On the origins of the epistemic, evidential, and subjectivity meanings in the mental state predicates

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