PART I: INTRODUCTION
* * *
1. MOTIVATION OF THE STUDY
Natural languages, true enough, offer speakers many and various linguistic devices to
facilitate their communication. That is, these devices are supposed to support the speakers in
terms of sharing information together with expressing their emotions and attitudes. More
importantly, these linguistic devices do give some certain influence over the listeners or the
information recipients’ beliefs or behaviors. These devices fall into the category of
Evidentials – one kind of Epistemic modality.
(1) It sounds like it’s raining. (Evidentials)
(2) The rumor is that she was killed. (Evidentials)
Linguistically, Evidentials are of prime importance in both spoken and written language.
Evidentials, admittedly, are said to come to the speakers’ assistance in expressing well their
certainties, their doubts, their guesses, and their hypotheses in conversations and writings
based upon the certain and absorbed ground of information. In other words, their utterance is
normally said to consist of their attitudes towards the accepted fact in terms of believability,
reliability, and compatibility.
However, not many linguists have formed a distinctively profound study on Evidential
modal markers. Most of the celebrated linguists have paid great attention to discussing
Modality in general and Epistemic modality in particular. Palmer (Mood and Modality,
1986), for example, investigates and restricts his study of Epistemic modality to what is
systematized and organized within the grammatical systems of languages. Whereas, Holmes
(Mood and Modality,1986) presents the expression of Epistemic modality to which is
attached the use of the full range of lexical devices in a variety of written and spoken texts.
Lyons (Semantics, 1977) then offers theoretically possible examples of objective Epistemic
modality together with subjective modality including modal adverbs such as “certainly” and
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“possibly” mentioned as lexical devices. Givón (Mind, Code and Context – Essays in
Pragmatics, 1989) also shows his interest in modality in a way of producing a theory of
Epistemic scale, meanwhile Halliday (An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 1985)
applies his Theme-Rheme structure to the describing the syntactic functions of Epistemic

• Evidential modal adverbs and adjectives: seemingly, apparently - apparent,
evidently - evident, obviously - obviously, surely – sure, undoubtedly, doubtful.
• Evidential modal nouns: rumor, doubt, truth.
• Evidential modal lexical verbs: think, believe, guess, suppose, doubt, see, hear,
taste, feel, smell, appear, seem, say, tell, sound, look.
Despite the fact that the paralinguistic factors such as hesitations, facial expressions, body
gestures, eye movements, etc. play an important role in expressing evidentiality, we find it
impossible to figure them out in this thesis due to the limitation of time. That is the reason
why we study Evidentials in only three aspects: semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic.
In terms of semantic aspect, we will have a focused investigation into the lexical meaning of
the Evidential modal markers. On these grounds, we will put them in order of certainty level,
which proves useful for our study analysis.
As far as syntactic aspect is concerned, we will have a close look at the way the utterances
including Evidential modal markers are grammatically structured. Moreover, the position of
these Evidential modal markers embedded within the utterance grasps our great attention.
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From the pragmatic aspect, we find it necessary to deal with the conditions that govern the
use of these Evidential modal markers in the process of communication such as speech acts.
Additionally, in order to have a more comprehensive account on the culture-specific aspect
of Evidential modal markers, we will take account of theory of politeness.
4. METHODS OF THE STUDY
Data collection procedure:
With respect to the data presented in the thesis, they include primarily examples collected
from authentic sources such as TV News Programmes at the website of BBC News
() (the programs broadcast on 4
th
- 30
th
April, 2008), and the newspaper
International Herald Tribune, The Global Edition of The New York Times, Issues:

Palmer’s theory. Besides, we tend to rank these Evidential modal markers at the scale of
certainty level, which is well proposed by Givãn.
Furthermore, in terms of syntactic aspect, we are going to follow the theory by Quirk (1972),
and Halliday (1985) which forms the basis for the analysis of Evidentials. The two linguists’
frameworks are at my disposal when investigating the position of the Evidential modal
markers located within the utterance and examining the grammatical structures built for the
expressions of evidentiality.
As stated in the Scope of the study, we are going to consider Evidential modal markers in the
context of the process of communication; hence, we will take account of the strategies the
speaker uses when uttering with Evidential modal markers in light of Searle’s (1969, 1985),
and Austin’s (1962) theory about Speech Acts and Brown’s and Levinson’s (1987) theory
about politeness. That may well facilitate our discussion about the pragmatic aspects of
Evidentials in the thesis.
5. DESIGN OF THE STUDY
It sounds appropriate to divide the paper into three main parts:
Part I: Introduction
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The Introduction presents the background of the study, states what the study is aimed at and
what specific tasks it deals with, identifies the delimitation of the study, and gives a sketch of
methods utilized together with the organization of the study.
Part II: Development
The Development includes 4 chapters:
• Chapter 1 is concerned with the theoretical concepts of Modality, Epistemic
modality, and Evidentials.
• Chapter 2 discusses the semantic features of English Evidential modal markers with
Vietnamese equivalents.
• Chapter 3 presents the syntactic features of English Evidential modal markers.
• Chapter 4 deals with the pragmatic features of English Evidential modal markers.
Part 3: Conclusion
The Conclusion offers an overview or a summary of the study in relation to modality,

