Epistemic modality is a subtype of linguistic modality that deals with a speakers evaluationjudgment of, degree of confidence in, or belief of the knowledge upon which a proposition is based. Epistemic modality is a modality that connotes how much certainty or evidence a speaker has for the proposition expressed by his or her utterance. Pdf epistemic modals and epistemic modality andy egan. Epistemic modality has an epistemic modal base and either no ordering or an ordering based on plausibility or stereotypicality. Pdf epistemic modality, evidentiality, quotativity and. Holliday university of california, berkeley abstract this chapter provides a brief introduction to propositional epistemic logic and its applications to epistemology. The paper explores epistemic modality in modern greek, in the genre of informal letter writing.
The aim of this paper is to establish the repertoire and distribution of verbal and adverbial exponents of epistemic modality in english and polishlanguage judgments passed by the court of justice of the eu cjeu and nontranslated judgments passed by the supreme court of poland sn. Volume 5 issue 2 december 2017 article 2 john fredy gil bonilla the use of the epistemic and deontic modality in the modal verb can between english. For instance, we dont know whether it rained in seattle yesterday. Epistemic modality markers in research articlesw 65 proposition expressed by the sentence he utters. On epistemic modality in 9a, the modal adverb dooyara perhaps and the modal auxiliary rashii seem express the speakers judgment about the factual status of. In other words, epistemic modality refers to the way speakers communicate their doubts, certainties, and guessestheir modes of knowing. Epistemic modality refers to the judgments about possibility, probability etc. Epistemic modals are argued to be predicates of propositions.
It might be that australia will win the next ashes series. View epistemic modality research papers on academia. Explores a variety of philosophical approaches, including contextualism, relativism, and expressivism. Epistemic definition of epistemic by merriamwebster. Moreover, this kind of pure unrestricted modality, called alethic modality from greek aletheia truth, is just one of many types of modalities, such as deontic, epistemic, or temporal modalities, which we want to model. Expressions of epistemic modality mark the necessitypossibility of an underlying. The epistemic usage and the root usage subjective and objective when the speaker makes an utterance, the feeling which is epistemic or root, can be seen. When used epistemically, these expressions mark the necessity or possibility of an underlying or prejacent proposition relative to a body of. Disagreement, questionbegging and epistemic selfcristicism.
For all i know, it might be that there is life on jupiter, and it might be that there is not. Epistemic modals and epistemic modality brian weatherson and andy egan 1 epistemic possibility and other types of possibility there is a lot that we dont know. Metaphysical modality is what is expressed by possible and variants such as possibly, as well as it could have been the case that and. Evidentiality is a kind of epistemic modality that denotes the source of the information being given. Both the contingency and the relativization of modals to a particular type of modality are achieved by having the. Whereas the first two, epistemic modality and evidentiality, are now firmly established in the linguistic literature, the third, interpretive use, originally formulated in the framework of. Expressions of propositional modality in japanese and chinese. Pdf on jan 1, 20, tanja gradecak and others published.
The relationship between language and conceptualization remains one of the major puzzles in language research. Definition of modality from the oxford dictionary of english grammar the expression of the speakers opinions about present likelihood or about obligation. Thus, many papers that influence the epistemology of modality are not on this list, since they are properly papers in one of the other areas. An epistemic limitation, then, is a limitation relating to knowledge or knowability. And the version of meaning perspectivalism that i will. This article deals with modal verbs in cognitive linguistics and discusses polysemy versus monosemy, metaphor, metonymy, minimal shiftspartial sanctioning, root modality and epistemic modality. Click download or read online button to get modality in grammar and discourse book now. Modality in grammar and discourse download ebook pdf, epub.
Finally, there is a vast body of historical literature on the epistemology of modality that stretches across both the analytic and phenomenological traditions. Boye 2012, to epistemic modality, understood as the indication of degree of certainty or. In linguistics, modality is a system of linguistic options that allows for expressing a speakers general intentions or illocutionary point as well as the speakers belief as to whether the proposition expressed is true, obligatory, desirable, or actual. An investigation of epistemic modality in literary texts. Epistemic modality, language, and conceptualization.
Epistemic modality markers as hedges in research articles. Epistemic modality markers as hedgings, female speakers, male speakers, power, mixed sex conversation. The trouble arises because neither approach takes into account the fact that being possibly thusandso in the epistemic sense of possibly is not a trait that an object has in and of itself, but one that an object possesses only relative to a way of thinking of the domain of quantification. Those types and functions of epistemic modality markers as hedgings also reflect the gender and power stereotype of male and female speakers. This site is like a library, use search box in the widget to get ebook that you want. Quantification and epistemic modality the philosophical.
Introduction it is often claimed in the linguistics literature that epistemic modality, unlike other kinds of modality, does not contribute to the truth conditions of the utterance. By adopting a systematic functional orientation, the book explains a whole range of. Two major corpora were compiled, the experimental and the control. Epistemic definition is of or relating to knowledge or knowing. Epistemic modality and truth conditions anna papafragou. Instead, it is argued that since modality in general, and epistemic modality in particular, seem to be universal categories in languages, the features discussed in this paper may prove to be valid when we are concerned with the analysis of modality in languages other than english, for example, swedish. As epistemic modals are used to indicate the possibility of some pr piece of knowledge, this. More specifically, it investigates the ways epistemic markers can be used to hedge or boost arguments while preserving peoples face. The use of epistemic modality markers as hedgings in mixed. Provides the first comprehensive introduction to epistemic indefinites. Original papers by leading researchers in the area. It has a goal to find the difference between deontic and epistemic modality that is indicated by their modal verbs.
