22.1768, Sum: Final Supplement - Semantics: Sometimes vs. Maybe

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LINGUIST List: Vol-22-1768. Wed Apr 20 2011. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 22.1768, Sum: Final Supplement - Semantics: Sometimes vs. Maybe

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1)
Date: 14-Apr-2011
From: George Huttar [gukageorge at gmail.com]
Subject: Final Supplement - Semantics: Sometimes vs. Maybe
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:05:37
From: George Huttar [gukageorge at gmail.com]
Subject: Final Supplement - Semantics: Sometimes vs. Maybe

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Query for this summary posted in LINGUIST Issue: 22.438                                                                                                                                                
 

Since my summary of responses (LINGUIST List 22.739, Feb. 13, 
found here: http://linguistlist.org/issues/22/22-739.html) to my query 
(22.438, Jan. 25, 2011) about expressions for 'sometimes' being used 
for possibility ('maybe'), I have received additional responses that I 
believe merit this supplementary posting:

First, my thanks to Johan van der Auwera, Bittor Hidalgo, Torsten
Leuschner, Liliane Haegeman, Martin Mangei, and Joanna Zaleska for 
their responses.

Hidalgo reported that while 'sometimes' is not used for 'maybe' in 
Basque, an expression for 'somewhere' is used for 'maybe' and even 
stronger possibility, represented by English 'probably' and 'apparently'.

Zaleska and Van der Auwera gave the common use of Polish czasem 
'sometimes' in the sense of 'maybe', at least in polar interrogatives. 
Zaleska cited a Polish-English dictionary giving "1. sometimes; now and 
then" and "by any chance" as two senses of czasem. Examples for the 
second include a polar interrogative, but also a warning reminder: nie 
zgub czasem tych pieni?dzy 'mind (or be careful) you don't lose that 
money'. Van der Auwera sent me his "From temporal adverb to modal 
particle - Some comparative remarks on Polish 'czasem'", Papers and 
studies in contrastive linguistics, 18.91-99 (1984), to which I refer 
interested readers for many of the points in the suggested explanations 
I have received, as well as further data (including Ukrainian) and 
discussion.

Leuschner and Haegeman provided additional examples of Dutch and 
Flemish soms 'sometimes' used to express possibility, with helpful 
details of its limitation to conditionals and certain types of 
interrogatives, as well as of interspeaker variation. Leuschner 
described the function of soms as most of all the pragmatic one of 
mitigation or hedging.

Finally, Mangei suggested a parallel with known extension of deontic 
modals to epistemic uses: thus analogous to 'he is allowed to do that -> 
maybe he's doing it (now)' and 'he is obligated to do it -> 
probably/certainly he is doing it (now)', there might be a similar 
implication 'sometimes he does it' -> 'maybe he's doing it (now)'.

George Huttar 

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics


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