抄録
This paper aims to analyze epistemic modal markers and the extended phenomena, further to explore the process of grammaticalization in modal markers from a cognitive perspective.
Deontic and epistemic meanings are expressed by means of the same expression in English. In general, wherever there is adequate historical evidence available on the evolution of a language, deontic modality develops prior to epistemic modality. Moreover, the semantic shift from deontic modality to epistemic modality can be described in a model based on grammaticalization theory. The semantic change from deontic to epistemic is the dominant tendency. On the contrary, in Japanese, Hebrew, Thai and Korean, the direction of semantic change is the reverse: epistemic to deontic.
Particularly in Japanese the more frequent emergence of epistemic uses can be predicted in psychological features of language use.
This paper suggests that two opposing directions of semantic changes stem from their typological difference. Furthermore, it will also be shown that the grammaticalization pathways can be affected by semantic structure and its mechanism.
