『영어 가능성 부사의 통사ㆍ의미ㆍ장르적 사용 양상에 대한 말뭉치 기반 연구: Maybe, Perhaps, Possibly를 중심으로』

Abstract

This study aims to provide a corpus-based study on the epistemic adverbs maybe, perhaps, and possibly in English, focusing on their syntactic positions, clause structures, genre-based distribution, and semantic–pragmatic functions. Based on 1,500 examples extracted from the 2010–present section of the COCA corpus, the research combines quantitative frequency analysis with qualitative functional interpretation. The findings reveal that each adverb exhibits distinct preferences for syntactic position (initial, medial, final) and clause type (independent, dependent, fragment), and that these structural patterns align closely with their core semantic features such as probability, subjectivity, and formality. Genre-based trends further support this functional alignment: maybe is dominant in spoken discourse, performing hedging and stance-marking functions; perhaps is prevalent in newspapers and fiction, conveying indirect inference and stylistic nuance; possibly is concentrated in academic writing, signaling logical distancing and conditional reasoning. These findings demonstrate that the actual use of epistemic adverbs is shaped by the dynamic interaction among semantic function, syntactic realization, and discourse genre. By integrating syntactic, pragmatic, and discourse-level perspectives, this study provides a comprehensive framework for understanding epistemic modality in English and offers implications for cross-linguistic comparison, language education, and corpus-based modality research.