Order of epistemic modal adverbials in European Portuguese: a functional approach

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyse the ordering of the epistemic modal adverbials (assertive, almost-assertive and hedges) in spoken European Portuguese. In ligth of the Theory of Functional Grammar (Dik, 1997). In Functional Grammar theory, epistemic adverbials are called propositional satellites which express some judgement of the speaker in relation to propositional content. For the analysis of the epistemic modal adverbials ordering in European Portuguese, data from the Projeto Português Fundamental, developed by Universidade de Lisboa were used (the data consists of 40 interviews). The following (possible) positions where the satellite can position in the superficial structure of the sentence were considered: 1 (initial), 2, S (generally first argument), 3, V (predicate), 4, (generally second argument), 5, 6, F (end). From the assertive satellites, 56,56% were placed in peripheral positions; of the almost-assertive ones, 70,58% were placed in those positions; hedges, positioned in the periphery of the sentence, represented by 68,18% of the total of modal hedges. The epistemic adverbials preference for peripheral positions is explained by the fact of epistemic satellites take as their target the entire proposition (according to the Principle of Iconic Ordering, proposed by Dik (1997)). The intrasentential positioning of some epistemic adverbials can be explained in terms of the proximity with the predicate (The Principle of Head Proximity) and, for some occurrences, it can be explained by the co-ocorrence of prototypical and paragogic values attributed by the adverb.