Chapter published in:
Studies in Historical Ibero-Romance Morpho-Syntax
Edited by Miriam Bouzouita, Ioanna Sitaridou and Enrique Pato
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 16] 2018
► pp. 275–302

Realmente, verdaderamente and ciertamente

On the relation between epistemic modality and intensifying adverbs

| Universitat de Barcelona
This paper deals with the historical evolution of three epistemic adverbs in Spanish, verdaderamente, realmente and ciertamente. First, we describe how these adverbs grammaticalise – or pragmaticalise – as discourse markers and, therefore, widen their structural scope. Secondly, we show how these words experience a subsequent functionalisation, allowing them to function once again as adverbs, but now as adjective modifiers and not as verbal adverbs. Finally, we conclude that the fact that verdaderamente, ciertamente and realmente preserve all these different meanings at the same time is not out of line with many other grammaticalisation processes, a feature defined in the bibliography as “layering” (Hopper, 1991).
Keywords: Spanish, grammaticalisation, epistemicity, adverbs, discourse markers, intensifying
Published online: 17 July 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.16.12gon
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Cited by other publications

Pountain, Christopher J.
2018.  In Studies in Historical Ibero-Romance Morpho-Syntax [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 16], ► pp. 303 ff. Crossref logo

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