Epistemic necessity in a parallel corpus: Lithuanian vs. English

ENThe article examines the qualitative and quantitative parameters of equivalence between the realizations of epistemic necessity in English and Lithuanian. The focus of the contrast lies on the auxiliary and adverb strategies (van der Auwera et al. 2005) in English (will, would, shall, should, ought to, must vs. probably, certainly, indeed, surely, definitely, presumably, no doubt/undoubtedly, for sure, for certain, decidedly, undeniably) as opposed to the corresponding modal verb and adverb/particle strategies in Lithuanian (turėti ‘have to’ vs. tikriausiai ‘certainly/most probably’, greičiausiai ‘doubtless’, veikiausiai ‘certainly/most probably’, turbūt ‘probably’, matyt ‘evidently’, būtinai ‘necessarily’, kо gero(-a) ‘very likely/most probably’, neišvengiamai ‘inevitably’, and be abejo/be abejonės/neabejotinai ‘no doubt/undoubtedly’). The aim of the corpus-based study is to find out which means of expression are preferable in the two languages. The paper will also look at the frequency of epistemic and non-epistemic use of the modal expressions in the original and in translation.