Epistemic stance adjectives in early modern English
Attitudes toward the certainty, reliability, and source of information can be expressed in a large variety of different ways. Much of the research on epistemic and evidential stance to date has focused on the study of verbs, especially on modal verbs and on partly grammaticalized verb-based stance e...
Guardado en:
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| Formato: | Article (Journal) |
| Lenguaje: | inglés |
| Publicado: |
July 22, 2026
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| In: |
Journal of English linguistics
Year: 2026, Pages: 1-26 |
| ISSN: | 1552-5457 |
| DOI: | 10.1177/00754242261455907 |
| Acceso en línea: | Resolving-System, kostenfrei, Volltext: https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242261455907 Verlag, lizenzpflichtig, Volltext: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00754242261455907 
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| Notas de Autor: | Daniela Landert |
| Sumario: | Attitudes toward the certainty, reliability, and source of information can be expressed in a large variety of different ways. Much of the research on epistemic and evidential stance to date has focused on the study of verbs, especially on modal verbs and on partly grammaticalized verb-based stance expressions like I think and it seems. In contrast, adjectives have received far less attention, although some studies have shown that they can provide important insight into the expression of stance. Overall, little is known about the contribution of adjectives to the expression of epistemic and evidential stance in historical periods of English, their relation to other types of stance markers, and their variation across different historical contexts. This study contributes to filling this gap. Based on the analysis of epistemic and evidential stance adjectives in three Early Modern English corpora, the Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760 (CED), the Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts (LC), and the Early Modern English Medical Text Corpus (EMEMT), I present results on two different aspects. On the one hand, I show how adjectives contribute to the expression of stance in Early Modern English. Special attention is paid to the use of stance adjectives with complement clauses that lack an overt complementizer. Such instances are difficult to retrieve, which is why they are sometimes excluded from the study of stance expressions. A detailed analysis shows to what extent this can affect results, especially when different genres are compared. On the other hand, I will show how the use of stance adjectives varies across three different historical genres, namely medical treatises, political tracts, and trial proceedings. This variation affects not just the frequency of forms and lexico-grammatical patterns, but also the rhetorical patterns in which they occur and even the meaning of stance adjectives. |
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| Notas: | Gesehen am 23.07.2026 |
| Descripción Física: | Online Resource |
| ISSN: | 1552-5457 |
| DOI: | 10.1177/00754242261455907 |