On the origins of the epistemic, evidential, and subjectivity meanings in the mental state predicates: The case of Dutch ; Zum Ursprung von Epistemischer Modalität, Evidentialität und Subjektivität in Verben des Denkens und Erkennens am Beispiel des Niederländischen

This paper aims to contribute to the debates about the nature of the speaker-related meanings of the mental state predicates, on the basis of a diachronic corpus study into the semantic evolution of five such verbs in Dutch. The analyses show that each of these verbs develops its own spe-cific profile in terms of a limited set of clearly distinguishable speaker-related meanings, viz. epistemic modality, evidentiality, and ‘subjectivi-ty’. Each of these meanings is moreover characterized by a distinctive di-achronic path. The study thus also demonstrates the independent status of ‘subjectivity’... Mehr ...