Inferentiality and modals. Gender, genre, and disciplinary variation in Modern English scientific writing

Abstract

Modal verbs present a wide arrange of meanings according to context. These are frequently indexical of the author’s position concerning their texts. The meaning I would like to revise here is inferentiality in academic writing, as the deductive process is a characteristic of this type of writing. For this, I would analyze The Coruña Corpus of Early Scientific Writing (1700-1900) from where I excerpt examples of modal verbs indicating inferential meaning (also labelled as epistemic necessity). Conclusions will report on gender, genre and disciplinary variation concerning the use of modals entailing inferentiality in this compilation.