"Arguments That Could Possibly Be Urged"Modal Verbs and Tentativeness in the "Coruña Corpus"

Resumen

This paper complements previous research into the late Modern English scientific writinguses of the adverbs possibly and perhaps as manifestations of either subjectivity or intersubjectivity,as presented in the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing. In order to have a better understandingof the uses of these adverbs as markers of tentativeness, we will explore their syntagmatic relationswith modal verbs. It is widely assumed that scientific discourse has an objective nature, althoughit has been questioned by its use of hedging and other expressions of stance. In the present study,we will assess how modal verbs accompanying these stance adverbs modulate the expression oftentativeness. The use of stance adverbs shows authorial presence and a covert interaction with thereader. The paper examines different degrees of hesitancy depending on the type of modal verbaccompanying these adverbs. The analysis has been carried out on four subcorpora of the CoruñaCorpus of English Scientific Writing. Our findings will be presented from a more general to a moredetailed account for each of the forms under investigation and interpreted taking into account thevariables ‘date of publication’ and ‘genre’ for the text, and ‘sex’ for the author.