Functional and formal constraints on the emergence of epistemic modality: a longitudinal study on French

Abstract

The study investigates the emergence and early development of epistemic modality, a linguistic sub-system devoted to the expression of speakers' cognitive attitudes. It is based on the longitudinal analyses of the naturalistic productions of a French child between 1;9 and 4;0. Analyses indicate that epistemic modality emerges later than dynamic/deontic categories and shows a specific developmental progression from 2;3 on. The study examines in particular: (1) the ontogenesis of epistemic functions, as primed by early meanings (prediction, ignorance) that anticipate core meanings related to certainty and uncertainty (possibility, belief, hypothesis); (2) the development of epistemic markings, where it is found that lexicalized devices emerge before grammaticalized ones; (3) the role of specific constraints concerning modal and propositional subject references. Results are discussed in a cross-linguistic perspective to specify how functional and formal constraints interact in the acquisition of epistemic modality.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 46 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.