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Evidentiality Revisited: Cognitive grammar, functional and discourse-pragmatic perspectives
Edited by Juana I. Marín-Arrese, Gerda Haßler and Marta Carretero
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 271] 2017
► pp. 297–313

Chapter 12
Exploring evidential uses of the passive of reporting verbs through corpus analysis

 | University of Navarra
One feature which has interesting evidential implications in English is the passive form of verbs of saying or thinking. Corpus evidence is used to trace the evolution of the most frequent passive structures of this kind over the last two hundred years, and to explore changes in their use. Diachronic developments in frequency, and evidence for semantic and syntactic narrowing of the passive forms of “say”, “expect” and “suppose”, are analysed in the light of claims that these forms are becoming grammaticalised. Trends concerning the deontic and evidential uses of “expect” and “suppose” are discussed.
Keywords: passive voice, reporting verbs, diachronic linguistics, deontic modality, evidentiality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Corpus and method
  • 3.Patterns of frequency today
  • 4.Diachronic developments
    • 4.1Patterns of frequency over time
    • 4.2Changing trends in use
      • 4.2.1“BE said to”
      • 4.2.2“BE expected to”
      • 4.2.3“BE supposed to”
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 21 March 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.271.13bre
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Szczyrbak, Magdalena
2024. Epistemological stance and passive reporting verbs in judicial opinions: the case of BE expected to and BE supposed to . Text & Talk 44:1 ► pp. 47 ff. DOI logo

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