Emerging inferentials in English?

Abstract This paper investigates the evolution of the present perfect and have to in English to assess whether these forms may be considered emerging inferentials. Combining quantitative and qualitative analyses in diachrony and synchrony, it argues that the two forms may show incipient signs of the grammaticalization of inferential evidentiality. The present perfect is already fully grammaticalized in its morphology, and highly frequent. Inferential evidentiality is not part of its meaning, but a slightly rising implicature. The semi-auxiliary have to is less grammaticalized morphologically, but possesses a distinct function that is traditionally called ‘epistemic’, but is rather ‘logical inferential’. This function is still infrequent, but has been rising steadily in the past decades. Whether these changes will lead to a fully-developed evidential paradigm is unpredictable, but this study confirms that evidentiality is a necessary notion to describe English grammar and its evolution accurately.