| This paper aims to analyze English and Japanese epistemic modality and the extended phenomena. I will present the process of grammaticalization in potential modality from a cognitive perspective.
Deontic and epistemic meanings are expressed by means of the same expression in English. In general, wherever there is adequate historical evidence available on the evolution of language, deontic modality shows signs of development prior to epistemic modality. Further deontic modality has limited expressiveness while epistemic modality uses more comprehensive forms of expression. Moreover, the semantic shift from deontic to epistemic modality can be described in a model based on grammaticalization theory. On the contrary, the more frequent emergence of epistemic use can be anticipated from independent assumptions about Japanese cognitive ability in psychological features of language use.
The modality development of DEONTIOEPISTEMIC is observed in English. However, in Japanese the direction of change is observed in reverse: EPISTEMIODEONTIC. I suggest two contrastive types of preferential con- version; [a SURU-language (MONO)] and [a NARU-language (KOTO)] as pro- posed by Ikegami (1982).
Japanese (a NARU-language [KOTO]) tends to construe the self ecologically. Epistemic meanings are taken as primitive and prototype. Therefore Japanese discourse is characterized by 'monologue'; whereas English prototype is distinguished by deontic modality which makes much of personal relations; hence English discourse sounds more like 'dialogue'.
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