there any possibility that I could use these words in writing?
Can I use the above sentence to take advice/suggestion or does it sound like the speaker's asking permission?
Without context, the sentence is ambiguous. You might be asking about the possibility, in this case probably meaning "would it be grammatically correct", or you could be asking for permission.
When I was a little boy in elementary school a fad went around the teachers that "can" and "could" refer to ability while "may" refers to permission. So if, say, you asked, "Can I take this book home?" that means "Am I capable of taking this book home?" But "May I take this book home?" means "Do I have permission?" And so the teachers thought it was hysterically funny that if a student asked, "Can I take this book home?" they would reply, "I don't know. Are you strong enough to carry it?"
That was all great except ... it was definitions of the words that the teachers made up. In actual use, people routinely use "can" to refer to permission.
(Many people seem to get great entertainment from making up their own definition of a word, and then making fun of people who use the word with the dictionary definition instead of the definition that they made up.)