Evidentiality and other types readjusted: interpersonal modality revisited

Interpersonal modality, bifurcating modalization and modulation, is an important construct of interpersonal meaning in the architecture of Systemic Functional Linguistics. By meticulously reviewing relevant researches from the perspectives of traditional modality and modality’s semantic map, three respects with respect to the system of interpersonal modality have been supplemented. Firstly, modalization, being subcategorized into possibility and usuality, is suggested to entertain evidentiality from the traditional sense. Secondly, considering the delicacy of the system of interpersonal modality, possibility in modalization should be further categorized into epistemic and root possibility; necessity as one subtype of modulation, superseding the original obligation in modulation, is subclassified into obligation and permission; inclination, being the other subtype of modulation, should be specified as the superordinate of volition and ability. Thirdly, the shifting of modal meanings from root possibility to epistemic possibility in modalization and from inclination to necessity in modulation should be clearly specified as far as language evolvement is concerned.

A diachronic corpus-driven study of the expression of possibility in Luganda (Bantu, JE15)

This article employs a 4-million-word diachronic corpus to examine how the expression of possibility has evolved in Luganda since the 1890s to the present, by focusing on the language’s three main potential markers -yînz-, -sóból- and -andi-, and their historical interaction. It is shown that while the auxiliary -yînz- originally covered the whole modal subdomain of possibility, the auxiliary -sóból- has steadily taken over the more objective categories of dynamic possibility. Currently, -yînz- first and foremost conveys deontic and epistemic possibility. It still prevails in these more subjective modal categories even though the prefix -andi-, a conditional marker in origin, has started to express epistemic possibility since the 1940s, and -sóból- deontic possibility since the 1970s. More generally, this article demonstrates the potential of corpus linguistics for the study of diachronic semantics beyond language comparison. This is an important achievement in Bantu linguistics, where written language data tend to be young.

Competing views

The present account, which construes justification as a kind of epistemic possibility of knowing, or of being in a position to know, competes with three recently advanced theories of justification. Of these competitors, the first two construe doxastic justification as the metaphysical possibility of knowing. While they differ in some details, these views share certain problematic features: they fail to yield a corresponding account of propositional justification, have trouble vindicating an intuitive principle of closure for justified belief, and fail to comply with the independently plausible principle that if one has a justified belief, one is in no position to rule out that one has knowledge. The present account does not have these problematic features. According to the third competitor, |φ‎| is propositionally justified in one’s situation just in case it would be abnormal—and so require explanation—if |φ‎| were to be false in the presence of the evidence that one possesses in that situation. This normic theory of justification validates the principle that propositional justification agglomerates over conjunction, and in so doing, violates the constraint that propositions of the form ⌜φ‎ & ¬Kφ‎⌝ never be justified. It likewise contradicts the independently plausible principle that whenever |φ‎| is propositionally justified all things considered, |¬Kφ‎| is not. The present account does not face these problems, since it rejects the relevant agglomeration principle and treats the condition encoded by ⌜¬K¬Kφ‎⌝ as luminous.

Justification as Ignorance

Justification as Ignorance offers an original account of epistemic justification as both non-factive and luminous that vindicates core internalist intuitions, without construing justification as an internal condition. The account conceives of justification, in its doxastic and propositional varieties, as a kind of epistemic possibility of knowing, and of being in a position to know, respectively. It thus contrasts with other recently proposed views that characterize justification in terms of the metaphysical possibility of knowing. In developing his account, Rosenkranz devises a suitable non-normal multi-modal epistemic logic for knowledge and being in a position to know that respects the finding that these notions create hyperintensional contexts, defends his conception of justification against well-known anti-luminosity arguments, shows that the account allows for fruitful applications and principled solutions to the lottery and preface paradoxes, and provides a metaphysics of justification, and of its varying degrees of strength, that is compatible with core assumptions of the knowledge-first approach and disjunctivist conceptions of mental states.

