Lexicographic representations of English epistemic adverbs: an overview of problems based on selected monolingual and bilingual (English-Polish) dictionaries

Abstract

Polish students often have problems identifying the contexts in which English epistemic adverbs such as arguably, conceivably, presumably can be used because their uses and functions tend to be culture- and language specific. In consequence, their repertoire of English epistemic adverbs is rather narrow. The aim of this paper is to establish whether the definitions offered by commonly used dictionaries are helpful in learning the meanings and uses of English epistemics. It demonstrates that while the meanings of epistemic verbs and adjectives are usually defined at length, the meanings of the corresponding adverbs are often described very briefly or even omitted.