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The Spanish verbs amenazar ‘to threaten’ andprometer ‘to promise’ do not only have a lexical reading but can also yield a subjective one, whereby the likelihood of the event expressed in the infinitive receives a negative, resp. a positive, evaluation. Three hypotheses are being tested: 1) as an outcome of the illocutionary force and the subject commitment attached to lexical prometer, the subjective readings of the latter may be expected to score high on the probability scale, whereas the event introduced by subjective amenazar will score low, in line with the lack of illocutionary force and weak subject commitment in lexical reading of this verb. 2) The viewpoint substantiated by the two verbs also differs: Whereas amenazar renders an event-oriented evidential reading from an internal point of view, prometer projects an external viewpoint leading to a more speaker-oriented subjective reading. 3) As a result of (1) and (2), prometer should easily combine with negatively oriented complements, whereas amenazar should resist taking positively oriented ones. The corpus research fully corroborates the first two hypotheses. The data, however, fail to unequivocally sustain the third one, especially because amenazar displays more flexibility than expected.

The subject of this research is epistemic modality, which is referred to a subjective type of modality in a common sense and in terms of gender; it is considered as the connection between a subject and an attribute. The purpose of this research is to study epistemic modality and its contextual features in a common sense and in terms of gender. The objectives of this article require application of several methods such as comparative analysis and text analysis. The methods favour the fact that the conclusions concerning the means of epistemic modality expression are maximally reliable. The method of continuous sampling was used to accumulate actual materials in terms of the gender approach. In the course of this study, the different types of epistemic modality such as epistemic modality of certainty / uncertainty, epistemic modality expressing the meaning of opinion – assumption, doubtful evaluation.

El cinismo y el quinismo son actitudes anti-téticas que pueden materializarse discursi-vamente a través del grado de opinión de la modalidad epistémica. En este trabajo pro-ponemos cuatro enunciados arquetípicos que representan múltiples opiniones respecto a la idoneidad o inconveniencia de que el catalán y el castellano acaparen los espacios y usos sociolingüísticos en Cataluña y en las cuales están presentes los componentes cínico y quí-nico. Estos elementos, que privilegian a una u otra lengua, no aparecen aisladamente, sino que se da una lucha entre ambas actitudes en la que una de ellas matiza la efectividad de la otra. Tomamos la perspectiva del Análisis Crítico del Discurso porque las ideologías que reproducen las relaciones de poder entre las lenguas se manifiestan discursivamen-te. Mediante esta perspectiva, dividimos los enunciados en segmentos separados ideoló-gicamente y señalamos cuál de ellos se ha de atacar para construir ideologías lingüísticas favorables a la lengua minorizada Cynicism and kynicism are antithetical at-titudes which can discursively materialize through the opinion degree of the epistemic modality. In this paper, we propose four ar-chetypical statements representing several opinions regarding the suitability and incon-venience of Spanish and Catalan languages about how they compete to monopolize so-ciolinguistic domains and uses in Catalonia. Cynical or kynical components are made clear in these sentences. These elements, which favour one or another language, do not appear in isolation, but there is a struggle between both attitudes in which one of them nuance the effectiveness of the other one. We take the Critical Discourse Analysis sin-ce the ideologies which reproduce the power relations between languages reveal themsel-ves discursively. Through this perspective, we divide the sentences into ideologically separated segments and we point out which of them must be attacked to build favourable linguistic ideologies to the minoritized lan-guage.

In this paper we describe a cognitive grammar approach to the study of signed language grammar. Using data from different signed languages, we explore three broad topics. First, we examine pointing, Place, and placing. We analyze pointing as a construction consisting of a pointing device, a symbolic structure which directs the interlocutor’s conceptual attention, and a Place, a symbolic structure consisting of a spatial location and a meaning, the focus of attention. Placing is a construction in which non-body anchored signs are placed at a location in space, thereby creating or recruiting a Place structure which can be used in subsequent discourse. We examine how these structures work in nominal grounding and in extended discourse. Second, we examine a cognitive grammar approach to grammatical modality. Our analysis is based on the cognitive model called the control cycle, which posits two types of control: effective, which describes our striving to influence what happens in the world, and epistemic, which concerns how we make sense of the world. We explore how effective and epistemic modality are expressed in facial displays, focusing on the brow furrow and a display with down- turned corners of the mouth we call the horseshoe mouth. Finally, we offer a brief account of a cognitive grammar approach to the relation between sign and gesture.In this paper we describe a cognitive grammar approach to the study of signed language grammar. Using data from different signed languages, we explore three broad topics. First, we examine pointing, Place, and placing. We analyze pointing as a construction consisting of a pointing device, a symbolic structure which directs the interlocutor’s conceptual attention, and a Place, a symbolic structure consisting of a spatial location and a meaning, the focus of attention. Placing is a construction in which non-body anchored signs are placed at a location in space, thereby creating or recruiting a Place structure which can be used in subsequent discourse. We examine how these structures work in nominal grounding and in extended discourse. Second, we examine a cognitive grammar approach to grammatical modality. Our analysis is based on the cognitive model called the control cycle, which posits two types of control: effective, which describes our striving to influence what happens in the world, and epistemic, which concerns how we make sense of the world. We explore how effective and epistemic modality are expressed in facial displays, focusing on the brow furrow and a display with down- turned corners of the mouth we call the horseshoe mouth. Finally, we offer a brief account of a cognitive grammar approach to the relation between sign and gesture.

The aim of this paper is to establish the repertoire and distribution of verbal and adverbial exponents of epistemic modality in English- and Polish-language judgments passed by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) and non-translated judgments passed by the Supreme Court of Poland (SN). The study applies a model for categorizing exponents of epistemicity with regard to their (i) level (high-, medium- and low-level of certainty, necessity or possibility expressed by the markers; primary dimension), (ii) perspective (own vs. reported perspective), (iii) opinion (based either on facts or beliefs) and (iv) time (the embedding of epistemic markers in sentences relating to the past, present or future) (contextual dimensions). It examines the degree of intra-generic convergence of translated EU judgments and non-translated national judgments in terms of the employment of epistemic markers, as well as the degree of authoritativeness of judicial argumentation, and determines whether the frequent use of epistemic markers constitutes a generic feature of judgments. The research material consists of a parallel corpus of English- and Polish-language versions of 200 EU judgments and a corpus of 200 non-translated domestic judgments. The results point to the high salience and differing patterns of use of epistemic markers in both EU and national judgments. The frequent use of high-level epistemic markers boosts the authoritativeness of judicial reasoning.

