Chapter 8. ‘I think’
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Graham Ranger
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the sequence ‘I think’ as a discourse marker, used in evidential or epistemic contexts. ‘I think’ is seen to assume a variety of different values, which Kaltenböck (2010), among others, identifies as “shielding”, “approximator”, “structural” or “booster” functions. I hypothesise that ‘I think’ is not inherently ambiguous, but that different values reflect specific configurations, which depend on identifiable contextual features. The present study explores this hypothesis, first with a corpus-based investigation of collocational affinities of the sequence, which reveals a number of characteristic environments. Secondly, I elaborate an enunciative description of ‘I think’ in terms of a basic schematic form, which undergoes certain controlled and calculable deformations to generate local “shapes” (Culioli 1990). I conclude that ‘I think’ in itself expresses neither evidentiality nor epistemic modality, but that these result from specific contextual configurations.
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the sequence ‘I think’ as a discourse marker, used in evidential or epistemic contexts. ‘I think’ is seen to assume a variety of different values, which Kaltenböck (2010), among others, identifies as “shielding”, “approximator”, “structural” or “booster” functions. I hypothesise that ‘I think’ is not inherently ambiguous, but that different values reflect specific configurations, which depend on identifiable contextual features. The present study explores this hypothesis, first with a corpus-based investigation of collocational affinities of the sequence, which reveals a number of characteristic environments. Secondly, I elaborate an enunciative description of ‘I think’ in terms of a basic schematic form, which undergoes certain controlled and calculable deformations to generate local “shapes” (Culioli 1990). I conclude that ‘I think’ in itself expresses neither evidentiality nor epistemic modality, but that these result from specific contextual configurations.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Chapter 1. Introduction 1
- Chapter 2. A quantitative perspective on modality and future tense in French and German 19
- Chapter 3. The temporal uses of French devoir and Estonian pidama (‘must’) 41
- Chapter 4. The competition between the present conditional and the prospective imperfect in French over the centuries: First results 65
- Chapter 5. Evidentiality and the TAM systems in English and Spanish 83
- Chapter 6. Expressing sources of information, knowledge and belief in English and Spanish informative financial texts 109
- Chapter 7. Evidentiality and epistemic modality in Old Catalan 145
- Chapter 8. ‘I think’ 165
- Chapter 9. Embedding evidence in Tagalog and German 185
- Chapter 10. Questions as indirect speech acts in surprise contexts 213
- Chapter 11. Non-finiteness, complementation and evidentiality 239
- Chapter 12. The perfect in Avar and Andi 261
- Chapter 13. The different grammars of event singularisation 281
- Chapter 14. Phraseological usage patterns of past tenses 309
- Chapter 15. Path scales 335
- Name Index 357
- Subject index 363
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Chapter 1. Introduction 1
- Chapter 2. A quantitative perspective on modality and future tense in French and German 19
- Chapter 3. The temporal uses of French devoir and Estonian pidama (‘must’) 41
- Chapter 4. The competition between the present conditional and the prospective imperfect in French over the centuries: First results 65
- Chapter 5. Evidentiality and the TAM systems in English and Spanish 83
- Chapter 6. Expressing sources of information, knowledge and belief in English and Spanish informative financial texts 109
- Chapter 7. Evidentiality and epistemic modality in Old Catalan 145
- Chapter 8. ‘I think’ 165
- Chapter 9. Embedding evidence in Tagalog and German 185
- Chapter 10. Questions as indirect speech acts in surprise contexts 213
- Chapter 11. Non-finiteness, complementation and evidentiality 239
- Chapter 12. The perfect in Avar and Andi 261
- Chapter 13. The different grammars of event singularisation 281
- Chapter 14. Phraseological usage patterns of past tenses 309
- Chapter 15. Path scales 335
- Name Index 357
- Subject index 363
