Epistemic Modality in Amharic

This book offers the first systematic and in-depth exploration of epistemic modality in Amharic, marking a pioneering effort to describe this grammatical category within an Ethio-Semitic language. The study is grounded in a rich corpus of written and spoken texts sourced from both print and electronic media, meticulously interpreted and analysed with the assistance of Amharic native-speaker informants. Epistemic modality is understood as the speaker’s assessment of her/his non-knowledge in respect to the proposition, where “non-knowledge” spans the gamut between (but not including) the two extreme epistemic states of knowledge and ignorance. In this comprehensive study, approximately 70 Amharic modal epistemic expressions, termed “epistemificators” and belonging to various word classes, are subject to detailed morphosyntactic and semantic analysis. The semantics of these epistemificators is examined primarily through dimensions, each featuring two or more values. Additionally, for selected epistemificators the author presents more detailed, finer-grained semantic sketches highlighting that seemingly synonymous modal expressions exhibit qualitative differences and are not interchangeable. The valuable insights contributed by these findings lay the groundwork for future, more comprehensive semantic descriptions. The author further explores the interaction between epistemic modality and two non-modal categories: time and negation. She illustrates how temporal distinctions can be conveyed even when conventional means are restricted. Regarding epistemic negation, she demonstrates that some epistemic expressions, when combined with two different clause linkers, ?ndä- and b?yye, exhibit the phenomenon known as NEG-raising. Intriguingly, in Amharic, this phenomenon presents a unique variation: when the negator appears downstairs, the epistemic linker is ?ndä-, but when it appears upstairs, the linker is b?yye. With her original treatment of epistemic modality, Krzyzanowska provides novel insights that delve deeply into the fabric of the Amharic language.