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In:Possibility and Necessity: Concepts and expressions of modality
Edited by Jean Albrespit, Christelle Lacassain and Tracey Simpson
[Studies in Language Companion Series 237] 2025
► pp. 52–86

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English copular perception verbs

At the crossroads of evidentiality and epistemicity

ORCiD logo with link | Sorbonne University
Published online: 4 November 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.237.03lac
Abstract
This paper focuses on the use of English copular perception verbs, or CPVs (look, sound, taste, smell and feel), which the two concepts of evidentiality and epistemicity help to shed light on. It reviews different positions concerning CPVs and their semantics regarding evidentiality and epistemicity. It also endeavours to delimit the evidential and epistemic categories, taking into account the four different types of relationships between them and addressing the corollary concepts of (inter)subjectivity and speaker evaluation and jugement. The corpus-based analysis then develops a typology of predicative complements, which helps to determine what characteristics make CPVs evidentials and what features of the verb or the sentence convey an epistemic reading, and to show that CPV sentences display converse degrees of evidentiality and epistemicity.
This cognitive- and function-based study demonstrates that CPVs have both an evidential meaning and an epistemic use as they express a (speaker) judgement on sensory data or perceived appearances. Subjectivity is analysed as a way of reconciling evidentiality and epistemicity in CPV sentences, as they convey a markedly subjective viewpoint: the ‘perceptual’ relationship is subjectively construed as the conceptualiser is at the centre of inferential and evaluative processes. CPV sentences are thus regarded as clear illustrations of subjectification, and CPVs of grammaticalisation.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Studies on CPVs relating to evidentiality and epistemicity: An overview
  • 2.Evidentiality and epistemicity: Delimiting concepts, scopes and relationships
    • 2.1An apparent confusion between evidentiality and epistemicity?
    • 2.2Four different types of relations between evidentiality and epistemicity
    • 2.3The concepts of (inter)subjectivity and subjectification
  • 3.CPVs: Uses, meanings and typology of predicative complements
  • 4.Copular perception verbs as evidentials
  • 5.Epistemicity in copular perception verb sentences
  • 6.Reconciling evidentiality and epistemicity in CPV sentences
    • 6.1(Inter)Subjectivity in CPV sentences
    • 6.2Converse or parallel degrees of evidential reliability, epistemicity and subjectivity
  • 7.CPV sentences as illustrations of subjectification?
  • Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
  • Corpora and dictionaries
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