Cover not available
Part of
Tense, Aspect, Modality, and Evidentiality: Crosslinguistic perspectives
Edited by Dalila Ayoun, Agnès Celle and Laure Lansari
[Studies in Language Companion Series 197] 2018
► pp. 83–108

Chapter 5
Evidentiality and the TAM systems in English and Spanish

A cognitive and cross-linguistic perspective

| Universidad Complutense de Madrid
This chapter examines and proposes plausible explanations for attested extensions of tense-aspect-modality (TAM) systems to inferential and reportative evidentiality based on the contrastive case study – British English (BrE) vs. Peninsular Spanish (PSp) – of some TAM markers realizing evidential functions: epistemic modals ‘must’, ‘must have’, and ‘deber (de)’, ‘deber (de) haber’; future perfect verbal forms ‘will have’, ‘habrá/n’; and conditional perfect verbal forms ‘would have’, ‘habría/n’. It is argued that the parameters playing a crucial role in facilitating these extensions include immediacy in relation to the ground and reality (cf. Langacker 2017) for inferential values, while irrealis (cf. Givon 1989) and frame-shifting to a counter point of view (Chilton 2014) are relevant for reportative evidentiality.
Keywords: evidentiality, inferential, reportative, modality, TAM systems
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Evidentiality and the TAM systems in English and Spanish
    • 2.1Dimensions and parameters of evidentiality
    • 2.2TAM systems in European languages: Epistemicity and inferentiality
    • 2.3Temporality-aspectuality and epistemicity
    • 2.4Temporality-aspectuality and reportativity
  • 3.The case study: Hypotheses, research objectives and methodology
    • 3.1Hypotheses and research objectives
    • 3.2Case study: Corpora
    • 3.3 Research design: Data collection and procedure
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1 Results: Epistemic modal > inferential evidentiality
    • 4.2Results: Future perfect and conditional perfect > epistemic/inferential values
    • 4.3Results: Conditional perfect > indirect reportative values
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.197.05mar
References (49)
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra. 2004. Evidentiality. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Anderson, Lloyd B. 1986. Evidentials, paths of change, and mental maps: Typologically regular asymmetries. In Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, Wallace Chafe & Johanna Nichols (eds), 273–312. Norwood NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Boye, Kasper. 2012. Epistemic Meaning: A Crosslinguistic and Functional-cognitive Study. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boye, Kasper & Harder, Peter. 2009. Evidentiality. Linguistic categories and grammaticalization. Functions of Language 16(1): 9–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brisard, Frank. 2013. An account of English tense and aspect in Cognitive Grammar. In Time. Language, Cognition and Reality, Kasia M. Jaszczolt & Louis de Saussure (eds), 210–235. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Celle, Agnès. 2005. The French future tense and English will as markers of epistemic modality. Languages in Contrast 5(2): 181–218. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Celle, Agnès. 2008. Tense, modality and commitment in modes of mixed enunciation. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 22(1):15–36.Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace. 1986. Evidentiality in English conversation and academic writing. In Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, Wallace Chafe & Johanna Nichols (eds), 261–272. Norwood NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Chilton, Paul. 2013. Frames of reference and the linguistic concepualization of time: Present and future. In Time. Language, Cognition and Reality, Kasia M. Jaszczolt & Louis de Saussure (eds), 236–258. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. Language, Space and Mind: The Conceptual Geometry of Linguistic Meaning. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coates, Jennifer. 1983. The Semantics of the Modal Auxiliaries. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Cornillie, Bert, Juana I. Marin-Arrese & Wiemer, Bjorn. 2015. Evidentiality and the semantics–pragmatics interface. An introduction. Belgium Journal of Linguistics 29: 1–18.Google Scholar
Cruschina, Silvio & Remberger, Eva-Maria. 2008. Hearsay and reported speech: Evidentiality in Romance. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 33: 95–116.Google Scholar
Dendale, Patrick. 1994. Devoir épistémique, marqueur modal ou évidentiel? Langue Française 102: 24–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. Il serait à Paris en ce moment. Serait-il à Paris? A propos de deux emplois épistémiques du conditionnel. Grammaire, syntaxe, sémantique. In Liens linguistiques. Etudes sur la combinatoire et la hiérarchie des composants, Camino Alvarez Castro, Flor María Bango de la Campa & María Luisa Donaire Fernández (eds), 291–317. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Diewald, Gabriele & Smirnova. 2010. Evidentiality in German. Linguistic Realization and Regularities in Grammaticalization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles & Turner, Mark. 2002. The Way We Think. New York NY: Perseus Books.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1982. Evidentiality and epistemic space. Studies in Language 6(1): 23–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1989. Mind, Code, and Context: Essays in pragmatics. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Jaszczolt, Kasia M. 2009. Representing Time: An Essay on Temporality as Modality. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
2013. Temporality and epistemic commitment: An unresolved question. In Time. Language, Cognition and Reality, Kasia M. Jaszczolt & Louis de Saussure (eds), 193–209. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kronning, Hans. 2015. El condicional epistémico de atribución en francés, italiano y español: Aspectos diafásicos, diatópicos y diacrónicos. In Les variations diasystématiques et leurs interdépendances dans les langues romanes, Kirsten Jeppesen Kragh & Jan Lindschouw (eds), 507–521. Strasbourg: Société de linguistique romane/ÉLiPhi.Google Scholar
