The evidential meaning of modal parentheticals

The article explores how the evidential meaning of ‘inference’, ‘perception’ and ‘hearsay’ transmitted resp. by the following French markers: faut croire [one should believe], on dirait [one should say] and paraît [it seems] is related to their parenthetical use. To address this question, we first analyze the syntactic and pragmatic function of these three parenthetical constituents, by showing that their preference for the final position is to be put in relation with a dialogical value. Second, we will see that their evidential meaning can be reconstructed step by step by taking into account such a dialogical value as well as the lexical meaning of the verb they are compounded with. More generally, our study will show that an evidential meaning is not a genuine value, but is obtained by a plurality of factors. Among them, the pragmatic function due to their parenthetical use plays a significant role. © 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V.