Abstract

This paper deals with epistemic modality in German. It starts with a discussion of the linguistic means that encode epistemic modality and how the concept of epistemic modality is best modelled. The survey of some of the most important theories on epistemic modality shows that, up to now, these have neglected the logical foundations of epistemic modality. It is argued that epistemic modality is best explained on the basis of alethic modality, which is concerned with the mere possibility or necessity of a proposition being true or false. The commonly concept of objective-epistemic modality turns out to be superfluous for an explanation of the origin of epistemic modality. Instead, epistemic modality emerges out of alethic modality. The transition from alethic modality to epistemic modality proves to be a change from the assertion of a possibility (of a proposition) to the assumption of the truth of a proposition. The paper therefore also has implications for speech act theory in so far as epistemic speech acts are clearly separated from assertives.