Evidential and epistemic sentence adverbs in Romance languages

In this paper evidential and modal adverbs will be studied, such as French apparemment, évidemment, visiblement, Italian apparentemente, evidentemente, ovviamente, and Spanish aparentemente, evidentemente and visiblemente. The development of their signification will be discussed, including German adverbs like offensichtlich. In these means of expression, the functional-semantic categories evidentiality and epistemic modality seem to overlap: on the one hand, they are used if the state of affairs talked about cannot be verified, that is, if there is still a moment of insecurity concerning the transmitted information. Then adverbials with a special structure (preposition + article + nominal form of a verb) will be analysed, and we will examine if they behave in the same way.


Introduction
The aim of this paper is to investigate epistemic and evidential sentence adverbs in Romance languages.First regularly formed adverbs will be studied, such as French apparemment, évidemment, visiblement, Italian apparentemente, evidentemente, ovviamente, and Spanish aparentemente, evidentemente and visiblemente.The adverbs were chosen for two reasons: firstly, they denote the visual access to information to different degrees and, secondly, they are used frequently in the three languages.For the latter reason we did not pursue the etymologically linked form in Italian and studied ovviamente rather than visiblemente.Then adverbials with a special structure, consisting of a preposition, an article and a nominal form of a verb will be analysed: Spanish al parecer, Portuguese ao parecer and ao que parece, Italian all'apperenza, in apparenza and Russian по-видимому.Regularly derived adverbs and adverbial constructions were analysed to find out if the adverbial character determines their syntactic and semantic behaviour or if the different kinds of adverbial are used in different ways.
The term "epistemic modality" denotes the speaker's assessment of the probability that the content of the utterance applies or is certain and the possible alternatives on a scale of probability.On the other hand, the adverbial locutions are often used if the information being talked about comes from an external information source, that is, an information source which cannot be identified as the speaker or author.With the term "evidentiality" we denote the marking of the source of the speaker's knowledge, as coming from visual or auditory perception, being derived from some indices, learned by information from other people or hearsay, or being deduced by reflexion. 1he study will analyse whether the adverbs under discussion may be used sentence-initially (1), parenthetically (2), as an adverbial with broad (3) or narrow scope (4) or as the component that modalises the predication (5): 1. "Apparently 2 I'm a crack addict!"Michelle Keegan jokes about snaps […].(Daily Mail 08.07.2012) 2. These days, it seems, we marry the property rather than the person.(The Guardian 20. 07.2006) 3. Apparently he saved a child from certain death, at the expense of his own.(BNC, AN7 1775) 4. Nicolas Sarkozy reaches out for Carla to spice up a seemingly boring meeting on his Indian state visit.(Daily Mail 09.12.2010) 5. "She apparently has not learned her lesson": Thieving girl, 13, forced to hold "I steal from my family" sign at busy intersection.(Daily Mail 15.02.2012)This study is based on written data which were obtained mainly from newspaper texts by looking for occurrences of the adverbials.In order to obtain data from different newspapers and other texts, the following corpora were used: CREA, CORDE, CORPES XXI of the Spanish Academy, Frantext, the PAISÀ corpus italiano, the Russian National Corpus, Korpus Leipzig, and the corpus programme GlossaNet.These corpora are not all of the same size and are differently constructed, but the concentration on occurrences in the same types of texts allows some observations to be made.

Evidentiality, speaker's stance and epistemic modality
Evidentiality is considered to be a structural dimension of grammar, the values of which are expressed by types of constructions that code the source of information which a speaker imparts.Drawing a boundary between speaker's stance, epistemic modality and evidentiality presents difficult problems in many European languages.Even if we assume that there are linguistic elements which fulfil the original function of marking the source of the speaker's knowledge, this is contingent on the marking of the speaker's stance and epistemic modality.The speaker's stance is a superordinate category, which includes several overlapping subcategories (cf.Hennemann 2013: 419): With the definition of speaker's stance as an indication of the speaker's commitment to the status of the information that they are providing, we have determined that this category is central to a pragmatic study.Stance-taking indicates how the speaker's position is to be interpreted with respect to a particular utterance.At a basic level, stance can be expressed by contextualisation cues, culturally specific tools or resources for stance-taking.Stance-taking has to do with indexing the speaker's orientation to the propositional content of discourse, to the speaker's interactional partners, or to conventional social identity categories.For the purpose of this paper we shall use the following definition of stance: "Stance is generally understood to have to do with the methods, linguistic and other, by which interactants create and signal relationships with the propositions they utter and with the people they interact with" (Johnstone 2009: 30-31).