expression and thus takes the entire proposition within its scope. As such, modality evokes
not only objective measures of factual status but also subjective attitudes and orientation
toward the content of an expression by its utterers.
Halliday (An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 1985) views that modality represents
the speaker’s angle, either on the validity of the assertion, or on the rights and wrongs of the
proposal. It is obviously seen that his definition of modality does not diverge much from
Palmer’s and Bybee’s.
For the good sake of a manageable study, it is recommended that Modality herein be
understood in its narrow sense as a semantic term concerning the speaker’s attitude or
opinion to the utterance.
1.1.2. PROPOSITION AND MODALITY
Jespersen (The philosophy of grammar, 1924) talks about the “content of the sentence” and
Lyons (Semantics, 1977) about “the proposition that the sentence expresses”, both wishing
to distinguish them from the speaker’s attitude or opinion. This assumes that a distinction
can be made in a sentence between the modal and the propositional elements, between
modality and proposition.
The distinction between proposition and modality is very close to that of locutionary act and
illocutionary act as proposed by Austin (How to do things with words, 1962). In the
locutionary act we are “saying something”, while in the illocutionary act we are “doing
something” – answering a question, announcing a verdict, giving a warning or making a
promise. These ideas are on the basis of speech act theory.
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Lewis (An analysis of knowledge and evaluation, 1946) proposes that “the proposition is
assertable; the contents of the assertion…can be questioned, denied or merely supposed,
and can be entertained in other moods as well.” But “modality” in this sense, referring to all
the non-propositional elements of a sentence, is much wider than in the sense in which it will
be used here.
Similarly, Rescher (Topics in philosophical logic, 1968) talks about propositions and argues
that where a proposition (which may be true or false) is subject to further qualification, this
qualification represents modality.

fact. The speaker might reasonably say that he knows, and does not merely think or believe,
that there is a possibility of Alfred’s being unmarried. In his words:
“Objective modality refers to reality; it is part of the description of the world. Subjective
modality, on the other hand, is the expression of the speaker’s beliefs.”
These are two kinds of epistemic modality. The semantic differences between subjective and
objective epistemic modality are significant. Objective modalized sentences are statements of
fact; thus, they can be denied and questioned while subjective epistemic sentences, express
the speaker’s beliefs and not statement of fact; hence, they cannot be denied or questioned.
1.2. EPISTEMIC MODALITY
1.2.1. DEFINITIONS OF EPISTEMIC MODALITY
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The term “epistemic” is suggested to be applied to not only modal systems that basically
involve the notions of possibility and necessity, but to any modal system that indicates the
degree of commitment by the speaker to what he says. In particular, it should include
Evidentials such as “hearsay” or “report” (the Quotative) or the evidence of the senses. The
Declarative, moreover, can be regarded as the unmarked (“unmodalized”) member of an
epistemic system, though by this definition some languages have no “unmodalized”
declaratives.
This use of the term may be wider than usual, but it seems completely justified
etymologically since it is derived from Greek word meaning “understanding” or
“knowledge” (rather than “belief”), and so is to be interpreted as showing the status of the
speaker’s understanding or knowledge; this clearly includes both his own judgments and the
kind of warrant he has for what he says.
It is often claimed in the linguistics literature that epistemic modality, unlike other kinds of
modality, does not contribute to the truth conditions of the utterance. Relatedly, several
commentators argue that epistemic modality expresses a comment on the proposition
expressed by the rest of the utterance:
Epistemic modality… is the speaker’s assessment of probability and predictability. It is
external to the content, being a part of the attitude taken up by the speaker: his attitude, in
this case, towards his own speech role as ‘declarer’. (Halliday, 1970: 349)

