Author(s): Katalin KISS

Title: TWO KINDS OF EPISTEMIC MODALITY IN THE CONTEXTS OF BUSINESS ENGLISH AND HUNGARIAN

Source: 11th International Conference of J. Selye University. Section on Language – Culture – Intercultural Relationships. Conference Proceedings

ISBN: 978-80-8122-331-0

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36007/3310.2019.105-117

Publisher: J. Selye University, Komárno, Slovakia

PY, pages: 2019, 105-117

Published on-line: 2019

Language: en

Abstract: The paper provides an overview of the ways to express different types of meanings related to epistemic modality, having to do with concepts such as possibility, probability, impossibility in English and Hungarian. All of these concepts cover the subjective or objective attitude or statement of the speaker, who presents their evaluation/judgement or belief of the knowledge upon which the proposition is based. Modal verbs such as English can or may express modal meanings, which are referred to as "epistemic" having to do with probability, logical possibility, hypothetical meaning, beliefs and predictability. In this paper we claim that within the category of epistemic modality two types must be distinguished in English: subjective possibility and objective possibility which are expressed by modals, modal lexical verbs with adverbs and some other means in English. Hungarian uses modals combined with the possibility suffix to express plain possibility and evidential probability within the single category of epistemic modality. In Hungarian, the two meanings correlate with two different sentence structures. The aim of the present paper is to show how specific devices, context, structural means in Hungarian (main stress, focus position of the constituents) may help to distinguish two types of epistemic modality.

Keywords: possibility, probability, epistemic modality, subjective possibility, objective possibility, inferential probability

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