Search results for "covert evidentiality"

The translatability into Italian of the German stance marking modal particles wohl, eben and ja. Between epistemicity and evidentiality

2015

Contrary to Italian and many other languages, German has a linguistic means to mark the speaker’s stance: the so-called modal particles, such as wohl, eben and ja. This paper examines their occurrence in a German novel and their possible translations in its Italian version. It analyses their complex meaning arising from the intertwined relations between speaker – hearer – state of affairs as the three key entities of stance they mark and the textual or situational context, concluding that they have only covert epistemic and evidential features. This cross-linguistic analysis proves that it is impossible not only to translate them, but also to draw a clear borderline between epistemicity and…