Resumen de Are "Modal Adverbs" automatically Modal Markers? The Case of French "Certainement" with its Epistemico-Modal and its Evidential Use
- català
L’adverbi francès certainement (‘certament, sens dubte’) ha estat etiquetat com un “adverbi modal”. D’acord amb la bibliografia, aquest adverbi té dos usos (com a adverbi oracional), anomenats “l’ús modal marcat” i “l’ús modal feble”. L’ús modal marcat és clarament (epistemico-)modal ja que indica certesa total, tant si és subjectiu com intersubjectiu. En canvi, el que ha estat anomenat “ús modal feble” l’hem considerat un ús evidencial. Aquest ús indica principalment que el contingut qualificat per l’adverbi prové d’una inferència no-monotònica, elaborada pel parlant, les conclusions de la qual són plausibles, revocables i, per tant, mai del tot certes. Això es deu a la presència d’un component evidencial-inferencial en el seu significat lèxic. Un segon component important en el significat és l’anomenat element modal feble de “probabilitat”, el qual analitzem com un valor de “no-certesa” i argumentem que és un element del significat de l’enunciat (i no del significat lèxic de l’adverbi), una propietat de quasiasseveració a la qual dona lloc el contingut inferit no-monotònicament. Finalment, defensem que l’adverbi també té un component de significat lèxic que hem anomenat “postura epistèmica de certesa”, que considerem diferent de la modalitat epistèmica. Tenint en compte els tres paràmetres i els valors corresponents, mostrem com pot ser interpretat certainement, en una sèrie de configuracions contextuals, tant en el cas de l’ús modal-epistèmic com de l’ús evidencial.
- English
The French adverb certainement (‘certainly’) is labelled a “modal adverb”. It has two (sentence adverb) uses according to the literature, called “strong modal use” and “weak modal use”. The strong modal use is indeed strong (epistemico-)modal in that it indicates total certainty, whether subjective or intersubjective. What is called its “weak modal use” is shown to be an evidential use. It indicates primarily that the content qualified by the adverb results from a non-monotonic inference, performed by the speaker, whose conclusions are plausible, defeasible, and thus never totally certain. This is due to the presence of an evidential-inferential component in its meaning. As for the so-called weak modal element of “probability” in its meaning, we reanalyse it as “non- certainty” and argue it is an element of utterance meaning, a property of quasi-assertions to which non-monotonically inferred content gives rise. Finally, we claim that the adverb also has a meaning component that we call “epistemic posture of certainty”, shown to be different from epistemic modality. On the basis of three parameters and their values, we show how certainementcan be interpreted, in a series of contextual configurations, either as an instance of its epistemico- modal use or of its evidential use.
