The paper is an empirical, corpus-based analysis of the functions of seem with different complementation structures and in impersonal constructions as well as in combinations with an experiencer. The focus is on describing how evidentiality (e.g. inferencing/observation or hearsay evidence) interacts with degrees of certainty or factivity of the construction. Other features are subjectivity and intersubjectivity (shared or non-shared information). Translations from English into Swedish have been used to get a more fine-grained picture of the degree of certainty expressed by seem and its relationship to the type of evidence. The different constructions with seem and their functions are explained in a grammaticalization perspective. Seem conforms to a number of principles such as layering and divergence (Hopper). Seem to is the most grammaticalized form and can be regarded as an evidential marker which is similar to the modal auxiliaries.
2020. Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics,
Almeida, Francisco Alonso
2015. The functions ofseemandparecerin early medical writing. Discourse Studies 17:2 ► pp. 121 ff.
Alonso-Almeida, Francisco
2013. An Analysis of the Grammatical and Pragmatic Values of Seem in the C19th Section of the Corpus of English Philosophy Texts. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 95 ► pp. 178 ff.
Alonso-Almeida, Francisco & Mª Isabel González-Cruz
2012. Exploring Male and Female Voices through Epistemic Modality and Evidentiality in Some Modern English Travel Texts on the Canaries. Research in Language 10:3 ► pp. 323 ff.
Brook, Marisa
2018. Taking it up a level: Copy-raising and cascaded tiers of morphosyntactic change. Language Variation and Change 30:2 ► pp. 231 ff.
2014. Stance markers. In Corpus Pragmatics, ► pp. 219 ff.
Grichin, Sergei & Olga Ulyanova
2023. Evidential Text Units in Russian Research Articles. In Science and Global Challenges of the 21st Century – Innovations and Technologies in Interdisciplinary Applications [Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, 622], ► pp. 135 ff.
Hasselgård, Hilde
2023. Seem and Appear and Their Norwegian Verbal Counterparts: A Cross-Register Contrastive Study. English Studies 104:1 ► pp. 173 ff.
2021. Marking one’s own viewpoint: The Finnish evidential verb+kseni ‘as far as I understand’ construction. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 44:3 ► pp. 255 ff.
Khafaga, Ayman
2023. Strategic lexicalization in courtroom discourse: A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis. Cogent Arts & Humanities 10:1
2018. Evidential and Argumentative Functions of Dynamic Appearance Verbs in Italian: The Example of Rivelare and Emergere. In Argumentation and Language — Linguistic, Cognitive and Discursive Explorations [Argumentation Library, 32], ► pp. 73 ff.
Miecznikowski, Johanna & Elena Musi
2015. Verbs of Appearance and Argument Schemes: Italian Sembrare as an Argumentative Indicator. In Reflections on Theoretical Issues in Argumentation Theory [Argumentation Library, 28], ► pp. 259 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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