On the origins of the epistemic, evidential, and subjectivity meanings in the mental state predicates: The case of Dutch
On the origins of the epistemic, evidential, and subjectivity meanings in the mental state predicates: The case of Dutch

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to contribute to the debates about the nature of the speaker-related meanings of the mental state predicates, on the basis of a diachronic corpus study into the semantic evolution of five such verbs in Dutch. The analyses show that each of these verbs develops its own specific profile in terms of a limited set of clearly distinguishable speaker-related meanings, viz. epistemic modality, evidentiality, and ‘subjectivity’. Each of these meanings is moreover characterized by a distinctive di-achronic path. The study thus also demonstrates the independent status of ‘subjectivity’ as a meaning category.

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