The epistemology of modality stanford encyclopedia of. Gillies university of michigan october 30, 2006 introduction epistemic modals are interesting in part because their semantics is bound up both with our information about the world and with how that information changes as we share what we know. Epistemic modality is a linguistic modality that expresses how certain a speaker is about the proposition being uttered. The book demonstrates how phenomenal consciousness and gradational possibleworlds models in bayesian perceptual. Epistemic modality definition of epistemic modality. In this kind of theory, deontic and epistemic modality are treated symmetrically, and both are seen as contributing to the proposition expressed by the utterance. Here, the speaker is expressing their attitude about whether it is true or not, accepting that there is a possibility, but not being certain. That means that there are a lot of possibilities that are, epistemically speaking, open.
Epistemic modality sil glossary of linguistic terms. Epistemic modality and tense in german volume issue 3 sarah m. It is expressed by the use of modal verbs such as might or must and adverbials such as probably or possibly. A modalized sentence locates an underlying or prejacent proposition in the space of possibilities the term prejacent was introduced by medieval logicians. In this article the term modality, when unmodified, will refer to metaphysical modality. This monograph addresses this issue by means of an in depth corpus based and experimental investigation of the major types of expressions of epistemic modality in dutch, german and english. Available formats pdf please select a format to send. Adverbial markers of epistemic modality across disciplinary. The epistemic usage means the speaker considers the event whether it is the fact or not, that is, the speaker is sure or not sure. Other readers will always be interested in your opinion of the books youve read. Three types of strategic functions for epistemic modality were discerned. In other words, they indicate that the speaker considers certain situations as possible, impossible, probable, certain, or uncertain. That means that there are a lot of possibilities that are, epistemically.
Modality in grammar and discourse download ebook pdf. No previous exposure to epistemic logic is assumed. Modal options can be realized by word order, modal auxiliaries and modal adjuncts. Whether youve loved the book or not, if you give your honest and detailed thoughts then people will find new books that are right for them.
It also provides the readers a better understanding of modality, particularly of its types and uses. Percentage of epistemic uses for historical english modals, after gotti et al. Characterization of epistemic modality as is wellknown, palmer 19902, 200f, 2003 classifies modality into two main cate. Its used primarily in philosophy including the field, epistemology, that bears its name as an adjective meaning related to the abstract concept of knowledge or knowability. The result of the analysis shows that in general, deontic modality indicates obligation and permission, while epistemic modality expresses possibility and prediction. Expressions of epistemic modality mark the necessitypossibility of an under. Sandy might be home says that there is a possibility. Evidentiality and epistemic modality at the semantics. This finite set of auxiliary verbs has received a disproportionate amount of attention from linguists, precisely because the modals form a neatly delineated set, and. Sometimes, the term mood is used to refer to both mood. Pdf epistemic modality in english scientific paper and its practical. Valentine hacquard linguistics department, university of.
Epistemic modality edited by andy egan and brian weatherson. This book concerns the foundations of epistemic modality. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. This modality distinguishes modalized and unmodalized in lyons 1977b terms.
Pdf the use of the epistemic and deontic modality in the modal. Aspects of modality by valentine hacquard submitted to the department of linguistics and philosophy on august 15, 2006 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of phd in linguistics abstract it is a crosslinguistically robust fact that the same modal auxiliaries come in different flavors. Deontic modality has a circumstantial modal base because one may have to abstract away from ones knowledge that the right thing will not be done and an ordering source based on a body of law or principles. I hope this paper will shed some light on the problem of what the nature of inference in our cognition of the outer world is. It was found that nnss use fewer epistemic expressions and favor different types than do nss. When a modal verb is used to express the speakers opinion about a statement, then this is epistemic modality. The epistemic usage and the root usage subjective and. This essay discusses the concept of modality, its types and uses. The role of information strength in child language vincenzo moscati and stephen crain arc centre of excellence in cognition and its disorders, macquarie university negative sentences with epistemic modals e. Epistemic modality and tense in german journal of germanic. A study of epistemic modality in academic and popularised. Metaphysical modality is what is expressed by possible and variants such as possibly, as well as it could have been the case that and variants, when these are used in the broadest objective sense. Epistemic modals or predicates in english and japanese are analyzed from three view points.
Epistemic adverbs, like other markers of epistemic modality, are concerned with the speakers assessment of the truth value of the proposition. Chalmers 1 ways things might be1 there are many ways things might be, for all i know. Mar 26, 2020 epistemic modality is a linguistic modality that expresses how certain a speaker is about the proposition being uttered. After introducing the relevant linguistic markers in cq in section 1, i will discuss some tests for distinguishing between illocutionary and propositionallevel modi. The tense in which an epistemic modal appears is either a pleonastic tense or a tense determined by the discourse context. Modality and language modality is a category of linguistic meaning having to do with the expression of possibility and necessity. Classically, three categories of modality are distinguished in linguistics. Pdf a contrastive analysis of epistemic modality in scientific. An investigation of epistemic modality in literary texts 731 you are clearly right.