Laca, Brenda. 2005. Tiempo, aspecto y la interpretación de los verbos modales en español. Lingüística ALFAL 17: 9–44.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. 2. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
2013. Modals: Striving for control. In English Modality: Core, Periphery and Evidentiality, Juana I. Marín-Arrese, Marta Carretero, Jorge Arús & Johan van der Auwera (eds), 3–55. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017. Evidentiality in Cognitive Grammar. In Evidentiality Revisited: Cognitive Grammar, Functional and Discourse-pragmatic Perspectives [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 271], Juana I. Marín Arrese, Gerda Hassler & Marta Carretero (eds), 13–55. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marín Arrese, Juana I. 2013. Stancetaking and inter/subjectivity in the Iraq inquiry: Blair vs. Brown. English Modality: Core, Periphery and Evidentiality, Juana I. Marín-Arrese, Marta Carretero, Jorge Arús & Johan van der Auwera (eds), 411–445. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marín-Arrese, Juana I. 2017a. Stancetaking and inter/subjectivity in journalistic discourse: the engagement system revisited. Evaluation in Media Discourse: European Perspectives, Ruth Breeze & Inés Olza (eds), 21–48. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2017b. Multifunctionality of evidential expressions in discourse domains and genres: evidence from cross-linguistic case studies. Evidentiality Revisited: Cognitive Grammar, Functional and Discourse-pragmatic Perspectives [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 271], Juana I. Marín Arrese, Gerda Hassler & Marta Carretero (eds), 195–223. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oliveira, Teresa. 2015. Between evidentiality and epistemic modality: The case of the future and the conditional in European Portuguese. Evidentiality and the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface, Bert Cornillie & Juana I. Marín-Arrese (eds). Special issue of Belgium Journal of Linguistics 29: 101–121.Google Scholar
Palmer, Frank R. 1990[1979]. Modality and the English Modals, 2nd edn. London: Longman.Google Scholar
2001[1986]. Mood and Modality, 2nd edn. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Peirce, Charles S. 1955. Philosophical writings of Peirce, Justus Buchler (ed.). New York NY: Dover.Google Scholar
Plungian, Vladimir. 2001. The place of evidentiality within the universal grammatical space. Journal of Pragmatics 33: 349–357. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sanders, José & Spooren, Wilbert. 1996. Subjectivity and certainty in epistemic modality: A study of Dutch epistemic modifiers. Cognitive Linguistics 7(3): 241–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Saussure, Louis. 2013. Perspectival interpretations of tenses. In Time. Language, Cognition and Reality, Kasia M. Jaszczolt & Louis de Saussure (eds), 46–69. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Saussure, Louis & Morency, Patrick. 2012. A cognitive-pragmatic view of the French epistemic future. French Language Studies 22: 207–223. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smirnova, Anastasia. 2013. Evidentiality in Bulgarian: Temporality, epistemic modality, and information source. Journal of Semantics 30: 479–532. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Squartini, Mario. 2001. The internal structure of evidentiality in Romance. Studies in Language 25(2): 297–334. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. Disentangling evidentiality and epistemic modality in Romance. Lingua 114: 873–895. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Lexical vs. grammatical evidentiality in French and Italian. Linguistics 46(5): 917–947. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sthioul, Bertrand. 1998. Temps verbaux et points de vue. In Le temps des événements, Jacques Moeschler, Jacques Jayez, Monika Kozlowska, Jean-Marc Luscher, Bertrand Sthioul & Louis de Saussure (eds), 197–220. Paris: Kimé.Google Scholar
Sweetser, Eve. 1982. Root and epistemic modals: Causality in two worlds. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 8: 484–507.Google Scholar
Talmy, Len. 1988. Force dynamics in language and cognition. Cognitive Science 12: 40–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tasmowski, Liliane. 2001. Questions au conditionnel. Le conditionnel en français, Patrick Dendale & Liliane Tasmowski (eds), 331–343. Recherches Linguistiques 25. Metz: Université de Metz.Google Scholar
Tournadre, Nicolas & LaPolla, Randy J. 2014. Towards a new approach to evidentiality. Issues and directions for research. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 37(2): 240–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van der Auwera, Johan & Vladimir Plungian. 1998. Modalityʹs semantic map. Linguistic Typology 2(1): 79–124. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vatrican, Axelle. 2015. Evidentiality and epistemic modality in rumor: Journalistic conditional in Spanish. Evidentiality and the Semantics–Pragmatics Interface, Bert Cornillie & Juana I. Marín-Arrese (eds). Special issue of Belgium Journal of Linguistics 29: 83–99.Google Scholar
White, Peter R. R. 2012. Exploring the axiological workings of ‘reporter voice’ news stories – Attribution and attitudinal positioning. Discourse, Context & Media 1: 57–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Veiga, Alexandre
2024. El llamado "condicional del rumor": gramaticalmente irreal, no evidencial. Moenia DOI logo
Kratochvílová, Dana
2023. Epistemic modality and grounding: constructions expressing positive epistemic judgement in Spanish and Italian from the perspective of cognitive grammar (with particular reference to the verbs credere and creer). Probus 35:2 ► pp. 327 ff. DOI logo
Marín-Arrese, Juana I.
2021. Chapter 9. Variation of evidential values in discourse domains. In Corpora in Translation and Contrastive Research in the Digital Age [Benjamins Translation Library, 158], ► pp. 233 ff. DOI logo
Hennemann, Anja
2020. Tal vez es X vs. Tal vez sea X. Probability constructions and the use of mood. Romanica Olomucensia 32:1 ► pp. 51 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 november 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.