Certainly but not certain: The expression of subjective and objective probability

Abstract

This paper investigates the interpretation of the epistemic modal adjectives possible, certain and their adverbial counterparts possibly, certainly, taking the perspective that the former express objective modality, whereas the latter express subjective modality. In support of this view, we report on two experiments that assess speakers’ acceptance of possible, certain, possibly, certainly in different contexts. Our results extend those of Lassiter (2016) in demonstrating a difference in interpretation between the adjectival and adverbial modals, with possibly less acceptable than possible but conversely certainly more acceptable than certain in the same situations. Furthermore, the results of our experiments suggest a new insight, namely that these differences depend, to some extent, on the probability of the eventuality in question and polarity of the prejacent sentence.

Truth Evaluators: A different point of view on the lying/misleading distinction

“…Using these expressions, this study aims to make three additional contributions to the existing literature (beyond the two described in §1): (i) To explore expressions which, as of yet, have not been examined within the context of the lying/misleading dispute; (ii) To consider the effect of explicit content, rather than implicated content, on the constitution of a misleading claim; (iii) To examine differences that pertain to the source of the speakers' evidence. To explain the last point, it has been noted that possible and possibly differ in several respects (see Yatsushiro et al, 2022, for a review), among which is the source of the speakers' evidence. Specifically, while the adjectival epistemic modal, possible, expresses that p is the (objective) estimation of some external speaker/authority, the adverbial epistemic modal, possibly, expresses that the (subjective) estimation was made by the speaker herself (Nuyts, 1992(Nuyts, , 2001.…”

Propositionale Argumente im Sprachvergleich / Propositional Arguments in Cross-Linguistic Research

“…In particular, I would like to thank Dag Haug, Katrin Axel-Tober, Werner Frey, Hans-Martin Gärtner, Martin Haspelmath, André Meinunger, François Récanati, Marga Reis, Hubert Truckenbrodt and Ilse Zimmermann, as well as an anonymous reviewer and the editors of this volume, for important comments. Since completion of this article and its prepublication in lingbuzz in 2020, three subsequent relevant publications have appeared, Krifka (2021Krifka ( , 2022 and Yatsushiro et al (2022). I dedicate this article to the memory of Ilse Zimmermann, who passed away in March 2020.…”

“…Papafragou 2006;Ernst 2009;Wolf 2012;for German, cf. Lang 1979;Doherty 1987;Müller 2019b;Yatsushiro et al 2022). One piece of evidence for this is that the protasis of conditionals, which is naturally interpreted as referring to a proposition, hence a TP, does not easily allow for epistemic adverbials, in contrast to epistemic adjectives:…”