The Semantic Field of Modal Certainty: A Corpus-Based Study of English Adverbs

Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen; Karin Aijmer

Published by De Gruyter Mouton 2007

The Semantic Field of Modal Certainty

A Corpus-Based Study of English Adverbs

Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen and Karin Aijmer

Volume 56 in the series Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL]

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110198928

Overview
Contents

About this book

In spite of the vast literature on modality in English, very little research has been done on modal adverbs as a group. While there are studies of individual adverbs, the semantic and pragmatic relations between them have been left largely unexplored. This book takes a close look at the whole field of modal certainty as expressed by adverbs in English. On the basis of corpus data the most frequent adverbs of certainty, including certainly, indeed, and no doubt, are examined from the point of view of their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics. The corpus used is the International Corpus of English - Great Britain, supplemented by data from other present-day English corpora, and questionnaires testing native speakers' intuitions on fine-grained similarities and differences between closely related adverbs. The methodology also includes the study of cross-linguistic equivalents as indicators of semantic-pragmatic relations between adverbs. Translation corpora yield correspondences in Swedish, Dutch, French and German. A detailed study of those correspondences adds useful information for setting up a semantic-pragmatic profile of each adverb, showing where their meanings overlap and where the boundaries are. The concept of semantic maps is relied on for plotting these relations.

The book not only provides a thorough empirical study of English adverbs expressing certainty, it also contributes to a better theoretical understanding of the complexity of modal certainty, how it is related to speakers' goals and to other semantic areas. It is the first in-depth study of this kind, combining rich information on English as well as opening up perspectives for further empirical and theoretical research into modality.

Author / Editor information

Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, Ghent University, Belgium; Karin Aijmer, Göteborg University, Sweden.

Reviews

"There is no doubt that this book will inspire similar studies in the domain of modality and in other domains."
Ilse Depraetere in: Journal of English Language and Linguistics 3/2009<

Topics

Frontmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	i
Table of contents Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Chapter 1. Aims, methodology and data Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 2. Establishing meaning relations: Problems and solutions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	10
Chapter 3. The linguistic categories of modality and evidentiality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	24
Chapter 4. An integrated model for describing adverbs of certainty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
Chapter 5. Classification of adverbs of certainty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
Chapter 6. The epistemic certainty adverbs certainly, definitely, indeed: Syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	80
Chapter 7. The epistemic certainty adverbs no doubt, surely: Syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
Chapter 8. Evidential, expectation and speech act adverbs: Syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
Chapter 9. Adverbs of certainty and the wider context: Text types and genres Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
Chapter 10. Semantic-pragmatic relations: Networks and maps Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
Chapter 11. Semantic-pragmatic relations: Parameters and features Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	278
Chapter 12. Conclusions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	321
Backmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	325

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
Audience: Researchers and Advanced Students of English, Libraries
Pages
- Front matter: 10
- Main content: 395
Keywords: English /language; modality; rhetorics

eBook

Published: September 25, 2008
ISBN: 9783110198928

Hardcover

Published: November 20, 2007
ISBN: 9783110196177