'A lo mejor and igual'. Epistemic and Non-Epistemic Meanings

Abstract

This paper looks into the use of a lo mejor and igual ('maybe', 'perhaps') in oral texts of the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual where the speaker doesn't show any lack of commitment to the proposition. In some of these texts, the speaker gives an example to substantiate his position; in others, he talks about everyday actionscharacterized by showing an effective state of affairs and, as such, not subject to doubt -. To account for these uses -not described in grammar -we provide some explanatory hypotheses based on the primary meaning of these exponents, their stage of grammaticalization and their pragmatic motivation.