Epistemic stance is likewise culturally grounded because it is embedded in particular regimes of knowledge and authority.Consequently, epistemic stance markers can be used to downgrade speaker authority and acknowledge other interactants' greater claims to hold relevant information (cf.Rauniomaa 2007: 232).To establish a relation of concomitance between stance and evidentiality, we need a broad notion of evidentiality that will be different from what typologists understand by this term.But even the grammaticalised means of expression of evidentiality in languages with genuine evidentials can also serve to express the speaker's stance.In Tuyuca one has to distinguish between the following kinds of evidentiality: (6a) the direct personal and visual experience of the speaker, (6b) the perception through hearing, (6c) making deductions from evidence, (6d) learning from the report of another person and (6e) drawing a conclusion based on logic (cf.Epistemic adverbs express the validity of a proposition and as sentence adverbs have a wide scope.In the Spanish utterance (7) the promising development of a person to a football star is not presented as part of the real world of the speaker, but as a possibility.In utterance (8), in contrast, the coolness of the two young men is more certain to be comparable to the ideal: Epistemic adverbs seem to be able to establish a scale of possibilities which can be represented as a net of relations, using the modal possibility operator (◊), the modal necessity operator (□) and the negation operator (¬) (cf.Martin 1983: 111;Becker 2014: 61;Haßler 2016: 303).But the linguistic realization of these logical relations by epistemic adverbs is far from simple: ISSN 1615-3014  Evidential adverbs fulfil the function of indicating the source of information for the transmitted content of a proposition.The semantic-functional understanding of evidentiality is necessary when studying evidentiality in Romance languages, since the starting point for adducing evidential meanings in a language that does not possess real evidentials is the function rather than the form.This can be seen, for example, in the Spanish adverb visiblemente 'apparently', which in its lexical meaning refers to immediate visibility (9): 9. La suma de estos quebrantos -que se hizo evidente cuando el gobierno debió renegociar su gigantesca deuda externa -ya obligó al Presidente Figueiredo a someterse a una delicada operación de by-pass y lo ha afectado visiblemente en lo físico.(Hoy, 25.04.-01.05.1984, from CREA [02.10.2018])'The sum of these losses, which became evident when the government had to renegotiate its gigantic foreign debt, had already compelled President Figueiredo to undergo a serious by-pass operation and had visibly affected him physically.' Evidential adverbs referring to immediate visibility can be used not only to refer to a process simply seen with one's own eyes, but also to a conclusion drawn from complex observations or something that the speaker may have learned from another person.In sentence (10) evidentemente refers to a psychical inclination of all Spaniards which can hardly be described as derived from visual perception.In sentence (11) aparentemente is even combined with a word denoting invisibility (invisible).In both sentences it marks a conclusion drawn by the writer.Primarily evidential adverbs can thus express inferential and quotative evidentiality in addition to direct visual evidentiality as well as epistemic restrictions.
