Valores epistémicos de las categorías verbales en español: Cuando la pragmática se integra en la gramática

Abstract

This article proposes that the epistemic senses triggered by verbal categories are distinctbut complementary, and that they can be pragmatically explained. Specifically, on the one hand, it isshown that the hypothetical reading related to subjunctive mood is a meaning of irrealis, and that it’sdue to a quantity conversational implicature; on the other hand, it is assumed that the distance conveyedby some tenses may be interpreted in terms of speaker’s epistemic stance toward the proposition