[Lingtyp] Epistemic possibility plus affective evaluation?

[Nigel Vincent]

Dear Bastian,
An item that might be of interest is Italian 'magari'. Used as an adverb it can mean simply 'maybe' - e.g. discussing whether to go on holiday in these corona times one might say magari è meglio rimanere a casa 'perhaps it's better to stay at home.  It can also be used by itself as an exclamation indicating that you would like something to happen but you don't think it will:
A: sarebbe bello poter andare in vacanza 'it would be nice to be able to go on holiday'
B: Magari! 'If only!'/ 'I wish!'
In origin it's a loan from Greek makarios 'happy'
Best
Nigel


Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
The University of Manchester

Linguistics & English Language
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
The University of Manchester



https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Bastian Persohn <persohn.linguistics at gmail.com>
Sent: 19 October 2020 4:50 PM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [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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