Boye Epistemic Meaning

A Crosslinguistic and Functional-Cognitive Study
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-3-11-021903-6
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 43, 390 Seiten

Reihe: Empirical Approaches to Language Typology [EALT]

This book is intended to contribute to the clarification of the linguistic research area covered by the terms modal, evidential and epistemic. It sets out to demonstrate that on cross-linguistic grounds a hitherto overlooked epistemic meaning domain must be given due recognition in linguistic theory, on a par with domains such as time and number. The relevant domain is coherent, but at the same time complex in that it consists of two subdomains: one which comprises degree-of-certainty meanings, and one which comprises information-source meanings. The book offers three arguments for giving recognition to such a meaning domain. The first argument concerns the clustering of linguistic expressions with epistemic meaning into morphosyntactically delimited systems of elements. The second argument has to do with the variation pertaining to the coding of epistemic meanings, as highlighted in a semantic map of epistemic expressions. The third argument turns upon the scope properties of epistemic meanings and the morphosyntactic reflections of these properties.Finally, the book proposes a unified cognitive analysis of epistemic meaning in terms of which it attempts to account for the properties of the epistemic meaning domain as well as of individual epistemic meanings.

Zielgruppe

Research Libraries, Scholars and Advanced Students interested in Modality, Evidentiality, Typology (esp. Semantic Mapping, and Universals Pertaining to Ordering of Linguistic Markers), and Cognitive Linguistics.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Boye, Kasper

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Historische & Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Semantik & Pragmatik
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Psycholinguistik, Neurolinguistik, Kognition