The present study investigates the locally situated interactional functions of so-called epistemic modals, daroo and deshoo, in Japanese conversation. Although the two forms are generally considered plain and polite variants of the same epistemic modal, both forms frequently appear in the present casual conversational data. A detailed sequential analysis demonstrates that daroo and deshoo are used to perform various social actions rather than simply expressing the speaker's conjecture. Deshoo has a rather fixed function of soliciting alignment or confirmation from the interlocutor. On the other hand, daroo works as part of larger constructions for various actions, including (i) displaying spontaneity, (ii) expressing neutral or uninvolved stance, (iii) displaying alignment, (iv) qualifying one's assertion, and (v) challenging the interlocutor's assertion. The findings suggest that linguistic categories such as ‘epistemic modals’ are epiphenomena of social interaction ( Ford et al., 2013 ), which are not themselves interactionally relevant to the conversational participants.

Polarity defined with regard to objective epistemic modality, whichserves to code whether the speaker is certain about the occurrence of astate-of-affairs. Regarding this definition, Dik asserts that negations shouldbe addressed both semantically and pragmatically, and a more comprehensivenegation scale should be comprised. Accordingly, he defined five levels ofanalysis as phrase, proposition, predication, predicate and constituent.Illocutionary negation is attained through the negation of performative verbs.In propositional polarity, the speaker approves of or denies any affirmative ornegative proposition given or implied in a certain context. In both conditions,the speaker provides their assessment of the truth of the proposition. Thenegation of predication is considered a structure, in which a certainstate-of-affairs is represented objectively. This kind of a negation affectsthe predicate only, and if this predicate is used in a state-of-affairs, itcannot render the proposition negative. A distinct way to obtain negativestatements is constituent negation or negation through zero-quantification.This study aims at explaining how negation in languages is addressed inFunctional Grammar (Dik, 1997), and revealing occurrences of negation in Turkish.To this aim, the study will discuss what negation is and at which levels itoperates before scrutinizing negation in Turkish. It is observed that negationin Turkish operates at all five levels proposed by Dik. However, the focus on{-mE} and {değil} caused the investigation of negation at predicate andconstituent levels to fall behind., Kutupsallık bilgisel nesnel kiplik çerçevesinde tanımlanmaktadır. Bilgisel kiplik ise konuşucunun bir olay-durumunun gerçekleşip gerçekleşmemesinden emin olup olmadığını kodlamayı sağlamaktadır. Dik bu tanımlamalardan hareketle olumsuzluğun anlambilimsel ve edimbilimsel açıdan ele alınması gerektiğini ve daha kapsamlı bir olumsuzluk türü ölçeği oluşturulması gerektiğini ileri sürmektedir. Buna göre tümce, önerme, yüklemleme, yüklem ve kurucu olmak üzere beş çözümleme düzeyi belirlemiştir. Edimzsözel olumsuzluk, edimsel eylemlerin olumsuzlanmasıyla elde edilmektedir. Önermesel kutupsallıkta, konuşucu bağlamda verilen ya da sezdirilen, olumlu ya da olumsuz bir önermeyi onaylamakta ya da reddetmektedir. Her iki durumda da konuşucu önermenin doğruluğu hakkındaki kişisel değerlendirmesini sunar. Yüklemlemenin olumsuzlanması ise,belli bir olay durumunun gerçekleşmemesinin nesnel olarak sunulduğu bir yapı olarak kabul edilmektedir. Bu tür olumsuzluk yalnızca yüklem üzerinde etkilidir ve eğer bu yüklem bir yüklemlemede kullanılırsa önermeyi olumsuz yapamamaktadır. Olumsuz bildirimlere ulaşmanın çok farklı bir yolu da kurucu olumsuzlama ya da sıfır-niceleme yoluyla olumsuzluktur. Bu ayrımlar göz önünde bulundurulduğunda, çalışmanın amacı dillerdeki olumsuzluk olgusunun İşlevsel Dilbilgisi (Dik 1997) çerçevesinde nasıl açıklandığının ortaya konması ve bu bağlamda Türkçedeki kimi olumsuzluk görünümlerinin açığa çıkartılması olarak belirlenmiştir. Bu amaç doğrultusunda öncelikle olumsuzluğun ne olduğu ve hangi düzlemlerde işlediği ele alınacak, ardından Türkçedeki olumsuzluk incelenecektir. Türkçenin olumsuzluğu Dik’in belirttiği 5 düzlemde de kullandığı gözlemlenmiştir. Ancak Türkçede olumsuzluk üzerine yapılan çalışmaların daha çok {-mE} ve {değil} birimleri üzerine odaklanması özellikle yüklem ve kurucu düzeyindeki olumsuzluğun incelenmesini geri plana itmiştir.

Previous works [like Cornillie (Epistemic modality and evidentiality in Spanish (semi)auxiliaries. A cognitive-functional approach, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 2007)] suggest that Spanish political discourse could be studied on the basis of the description of the different evidential and modal types. The present study extends this synchronic hypothesis and addresses the evolution of the Spanish evidential discourse markers *al parecer* and *por lo visto* in a specific political genre, namely parliamentary debates, to shed some light on the evolution of parliamentary debate itself. To do so, a corpus analysis has been carried out of Spanish parliament debates from the last 39 years (1979–2018). The results show how the use of evidential markers has decreased and the pragmatic functions attached to these markers have progressively specialised in expressing negative/criticism pragmatic functions. The decrease in frequency and their specialisation in criticisms are presented, among other factors, as consequences of the evolution of parliamentary debates in Spain.