in (9b) or (12b) involve deontic (or root) conversational backgrounds. In this kind of theory,
deontic and epistemic modality are treated symmetrically, and both are seen as contributing
to the proposition expressed by the utterance.
1.2.2. TYPES OF EPISTEMIC MODALITY
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It is well known that Palmer claims epistemic modality is divided into two basic categories:
Judgements and Evidentials. It is can be vividly described in the diagram below:
Epistemic modality
Evidentials Judgments
Type a Type b Inference Confidence
“certainty” -
Knowledge
Visual [Declarative] [Declarative] [Declarative]
– Belief
Non-visual Sensation
Report
Deductive Deductive
Assumptive Assumptive “probably”
Spectaculative “possibly”
Diagram 1: Types of Epistemic modality
(Palmer, 1986 : 95)
Notes:
[ ]unmarked member
equivalence
“stronger than”
As shown in the diagram, Judgments and Evidentials are stated to be concerned with the
indication by the speaker of his commitment to the truth of the proposition being expressed.

More clearly stated, Evidentials also are to relativize or measure the information status of the
sentence. The term “information status” is intended to include both the truth-value of a
sentence and the relative importance accorded to it. Evidentials are said to own itself two
essential properties. First and most importantly, a source of evaluation or reliability of the
sentence is involved. This “source of information” defines who stands for the information
status of the sentence. Secondly, the information status of the sentence is most often
measured on the type varies: the sentence is measured with respect to reliability, probability,
expectation or desirability.
1.3.2. DEFINITIONS OF EVIDENTIAL MODAL MARKERS
Evidential modal markers are defined as lexical categories which indicate how and to what
extent speakers stand for the truth of the statements they make. In English, all Evidential
modal markers are lexical. English does not have grammaticalized Evidentials, but there are
lexicalized Evidentials. The lexicalized Evidentials of English include the Evidential modal
senses of verbs of expression and verbs of appearance, and Evidential adverbs such as
“evidently and apparently”. Other language units for Evidential modal markers are about to
be well-mentioned later.
1.3.3. TYPES OF EVIDENTIALS
In the views of different linguists, Evidentials can be divided in different ways. Jakoson
(1957) represents four types of Evidentials in terms of the source of information:
• quotative (hearsay),
• revelative (dream),
• a guess (presumptive), and
• previous experience (memory).
For Carib, Hoff (1991) distinguishes introspective Evidentials (knowledge from inference)
from extraspective Evidentials (culturally available knowledge).
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Taking Evidentials into consideration, Palmer (1986) observes that there are at least four
ways of presenting a statement or a fact:
• speculative,
• deductive,

assumption, appearance, and all other
types of supportive, auxiliary
information, of which quotation and
hearsay are found the most common.
Diagram 2: Types of Evidentials
(15) I heard him beating the dog at 7 p.m. yesterday.
(Direct Evidentials)
(16) Rumor has it that the police have arrested John.
(Indirect Evidentials)
1.3.4. SCALES OF EVIDENTIALS
No doubt arises that scales, and more generally hierarchies, have proven useful tools in
typology as well in semantics and pragmatics. In typological research, the most common
type of hierarchy are implicational universals which are used to predict possible and
impossible language systems as well as directions of diachronic language change, among
other things (Croft ,1990, and Dik, 1981). In semantics and pragmatics, linguistics scales are
taken to be an ordering of a set of linguistic expressions belonging to a single grammatical
category, where the order is determined by degree of informativeness or semantics strength
(Levinson, 2000). These scales are generally used to explain conversational implicatures
(Grice, 1989) associated with the linguistic expressions they order.
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In terms of Evidential scales, Willet (1988) proposes the hierarchy as follows:
ATTESTED > REPORTED > INFERRING
In this hierarchy, he explains that “on the scale from most to least direct, Attested evidence is
ranked as the most reliable source, Inferring evidence as the least reliable, and Reported
evidence somewhere in the middle”. (Willett, 1988:86)
Thus, for Willett the speaker’s preference of certain evidence types over others is based on
two criteria: directness and reliability. He goes on to say that “a speaker using on Inferring
evidential denies having reported or direct evidence,” that is, for him the indirect negation
between Inference and Reportative goes in the opposite direction.
Meanwhile, it is seen that de Hann (1998) shows another scale for Evidentials:

granted,
presupposed and
above challenge.
Here, the
presupposed
information are
assumed by the
speaker to be
known to, familiar
to, or otherwise
unlikely to be
challenged by the
hearer.
P are doubtful
hypotheses and
beneath challenge
and substantiation.
P here are known
as irrealis. The
information whose
source is largely
irrelevant is
weakly asserted.
The speaker does
not intend to
defend the
information in
order to solicit
challenge,
correction or

senses
Feeling
3
rd
personHearer
Diagram 4: Scale of Evidentials’ certainty (Givãn, 1989)

