Pragmatic Competence for L2 Learners: The Case of Maybe, Perhaps, and Possibly as Hedging Terms

Abstract

The construct of hedging is a significant part of the native speaker’s intuition used to indicate different degrees of un/certainty and mark various levels of likelihood. This paper explores the use of three sentence adverbs, maybe, perhaps, and possibly, in terms of their pragmatic differences in spite of the great deal of overlap in their semantic structure when used to hedge propositions. The use of the three hedging devices is highly affected by three parameters the: formality, positiveness, and possibility. In addition, the three hedging devices behave similarly in the sense that they occur in direct questions but not in imperatives or comparative structures and have no corresponding negative forms. They are different in being derived from an adjective or rephrased with a cognate word and occurring initially in requests or after intensifiers. Appropriate use of hedging is among the difficult aspects of learning a second/foreign language even for those who achieved an advanced level of proficiency in L2.