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Acknowledgements;5
2;List of figures;12
3;List of tables;14
4;List of abbreviations;15
5;1. Preliminaries;19
5.1;1.1. Introduction;19
5.2;1.2. Overview of the book;24
5.3;1.3. Theoretical basis;25
5.3.1;1.3.1. Central assumptions;25
5.3.2;1.3.2. Crosslinguistic descriptive categories;26
5.4;1.4. Empirical basis;29
5.5;1.5. The term epistemic in linguistics and philosophy;33
5.6;1.6. Epistemic meanings and notions;36
5.6.1;1.6.1. Evidential meanings and notions;37
5.6.2;1.6.2. Epistemic modal meanings and notions;38
5.6.3;1.6.3. Non-epistemic meanings and notions occasionally considered epistemic in the literature;49
5.6.4;1.6.4. Overview of epistemic meanings and notions;53
5.7;1.7. Precursors of the category of epistemicity;54
5.7.1;1.7.1. Epistemic meaning variants;55
5.7.2;1.7.2. Epistemic stance;57
5.7.3;1.7.3. Language-specific groups of epistemic expressions;58
5.7.4;1.7.4. The descriptive category of status;59
5.7.5;1.7.5. Epistemic scales;61
5.8;1.8. Summary of Chapter 1;65
6;2. Epistemic systems;66
6.1;2.1. Introduction;66
6.1.1;2.1.1. Morphosyntactic systems;66
6.1.2;2.1.2. The argument;67
6.1.3;2.1.3. Overview of Chapter 2;70
6.2;2.2. General epistemic systems across languages;70
6.2.1;2.2.1. General epistemic systems in American languages;71
6.2.2;2.2.2. General epistemic systems in non-American languages;91
6.2.3;2.2.3. Evidential subsystems with epistemic modal extensions as general epistemic systems;106
6.2.4;2.2.4. Other possible instances of general epistemic systems;107
6.3;2.3. Epistemic subsystems across languages;113
6.3.1;2.3.1. Evidential systems across languages;113
6.3.2;2.3.2. Epistemic modal systems across languages;116
6.3.3;2.3.3. Epistemic extensions of narrow-sense modal systems;125
6.4;2.4. Several epistemic systems in one and the same language;127
6.5;2.5. Epistemic expressions as a universal phenomenon;132
6.5.1;2.5.1. Scattered coding of epistemic meaning;133
6.5.2;2.5.2. Lexical coding of epistemic meaning;140
6.6;2.6. Summary of Chapter 2;142
7;3. A semantic map of epistemic expressions;144
7.1;3.1. Introduction;144
7.1.1;3.1.1. Semantic mapping;144
7.1.2;3.1.2. The argument;146
7.1.3;3.1.3. Overview of Chapter 3;147
7.2;3.2. The map;148
7.3;3.3. The crosslinguistic significance of the notional distinctions found in the map;149
7.3.1;3.3.1. The distinction between direct and indirect justification;149
7.3.2;3.3.2. The distinction between full, partial and neutral support;151
7.3.3;3.3.3. The distinction between evidential and epistemic modal notions;154
7.4;3.4. The crosslinguistic significance of the connecting lines found in the map;155
7.4.1;3.4.1. Connecting line 1: The link between direct and indirect justification;156
7.4.2;3.4.2. Connecting line 2: The link between full and partial support;158
7.4.3;3.4.3. Connecting line 3: The link between partial and neutral support;162
7.4.4;3.4.4. Connecting line 4: The link between direct justification and full support;163
7.4.5;3.4.5. Connecting line 5: The link between indirect justification and partial support;167
7.5;3.5. How to falsify the proposed semantic map of epistemic expressions;172
7.6;3.6. The structure of the semantic map of epistemic expressions;176
7.6.1;3.6.1. The epistemic modal scale;178
7.6.2;3.6.2. The evidential reliability scale;181
7.6.3;3.6.3. The relation between the epistemic modal scale and the evidential scale;184
7.7;3.7. Related semantic maps;185
7.7.1;3.7.1. Anderson’s (1986) map of evidentiality;185
7.7.2;3.7.2. Van der Auwera and Plungian’s (1998) map of narrow-sense modality;187
7.8;3.8. The asymmetry of the semantic map with respect to coding potential;190
7.8.1;3.8.1. Zero-coding potential;192
7.8.2;3.8.2. Dependencies between zero-coding potentials;197
7.9;3.9. Summary of Chapter 3;199
8;4. Epistemic meaning and scope;201
8.1;4.1. Introduction;201
8.1.1;4.1.1. Scope;201
8.1.2;4.1.2. The argument;202
8.1.3;4.1.3. Overview of Chapter 4;203
8.2;4.2. The scope of epistemic meaning;203
8.2.1;4.2.1. Speech acts, propositions and states-of-affairs;205
8.2.2;4.2.2. Epistemic meaning and the proposition;213
8.3;4.3. The distribution of epistemic expressions among different clause types;217
8.3.1;4.3.1. Distribution among different types of independent clauses;217
8.3.2;4.3.2. Distribution among different types of dependent clauses;224
8.3.3;4.3.3. Epistemic expressions disambiguate polyfunctional clauses as propositional;231
8.3.4;4.3.4. Propositional clauses disambiguate polyfunctional expressions as epistemic;233
8.4;4.4. The position of grammatical epistemic expressions in a universal ordering of grammatical expressions;237
8.4.1;4.4.1. A universal ordering of grammatical tense, epistemic and illocutionary expressions;239
8.4.2;4.4.2. The ordering of grammatical epistemic expressions relative to other grammatical expressions;240
8.4.3;4.4.3. The ordering of co-occurring grammatical epistemic expressions relative to each other;254
8.4.4;4.4.4. The ordering of grammatical epistemic expressions and the propositional scope of epistemic meanings;262
8.5;4.5. Less than one propositional expression per epistemic expression;267
8.5.1;4.5.1. Epistemic expressions without propositional expressions;268
8.5.2;4.5.2. More than one epistemic expression per propositional expression;275
8.6;4.6. Summary of Chapter 4;293
9;5. A functional-cognitive analysis of epistemic meaning and the proposition;294
9.1;5.1. Introduction;294
9.1.1;5.1.1. Definitions of epistemic, evidential and epistemic modal meaning;294
9.1.2;5.1.2. Overview of Chapter 5;295
9.2;5.2. A functional-cognitive analysis of the proposition;295
9.2.1;5.2.1. The proposition as a referring meaning unit;296
9.2.2;5.2.2. The proposition as a linguistic prompt to evoke a Langackerian process construed as referring;297
9.2.3;5.2.3. Arguments in support of the proposed functional-cognitive analysis;300
9.2.4;5.2.4. Reference and truth value;309
9.3;5.3. A functional-cognitive analysis of epistemic meaning;309
9.3.1;5.3.1. Epistemic meaning as a linguistic prompt to evoke a conceptual justificatory-support structure;309
9.3.2;5.3.2. Epistemic meaning as a survival skill;312
9.4;5.4. Relating the functional-cognitive analysis to the crosslinguistic data;315
9.4.1;5.4.1. Conceptual coherence and epistemic systems;316
9.4.2;5.4.2. Conceptual coherence and the semantic map of epistemic expressions;318
9.4.3;5.4.3. Conceptual dependence and the propositional scope of epistemic meanings;321
9.4.4;5.4.4. Functional dependence and propositions without epistemic expressions;326
9.5;5.5. Summary;333
10;6 Conclusion;335
11;References;340
12;Language index;379
13;Subject index;384

Über Autor(innen)

Kasper Boye, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.