RT Journal Article
T1 On epistemic modality and discourse strategy: evidence from Galician adverbs
A1 Míguez, Vítor
K1 Epistemic adverbs
K1 Mitigation
K1 Strengthening
K1 Certainty
K1 Uncertainty
AB 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.
PB Elsevier
SN 0378-2166
YR 2022
FD 2022
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/31904
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/31904
LA eng
NO Míguez, V. (2022). On epistemic modality and discourse strategy: Evidence from Galician adverbs. Journal of Pragmatics, 201, 32–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2022.09.003
DS Minerva
RD 23 abr 2026