Abstract
n this paper, we analyze the meaning potential of the Czech epistemic particle zřejmě, focusing on the degree of certainty it expresses. Based on a preliminary observation, we hypothesize that, contrary to the existing dictionary treatment, there are two separate meanings of zřejmě with different degree of certainty. Our corpus study follows the assumption that comparing data from parallel corpora may be helpful in determining the fine-grained meaning of pragmatic markers, including epistemic markers. In the analysis, we investigate the epistemic features of English and Swedish translation equivalents of zřejmě, their semantic consistency and the ability of recipients to interpret the degree of certainty expressed.
The corpus data show that there are two interpretative tendencies differing in the degree of certainty expressed, one of them rooted in the evidential meaning. Nevertheless, not even native speakers are fully able to distinguish between these two meaning interpretations