Epistemic modality

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Epistemic modality is a sub-type of linguistic modality that deals with a speaker's evaluation/judgment of, degree of confidence in, or belief of the knowledge upon which a proposition is based. In other words, epistemic modality refers to the way speakers communicate their doubts, certainties, and guesses — their "modes of knowing".

Epistemic modality may be indicated:

(a) grammatically: through
- modal verbs (e.g., English: may, might, must; German: sollen),
- a particular grammatical mood on verbs, or
- a specific grammatical element, such as an affix (Tuyuca: -hīyi "reasonable to assume") or particle; or

(b) non-grammatically (often lexically): through
- adverbials (e.g., English: perhaps, possibly), or
- through a certain intonational pattern.

Many linguists consider evidentiality (the indication of the source of the information upon which a proposition is based) to be a type of epistemic modality. An English example follows:

I doubt that it rained yesterday. (epistemic: judgment of information source)

I heard that it rained yesterday. (evidential: identification of information source)

However, other linguists feel that evidentiality is distinct from and not necessarily related to modality. Some languages mark evidentiality separately from epistemic modality.

[edit] References

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (2004). Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-926388-4.
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.; & Dixon, R. M. W. (Eds.). (2003). Studies in evidentiality. Typological studies in language (Vol. 54). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 90-272-2962-7; ISBN 1-58811-344-2.
Blakemore, D. (1994). Evidence and modality. In R. E. Asher (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (pp. 1183-1186). Oxford: Pergamon Press. ISBN 0-08-035943-4.
Kiefer, Ferenc. (1986). Epistemic possibility and focus. In W. Abraham & S. de Meij (Eds.), Topic, focus, and configurationality. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Kiefer, Ferenc. (1994). Modality. In R. E. Asher (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (pp. 2515-2520). Oxford: Pergamon Press. ISBN 0-08-035943-4.
Palmer, F. R. (1979). Modality and the English modals. London: Longman.
Palmer, F. R. (1986). Mood and modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-26516-9, ISBN 0-521-31930-7. (2nd ed. published 2001).
Palmer, F. R. (2001). Mood and modality (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-80035-8, ISBN 0-521-80479-5.
Palmer, F. R. (1994). Mood and modality. In R. E. Asher (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (pp. 2535-2540). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Saeed, John I. (2003). Sentence semantics 1: Situations: Modality and evidentiality. In J. I Saeed, Semantics (2nd. ed) (Sec. 5.3, pp. 135-143). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-22692-3, ISBN 0-631-22693-1.