[Lingtyp] Epistemic possibility plus affective evaluation?

[Eitan Grossman]

Hi all,

I'm not sure this is what you're looking for, but Modern Hebrew has a set
of predicates that inflect like adjectives, and convey epistemic
possibility or 'is likely' but with a 'desirable' or 'undesirable' flavor:

ze *asui* likrot [it likely to.happen] 'It's possible/likely to happen
(neutral or favorable outcome).'
ze *alul* likrot [[it likely to.happen] 'It's possible/likely to happen'
(undesirable outcome)

A recent example: "The healthcare system hasn't collapsed. ze od *alul*
likrot "it's still likely to happen."

There are plenty of recent examples with *alul* that the COVID-19 epidemic
provide us with (the virus *alul* to make men sterile, or *alul* to damage
hearing).

I'm not aware of any recent treatments of this, and I'm not sure if anyone
has looked at corpora in recent times.

Eitan



On Mon, Oct 19, 2020 at 7:15 PM Wiemer, Bjoern <wiemerb at uni-mainz.de> wrote:

> Dear Bastian,
> do you have in mind such things like so-called modal particles which
> express surprise about some pleasant/unpleasant event? For instance,
> Russian "razve", "neuželi" used in yes/no questions:
>
> (1a)    Razve on prišel?
> (1b)    Neuželi on prišel?
>         'Is it really the case that he has come?'
>
> The translation is only approximative, but it holds for both. The
> difference is that (1a) is about a surprise concerning an event that the
> speaker evaluates positive, while in (1b) the speaker implies that for
> him/her the event is not so pleasant. Thus, a kind of combination of
> counterexpectation  and evaluation. However, the point is whether
> counterexpectation/surprise weakens epistemic support, or whether (full)
> epistemic  support remains unaffected and the speaker simply accepts a
> fact, but nonetheless expresses her/his surprise (+ evaluation). Of course,
> differences of epistemic support might be modified (and indicated) by
> intonation.
>         Similar things exist in German, e.g.
>
> (2)     Ist er etwa gekommen?
>         Ist er wirklich gekommen?
>         Ist er tatsächlich gekommen?
>         (same translation as with 1a-1b)
>
> However, there is no contrast as for positive--negative evaluation of the
> unexpected event; all these particles (etwa, wirklich, tatsächlich) can be
> used in either case (also depending on intonation).
>
> Best,
> Björn.
>
>
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im
> Auftrag von Bastian Persohn
> Gesendet: Montag, 19. Oktober 2020 16:51
> An: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> Betreff: [Lingtyp] Epistemic possibility plus affective evaluation?
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> I was wondering if you know of any examples of expressions of epistemic
> possibility - especially adverbials - that additionally contribute an
> element of affective evaluation, i.e. expressions that could be paraphrased
> in English along the lines of  ʻmaybe (and I hope that is the case)ʼ or
> ʻmaybe (but hopefully that's not the case)ʼ.
>
> Thanks so much!
>
> Bastian
>
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