Evidentiality and epistemic modality in the rumor/journalistic conditional in Spanish

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the functions of the so-called rumor / journalistic conditional in Spanish. In order to do this, I will try to account for the fact that rumor conditionals are epistemic as well as evidential whereas conjecture conditionals in Spanish are epistemic but not evidential, as they convey uncertainty and do not encode the source of information. I will claim that the morphological marker -ria is a modal epistemic operator of possibility in both cases. In a rumor conditional, the epistemic operator quantifies over the illocutionary force of an embedded proposition p (enunciation / truth of the information), which means “maybe the information about p is true”. The situation p is anchored in the present or in the future. In a conjecture conditional, the modal epistemic operator quantifies over the realization of an embedded proposition p (fact), which means “maybe the realization of p is true”. The situation p is anchored in the past.