Epistentiality, manner and dialogic contraction: The case of English clearly and Spanish claramente

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the English adverb clearly and its Spanish equivalent claramente, both of which have a meaning of manner that pertains to the internal structure of the state of affairs, and an epistential (epistemic and evidential) meaning that expresses a propositional attitude of high commitment to the information transmitted, based on evidence. The adverbs have been submitted to a quantitative analysis of occurrences extracted from two corpora of contemporary language, which uncovers a strong relationship between the two meanings in present-day language, evidenced by a number of facts: 1) cases of merger where the two meanings co-occur; 2) expression of dialogic contraction in all the epistential occurrences and part of the manner occurrences; 3) marginal gradability and negatability of the epistential meaning; 4) relative positional freedom of the adverbs with the two meanings, and 5) occurrences of manner in combination with verbs of perception, cognition or communication, in contexts favouring expression of dialogic contraction directly or as a conversational implicature. Two subsidiary issues are also addressed, namely the similarities and differences between clearly and claramente and between their use in spoken and newspaper discourse.