10. Esta confianza estaba evidentemente fundada en la disposición general de todos los españoles, que guiados por el instinto de la felicidad, que el autor de la naturaleza puso en el corazón de los hombres, sabían que no había otro camino para que se mejorase la suerte de la España, que el de cambiar las instituciones, ni otro medio de conseguirlo que por un alzamiento militar.(El Imparcial, 01.06.1822, from CORDE [02.10.2018])'This trust was evidently based on the general disposition of all Spaniards who -guided by the instinct of happiness which the creator of nature has placed in the human heartknew that there was no other way for the fate of Spain to turn positively than to change the institutions, and there was no other means to achieve that than by a military uprising.'11.Y, de igual manera que en el Estado jurídico se destacan lazos legislativos que descubren y ordenan las relaciones en todo el ámbito nacional, porque a todos protegen y a todos obligan las relaciones aparentemente invisibles de la colectividad, de la misma manera en el ámbito económico nacional hay que descubrir también las interrelaciones económicas entre los distintos sectores, […].(Contabilidad Nacional, ABC, 11.07.1958, from CORDE [02.10.2018])'And in the same way that in the lawful state legislative ties dominate which uncover and organise the relationships on the entire national level because they protect everyone and oblige everyone to uphold the apparently invisible relationships of the group, in the same way on the national economic level one must also uncover the economic interrelationships between the different sectors […].' Using an evidential marker like evidentemente or aparentemente restricts at the same time the speaker's recourse liability for the content of the utterance.That means that they modalise the predication by using evidential adverbs.The occurrence of aparentemente in example ( 12) is primarily a modalisation of the proposition 'that children keep something in their memory': 12. La aportación de Gadino nos parece útil para comprender cómo la escuela actual, en ciertos casos, está llevando a que los niños gestionen el conocimiento (que no es lo mismo que aprendan esquemas y los guarden aparentemente en su memoria).(López, Daniel F.; Mendizábal, Iván Rodrigo: La gestión del conocimiento y la comunicación digital, México, 2013, from CORPES XXI [02.10.2018].)'We find Gadino's contribution very useful for understanding how, in some cases, the current school is conducting the children to manage the knowledge (which it does not mean the same as they learn schemes and apparently keep them in their memories).' On the other hand, adverbs lexicalized with primarily epistemic meaning may be used as markers of evidentiality.In the following utterance, for example, posiblemente marks conclusion drawn by the writer that the visual culture of Venezuela should be influenced by the figurative language of the Italy of the end of the century: 13.No han sido identificadas todavía, de manera concreta, las fuentes de su cultura visual, posiblemente inspirada en cierto lenguaje figurativo de la Italia de fines del siglo pasado, pero aún con cierta vigencia a lo largo de los años veinte y treinta.(Noriega, Simón: Venezuela en sus artes visuales.Mérida, 2001, from CORPES XXI [02.10.2018])'The sources of his visual culture have not yet been concretely identified, possibly inspired in some figurative language of Italy of the end of the last century, but still having some validity throughout the twenties and the thirties.' The marking of evidentiality cannot be separated from the subjectification of the utterance, its relativisation to the epistemic centre of the speaker and thus the expression of speaker's stance.
In cases examined here, the functional-semantic categories of evidentiality and epistemic modality seem to overlap: on the one hand, they are used if the state of affairs talked about cannot be verified, that is, if there is still a moment of uncertainty concerning the information transmitted.On the other hand, these adverbial locutions are often used if the information being talked about comes from an external information source, i.e., an information source which cannot be identified as the speaker or author.

The position and the scope of evidential and epistemic modals
We will now investigate whether the adverbs may be used sentence-initially, parenthetically, as an adverb with wide or narrow scope or as a component of a modalised predication.In the following table the total number of occurrences of the adverbs in the different corpora is listed.The three most frequently used purely modal adverbs (Spanish posiblemente, French peut-être and Italian forse) were also taken into account.From these occurrences, 300 random examples were analysed manually in each case, distinguishing cases in which the adverbs take wide scope over the whole proposition from those where they modalise or add an evidential meaning only to part of it (narrow scope).For the wide scope and the narrow scope we arrived at the following results by analysing the occurrences in the different corpora: We have to proceed with caution when using the results presented in this table.The corpora of the different languages are not of the same size and the period covered by each of them is not the same.For example, CORPES is strictly limited to the 21 st century and contains many different types of texts, even oral speech, while Frantext is mainly based on literary texts.Even if we excluded the older periods, the difference between the corpora may have influenced the results.The Italian corpus PAISÀ is a research engine which explores the internet, in the same way as Wortschatz Leipzig, which we used for French visiblement, for which Frantext did not return any results.Nevertheless, some results can be deduced from the corpus analysis.
All the adverbs appear with wide and narrow scope.For the adverbs lexicalized with a primarily modal meaning, the wide scope is predominant; this means that these adverbs occur mainly as modal sentence adverbs, modalising the whole proposition.Only Italian forse is an exception, with 49 % of its occurrences with narrow scope.But the percentage of modal adverbs with narrow scope is also rather high in the other languages.
For the adverbs with a primarily evidential meaning, we have to differentiate between the degree of grammaticalisation of the adverbs.Spanish aparentemente, Italian apparentemente, and French apparemment can express both evidentiality and modality.In the Spanish and Italian corpora, they are used with wide and narrow scope in equal measure.The less frequent use of French apparemment with narrow scope could be related to the fact that this adverb nearly always conveys epistemic and not specifically evidential meaning, so it approximated the usage of the modal adverbs.