This is a pragmatic study of the use of the items of epistemic modality in a literary discourse with the main aims to identify, analyze and describe the ways the items of epistemic modality are used. Their contextual meanings, functions, and implication to the pedagogical attempts are also unfolded. The results of the interpretative and descriptive analysis reveal that the items of epistemic modality are found to be very dominant which also suggests that the genre of narrative fiction is linguistically characterized by the utterances that are established on the basis of knowledge and reasoning. The items of epistemic modality are found to be polysemous and polyfunctional which are reflected pragmatically in the forms of politeness, negotiative and constructive functions. All these lead to the acknowledgement that the use of the items of linguistic modality in literary discourse and their usage for language teaching in the applied linguistic contexts is worth conducting.Keywords: pragmatics, Linguistic modality, Epistemic modality, Pedagocical implication

Considerando a modalidade como uma forma de manifestação da atitude do enunciador frente ao enunciado produzido, este trabalho propõe-se a analisar, dentro de uma abordagem funcionalista da linguagem, os efeitos de sentido produzidos pela coocorrência de elementos modalizadores em obras de autoajuda dirigidas às mulheres com o objetivo de verificar em que medida os valores iguais ou diferentes desses elementos contribuem para reforçar ou atenuar um determinado efeito de sentido relativo ao tom do discurso. Para o levantamento e análise dos modalizadores, partimos da classificação de modalidade proposta por Hengeveld (2004), adotando quatro dos valores modais propostos pelo autor: modalidade facultativa, modalidade deôntica, modalidade volitiva e modalidade epistêmica. Os resultados da análise evidenciam os efeitos de sentido que surgem justamente da combinatória dos elementos modais, revelando ora um tom de certeza, ora um tom de autoridade na caracterização desse tipo de discurso.

It is well known that the representatives of a certain gender and age groups are distinguished by various perceptions of the world, evaluation of the objective reality events as well as by operating facts as reliable. The purpose of the research is to reveal the speaker’s gender and age characteristics affecting the confidence level in reliability of facts provided and as such the epistemic modal markers (modal words and modal verbs) chosen by him or her. To achieve the objective of the research there were used some linguistic methods such as a communicative-pragmatic and the descriptive ones. The illustrative basis consists of the situations expressing the meanings of epistemic possibility and epistemic necessity. Two types of literary characters from two fiction resources (J. Banville «The Sea» and M. Zusak «The Book Thief») were chosen to analyse: a middle-aged man and a teenage girl. The research identifies that the man mostly deals with markers of epistemic possibility if his statement is based on retrospection, intuition, or faith / conjecture (unlike a girl), an assumption (similar to a girl). In case of having a convincing evidence base, the man uses epistemic necessity markers. The girl demonstrates the usage of modal markers of epistemic necessity if her statements are based on faith, desire to benefit or “female logic”. The desire to attract attention of the opposite sex interlocutor is marked by the usage of modal markers of epistemic possibility. It is also worth noting that strong emotions, which are common to a teenage girl rather than a mature man, can distort the reliability of the statements. The content of the article is of practical value for the further epistemic modality researches in the field of linguistic pragmatics and sociolinguistics.

This paper investigates the interaction between quantifiers and epistemic modals, focusing on the contrast between every and any . It builds on observations made in von Fintel & Iatridou 2003, who noted that quantifiers seem unable to take wide scope across an epistemic modal. The proposal at the heart of the paper is that modes of epistemic access to domains of quantification play a role in accounting for apparent restrictions on scope. The paper takes the characterization of conceptual covers in Aloni 2001 as a starting point to argue that in the context of epistemic modals, constraints on epistemic access to the domain of quantification can give rise to scope illusions. EARLY ACCESS

Financiado para publicación en acceso aberto: Universidade de Vigo/CISUG The aim of this study is twofold: firstly, it presents a general overview of the evidentiality system in Galician, and secondly, it explores the use of its marker seica. We will argue that, apart from the core evidential meanings, which are independent of epistemic modality, the evidential markers in conversation index social meanings related to asymmetry of epistemic authority, face-saving strategies, detachment, irony, and deference towards the hearer. The territory of information model plays a crucial role in the selection of a specific evidential and this includes taking into consideration the perspective of the listener. We will claim that Galician evidential markers aim less at the attenuation of the speaker's commitment, and more at conveying negative politeness. Regarding seica, this unit presents a broad spectrum of meanings, ranging from all types of inferential values to hearsay and quotative meanings. Nuances of epistemic modal doubt, mutual shared knowledge and mirativity can be added depending on the context. Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad | Ref. FFI2015-65474-P

Resumen: En este artículo nos proponemos describir algunos fenómenos lingüísticos que contribuyen a crear la incertidumbre en el texto literario. En particular, analizaremos distintas estrategias narrativas que configuran lo siniestro (Freud, 1919) en un texto que, si bien es un relato de autor, utiliza los modos de decir propios de la leyenda tradicional de transmisión oral: “El Monte de las Ánimas”, de Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. El efecto inquietante que produce esta leyenda en el lector es resultado de múltiples fenómenos analizados por la teoría literaria (como los estudios del género fantástico). No obstante, queremos proponer un abordaje basado en algunas nociones provenientes del campo de la lingüística y del análisis del discurso como factores determinantes de este efecto. Trataremos tres aspectos: el discurso reproducido (Maldonado, 2001) o la representación del discurso ajeno (Authier-Revuz, 2003), la modalidad epistémica que informa sobre el conocimiento del enunciador frente a los hechos mencionados (Nuyts, 2001; García Negroni & Tordesillas Colado, 2001) y los verbos evidenciales que dan cuenta del modo de obtención de la información por parte del locutor (Aikhenvald, 2004), en especial los casos de evidencia indirecta transmitida, el folklore o saber popular (Willett, 1988). A nuestro entender, la articulación de estos tres elementos constituyen un posible camino de descripción del efecto mencionado.

