Evidentiality is a grammatical category that encodes information source as its primary meaning. The information can be: acquired through direct perception, reported by others (hearsay) or inferred by the speaker upon considering the information that is available. Languages with an evidential grammatical category have morphemes with a primary evidential value (Aikhenvald 2004). Nevertheless, Romance languages, like many other languages, have a tense- modal system and lack an evidential grammatical category, instead of which several lexical units or certain constructions convey information source. This special issue is devoted to some of those items, such as modal adverbs, evidential meanings developed from tenses such as the conditional, and certain (semi)grammaticalized markers using SAY-verbs and SEE-verbs. These evidential strategies are good examples of the lexical-grammatical continuum (Cornillie 2007b, Squartini 2008, Pietrandrea 2007, Diewald & Smirnova 2010).

The labels condizionale riportivo (reportative conditional) or condizionale citativo (quotative conditional) are employed to describe certain uses of the conditional mood in Italian, particularly when the conditional marks the non-firsthand nature of a given piece of information. This use of the conditional is particularly frequent in the language of newspapers. However, reportative conditionals may also carry epistemic overtones, and they are used by speakers when they want to stress that they are not committed to the truthfulness of the information reported. Depending on the context, a reportative conditional can be either a purely evidential marker, or an evidential marker with epistemic overtones. Some Italian (trained) speakers exploit this ambiguity as a strategy to play on the two possible interpretations. This strategy is particularly significant in contexts in which the speaker is supposed to be neutral and, as such, must refrain from expressing her/his epistemic stance when recounting events. In this paper, after an analysis of the different sections of newspapers in which reportative conditionals occur, I will discuss one particular use of reportative conditionals in Italian newspapers, i.e. the “political” use of conditionals. To this end, I will carry out a qualitative analysis of some excerpts from newspapers published between the second half of the 19th century and today. In particular, it will be shown that journalists often take advantage of the ambiguities underlying reportative conditionals in Italian, in order to discredit the political position of a person (or group) without overtly questioning it.

catalaL’adverbi frances certainement (‘certament, sens dubte’) ha estat etiquetat com un “adverbi modal”. D’acord amb la bibliografia, aquest adverbi te dos usos (com a adverbi oracional), anomenats “l’us modal marcat” i “l’us modal feble”. L’us modal marcat es clarament (epistemico-)modal ja que indica certesa total, tant si es subjectiu com intersubjectiu. En canvi, el que ha estat anomenat “us modal feble” l’hem considerat un us evidencial. Aquest us indica principalment que el contingut qualificat per l’adverbi prove d’una inferencia no-monotonica, elaborada pel parlant, les conclusions de la qual son plausibles, revocables i, per tant, mai del tot certes. Aixo es deu a la presencia d’un component evidencial-inferencial en el seu significat lexic. Un segon component important en el significat es l’anomenat element modal feble de “probabilitat”, el qual analitzem com un valor de “no-certesa” i argumentem que es un element del significat de l’enunciat (i no del significat lexic de l’adverbi), una propietat de quasiasseveracio a la qual dona lloc el contingut inferit no-monotonicament. Finalment, defensem que l’adverbi tambe te un component de significat lexic que hem anomenat “postura epistemica de certesa”, que considerem diferent de la modalitat epistemica. Tenint en compte els tres parametres i els valors corresponents, mostrem com pot ser interpretat certainement, en una serie de configuracions contextuals, tant en el cas de l’us modal-epistemic com de l’us evidencial. EnglishThe French adverb certainement (‘certainly’) is labelled a “modal adverb”. It has two (sentence adverb) uses according to the literature, called “strong modal use” and “weak modal use”. The strong modal use is indeed strong (epistemico-)modal in that it indicates total certainty, whether subjective or intersubjective. What is called its “weak modal use” is shown to be an evidential use. It indicates primarily that the content qualified by the adverb results from a non-monotonic inference, performed by the speaker, whose conclusions are plausible, defeasible, and thus never totally certain. This is due to the presence of an evidential-inferential component in its meaning. As for the so-called weak modal element of “probability” in its meaning, we reanalyse it as “non- certainty” and argue it is an element of utterance meaning, a property of quasi-assertions to which non-monotonically inferred content gives rise. Finally, we claim that the adverb also has a meaning component that we call “epistemic posture of certainty”, shown to be different from epistemic modality. On the basis of three parameters and their values, we show how certainementcan be interpreted, in a series of contextual configurations, either as an instance of its epistemico- modal use or of its evidential use.