The adverbs expressing direct visual access to information are mainly used as sentence adverbs, with the exception of Spanish visiblemente.The general tendency to use them with wide scope could be explained by the relatedness of the source of knowledge to the verb.The exception of Spanish visiblemente could arise from the fact that this adverb has established lexical collocations with adjectives denoting mental states.In the corpus we could find collocations of visiblemente with the following adjectives: visiblemente emocionado, conmovido, afectado, enfadado, enojado, ilusionado, cansado, molesto, desmejorado, fatigado, pálido, mareado, relajado, alterado, azarado, agitado, dolido, torcido, manipuladas, relajados, sucias, feliz, llena de energías, agotado, contrariado, alcoholizado, azorada, turbado, conturbada, amargado, serio, nervioso, inquieto.These are adjectives describing mental states of persons which are detectable from their visual appearance.In these occurrences, the adverb visiblemente has maintained its meaning of direct visual evidentiality and it seems to "attract" a specification of the state by an adjective.It is appropriate for such collocations to appear as secondary predicates, specifying the subject as in the examples ( 14) and ( 15 'However, the attorney, visibly tired, has proved to be very succinct in his statements.' In these sentences, visiblemente modifies the adjectives incómodo and cansado, characterising them as temporarily visible properties of respectively the secretary and the lawyer.The extensive use of visiblemente in such contexts could explain the high percentage of this adverb with narrow scope in the corpus.
Concerning their position in the sentence, we were able to establish that all the adverbs appear in the initial, intermediate and final position.The initial position is common for all adverbs and, with the exception of Spanish visiblemente, in this position their scope is the whole sentence.
Here are examples of the evidential adverbs in the three Romance languages we studied: 16. 'Evidently, the lexicon is constantly built along its history with words that show cultural influences of the surroundings.' Sometimes the adverb is preceded by a connector, as in the case of French visiblement (18).There are many occurrences with initial use of visiblemente in Spanish, but they are not sentence adverbs (cf.example ( 14)).
The evidential adverbs rarely appear in the final position of a sentence.Nevertheless, we found occurrences for all the adverbs: 24.De vagues études de lettres, ce sont encore les parents qui l'entretiennent et très confortablement, apparemment.(Lagarce Jean-Luc, Journal 1977-1990, from Frantext [02.10.2018])'In vague studies of literature they are still the parents who maintain it and very comfortably, apparently.' source.In sentence (32) something is declared to be easy in general, but -on the basis of a judgment or information obtained from someone else -not for a certain person.In sentence (33) the proposition 'that she asked a question' is not modalised, but the quality of this question is related to somebody's interpretation: 'The policemen, visibly of Irish origin -big backs, red necks of athletes, small malicious and a bit evil eyes with mouths almost smiling -continued drinking without being perturbed.' In the intermediate position, the meaning of an evidential adverb as a marker of a certain type of source of knowledge is possible, as in example ( 35), but it can also mark evidentiality in general without marking a concrete source (like in 34) or simply function as a mitigator (as in 32 or 33).

Commonalities and demarcation problems in the marking of different types of evidentiality and modality
The demarcation problems in the marking of different types of evidentality and modality appear in many languages.They can also be seen in the German adverb offensichtlich 'apparently', which in its lexical meaning refers to immediate visibility.Example (36), however, does not refer to a process simply seen with one's own eyes, but rather to a conclusion drawn from complex observations or something that the journalist may have learned from the com-pany mentioned.Offensichtlich can thus express inferential and quotative evidentiality in addition to direct visual evidentiality.Without offensichtlich, the sentence would doubtlessly be more definite than with the adverb, which, according to its original lexical meaning, would have to underscore the obviousness of the conclusion.Through frequent use, the definition of offensichtlich has undergone a change, which licenses its use for indirect evidentiality.With the use of offensichtlich as evidential marking, the author even infers an epistemic modalisation as ‛very probable' and expresses their attitude towards the conveyed content, which is, however, less binding than without the evidential marking.Still greater indefiniteness is expressed in sentence ( 37), where a generally applicable statement which encompasses the future is weakened with the word offensichtlich.While with the explication of the predication with the predicate adjective the author makes a clear statement about the plausibility of their conclusion, with the adverb they merely mark the conclusion as such.No explicit reference is made to what lies behind it or its basis.The use of the adverb offensichtlich allows the sources of the reported knowledge to be tuned out.However, the existence of such sources is not called into question.Thus, this construction imbues the assertion with a certain degree of vagueness, which the writer does not have to commit themselves to or specify.This reduced commitment of the writer could be called limitation of the recourse liability.It takes place through the evidential marking of the statement, which is concluded from reasons and sources of knowledge that are not specified more closely.

