Epistemic Modalities and Evidentiality in Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Zlatka Guentchéva

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110569889
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume explores phenomena which come under the heading of epistemic modalities and evidentiality in more or less well-known languages (Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, Hungarian, Tibetan, Lakandon and Yucatec Maya, Arwak-Chibchan Kogi and Ika). It reveals cross-linguistic variations in the structuring of these vast fields of enquiry and clearly demonstrates the relevance and interplay of multiple factors involved in the analysis of these two conceptual domains. Although the contributions present diverging descriptive traditions, they are nonetheless within the broad domain of functional-typological linguistics and give access to distinct yet comparable approaches. They all converge around a number of key issues: modal verbs; the relationship between epistemic modality and evidentiality; the relationship of modal notions with some tense and aspect notions; the notions of (inter)subjectivity, commitment and (dis)engagement; the prosodic variation of modal adverbs, the diachronic connections between negation and evidential markers, the connection with mirativity. The volume is of interest to linguists and advanced graduate students working in general and theoretical linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, cognition, and typology.

Part I: Germanic languages

Michael Herslund

Epistemic modality, Danish modal verbs and the tripartition of utterances

Note: The present article is a revised and updated version of the article in French, Herslund (2003). I thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful criticism of an earlier version.

Michael Herslund, Copenhagen Business School

Abstract: The Danish modal verbs are basically polysemous in the sense that they convey different kinds of modality. The verb kunne ‘can’ e.g. both expresses dynamic modality (capacity, viz. He can/is able to swim), deontic modality (permission, viz. He can/is allowed to swim), or epistemic modality (supposition, viz. He can/is assumed to swim).

The article attempts to explain this distribution of the three kinds of modality by linking it to the tripartition of the sentence proposed by R. M. Hare (1971). According to this philosopher every sentence can be broken down into a neustic (‘I say’), a tropic (‘it is the case’) and a phrastic (‘the lexical content’) component. The idea is then simply to relate the different readings of a modal to the different components, so that the dynamic and deontic are both related to the phrastic component, the deontic furthermore to the tropic, but the epistemic reading exclusively to the tropic component, cf. e.g. Herslund (2003). The three readings are thus the results of three different positions of the modal verb. The use of the terms ‘component’ or ‘position’ does not imply any concrete localisation in the sentence with the exception of certain cases of iconicity. A number of semantic and syntactic arguments are adduced in favour of the proposed analysis.

Keywords: modal verb, modal value, modal intensity; neustic, tropic, phrastic component; dynamic, deontic, epistemic modality

1Introduction

Modality is a difficult and controversial concept – for a number of reasons. First, there seems to be no consensus on its ontological status: is it a linguistic category or is it a semantic field (“a content domain”)? Insofar as linguistic categories usually are conceived as (numerically limited) sets of linguistic forms with a rather precise meaning within the overall linguistic system, there seems to be no reason to assume it is a category on line with tense, aspect and mood for instance. As is well known, modality can be expressed in a number of ways (special verbs or verb forms, adverbs, whole phrases, etc.), so we are left with the conception of modality as a semantic field. Second, what is the content of the field? A common definition is that modality characterises sentences conveying the speaker’s attitude towards the propositional content of his utterance, i.e. his evaluation of the possibility or necessity for the description of a given state of affairs to be true; hence the field’s affinity with related areas such as subjectivity and evidentiality. Third, how can this field be described and subdivided? A widespread subdivision partitions the field into root (or dynamic) modality, epistemic and deontic modality (Boye 2001, 2005, Nuyts 2005),1 but other types are also found in the literature, such as alethic and boulomaic modalities. This proliferation of modality types leads to the final question: do we need this ill-defined semantic area at all as a linguistically relevant concept? The answer of Nuyts (2005) is that we do not. He prefers to treat the different types of modality as levels within a larger “category” of qualifications. He may have a point here, but the very fact that epistemic and deontic modalities constitute separate identifiable levels casts doubt upon his conclusion. I shall therefore take the more traditional view that it makes sense to speak of modality, and that it can be fruitful to distinguish between dynamic (or root), epistemic and deontic modality.

One reason for this is that the retention of the three kinds of modality, dynamic, epistemic and deontic is justified by their close resemblance and affinity to the three fundamental functions of the utterance that are identified by Benveniste (1974: 84): assertion (dynamic), interrogation (epistemic) and intimation (deontic).

However one defines the field, the Germanic languages possess a special class of verbs, the modal verbs, whose only, or at least primary, function is to convey the speaker’s evaluation of the possibility or necessity of a certain state of affairs to obtain, in contradistinction to so-called categorical sentences, which are simply asserted as true. So modality can be seen as, if not grammaticalised, to a certain extent lexicalised in these languages – which does not preclude that modal values can be expressed in numerous other ways.

The modal verbs constitute in Danish a class with special morphological and syntactic features. Historically, they are so-called preterite-present verbs characterised by the Ablaut of their present tense forms and the absence of the present tense ending -r, but contrary to the English modals their inflection is not defective insofar as they have their own infinitive form (cf. Table 1.1a); syntactically, they are directly followed by an infinitive, i.e. without the complementiser at ‘to’ (cf. Table 1.1b), together with which they constitute a modal expression. The present article will concentrate on the three central Danish modal verbs kunne ‘can’, skulle ‘shall’ and måtte ‘may/must’, which all have clear epistemic uses.2

Table 1.1: Modal Morphology

a. kunne	skulle	måtte
can-INF	shall-INF	may/must-INF
han kan	han skal	han må
he can-PRES	he shall-PRES	he may/must-PRES
b. han kan gøre det	han skal gøre det	han må gøre det
he can-PRES do it	he shall-PRES do it	he may/must-PRES do it
vs.
han prøver at gøre det
he tries to do it

2Modal value and intensity

As in other (Germanic) languages the modal verbs in Danish are polysemous and convey the three different modal values: dynamic (or root modality),3 deontic and epistemic (Section 2.1); there is not a single modal verb that carries only one of these values, and they all seem to be able to express them all. These three values can be graduated into modal intensities ranging from the possible to the necessary (Section 2.2).

2.1Modal values

To take a first example, the verb kunne ‘can’ has as its semantic core the notion of ‘possibility’. The sentence Han kan svømme of Table 1.2 has consequently three interpretations:

Table 1.2: Modal Values

1.	‘He has the capability to swim’	(physical possibility: dynamic modality)
2.	‘He has the permission to swim’	(social possibility: deontic modality)
3.	‘He has the possibility to swim’	(mental possibility: epistemic modality)

Such (multiple) ambiguity is inherent in any modal verb, but in actual use one is seldom in doubt.

2.2Modal intensity

The three modal values, dynamic, deontic and epistemic, can be further described in terms of degrees on a scale of modal intensity ranging from ‘possible’ to ‘necessary’ (Lyons 1977: 787ff, Herslund 1989: 13). The degrees o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editorial Preface
• List of Contributors
• Part I: Germanic languages
• Part II: Romance languages
• Part III: Baltic and Slavonic languages
• Part IV: Non Indo-European languages
• Part V: Theoretical perspectives
• About Contributors
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Language Index