Studying epistemic adverbs in Galician

Studying epistemic adverbs in Galician Overview and preliminary results V´ıtor M´ıguez [email protected] Instituto da Lingua Galega Universidade de Santiago de Compostela Universiteit Antwerpen May 18, 2018 This work has received financial support from the Xunta de Galicia and the European Union (European Social Fund - ESF) V. M´ıguez (ILG-USC) Studying epistemic adverbs in Galician UAntwerpen 2018 1 / 15 The Galician language Romance language spoken in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula Closely related to Portuguese Official in Galicia (together with Spanish) Language shift has accelerated over the last decades V. M´ıguez (ILG-USC) Studying epistemic adverbs in Galician UAntwerpen 2018 2 / 15 Overview of the study Four epistemic adverbs certamente >seguramente >probablemente >posiblemente Three written genres Narrative Essayistic Journalistic 200 instances per adverb per genre extracted from CORGA (∼36 million words) No spoken data Spoken corpora for Galician are too small (for now) V. M´ıguez (ILG-USC) Studying epistemic adverbs in Galician UAntwerpen 2018 3 / 15 The analysis Data is coded for Genre Semantics Position in the clause Verb properties IGrammatical mood ITime reference IType of State of Affairs IPolarity V. M´ıguez (ILG-USC) Studying epistemic adverbs in Galician UAntwerpen 2018 4 / 15 The analysis Main research questions are 1Genre IDo adverbs prefer any genre(s) over other(s)? IDo meanings prefer any genre(s) over other(s)? 2Grammatical mood IIs subjunctive more frequent with weaker epistemic adverbs? IDo negation, non-past time reference, and other (relevant) factors favor the use of subjunctive? 3Semantics IAre stronger epistemic adverbs less centrally epistemic? IDo adverbs differ in terms of time reference? V. M´ıguez (ILG-USC) Studying epistemic adverbs in Galician UAntwerpen 2018 5 / 15 The mood alternation Romance languages are experiencing a loss of subjunctive temporal forms (Harris, 1974) However, the use of subjunctive with epistemic adverbs seems to be increasing (at least for Spanish: Houle and Mart´ınez G´omez 2011; Woehr 1972) Examples (1) a. Indicative Probablemente esta ser´a a ´ultima vez que visite esta cidade. (NARR-585) ‘This will probably be the last time I will visit this city.’ b. Subjunctive Ma˜n´a probablemente sexan s´o tres os que estean traballando tralo mostrador. (NARR-54) ‘Tomorrow there will probably be only three people working behind the counter.’ V. M´ıguez (ILG-USC) Studying epistemic adverbs in Galician UAntwerpen 2018 6 / 15 Mood across epistemic adverbs Do weaker epistemic adverbs favor subjunctive? Ind Subj n posiblemente 58,62 41,38 58 probablemente 69,35 30,65 62 seguramente 98,44 1,56 64 certamente 100,00 0,00 47 Table 1: Share of grammatical mood by adverb in Galician narrative prose Posiblemente has a stronger preference for Subj than probablemente Seguramente rarely appears with Subj Certamente does not (and cannot) appear with Subj Other works did not find significant differences between posiblemente and probablemente (DeMello, 1995) V. M´ıguez (ILG-USC) Studying epistemic adverbs in Galician UAntwerpen 2018 7 / 15 Semantics Overview of the semantic categories certamente seguramente probablemente posiblemente epistemic + + + + strategic + + + + manner + + – – dynamic – – – + scalar ? – – – corrective ? – – – pragmatic – ? – – Table 2: Semantic categories and epistemic adverbs V. M´ıguez (ILG-USC) Studying epistemic adverbs in Galician UAntwerpen 2018 8 / 15 The semantics of certainty items Epistemic modality “a speaker’s evaluation of the likelihood of a state of affairs, as expressed in language” (Nuyts, 2001, 1) (2) Foi esta indeterminaci´on o que o induciu a non dicir nada ´a polic´ıa. Esto e os reberetes fant´asticos do sucedido, que certamente far´ıan pensar ´a polic´ıa nunha historia de drogas ou alcohol. (NARR-284) ‘It was that indeterminacy what induced him not to tell anything to the police. That and the fantastic details of what had happened, that would certainly lead the police to think of a story of drugs and alcohol.’ V. M´ıguez (ILG-USC) Studying epistemic adverbs in Galician UAntwerpen 2018 9 / 15