Das macht die
The other German evidential adverbs, such as offenkundig ('evidently', 'obviously'), anscheinend ('seemingly'), wie es scheint ('as it seems'), offenbar ('clearly', 'evidently'), augenfällig ('as is particularly evident'), behave quite similarly and have to a great extent lost the reference to visual evidentiality that underlies them etymologically.The syntactic analysis of the German adverbs will therefore be limited to offensichtlich.The flexibility of its position in the sentence can serve as an argument for its status as a marker of epistemic modality.As an adverb, offensichtlich can take any position in the sentence.In the corpus of the Digitales Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache, it is primarily found in the sentence in a position following the verb and at the beginning of a sentence: 'However, there is apparently a second piece of information, which to date has not been made public in connection with the test.' But offensichtlich can also appear at the end of an utterance: 41. Doch anstatt dies als Warnung zu betrachten und die eigenen Bilanzen kritisch zu prüfen, drohten die Banken der Regierung mit Klagen und versuchten zu handeln.Erfolgreich offensichtlich.(Die Zeit, 05.07.2009, from DWDS [03.10.2018])'But rather than looking at this as a warning and critically examining their own balance sheets, the banks threatened the government with lawsuits and attempted to negotiate.With success, apparently.' In a similar way, this applies to the Spanish adverbs visiblemente 'visibly', aparentemente 'apparently' and evidentemente 'evidently', 'obviously', which in their direct meaning denote visual access to the content of the proposition.However, while this access for visiblemente is explicit, aparentemente and evidentemente can also denote conclusions which are not based on visual perception (see the examples (9) to (11), cf.Haßler 2004).
In example (42) aparentemente is used autonymically in an oral interview and indicates the process of becoming conscious of its use.At first the speaker uses it formulaically (David es un niño supernormal, aparentemente) after which she becomes aware that her speech act is not a conclusion, but a simple statement.For this reason she corrects herself with words such as bueno, aparentemente y sin aparentemente, es supernormal: 42. El segundo se llama David.David es un niño supernormal, aparentemente, bueno, aparentemente y sin aparentemente, es supernormal y tiene ahora pues yo creo que veintiséis veinticinco, bueno, nunca me aclaro con estos dos.(Entrevista CSC008, mujer, 20 años, 1998, from CREA [03.10.2018])'The second one is named David.David is apparently a supernormal child, well, apparently and not apparently, he is supernormal, and now I think he's twenty-six or twenty-five, I'm not sure which of the two.' The data from the French corpus Frantext also confirm this usage of evidential adverbs, whereby apparemment in particular is also used increasingly within a narrow scope, that is with modalising or limiting function only with reference to a word or a part of the sentence.In the following sentence, apparemment refers to the property of superiority to be decisive and thus marks this quality as conclusions or coming from hearsay.The doubting context (I never understood the nature…) also suggests that a modalisation is not very probable here: 43.
[…] je n'ai jamais bien compris la nature de cette supériorité apparemment decisive.(Genette, Gérard, Bardadrac, 2006, from Frantext [03.10.2018])'[…] I never understood the nature of this apparently decisive superiority.' The Italian adverbs apparentemente, evidentemente and ovviamente behave in the same way (cf. examples (19) to (21) above).They are used to reduce the discourse obligation of the speaker and to indicate that the content of the proposition comes from a source or a reflection, but not necessarily from visual experience.None of the above examples aim to state visible facts, but rather to convey conclusions.The evidential meaning of the adverb has clearly shifted from characterising visually observable phenomena to conveying one's own conclusions.Inferential evidentiality and epistemic modality are expressed by these adverbs in equal measure.Besides this, by means of the adverbs, the speaker subjectifies their statement, they convey their stance.
If a speaker describes a really evident fact, for example a situation they and the hearer are experiencing, they do not need to use evidentials.Whenever the speaker seems motivated to explicate evidence, a reduction of the degree of evidentiality always takes place as well.It seems possible in these cases to suppose a lexical meaning of the evidential marker that is very general.It does not indicate that the knowledge of the speaker comes from visual or auditory perception, from hearsay or the speaker's own reflection, but it marks the existence of a source in general.It is not that the content of the utterance is apparent, not that it is visible, but rather the non-presence, the not-mentioning of the information source which is decisive for the use of the adverbs.