A pesar de que en el curso 2017/2018 se cumplieron dos decadas de la entrada del aragones en la escuela, todavia son escasos los datos sobre su situacion y perspectivas de futuro en el ambito educativo. Con el fin de realizar una aportacion en este sentido, desarrollamos un estudio de caso multiple bajo metodologia cualitativa, centrado en el analisis de las actitudes linguisticas de la comunidad educativa de las 26 escuelas donde se ensenaba esta lengua entre 2013 y 2015. En lo que respecta a los docentes, los datos muestran un clima actitudinal predominante que denominamos como interes condicionado, tendente a la valoracion positiva de la lengua per se pero con cierto rechazo a su promocion en la ensenanza, al identificarse como una potencial amenaza desde el punto de vista laboral por parte de unos claustros de maestros compuestos principalmente por docentes interinos. Asimismo, entre los maestros prevalece una ideologia sobre el aprendizaje linguistico de orientacion instrumental, lo cual se suma a lo anterior para explicar la escasa evolucion del aragones en la Educacion Infantil y Primaria.

This paper aims to reassess how —and if— the epistemic conditional in French relates to evidentiality, focusing on its use in reportative and non-reportative declarative sentences as well as in conjectural polar questions. It is proposed that the epistemic conditional developed from the modal hypothetical use, which accounts for its ability to establish an epistemic frame. The epistemic conditional is defined as a construction that conveys an assumption whatever the source of information. It is claimed that the epistemic conditional does not primarily encode information source. Although the epistemic nature of the epistemic conditional makes it prone to draw on reportative evidence, it is not primarily an evidential marker. Nonetheless, the epistemic conditional is claimed to have indirect evidential and mirative extensions. Rather than the type of information source, the conditional encodes the speaker’s lack of control over information, which affects her level of commitment. Such an approach allows handling the different uses of the epistemic conditional in declarative sentences as well as in conjectural questions in a unified way.

The sequence se ve que can convey various meanings: indirect physical perception, cognitive perception and evidentiality. The latter value, however, is restricted to European Spanish, and is especially frequent in the Eastern Area. From a diatopic perspective, the existence of ambiguous uses of se ve que can be acknowledged where speakers can interpret both a perceptual and an evidential meaning of the structure. Thanks to a diachronic study and to the analysis of ambiguous vs. non-ambiguous uses, this article postulates further recognition criteria that help distinguish between perceptual and evidential meanings of se ve que . In this sense, the study shows that the trait shared by perceptual and evidential values —and the one leading to ambiguity— is the fact that they are based on one and the same reasoning process, and the difference between them —that may help distinguish them— lies in the part of the reasoning process that is being cognitively focused. Likewise, the article shows how a deeper study of se ve que can contribute to a better understanding of evidentiality in Spanish.

This study deals with an Catalan evidential marker without a written tradition, but mainly an oral one: diu que (‘(s)he.says.that’, ‘it is said that’), a Romance correlate for dizque (Spanish) or dice che (Italian) (cf. Travis 2006, Cruschina 2015, Alcázar 2018). The spoken, dialectal and, to some extent, residual nature of this marker forces us to search for different sources in order to approach it. The study focuses on the oral recordings of Museu de la Paraula [Word Museum] —an ethnological archive with monological spoken texts— will be completed with the examination of the first results of the colloquial corpus Parlars —a dialectal and informal corpus with monological and dialogical spoken texts. The analysis of diu que and the corpus data show a partially grammaticalized construction with a reportative evidential value. A mirative extension can be also found, but not a pure epistemic meaning. Also, the rise of diu que has been seen as an example of grammatical constructionalization with a tendency towards more subjective meanings, from a quotative strategy to a reportative evidential marker. Related markers such asque diu que or the conventional formula to begin tales això diu que era have been attested.

Cuatro traducciones romances (una italiana, una francesa, una castellana y una portuguesa) de entre los siglos XIV y XVI del dialogo ciceroniano De senectute constituyen el corpus de este trabajo centrado en el analisis de las variantes inter- y extraoracionales desde una perspectiva comparativa que pretende determinar el grado de convergencia y divergencia existente entre los tipos de relacion sintactica de los textos meta en comparacion con el texto latino fuente. Se presta especial atencion a los procesos de interferencia linguistica que implican soluciones (anti)latinizantes en las versiones.

Only by understanding gender as behavior and not as biological characteristic, it can be said that gender is attached to identity, and because of this bond the concept of gender identity is arised to a concept that has language, history and culture features. In the current paper acoustic and voice quality features related to language have been examined in the communication of emotions. For this purpose, surveys were made to 136 informants who were selected from South Basque Country, and all in all a corpus formed by 408 sentences was collected. These informants were told to repeat a semantically neutral sentence in their own language variety by simulating basic emotions. One of the results of this study, among others, shows statistically that the general use of voice quality is significantly different between two genders when emotions are being expressed.

Two verbs such as entrar and salir do not seem to have much in common but the fact that both of them belong to the verbs of motion category. However, a review of the history of these units will enable us to notice not in all the cases is or has been that way, but beyond that apparent semantic dichotomy both verbs have developed around a set of semantic links that enabled to express similar meanings. The purpose of this investigation is to examine the links between these verbal units and to expose these existing coincidences among some of their semantic values in the 13 th , 14 th and 15 th centuries from the Cognitive Semantics point of view along with a brief tour through their etymological origins and their first evolution in Romance origins.