Evidentiality and Modality in English and Serbian Academic Discourse of Forestry Research Papers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/analiff.2018.30.1.10Keywords:
evidentiality, epistemic modality, evidential markers, academic discourseAbstract
The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between evidentiality and epistemic modality in English and Serbian academic discourse of scientific articles in the field of forestry. Two corpora consisting of scientific texts in each of the two languages were formed and examples of evidentiality and epistemic modality were recorded in them. The findings and descriptions of evidentiality are presented comparatively, and the general finding is that the two languages generally express evidentiality through similar means. Some interesting constructions and differences in the use of evidential markers were described, such as two-layered evidentiality in English and evidential constructions with the verb moći ‘can’ and verbs of cognition in Serbian. The established purpose of these constructions is hedging, as one of the typical features of academic discourse. Another feature of the Serbian texts is a range of verbs of perception, while zero evidentiality appears in the English corpus only. The research suggests that the same linguistic means can be used as markers of evidentiality and epistemic modality, whose degree of epistemic evaluation varies depending on the type of information source and the evidential marker used. The epistemic component in evidentials is seen as facultative, while its degree varies along a gradient. Although evidentiality and epistemic modality deal with different semantic areas, a common overlap between them was found. However, it is proposed that demarcation between these two areas be maintained, despite the common overlap of these two areas in markers which only seem to be purely evidential at first sight.
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