epistémicas

Epistémicas, in the context of philosophy and linguistics, refers to aspects that express knowledge, evidence or the speaker’s stance regarding the truth of a proposition. The term derives from epistemic, which concerns knowledge and justification. Epistemic modalities distinguish how certain or uncertain a statement is, or what counts as evidence for it, as opposed to other modalities such as deontic (obligation) or dynamic (ability or action).

In linguistics, epistemic meaning is realized through verbal mood, adverbs, and evidential markers that convey the speaker’s degree of confidence or evidence. Examples in English include must, might, could, and probably; in Spanish, expressions like debe ser, podría ser, tal vez, and quizá serve similar roles. Epistemic expressions can indicate deduction, possibility, probability, or doubt, and they often interact with evidential systems that indicate the source or reliability of information.

In philosophy and formal semantics, epistemic modality is studied through epistemic logic, where operators such as Kp denote "the agent knows that p" and Bp denotes "the agent believes that p." This field examines how knowledge, justification, and evidence constrain what can be asserted as true. It also distinguishes epistemic from other modalities and explores how information evolves in dialogue, reasoning, and scientific inquiry. Notable work includes the development of epistemic logic and dynamic epistemic logic, which model knowledge updates.

Across languages, epistémicas display diverse realizations and interact with evidentiality and discourse structure. They play a central role in understanding how speakers convey certainty, inference, and justification, making them a key topic in semantics, pragmatics, and epistemology.