Non-verbal markers of modality and evidentiality in MarENG

[EN] This article examines a variety of options for expressing speaker and writer stance in a subcorpus of MarENG, a maritime English learning tool sponsored by the EU (35,041 words). Non-verbal markers related to key areas of modal expression are presented; (1)epistemic adverbs and adverbial expressions, (2) epistemic adjectives, (3) deontic adjectives, (4) evidential adverbs, (5) evidential adjectives, (6) evidential interpersonal markers, and (7) single adverbials conveying the speaker’s attitudes, feelings or value judgments. The overall aim is to present an overview of how these non-verbal markers operate in this LSP genre.

Author stance in doctoral dissertations of native and non-native speakers of English: a corpus-based study on epistemic adverbs

[EN]Our study concentrates on the epistemic adverbs used in conveying author stance in academic English. The Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger, 1996) was run to three sets of corpora comprising doctoral dissertations written by native and non-native academic authors of English. Epistemic adverbs occurring in the dissertations were identified through a computer programme and their frequencies were separately computed for each corpus. Lastly, a log-likelihood test was administered to see whether there is a statistically significant difference across the groups in concern concerning the use of these adverbs.