Epistemic and evidential markers in the rhetorical context of concession

Abstract

This article examines the emergence and degree of stabilisation of the contextual values developed by epistemic and evidential markers in the polyphonic sequence of concession. By investigating a Romanian oral and written corpus, we analyse the concessive and/or reportative values firstly of two epistemic adverbs used to express the high/low degree of the speaker’s formal commitment (desigur ‘of course’, and poate ‘maybe’), and subsequently of the epistemic (evidential) future (the Romanian ‘presumptive mood’). The latter expresses an intermediate (and variable) degree of commitment, and is a typically inferential evidential that switches to the status of a reportative evidential. The conclusion is that the concessive context (marked by contrast connectors) is a discourse factor which systematically implies an ambiguous commitment, giving rise to a reportative interpretation of epistemic and inferential markers.