From certainty to uncertainty

Abstract In this article, we examine diachronically the use of two central and frequent epistemic particles, vist ‘perhaps, probably’ and kindlasti ‘definitely, certainly’, in written texts in Estonian from the 16th century to the present day. Currently, these particles convey various degrees of the speaker’s epistemic assessment: vist expresses uncertainty regarding the truthfulness of the information conveyed, while kindlasti indicates high certainty. The meaning of vist has diminished in terms of certainty to become an uncertainty marker. The meaning of the particle kindlasti has stayed the same over time, but a downtoning function has developed. Thus, we observe a weakening of epistemic functions for both particles over time within the framework of pragmaticalisation. We highlight a regularity where, during the pragmaticalisation of particles within the domain of probability, a unidirectional functional-semantic shift occurs in the chain of certainty > assumption > uncertainty .