This study discusses the phraseological pattern It + V-link + ADJ + That Clause as a rhetorical feature of argumentation in Ghanaian scholars’ research articles (RAs) across the disciplines of Sociology, Economics and Law. It looks at the pattern’s occurrence with the adjectives possible, likely and clear in RAs by Ghanaian authors based in Ghana and in RAs by international scholars who are native speakers to determine potential divergent patterns of use between the two groups of scholars in the three disciplinary fields. Because RAs produced by non-native writers are often said to be characterized by overuse, underuse or misuse of rhetorical features (e.g., Martinéz, 2005, Englander, 2006), this study adopts a corpus-based approach to investigate the extent to which Ghanaian scholars’ use of the above collocational pattern involving possible, likely and clear differs from international scholars’ use of the pattern in terms of frequency information, levels of epistemic force, and intensification/mitigation styles. A close inspection of a million-word corpus of RAs, supported by robust statistical analyses, reveals considerable differences in the way the pattern is used between the two groups of scholars across the disciplines studied, which suggest that Ghanaian scholars do not fully apply the preferred stereotypical uses of the pattern found in reputable international RAs. The study has implications for how Ghanaian scholars have acquired rhetorical strategies of academic writing.

A central idea in Ruth Millikan's biosemantics is that a representation's content is restricted to conditions required for the normal success of actions that it has as its function to guide. This a ...

Languages vary in how they encode and interpret attested information. The present research examined how users of Turkish and English construe utterances containing evidential information, in particular, whether evidential information is interpreted strictly as conveying source information (firsthand, or non-firsthand), or whether it is also perceived as signaling reliability of particular sources. Participants read sentences in their respective language presented in various source and modal forms and were asked to judge the source of information of the proposition and their confidence in whether the asserted event actually happened. It was found that there was sufficient information from evidential and modal expressions to make both source and probability of occurrence judgments, although the groups differed somewhat in their judgment patterns. The findings are taken to suggest that, for both Turkish and English speakers, evidentiality and epistemic modality overlaps to some extent but the two do not function exactly in the same way.

This article studies the evolution, from Medieval to Modern French, of three evidential markers that are semantically related from a diachronic perspective: il m’est avis que ‘I think that’, ‘it seems to me that’, apparemment ‘apparently’, and il paraît que ‘it seems that, apparently’. This study demonstrates the rise of the modal and evidential uses of the markers in question, from the Medieval period onwards, and provides a semantic characterization of these three epistemic-evidential markers in order to precisely grasp the evolution of their meaning. Using information from a number of databases, this article provides empirical support for the study of the different types of evidentiality, their evolution, and their interaction with the epistemic commitment of the speaker and the degree of certainty. The three markers have evolved towards greater subjectivity and a lower degree of certainty. Their historical semantic description shows that a marker may shift diachronically between various types of evidence.

The idea that we can understand key aspects of the metaphysics of consciousness by understanding conscious states as having a presentational character plays an essential role in the phenomenological tradition beginning with Brentano and Husserl. In this paper, the author explores some potential consequences of this connection for contemporary discussions of the ontology of consciousness in the world. Drawing on Hintikka’s analysis of epistemic modality, the author argues that the essential presentational character of consciousness can be seen as accounting for the familiar failure of substitutivity of identicals in intensional contexts of conscious presentation and further provides for an ontology of conscious presentation that avoids metaphysically problematic commitments to “special” intentional objects. The author next considers how the irreducibility of intensional contexts, if grounded in the presentational character of consciousness, also may provide for a kind of irreducibility of the “first-person” perspective to third-person or objective description across possible worlds. Finally, drawing on Chalmers’ “two-dimensionalist” semantic framework, the author argues that attention to the presentational aspect of consciousness as thus understood, while it provides significant motivation for the existence of the “hard problem” of the irreducibility of consciousness to physical and structural description, is nevertheless consistent with a globally monist, rather than dualist, ontology.

In both Russian and Chinese, there are conditional connectives that appear in the apodosis of conditional sentences and are derived from non-proximal demonstratives. This work will concentrate on the Russian conditional connective to and the Chinese conditional connective nà, which share a similar development from distal demonstratives and exhibit similar syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties. The analysis will take into account that both Russian to and Chinese nà are fundamentally deictic and have a motivated semantic content, which is closely related to the respective distal deictic demonstratives with the meaning that. The main question addressed in this work is how the semantics of distal demonstratives can account for their interaction with environments marked by epistemic uncertainty. In order to explain how the spatial relationship is transferred to the modal domain, the research will draw upon the theoretical framework of Deictic Space Theory, a cognitive linguistic theory which grounds fundamental features of human language in spatial cognition. The analysis will show how the occurrence of distal deictics in constructions involving epistemic uncertainty can be explained as a metaphorical extension from the basic meanings of remoteness in space and time to remoteness in certainty.

This paper considers the early and later stages of the acquisition of epistemic modality, focusing on certainty and uncertainty, and such basic forms of their expression as parenthetical modal words (e.g. navernoe ‘probably’, možet byt’ ‘maybe’, konecno ‘of course’, dejstvitel’no ‘really’), along with sentential complement constructions (e.g. I dumaju/scitaju, (cto) p ‘I think/believe (that) p’), which are closely connected in semantics and functions. Epistemic and – more broadly – subjective (modus) markers are interpreted as linguistic tools, conveying the propositional attitudes and feelings of the speaker/writer to a given state of affairs. Sequences in the development of epistemic repertoire, the epistemic density of spoken speech and the written texts of Russian children and adolescents, as well as the functions performed by epistemic markers, both at utterance level and text level, are discussed. Keywords: (Un)certainty, propositional attitudes, epistemic markers, early and late language development, oral and written language, Russian

In this paper, I classify the senses of epistemic hui into two types: a future one and a generalizing one, and argue that hui has three core semantic properties. First, it expresses a non-posteriority reading. Second, it complies with a constraint of alternatives. Third, it denotes evidentiality. I demonstrate that specificity of a situation can tell future and generalizing senses apart.

