On the Rise of Epistemic Meanings in English: An Example of Subjectification in Semantic Change

Abstract

This paper outlines three general tendencies in semantic change, and focuses on the third: meanings tend to become increasingly situated in the speaker's subjective belief state or attitude toward the proposition. Examples are drawn from the development of epistemic, including evidential, meanings in English in three domains: modal auxiliaries (e.g. must ), assertive speech act verbs (e.g. insist that ), and modal adverbs (e.g. apparently ). It is shown that epistemics develop from less to more strongly subjective epistemicity. The process of change involved in the development of epistemics is hypothesized to be strengthening of pragmatic inferences to relevance, not, as has sometimes been suggested, generalization, bleaching, or metaphor.