Outline of a theory of justification

Core theses of the novel account of justification to be developed are first stated: one has propositional justification for p just in case one is in no position to know that one is in no position to know p; and one has doxastic justification for p just in case one is in no position to know that one does not know p. Unlike other theories that conceive of justification in terms of the metaphysical possibility of knowing, the present account thus construes it as a distinctive kind of epistemic possibility. It treats propositional justification as non-factive, both its presence and its absence as luminous conditions, and by assuming a weak non-normal modal logic for knowledge and being in a position to know, validates principles of positive and negative introspection for it. The account thereby attributes features to justification that internalists care about. But it does so without construing justification as an internal condition. The account allows one to systematically distinguish between the condition of being justified and the metaphysical grounds for its obtaining, thereby heeding externalist insights into the difference between the good cases and the bad cases envisaged by radical scepticism. Lines of argument that show the account’s potential, e.g. in dealing with the preface and lottery paradoxes, are previewed, and so are lines of defence against challenges and objections, including prominent anti-luminosity arguments.

The peculiarities of realization of modal values of necessity and epistemic possibility in the Russian and Chinese languages

This article examines the linguistic-specific parameters of language means for expressing modal valies of necessity and epistemic possibility in the Russian and Chinese languages. Particular attention is given to the analysis of quantitative and functional-semantic characteristics of language means for expressing modality in the Russian and Chinese languages from the comparative perspective. The goal of this research lies on examination of functionality of the means of objective and subjective modality within the Russian language reflected in the Chinese language. The research is based on the material of the user parallel corpus, which contains Russian and Chinese literary texts with translation, as well as on the results of student poll conducted for the purpose of determination of meta-representations of the native speakers on functionality of a number of linguistic units of the corresponding microfields. The results of comprehensive analysis demonstrate that the core and periphery of the functional-semantic fields of necessity and epistemic possibility in the Russian and Chinese languages are similar with regards to the types of linguistic units that comprise the field (the core zone consists of modal verbs and modal words); however, the allocation of elements within the field differs. From the functional-semantic perspective, the author determines a group of modal values with accurate cross-lingual correspondences and a group of words with different meanings, as well as indicates the semantic lacunas. The survey results of the native speakers confirm varying degree of consolidation of the opinion on the value of modality markers.

Realism, reliability, and epistemic possibility: on modally interpreting the Benacerraf–Field challenge

A Benacerraf–Field challenge is an argument intended to show that common realist theories of a given domain are untenable: such theories make it impossible to explain how we’ve arrived at the truth in that domain, and insofar as a theory makes our reliability in a domain inexplicable, we must either reject that theory or give up the relevant beliefs. But there’s no consensus about what would count here as a satisfactory explanation of our reliability. It’s sometimes suggested that giving such an explanation would involve showing that our beliefs meet some modal condition, but realists have claimed that this sort of modal interpretation of the challenge deprives it of any force: since the facts in question are metaphysically necessary and so obtain in all possible worlds, it’s trivially easy, even given realism, to show that our beliefs have the relevant modal features. Here I show that this claim is mistaken—what motivates a modal interpretation of the challenge in the first place also motivates an understanding of the relevant features in terms of epistemic possibilities rather than metaphysical possibilities, and there are indeed epistemically possible worlds where the facts in question don’t obtain.

Sensitivity to syntactic violation and semantic ambiguity in English modal verbs: A self-paced reading study

The present study is, to our knowledge, the first self-paced reading experiment to investigate the effects of syntactic violation and semantic ambiguity on processing English modal auxiliaries. Forty undergraduate students, native speakers of English, took part in the study and read 36 target sentences, each containing a modal verb in context. Two of the most frequent English modals, can and may, were used in three distinct categories of modal expression: agent-oriented/ability, epistemic possibility, and speaker-oriented/permission. The two modal auxiliaries were manipulated such that they were either congruent or incongruent with the context, or in the case of permission felicitous or infelicitous relative to the context. We found that incongruent modal use in an agent-oriented context resulted in a reading penalty that was observed in a spillover on the segments following the modal and the lexical verb. Incongruent modal use to express epistemic possibility significantly affected reading times immediately after the modal auxiliary, and also spilt over to the following segments. Reading times in sentences expressing speaker-oriented modality were not affected by inconsistency in the use of the modal verb unmarked for formality in a formal context. The substantive and methodological implications of findings are discussed.