This research project includes theoretical, descriptive, and experimental studies on units that introduce a modal value in discourse. These studies are focused on Spanish, although also contrastive research (in French, English, German, and Spanish) was carried out.

From a theoretical and descriptive point of view, modality markers are considered as a communicative resource for distancing or adhering ourselves to what is said or the way of saying it, so that they are at the service of image management and, very often, contribute toward regulating the relationship between interlocutors. They therefore contribute to the interactional construction of discourse.

At the same time, modality markers can construct discursive representations, indicating the attitude of the interlocutor in the utterance or the degree of commitment to the expressed propositional content. We are especially concerned with the relations between epistemic modality and evidentiality (González Ruiz, Izquierdo Alegría & Loureda 2016).

From an experimental point of view, different types of modality markers have been considered. The results reveal that modal adverbs do not fit the cognitive functioning of discourse particles because their processing cannot be predicted by the principles of marking (Loureda, Cruz, Recio & Rudka 2021). Experimental evidence that has been obtained, suggests that modal adverbs have a fundamentally conceptual meaning (not procedural, like discourse particles), although secondary communicative instructions have developed around this conceptual meaning.

Results

González Ruiz, R., Izquierdo Alegría., D & Loureda, Ó. (eds.) (2016). La evidencialidad en español: teoría y descripción. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert.

González Ruiz, R., Izquierdo Alegría, D., Loureda, Ó. (2016). “Un acercamiento a los fundamentos de la evidencialidad y a su recepción y tratamiento en la lingüística hispánica“. In González Ruiz, R., Izquierdo Alegría., D & Loureda, Ó. (eds.), La evidencialidad en español: teoría y descripción. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert.

Current Researchers

• Prof. Dr. Óscar Loureda Lamas

• Prof. Dr. Ramón González Ruiz

• Dr. Dámaso Izquierdo Alegría

Funded projects

Discourse, cognition and linguistic markers: empirical studies on word processing using the eye-tracking method. Cooperation with the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Funded by the Chilean funding institution CONICYT (Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica, PII 20150058; 2016-2019).