Probably, likely, possibly と perhaps, maybe との違い

DOI

Description

Many English-Japanese dictionaries and English-usage dictionaries in Japan classify ‘probably’, ‘likely’, ‘possibly’, ‘perhaps’ and ‘maybe’ into the same group, all of which indicate the possibility of occurrence of something. Some of them further show their respective percentages.<br>In this paper I will show that these words are divided into two groups according to whether they express the speaker's certainty or not. ‘Probably’, ‘likely’ and ‘possibly’ indicate that the speaker is certain that something will happen, while ‘perhaps’ and ‘maybe’ indicate that he is not certain. Some syntactic features such as the following will support this analysis: the former group words can be modified by ‘very’ and ‘quite’, and take comparative and superlative forms, and the latter group words can modify a number with the meaning ‘about’.

Journal

Details 詳細情報について

  • CRID
    1390001205348376320
  • NII Article ID
    130003715728
  • DOI
    10.11200/japeronso1991.2004.57
  • ISSN
    18844413
    1883230X
  • Text Lang
    ja
  • Data Source
    • JaLC
    • CiNii Articles
  • Abstract License Flag
    Disallowed

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