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Part of
Evidence for Evidentiality
Edited by Ad Foolen, Helen de Hoop and Gijs Mulder
[Human Cognitive Processing 61] 2018
► pp. 121–141

Chapter 5
Finnish evidential adverbs in argumentative texts

| University of Helsinki

The analysis concerns three meaning types that denote the interlocutors’ epistemic access and epistemic authority to knowledge: expectedness, shared access, and individual access. The different accesses lead to different interactional and textual functions of evidential adverbs. The most relevant features concern the rhetoric patterns (concession, contrast, adding, etc.) connected with argumentation and the type of knowledge occurring in the scope of an adverb (generic – specific, conventionalized – non-conventionalized, irrefutable – negotiable). The study focuses on Finnish adverbs derived from the verb tietää ‘know’, and their usage in reader comments in newspaper online sites.

Keywords: argumentation, epistemic access, interaction, evidential adverbs
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Modes of knowing derived from tietää ‘know’
  • 3.Epistemic and evidential adverbs in use
  • 4.The data
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Expectation and shared knowledge
    • 5.2‘As far as is known’ type of shared access
    • 5.3Individual knowledge
  • 6.Discussion of the results and conclusion
    • 6.1Access and the type of the state of affairs
    • 6.2Dialogic framing and the rhetoric structure
    • 6.3Epistemic and evidential scales
      • Data
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.61.06jaa
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Cited by 2 other publications

Jaakola, Minna
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. DOI logo
Kittilä, Seppo
2023. Inference versus assumption in light of the Finnish evidential-modal adverbs näköjään and varmaan . Folia Linguistica 0:0 DOI logo

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