Epistemic evaluation in factual contexts in English

Celle, Agnès

doi:10.1515/9783110572261-002

Epistemic Modalities and Evidentiality in Cross-Linguistic Perspective 2018

DOI: 10.1515/9783110572261-002

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Epistemic evaluation in factual contexts in English

Agnès Celle¹

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Cited by 2 publications

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Unfolding constructions

Peltola

2021

Constructional Approaches to Language

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This paper explores the semantic motivation of postmodal auxiliaries in complement constructions conveying mirativity in French and Finnish. French pouvoir ‘can’ and Finnish pitää ‘should’ both occur as postmodal markers in complements of epistemic and axiological items. These constructions refer to events that deviate from what is discursively projected as expected. As a modal verb of possibility, pouvoir profiles the meaning ‘p and not ¬p’, which is based on an opposition, while pitää, originally a necessity verb, gives prominence to the paradigmatic meaning ’p instead of q1, q2 …’. While the two verbs function in a similar manner as indexes of an interclausal semantic link in mirative constructions, the meaning of unexpectedness is not construed in the same way, and the critical contexts in the evolution of postmodal complement patterns with pouvoir and pitää are of a different type.

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Unfolding constructions

Peltola

2021

Constructional Approaches to Language

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Questions as indirect speech acts in surprise contexts

Celle¹

2018

Studies in Language Companion Series

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This chapter offers an analysis of two types of interrogatives used as indirect speech acts in surprise contexts in English – unresolvable questions and rhetorical questions. The function of these questions is not to request information that is unknown to the speaker. It is argued that surprise-induced unresolvable questions are expressive speech acts devoid of epistemic goals. Surprise-induced rhetorical questions are shown not to suggest an obvious answer, but to request a commitment update from the addressee. Adopting a schema-theoretic approach to surprise, it is shown that unresolvable questions and rhetorical questions can express mirativity, the former at the initial stage of the cognitive processing of unexpectedness, the latter at the last stage.

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Epistemic evaluation in factual contexts in English

Cited by 2 publications

References 7 publications

Unfolding constructions

Unfolding constructions

Questions as indirect speech acts in surprise contexts

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