This article discusses some of the ways in which natural language can express modal information – information which is, to a first approximation, about what could be or must be the case, as opposed to being about what actually is the case. It motivates, explains, and raises problems for Angelika Kratzer's influential theory of modal auxiliaries, and introduces a new approach to one important debate about the relationships between modality, evidentiality, context change, and imperative force.

This paper focuses on the Korean suffix -te, which has been variously analyzed as a marker of tense, aspect, tense–aspect, mood, mood–tense, or evidentiality. I argue against all of these approaches and propose instead that -te is a spatial deictic past tense, which triggers an evidential environment. It refers to a certain past time when the speaker either observed an event or some evidence of the event within his (her) perceptual field. Thus, the denotation of -te is ‘overlap’, not between (...) the speaker's perceptual field and the event itself, but between the speaker's perceptual field and the evidence of the event at the past reference time. To account for this denotation, propose an ‘evidence trace’ function as well as a ‘speaker's perceptual trace’ function (cf. M. Faller, J Semantics 21:45–85, 2004). My analysis shows that suffixes like -ess (which is traditionally analyzed as a perfect) play two roles, as an indirect evidential and a perfect, depending on whether they appear with the spatial deictic tense -te or with a simple deictic tense. I argue that in Korean two distinct tense systems—the regular tense–aspect system and the spatial deictic tense–evidential system—exist in parallel. Thus the proposed analysis allows evidentials to be subsumed under the formal theory of tense, aspect, and mood. (shrink)

Evidentiality refers to the linguistic marking of the nature/directness of source of evidence of an asserted event. Some languages (e.g., Turkish) mark source obligatorily in their grammar, while other languages (e.g., English) provide only lexical options for conveying source. The present study examined whether or under what conditions firsthand source information is relied on more than nonfirsthand sources in establishing discourse coherence. Turkish- and English-speaking participants read a series of somewhat incongruous two-sentence narratives and were to come up with a (...) way of completing each narrative so that it would form a coherent story. Each narrative contrasted two source types (firsthand vs. hearsay, firsthand vs. inference, or inference vs. hearsay) and two information types (general vs. particular information) each presented first or second. Analysis of story completions showed greater overall reliance on firsthand information when it was presented second and referred to a particular event. When the firsthand source occurred first and the particular event occurred second, the latter was favored, especially by Turkish participants. Taken together, the findings suggest that evidentiality interacts with information type in establishing discourse coherence and that both firsthand and particular information are relied on more when presented later rather than earlier in discourse. (shrink)

Human cognition affects the result of symbolic activity. Evidentiality is a linguistic concept which encodes the source of information and expresses the attitude and confidence of speaker. This paper collects 31 judgments from the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) and local people’s courts in the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C) as the research corpus, and analyzes the evidentiality in four aspects: information source, lingual form, evidential function and speaker’s attitude of the information. It is found in this study that: 1) The (...) information sources are divided into four types as cultural belief, sensory experience, verbal rumor and inferential hypothesis; 2) Lingual form consists of three categories: vocabulary, phrase and compound sentence; 3) Evidentiality in court judgments performs four functions: support with citation, induction with description, paraphrase with less responsibility and summarization with reasoning; 4) The reliability of evidentiality presents a two-tier structure based on different information sources. From the perspective of Peirce’s semiotics, the paper analyzes the judicial practice of court judgments with actual data and proposes some suggestions. (shrink)

Spanish has a series of evidential discourse markers that combine the lexical semantics of visual perception with reference to inference or hearsay, for example, evidentemente ‘evidently’, por lo visto ‘visibly, seemingly’, al parecer ‘seemingly’ and se ve ‘one sees that, apparently’. The main aim of this article is to examine the grammatical, semantic and interactional properties of these four evidential discourse markers in informal and formal spoken Spanish. From a semantic point of view, we study the evidential values expressed by (...) these markers and discuss the correlations between them. From a functional point of view, we analyse the evidential markers on the basis of discourse-interactional criteria such as illocutionary force, position in the turn and kind of turn. From a grammatical point of view, we address the preferences in terms of person and Tense/aspect/modality experienced by these evidential markers in discourse. The main result of our analysis is that, as far as the semantic and discourse properties are concerned, evidentemente differs from por lo visto, al parecer and se ve que. The former seems to refer primarily to shared thoughts, developing a reading that goes beyond any of the traditionally distinguished evidential values. The three other markers, by contrast, refer to indirect evidence, often combining the evidential values of reported knowledge and inference. In talk-in-interaction, the two types of markers behave differently: evidentemente does not enhance turn-taking, whereas the other markers leave room for the co-participant to give his or her view of the state of affairs. (shrink)

