Some pragmatic features of assertive and non - assertive epistemic modal adverbs in English

Abstract

Epistemic adverbs are one of the most popular lexical devices expressingmodality. In communication, the speakerwants to convey his/ her judgements and attitudes to the possibility of the states of affair stated in the propositions. However, it is impossible to use them effectively without mastering their pragmatic features. Based on 250 Englishutterances collected from different sourcessuch as novels, short stories and the Internet, this paper has investigated the pragmatic features of the assertive and non-assertive epistemic modal adverbs in terms of their pragmatic features with an aim to help Vietnameselearners of English use them effectivelyin communication.