5
The evidential use of adverbials in Romance languages and Russian Besides the adverbs mentioned, there are locutions consisting of a preposition and a verb meaning 'to seem' that show the same behaviour.A strikingly large number of locutions with the etymological meaning of seeing or visual appearance have become multiple Whereas in example (44) parecer refers to a personal opinion which was ʻevidently' or ʻobviously' perceived by others, example (45) is about the appearance of being poor that is aroused but does not correspond with the facts.This latter meaning is dominant in the al parecer connection and can be found in various different functions.Here, as evidential usages developed, a merging with the function of parecer that points to real sensual perceptions has obviously occurred.
Al parecer can already be found in a non-specific evidential function in texts dating from the first half of the 17 th century.By non-specific evidential function, we mean the reference to a source of knowledge where it remains open whether this source is based on one's own view or conclusion, or whether it comes from a third-party.In the following example, the contagious character of an illness is communicated evidentially.A degree of uncertainty as to whether the illness is in fact contagious also resonates in the sentence: The evidential marking can be placed at the beginning or inserted into the phrase.There was no use of по-ви́димому at the end of the phrase in the corpus.The expression can be used for various types of evidentiality.Hence, in the following example, the source of information would appear to be from hearsay: 'Apparently they were delegated pursuant to the ordinance because they acted decisively, as do all people who are not acting in their own name.'

Portuguese ao parecer/ao que parece
In the Portuguese corpus, we found 38 occurrences of the locution ao parecer.Some of them refer to the outward appearance, and it can be doubted whether this is a true reflection of the facts: 56.A dona da casa, por certo traquejada nessas bolandinas do marido, estava sossegada, ao menos ao parecer.(Simões Lopes Neto, Contos Gauchescos, 1912, from CDP [03.10.2018]).'The mistress of the house, surely experienced in these mad outbursts of her husband, was quiet, at least apparently.' It must also be taken into account here that parecer is lexicalised in Portuguese as a substantive with the meaning 'view', 'opinion', 'expertise'.Ao parecer occurs with this meaning in almost half of the examples in the corpus (17 times): 57. Esta animava-os à prática de novos crimes, e expunha ao público descrédito a administração menos digna de temer-se, ao parecer deles, do que o particular que muitas made in the foreign countries.I say the appearance; I do not pretend to insinuate that this profit is always illusory; […]' The meaning that we established as coming from the combination of a preposition and a nominal element in other Romance languages is assumed in French by the adverb apparemment and the verbal expression avoir l'air de.

Cross-linguistic generalisation and conclusion
What contributions do the data discussed above make to our understanding of evidentiality?What can we say about the evidential nature of the functions and syntactic usages of the adverbs and locutions made up of a preposition and nominal element in the different languages examined here?
Firstly, the evidential value of the adverbs and the locutions proves to be indeterminate, that is the decision whether the case is quotative or inferential evidentiality or hearsay depends on the context and is not determined by the markers of evidentiality themselves.It therefore appears to us to be justified to speak of a non-specific evidential function.
Secondly, the evidential markers investigated here can be used parenthetically and nonparenthetically, with a wide or narrow scope.They can be used in different positions in the sentence, whereby a placement at the end of the sentence occurs very rarely in Spanish and is ruled out in Russian on the basis of the corpus data.Where the usage is at the end of a sentence or with a narrow scope, it is always in the spoken language or with the aim of depicting spoken language in a written text.The prototypical uses of the observed evidentiality markers are hence the parenthetical placement at the start and in the middle of a sentence, and the wide scope.The usage with narrow scope is considered to be conspicuous and therefore simultaneously serves to mark a focus.
Thirdly, it can be concluded that the lexemes with the two meanings 'visible' and 'apparent' in combination with a preposition, the spatial meaning of which is a direction, show the tendency of developing an evidential meaning.This tendency is total in Spanish and Russian, but less defined in Italian.In Portuguese, the special lexicalisation of parecer gives rise to the substitute construction ao que parece, whereas in French the largely monosemantic usage of à l'apparence rules out evidential usages.In Italian, all'apparenza/in apparenza occurs evidentially, but also with the meaning 'apparently in contradiction with the real situation'.

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Different kinds of modality