This paper addresses two key issues in the study of discursive constructions: the strategic use of ‘justificatory support’ aimed at the legitimisation of assertions, and the mystification of responsibility for epistemic stance acts in the discourse. The paper argues that the use of epistemic stance resources contributes to the speaker's strategic aim of legitimising assertions, which plays an indirect role in the legitimisation of actions. An additional dimension of legitimisation is the inter/subjective anchoring of these stance acts, which by default (...) index the speaker as conceptualiser, thus assigning responsibility and accountability for the validity of the communicated information. This paper explores these issues and presents results on the stancetaking patterns and the expression of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in the discourse of a parliamentary inquiry and a public inquiry. (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of papers reflecting key theoretical issues in argumentation theory. Its six sections are devoted to specific themes, including the analysis and evaluation of argumentation, argument schemes and the contextual embedding of argumentation. The section on general perspectives on argumentation discusses the trends of empiricalization, contextualization and formalization, offers descriptions of the analytical and evaluative tools of informal logic, and highlights selected principles that argumentation theorists do and do not agree upon. In turn, the section on (...) linguistic approaches to argumentation focuses on the problem of distinguishing between explanation and argument, while also elaborating on the role of verbal indicators of argument schemes. All essays included in this volume point out notable recent developments in the study of argumentation. (shrink)

Within the linguistics literature it is often claimed that epistemic modality, unlike other kinds of modality, does not contribute to truth-conditional content. In this paper I challenge this view. I reanalyze a variety of arguments which have been used in support of the non-truth-conditional view and show that they can be handled on an alternative analysis of epistemic modality. # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Many conditionals seem to convey the existence of a link between their antecedent and consequent. We draw on a recently proposed typology of conditionals to argue for an old philosophical idea according to which the link is inferential in nature. We show that the proposal has explanatory force by presenting empirical results on the evidential meaning of certain English and Dutch modal expressions.

This article explores the use of epistemic stance strategies in journalistic discourse in English and Spanish. The linguistic resources of epistemic stance include evidential and modal expressions, as well as verbs of cognitive attitude and expressions of factivity. This article examines the pattern of distribution of epistemic stance expressions in three types of journalistic genres in English and Spanish and the presence of multifunctionality of some evidential expressions in the two languages. The article aims to reveal possible similarities or differences (...) in the use of the stance resources in the various genres and across languages. (shrink)

At least many conditionals seem to convey the existence of a link between their antecedent and consequent. We draw on a recently proposed typology of conditionals to revive an old philosophical idea according to which the link is inferential in nature. We show that the proposal has explanatory force by presenting empirical results on two Dutch linguistic markers.

This work addresses the relation among the semantic-pragmatic categories of evidentiality, epistemicity and intensification based on a study of the discursive use of certain Spanish idiomatic phraseological units. The first part offers an introduction to some theoretical aspects, while the second part analyses the usage of the idiom a fe que. Two important theses that are defended in this article are as follows: evidentiality has played an important role in the process of lexicalisation and grammaticalisation of a number of idiomatic (...) phraseological units and some evidential expressions display the existence of close relationships among evidentiality, epistemicity and intensification. (shrink)

Se constructions designate a set of polysemous constructions along a transitivity continuum marked by the clitic se that perform various functions: reflexive/reciprocal, middle, anticausative, passive, and impersonal. A counterpart of these constructions without the clitic – the null se construction – is also attested. Based on an extensive usage-feature and profile-based analysis, and using multivariate statistical methods, we analyze, considering Cognitive Grammar, the conceptual, structural, and lectal factors that determine the choice between overt and null se constructions. The results of (...) the study show that the null constructions are far more frequent in Brazilian (BP) than in European Portuguese (EP). In BP, the focus on the moment of change is a crucial factor for the overt/null variation in reflexive/reciprocal, middle, anticausative, and impersonal constructions. If the moment of the change of state is profiled, the overt se construction is usually produced. If the moment of change is not profiled, the null se construction is preferred. External factors also play a role in the variation. Register is an important predictor for the observed variation of the anticausative construction, and the only predictor for the overt/null variation in the case of the passive construction. In EP, the null se variant is mainly limited to anticausative constructions. In all cases of null constructions, there is a shift to an absolute construal, which has an impact on the way that the transitivity continuum is conceptualized. (shrink)