On epistemic modality and discourse strategy: evidence from Galician adverbs

Abstract

This paper argues for a conceptual distinction between epistemic modality and discourse strategy, and aims to disentangle both notions by showing how they relate to each other on the basis of corpus data. The meanings of six Galician epistemic adverbs are studied using samples taken from an electronic corpus. 1800 observations were coded for the relevant meaning categories, including epistemic modality, mitigation, strengthening and other strategic and non-strategic uses, such as tendency and dynamic modality. The results reveal a relation between the epistemic value encoded by an adverb and the discourse strategic goals it serves: possibility adverbs feature several strategic uses, but only in a small portion of their occurrences; probability adverbs are almost purely epistemic; and certainty adverbs take on strategic functions most often. Thus, the study shows the viability and descriptive adequacy of distinguishing between modal and strategic uses of epistemic expressions.