If a speaker is forced to choose evidence to defend his assertion, he chooses evidence
according to the four scales presented in the diagram, and according to the internal order of
the gradients, vision over hearing, for instance.
Givãn provides rules of evidence for his scale and points out that only in the case of realis-
assertion is evidence assumed to be both available and expected, which is ranked according
to the degree of evidentiary strength. It is also claimed that in languages further
differentiating among several sensory sources of direct evidence, the grammar of
evidentiality tends to rank the senses according to their reliability as source of evidence.
Besides, in the grammar of evidentiality, one finds the ranking of either the participants in
the event according to person or the temporal proximity of the reported event to the speech
time in a rather predictable way. The diagram below does help to illustrate the scales:
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Scales
Scale of
temporal
proximity
Scale of spatial
proximity
Scale of
participants in
events
Scale of
reliability of

from speech
situation
a. Nearer to
speech time
b. Farther
away from
speech time
Diagram 5: Types of scales (Givãn, 1989)
1.3.5. EVIDENTIALS AND INTERACTION
Various different types of interaction may arise between Evidentials and different values of
person. In particular, interactions may affect the frequency or the interpretation of
Evidentials, or both. These interactions can be considered to fall into four types:
• (1) The frequency of certain Evidentials varies greatly depending on person.
For example, reported Evidentials are uncommon with first person because
normally when a speaker was involved in an action, they do not need to be
told that it occurred.
• (2) The interpretation of some Evidentials in some languages changes
depending on the person values in the sentence. For example, with a first
person subject, non-witnessed Evidentials often encode that an action was
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non-volitional, rather than indicating that the speaker did not witness the
event, their more common interpretation.
• (3) Particular Evidentials and person values cannot co-occur in particular
languages. For example, in some languages an inferred evidential cannot be
used in first person contexts.
• (4) Certain Evidentials can be used with utterances which involve any person,
but with restrictions on particular combinations of person and evidential with
particular predicate types. For example, a predicate indicating something
about an internal state may be used with a non-visual evidential, showing a
speaker’s knowledge is based on feeling - but only if the internal state relates

many positions. Their mobility is well seen in the following examples:

Initial Medial Final
(20) I am sure (that) Peter (Theme) can pass the exam. (Rheme)
(21) Peter, (Theme) I am sure, can pass the exam. (Rheme)
(22) Peter (Theme) can pass the exam, (Rheme) I am sure.
1.5. BACKGROUND ON SPEECH ACT THEORY
1.5.1. SPEECH ACT THEORY
This section offers a brief introduction to the basic speech act theoretic concepts developed
by Searle and his colleagues (Searle and Vanderveken, 1985, Vanderveken, 1990,
Vanderveken, 1991.) who based them on ideas first introduced by Austin (1962).
Austin (1962) presents three acts the speaker performs when he/she utters a sentence:
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• Locutionary act
By locutionary act, the speaker selects language units as phonetic units, lexical
items, grammatical rules and combines these to form an utterance.
• Illocutionary act
By illocutionary act, the speaker is using a sentence to perform a function. He may
use some specific language units as indicators to signal the function of the utterance.
• Perlocutionary act
By perlocutionary act, the speaker conveys an idea, a further purpose which can be
interpreted by the hearer, not on the surface of the words and structures of the
sentence by means of his manner of locutionary act in an actual situation.
Here come the basic assumptions of speech act theory which are summarized in the
following quote from Searle and Vanderveken (1985).
The minimal units of human communication are speech acts of a type
called illocutionary acts (terminology introduced by Austin (1962)).
Some examples for illocutionary acts are statements, questions,
commands, promises, and apologies. Whenever as speaker utters a
sentence in an appropriate context with certain intentions, he performs

• Propositional content conditions put restrictions on the propositional content of an
illocutionary act of a particular force. For example, the propositional content of a
promise must present a speaker’s future course of action.
• Preparatory conditions are certain propositions that speaker takes for granted in
performing the illocutionary act.
• Sincerity conditions are “propositional attitudes of the form m(P), where m is a
psychological mode such as, for instance, desire, regret, or hope […] A performance
of an illocutionary act is sincere when the speaker has the mental state that he
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