This article investigates epistemic modality in political discourse. It focuses on modality markers in terms of their word classes, semantic meanings and discourse functions in political speeches. The data were taken from three speeches delivered by the 23rd Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The results show that the markers found in the three speeches are of five different types, i.e., lexical verbs, modal adjectives, modal adverbs, modal auxiliary verbs and modal nouns, with meanings ranging from possibility, probability, to certainty. The markers also indicate the speaker’s commitment whose degree reflects the function in the social context. The speaker’s commitment is divided into three degrees of engagement, each of which serves as a means to be polite, to be diplomatic, and to be persuasive. The findings suggest that Trudeau tends to use reasonable judgment expressions to sound diplomatic and persuasive in his speeches.

Defined narrowly, evidentiality pertains to the sources of knowledge or evidence whereby the speaker feels entitled to make a factual claim. But evidentiality may also be conceived more broadly as both providing epistemic justification and reflecting speaker’s attitude towards the validity of the communicated information, and hearer’s potential acceptability of the information, derived from the degree of reliability of the source and mode of access to the information. Evidentiality and epistemic modality are subcategories of the same superordinate category, namely a category of epistemicity. Since the first seminal works on evidentiality (Chafe and Nichols 1986), studies have for the most part centred on languages where the grammatical marking of the information source is obligatory (for example Willett 1988; Aikhenvald 2004). Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the study of the domain of evidentiality in European languages, which rely on strategies along the lexico‐grammatical continuum. Assuming a broad conception of evidentiality and defining it as a functional category, we study linguistic means that fulfil the function of indicating the source of information for the transmitted content of a certain proposition in Romance languages.

The Japanese sentence-final particle kke is a marker of epistemic modality with evidential and mirative overtones. Its most common application is indexing the uncertainty of one’s recollection in interrogative sentences, but in declarative sentences it indexes a reaffirmation of the certainty of the utterance. This study traces the grammatical development of kke from the older Japanese perfect auxiliary -kyeri, citing examples from 8th-century Japanese through today. Through examining kke’s diachrony, it provides evidence that modal sentence-final particles can develop from auxiliaries when the contexts in which they are used become restricted over time.

Standards and norms for reasoning function, in part, to manage epistemic risk. Properly used, modal qualifiers like presumably have a role in systematically managing epistemic risk by flagging and tracking type-specific epistemic merits and risks of the claims they modify. Yet, argumentation-theoretic accounts of presumption often define it in terms of modalities of other kinds, thereby failing to recognize the unique risk profile of each. This paper offers a stipulative account of presumption, inspired by Ullmann-Margalit (J Philos 80:143–163, 1983), as an inferentially generated modal qualifier, “presumably, p,” distinguishing it from other, particularly epistemic modalities, e.g., standing commitments, assumptions, assertions, suppositions, hypotheses, and defeasible claims. By avoiding the tranching of inferential instruments of qualitatively different bona fides and risk profiles, this account provides a more accurate risk-rating system that better manages epistemic risk in inference, as well as contributing to the normative theory of the operation of presumption in reasoning and argument.

The paper analyses the epistemic modal words and expressions of doubt and shared knowledge in linguistic research articles. The restrictive features of the academic argumentation contribute to and connect with the author’s orientation focusing on the expectations and the possible responses of the disciplinary community. The authors evaluate the degree of the credibility of their assertions and modify it by means of epistemic components according to its appropriateness in argumentation contexts and in relation to the general discourse norms of professional interaction continually. From ethic and professional points of view, it is crucial to control the illocutionary force of critical comments especially when they relate to the judgments of the colleagues to be belonged to the same disciplinary community or to the well-known knowledge. Moreover, the important pragmatic aim of academic argumentation is not confrontation, but the way to accept a compromise and to achieve the possible compatibility of the different positions. Since the semantic potential of epistemic units of doubt mitigates the illocutionary force of critical comments and the components of shared knowledge construct the positive underground of the cooperative engagement with the disciplinary community. Then the modal epistemic components are treated as markers of the intersubjective relations between the authors and their target audience. They open a discourse dimension of the hedged polite argumentation and allow the authors to articulate their personal stance against the background of restrained disagreement, additional restrictions and reservations, circumstances, criteria, characteristics etc. They make it possible to downplay the conflict between previous and novel knowledge structures fixated in texts. The paper draws attention of the linguists who are interested in the issues of the science language to the necessity to take into account the discourse dimension of academic writings.

Kokkuvote . Artiklis on vaatluse all episteemilise modaalsuse leksikaalsete valjendusvahendite (markerite) arvatavasti , voib-olla ja akki toenaosuse tajumine. Vaadeldakse, kui palju oleneb markerite toenaosuse tajumine kontekstist, naiteks tugevast voi norgast eeldusest ehk olemasoleva informatsiooni rohkusest, markeriga lause agendi soost ja keelevalistest teguritest ehk vastajate soost ja vanusest. Markerite toenaosuse taju uurimiseks koostati internetikatse, millele vastas 328 eesti keelt konelevat inimest, kellest noorim oli alla 18-aastane ja vanim ule 60. Tulemustest selgus, et kolmest markerist tajutakse koige tugevamat toenaosust valjendavana markerit arvatavasti , pisut norgemana tunnetatakse voib-olla ja akki toenaosust. Kontekstil on markerite toenaosuse tajumisel oluline roll: toenaolisemana tajutakse lauseid, mille kontekst on tugevama eeldusega, mitmetahendusliku kontekstiga lauseid tajutakse aga hoopis norgema toenaosusega. Markerite toenaosuse tajumist mojutavad ka keelevalised tegurid, nagu vastaja sugu ja vanus. Abstract. Laura Tuuts and Reili Argus: The comprehension of lexical epistemic markers: the Estonian adverbs arvatavasti (‘probably’), akki (‘perhaps’) and voib-olla (‘maybe’) . The paper analyses the comprehension of epistemic modality markers arvatavasti ‘probably’, voib-olla ‘maybe’ and akki ‘perhaps’. The study focuses on the connections between the nature and the amount of context in the comprehension of epistemic markers which belong to the class of markers with average degree of certainty. In addition to the influence of context, factors like the gender of the agent in the context sentence, as well as the respondent’s gender, age, education and foreign language skills have been analysed according to different markers and context types. Answers of 328 Estonian-speaking respondents (aged 18–60) revealed that the marker arvatavasti ‘probably’ has the strongest epistemic value, while the other two markers under observation have a somewhat weaker epistemic value. Context has a big impact on the comprehension of all three markers: sentences with stronger premises were comprehended as expressing stronger certainty, and the sentences with ambiguous context were comprehended as expressing the weakest certainty. Factors like the gender of the agent in the context sentence as well as the respondent’s gender have some influence on the comprehension of epistemic markers, while factors like foreign language skills and education do not have such a strong effect on the comprehension of epistemic modality markers. Keywords : epistemic modality; lexical markers; comprehension of probability; Estonian

