Marking one’s own viewpoint: The Finnish evidential verb+kseni ‘as far as I understand’ construction

Abstract

Abstract This article examines evidentiality in the frame of inferential adverbs in written interaction from the perspective of Finnish, a language that does not have evidentiality as a grammatical category. The analysis focuses on six adverbs, such as käsittääkseni ‘as far as I understand’ and tietääkseni ‘to my knowledge, as far as I know’. Evidentiality and epistemic modality intertwine in their semantics, as these adverbs represent a writer’s access to information, but also indicate her evaluation of its reliability. First, this article offers a description of the interactional functions of these adverbs such as marking a writer’s opinion in contrasts, expressing slight hedging in order to anticipate corrections, to allow space for other opinions, or to create irony. Second, in the framework of cognitive grammar, the analysis focuses on the meaning of the evidential verb+kseni construction and the effect of different verb stems on it. These adverbs share similar functions in texts, which is due to their flexible constructional meaning. While varying from lexeme to lexeme, specific evidential and epistemic dimensions can either be foregrounded and relevant in a situation or remain backgrounded and not activated.