Evidentiality and Epistemic Modality in Spanish (Semi-)Auxiliaries: A Cognitive-Functional Approach

✍ Scribed by Bert Cornillie

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 328
• Series: Applications of Cognitive Linguistics [ACL]; 5
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This volume presents a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the Spanish evidential semi-auxiliaries parecer and resultar, the modal constructions with amenazar and prometer, and the modal auxiliaries poder, deber and tener que. These verbs have never been considered together in a global approach that transcends the classical "verbal periphrases" model.

The book proposes a cognitive-functional account of evidentiality and modality in Spanish with special attention to subjectivity and grounding. The theoretical reflection relies on empirical evidence of two sorts: synchronic and diachronic corpus-analyses alternate with tests that measure the semantic and pragmatic compatibility of the evidential and epistemic constructions with specific sentences.Following the assumption that linguistic forms are determined by their meaning, the array of constructions that characterizes the different verbs justifies their grouping in three pairs of (semi-)auxiliaries: parecer vs resultar, amenazar vs prometer and poder vs deber/tener que. The distributional differences observed in the corpus are further shown to correlate with different degrees of grammaticalization.

Primarily intended for scholars working in the field of Spanish functional linguistics, the monograph is also relevant for grammaticalization studies and for cognitive-semantic research at large. Given its combined theoretical and applied character, the volume is also of interest to anyone concerned with syntactic processes, lexical semantics or the wider area of discourse analysis and pragmatics.

✦ Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Contents
Chapter 1 Background, objectives and methodology
Chapter 2 Evidentiality with parecer and resultar
Chapter 3 Degrees of transparency and subjectification with parecer and resultar
Chapter 4 Evidentiality and modality with prometer andamenazar
Chapter 5 Partial transparency with modal prometer andamenazar
Chapter 6 Subjectification of prometer and amenazar
Chapter 7 Evidentiality, modality and transparency with poder, deber and tener que
Chapter 8 Epistemic and evidential modals: modal grounding and subjectification
Chapter 9 General conclusions
Backmatter