Kim, Hyung-Sun. 2016. Incidental Development of Epistemic Modality in an Interactive Discourse: The Use of Boosters and Hedges. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 41-4, 545-570. Epistemic modality (EM) concerns how writers qualify their claims in terms of commitment. It is mostly realized by means of boosters and hedges that constitute a subset of metadiscoursal skills. The outcome texts of a computer-mediated forum created internationally between American and Korean university-level speakers of English was utilized in searching for clues about the incidental development of EM. This study attempted to determine the level of EM occurrences as it changed over time. As for the within-group variance, while the L1 uses stayed at a relatively steady rate for both categories, the L2 use changed in statistically significant degrees. The semantic analysis revealed that the L2 fluctuation moved in the direction of more prudence and deference to audience in voicing one’s opinion as the discourse sessions continued, and the subject-related knowledge increased. Even in employing boosters, the frequency of those featuring strong versions of certainty constantly decreased while that of its milder version, probability markers, increased. This trend was confirmed by the between-group analysis, which also showed the incidental effect was more evident for hedges than for boosters. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for future studies are also offered. (Chosun University)

Makalah ini membahas modalitas tuturan Jakarta Basuki Cahaya Purnama dalam wacana Kalijodo. Masalah dalam penelitian ini adalah bentuk modalitas tuturan, sikap, dan representasi Gubernur Jakarta, Basuki Cahaya Purnama, dalam wacana Kalijodo. Teori yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah teori modalitas menurut Alwi (1992) dan Fairclough (Santoso, 2012). Metode yang dilakukan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode kualitatif-deskriptif, yakni melakukan pemaparan dan penilaian terhadap data kebahasaan melalui teori modalitas sebagai alat analisis. Hasil analisis menunjukkan terdapat sembilan bentuk modalitas deontik bermakna perintah dan/atau sembilan modalitas relasional-perintah. Jumlah modalitas tersebut sangat dominan dibanding dengan jumlah modalitas epistemik bermakna kepastian empat buah, modalitas dinamik kesanggupan satu buah, modalitas epistemik keteramalan satu buah, dan modalitas intensional permintaan satu buah. Hal tersebut merepresentasikan sikap Basuki Cahaya Purnama yang sangat memiliki kuasa. Selain itu, temuan modalitas deontik-perintah atau relasional-perintah yang dominan ditambah dengan modalitas epistemik kepastian diurutan kedua jumlahnya menunjukkan bahwa Ahok dalam menanggulangi kasus Kalijodo dengan pendekatan perintah yang tegas tanpa keraguan.

The increasing interest in cross-linguistic research in the area of epistemic modality calls for developing a common theoretical framework within which the inventories and uses of epistemics can be compared across languages. The aim of this study is to compare the repertoires of English and Polish adverbs of certainty taking as the starting point the classification employed by Simon-Vandenbergen and Aijmer (2007). It attempts to examine the validity of their typology for cross-linguistic studies with reference to data from English and Polish. The uses of English and Polish epistemics are illustrated with examples from the British National Corpus and the PWN corpus, respectively. Because the means of expressing epistemic modality differ both the cross-linguistically and cross-culturally, the findings are placed in a cross-cultural perspective.

This paper presents corpus and experimental data that problematize the traditional analysis of must as a strong necessity modal, as recently revived and defended by von Fintel and Gillies (in Nat Lang Semant 18(4):351–383, 2010). I provide naturalistic examples showing that must p can be used alongside an explicit denial of knowledge of p or certainty in p, and that it can be conjoined with an expression indicating that p is not certain or that not-p is possible. I also report the results of an experiment involving lotteries, where most participants endorsed a sentence of the form must not-p despite being instructed that p is a possibility. Crucially, endorsement was much higher for must in this context than for matched sentences with knowledge or certainty expressions. These results indicate that the requirements for felicitous use of must are weaker than for know and certain rather than being at least as strong, as the epistemic necessity theory would predict. However, it is possible to account for these data while retaining the key insights of von Fintel and Gillies’ analysis of the evidential component of must. I discuss several existing accounts that could be construed in this way and explain why none is completely satisfactory. I then propose a new model that embeds an existing scalar theory into a probabilistic model of informational dynamics structured around questions and answers.

Given the importance of epistemic modal use in academic writing, this study aims to investigate how well Chinese PhD students use English epistemic modals and whether their achievement in using English epistemic modals is correlated with their degree of Tolerance of Ambiguity (TOA) as a learning style. Fill-in-the-blank exercises were designed to test the participants’ use of epistemic modal verbs in English. Based on theories about matching, embedding and form-function mapping in second language learning, this study analyzed the errors that participants made when they chose modal forms in English to express epistemic functions/meanings conveyed by Chinese modal verb “会” (hui) in different syntactic contexts. A questionnaire survey was conducted to measure the participants’ degree of TOA and IBM SPSS 26.0 was used for statistical calculation of the correlation coefficient between the participants’ scores of TOA and their scores in using epistemic modal verbs. It was found that the degree of TOA is significantly correlated with epistemic modal use, i.e., the less tolerant of ambiguity a participant was, the less successfully he/she did in using epistemic modal verbs. The results of this study carry implications for language teaching and indicate the necessity of enhancing acquisition of epistemic modality and raising students’ tolerance of ambiguity.

