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translatability into Italian of the German stance marking modal particles wohl, eben and ja

What is it about?

Contrary to Italian and many other languages, German has a linguistic means to mark the speaker’s stance: the so-called modal particles, such as WOHL, EBEN and JA. This paper analyses their complex meaning arising from the intertwined relations between speaker – hearer – state of affairs as the three key entities of stance they mark and the textual or situational context, concluding that they have only covert epistemic and evidential features. This cross-linguistic analysis proves that it is impossible not only to translate them, but also to draw a clear borderline between epistemicity and evidentiality.

Why is it important?

This paper describes the pragmatic meaning of WOHL, EBEN and JA, compensating the lack of a lexical meaning.

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Marion Weerning
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