Posibilidad epistémica y subjetividad

Abstract

In this paper I examine the modal meaning of possibility through its use with the predicative adjectives possible and impossible in Spanish. I discuss in particular the role of the source of modal evaluation, which in the deontic domain is often characterized as a ‘force’ (Heine 1995) and whose weakening is evident in many expressions of feasibility or potentiality. I argue that the relevant factor for obtaining the epistemic sense is not the assessment of the degree of probability of an event, but the role of the source: the traits of will, responsibility and power are no longer prominent, and the speaker encodes his/her role as an evaluator of his/her own message. For this reason epistemic modality has been considered as an expression of subjectivity. With examples from corpus CREA, I will show the infl uence of context and inference on the shift from so-called objective possibility to subjective possibility.