The present paper aims to define the linguistic status of surprise, in comparison with other more prototypical emotions. Based on a sample of American spoken English (In Treatment), we argue that surprise entails an epistemic judgment whereby a specific event is connected to the speaker’s set of expectations. Our contention is that surprise can be characterized as a disconnection between emotive and emotional communication (Marty A: Untersuchungen Zur Grundlegung Der Allgemeinen Grammatik Und Sprachphilosophie. Olms, Hildesheim/New York, 1976), identified linguistically as a disconnection between expression and communication (Bally C: Le Langage et La Vie. Payot, Paris, 1926). Emotional reactions of surprise are thus expressed by the speaker’s intonation in mirative utterances, and by non-sentential elements in constructions. The second part of our study focuses on surprise lexemes (surprise (N) and surprised (Adj)). Surprise (N) cannot be classified as an epistemic state noun, nor as a prototypical psychological noun, as its prototypical sense is actually what we call its source reading. The state reading of the noun is thus identified as a metonymic extension of that prototypical sense, thereby reversing the expected structure of its semantic network. Similarly, the adjective surprised does not fall into prototypical scenarios, but rather rich and complex ones, pragmatically speaking. We show that the use of surprised (Adj) implies a comment on or an explanation of the initial emotional reaction, not the expression of it.

This chapter presents reasons against semantic relativism. Semantic relativism is motivated by intuitions that are presumed to raise problems for traditional or contextualist semantics in contested domains of discourse. Intuition-based arguments are those based on competent speakers’ putative intuitions about seeming faultless disagreement, eavesdroppers, and retraction cases. I will organize the discussion in three parts. First, I shall provide a brief introduction to intuition-based arguments offered in favor of semantic relativism. Second, I shall indicate that there are ways for contextualism to explain the (appearance of) intuitions that support semantic relativism. Third, I shall review of experimental results and independent arguments that put into question the appeal of semantic relativism.

In the present study, samples of late Modern English scientific texts have been analysed to evaluate cases of epistemic modality as realised by modal verbs. The aim of this research was to detect if there exist variances in the way modals are used in historical texts from a gender perspective. For this, I have interrogated the Corpus History English Texts (1700-1900) which is part of The Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Texts, which contains history texts written by male and female authors. I have used the Coruña Corpus Tool for retrieval, although manual analyses have been carried out as well. Each of the occurrences found have been categorised according to their contextual meanings. The results obtained account for a high frequency on the usage of these modal verbs according to gender and the diverse pragmatic functions these modal verbs accomplish in the communicative process, such as mitigation and negative politeness. From a pragmatic perspective, epistemic modals have the potential to allow negotiation of meaning between writers and their audience among other functions.

Considered from the aspect of its instrumental function, language can be defined as an instrument of communication formed within a certain culture and reflecting the specificity of the culture. The national style of communication which presents the totality of numerous speech acts reflects the specificity of ethnic consciousness and cultural values of a linguocultural community. The cultural specificity of the national communication style is constituted by means of various language means: phonetic, lexical and grammatical peculiarities of speech act, emotive richness, the proportion of explicit and implicit ways of expressing meaning, and patterns of discourse. A significant role is played by the modality as one of the most anthropocentric categories. Epistemic modality is especially important for the national style of communication, as it reflects most fully the national-specific concepts and the cultural values. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the contribution of modality to the specificity of the national style of communication. As the author shows, the rich repertoire of modal means and the high frequency of their use in speech acts give every ground to regard the modality of speech acts as one of the major markers of national style of communication. The formation of ability to skillfully use modal means requires a lot of attention and effort in teaching English, as their authentic use largely determines the success of communication across cultures and helps to overcome linguocultural communicative interference.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that word frequency influences sentence processing. However, the impact of frequently used epistemic modality adverbs on sentence processing is less clear. The aim of the present study is to investigate the processing of Chinese epistemic modality adverbs by means of ERPs (event-related potentials) based on degrees of modal certainty encoded by different orthographic forms of two epistemic adverbs yexu (possibly) and yiding (surely) co-occurred with two psychological verbs guji (estimate) and quexin (convince) in Mandarin Chinese sentences as Wo guji Xiaolin yexu hui jingxuan banzhang (I estimate Xiaolin possibly future compete monitor). Two conditions (i.e. agreed and disagreed conditions) are constructed through manipulating the agreement of the certainty degree between the psychological verbs and the epistemic adverbs. Twenty-four enrolled Chinese college students took part in the ERP experiment. The results showed that the epistemic adverb yexu (possibly) in disagreed sentences (quexin & yexu) relative to agreed sentences (guji & yexu), elicited a monophasic P600 effect with a centro-parietal distribution, indicating extra syntactic costs in processing the epistemic adverb in sentences with modal uncertainty. The absence of N400 was observed for processing yexu (possibly) in the agreed and disagreed sentences, suggesting that little semantic processing difficulty of the epistemic adverb happens in sentences with modal certainty and/or uncertainty. While for the epistemic adverb yiding (surely) in the agreed and disagreed sentences, the absence of P600 and N400 indicates that little difficulty in syntactic and/or semantic processing of the epistemic adverb happens in sentences with modal certainty and/or uncertainty.

This chapter surveys three representative chunks of the Algonquian family: the Cree-Innu-Naskapi continuum, Ojibwe, and Eastern Algonquian. After noting the very productive role of lexical means of expressing perception (the closest Algonquian gets to sensory evidentials), it highlights how some of the Cree-Innu-Naskapi continuum languages show affixal morphology that contrasts (Direct versus) Indirect evidentiality, Inferentiality, and the distinctive ‘dream-witnessed’ Subjective—with the remainder of the family showing essentially subsets of this range of contrasts. At the phrasal-syntactic level, it examines how the use of uninflected particles and quotative verbs pay special attention to encoding the information source. It shows that evidentiality has traditionally been overlooked due to the treatment of relevant phenomena as essentially epistemic.

