This paper argues that evidential clitics in St’át’imcets (a.k.a. Lillooet; Northern Interior Salish) introduce quantification over possible worlds and must be analyzed as epistemic modals. We thus add to the growing body of evidence suggesting that the functions of encoding information source and encoding epistemic modality are not necessarily distinct. However, St’át’imcets evidentials differ...

this paper compares epistemic virtue from the viewpoints of zagzebski and mulla sadra, aiming to determine the extent to which their viewpoints on epistemic virtue are similar. zagzebski, the contemporary philosopher, considers epistemic virtue as the basis on which knowledge is interpreted. she sees epistemic virtue as a requirement for achieving knowledge. mulla sadra, the founder of transcen...

We investigate modal logics of high probability having two unary modal operators: an operator K expressing probabilistic certainty and an operator B expressing probability exceeding a fixed rational threshold c ≥ 1 2 . Identifying knowledge with the former and belief with the latter, we may think of c as the agent’s betting threshold, which leads to the motto “belief is willingness to bet.” The...

Anti-realist epistemic conceptions of truth imply what is called the knowability principle: All truths are possibly known. The principle can be formalized in a bimodal propositional logic, with an alethic modality ♦ and an epistemic modality K, by the axiom scheme A ⊃ ♦KA (KP). The use of classical logic and minimal assumptions about the two modalities lead to the paradoxical conclusion that al...

Two of the authors (van Benthem and Pacuit) recently introduced evidence logic as a way to model epistemic agents faced with possibly contradictory evidence from different sources. For this the authors used neighborhood semantics, where a neighborhood N indicates that the agent has reason to believe that the true state of the world lies in N . A normal belief modality is defined in terms of the...

In the aspectual linguistic literature, a connection between imperfective aspect and modality/subjectivity is quite often mentioned. This article investigates a possible counterargument to this connection by analyzing modal readings of tenses in Russian. Two types of uses of tenses are described: (1) temporal reading of the tense with a modal inference and (2) strictly modal reading of the tens...

This paper explores three questions about the semantics of free relatives (FRs). One, do FRs have a uniform meaning? Two, related to one, what is the contribution of ever? And three, perhaps less discussed than the other two, what is the relation between identity and free choice (FC) readings of FRs with ever? It claims that FRs are always definite. Ever introduces a type of modality that is in...

Recent years witnessed a growing interest in non-standard epistemic logics of knowing whether, knowing how, knowing what, knowing why and so on. The new epistemic modalities introduced in those logics all share, in their semantics, the general schema of ∃x φ , e.g., knowing how to achieve φ roughly means that there exists a way such that you know that it is a way to ensure that φ . Moreover, th...

Epistemic modality is described as the speaker's judgment, assessing degree of factual proposition, or confidence non-confidence in truth value proposition. The paper focuses on expression “thấy”, “nghĩ” predicates Vietnamese and compares with mental verbs English. To achieve research objectives, uses descriptive, statistical comparative methods to clarify general epistemic particular. initiall...