This paper discusses evidentiality and epistemic modality in Zhuang, a Tai language spoken in South China’s Guangxi Province and surrounding regions. A set of verbs of SPEAKING are found in Zhuang that describe the sources of information. These typically involve the grammaticalised markernau⁴which derives from a lexical verb meaning ‘say’, forming a rich array of expressions to mark direct and indirect speech, hearsay and other types of reported information, which carry a wide variety of evidential and epistemic overtones such as surprise, self-correction, mirativity, uncertainty, among others. A number of sentence-final particles, along with hedges and sensory verbs, are also found with these functions. Each of these conveys different degrees of reliability of the source of information.

Tout roman à thèse communiste, comme tout conflit idéologique, répartit l’humanité en bons et en méchants, ce qui donne lieu à une axiologie binaire : c’est ce que l’on observe dans l’œuvre de Manuel Tiago dont l’écriture est explicative et normative. L’auteur, d’ailleurs, recourt fréquemment à la modalité déontique, qui caractérise le normatif, ainsi qu’aux commentaires évaluatifs, et donc à la modalité épistémique. Son premier roman, Até Amanhã, Camaradas, écrit sous la dictature salazariste, a servi de manuel aux membres du PCP qui devaient se transformer en « révolutionnaires professionnels » en luttant dans la clandestinité.----------------------------------------------------------------------LITERATURA DE PARTIDO E ESCRITA NORMATIVA: A OBRA DE MANUEL TIAGO/ÁLVARO CUNHALTodo o romance de tese comunista, assim como todo o conflito ideológico, divide a humanidade em bons e maus, o que dá origem a uma axiologia binária : é o que se verifica na obra de Manuel Tiago cuja escrita é explicativa e normativa. O autor, aliás, recorre frequentemente à modalidade deôntica, que caracteriza o normativo, bem como aos comentários avaliadores e, consequentemente, à modalidade espitémica. O seu primeiro romance, Até Amanhã, Camaradas, escrito sob a ditadura salazarista, serviu de manual para os membros do PCP que deviam transformar-se em « revolucionários profissionais », lutando na clandestinidade.---Artigo em francês.

Since political discourse portrays politicians’ knowledge state and their ideological assumptions, a critical analysis of Clinton’s speeches may unveil her perceptual and conceptual worlds. More specifically, critical discourse analysis may uncover her mental representations about the Tunisian Revolution and the US attitude towards such an important political event in North Africa and the Middle East. Studying factive presupposition and epistemic modality seems to be an effective pragmatic tool to reveal what is presented as factual and ideological knowledge in political discourse. The research instrument used to work out the frequency distribution of these lexical features is the latest version of ‘AntConc’ software. To uncover the epistemic state of Hillary Clinton, van Dijk’s (1995b) socio-cognitive approach, mainly discourse-cognition-society paradigm, is applied to analyze her speeches between January 2011 and December 2012. At the discourse level, research findings reveal that factive presupposition, epistemic modality and evidential verbs unveil the speaker’s strong personal commitment to the truth value of her propositions. At the cognitive level, results show that the speaker’s personal and social values, attitudes, ideologies and knowledge unmask her mental mapping of Tunisia, democracy and human rights. It also uncovers the cognitive mechanisms that govern discourse production and understanding via ICMs, cognitive frames, mental models and context models. At the social level, research demonstrates that Clinton's perceptual and conceptual worlds are based on a dichotomy that involves ‘WE’, or democracies Vs. ‘THEY’ or the enemies of democracy, hence a dual vision of the world or polarization. This research bridges the lack of research combining epistemic presupposition, epistemic modality and evidentiality within a socio-cognitive framework

The article discusses the early means of expressing the epistemic notions of certainty and uncertainty (epistemic markers) in three typologically-different languages – Russian, Estonian and Hebrew. The results are based on an analysis of naturalistic speech samples of 9 typically-developing monolingual children, recorded from ages 1;3 to 6;2. The emergence of epistemic markers in child speech is compared to child-directed speech. Acquisition of means of expressing epistemic modality starts to develop at the end of the second year of life with the marking of uncertainty. The findings indicate an expansion of epistemic evaluation from objective situations in the physical world to the mental world. A comparison of child speech with the input reveals that both the frequency of a marker in the target system and the degree of epistemic semantics influence its emergence and development. Differences between languages mostly concern the frequency of usage of epistemic markers and the degree of epistemic evaluation children start with.

In this article, we perform an evidential analysis of three types of construction taken from essays written by students of French as a foreign language: the shown source, the quoted source and borrowed knowledge. The issue with these constructions, which refer to passages from a book, is knowing the extent to which they have an evidential value because, within the context of our analysis, the source and the knowledge reference overlap. We defend an evidential reading of these segments given their argumentative function in the students’ discourse. We perform a pragmatic analysis of these language forms that take into account the parameters of the communicative situation and the type of text that the students have to produce. Our hypothesis is this: the figure of the teacher (who, in this case, is the hearer and the addressee) and his or her instructions have a direct impact on the way in which the student presents his or her knowledge of the book on which he or she is commenting. The analysis of the function of these three forms has also led us to address the issue of the relationship between evidentiality and notions like the reliability and epistemic modality. We conclude that source (evidentiality) is a reliability’s character and an epistemic function in the discourse.

Post-graduate law students are expected to handle a variety of legal and academic written genres. In these genres, meaning can be nuanced through a variety of means, including hedging. However, international law students often find decoding instances of hedging challenging, with interpretation of the writer’s true meaning suffering as a result. The aim of this paper is to compare hedging in two written legal genres which are frequently used by post-graduate law students to underpin their own academic essays: Law review articles and Supreme Court decisions. To that end, two analyses were undertaken. The first was qualitative in nature and involved the identification of hedges in a small corpus of just under 50,000 words based on introspection and intuition as per Salager-Meyer (2000). The second analysis served to verify conclusions drawn by using WordSmith Tools 6.0 (Scott 2013) and a much larger corpus of nearly eight million words. Correlation was found between the results of the two analyses, indicating that qualitative results could be extrapolated to larger samples to some degree.

This paper aims at establishing a set of criteria that could contribute to the identification of modal meanings in lexical items typical of the summaries of the European Court of Human Rights judgments.