Evidential al parecer: Between the physical and the cognitive meaning in Spanish scientific prose of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries

Some of the evidential particles and adverbs in Spanish are believed to have developed during the 18th and 19th centuries. This also coincides with the consolidation of scientific writing in Spanish, a genre that holds a special relation with the expression of sources of information. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to study the evolution of the Spanish evidential discourse particle al parecer (‘seemingly, apparently’) in scientific texts of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Our analysis shows that in the period under review the occurrences of the evidential particle al parecer were dominant, but they were not the only uses of this construction. It coexisted with two other constructions: a two-member construction al parecer x, pero en realidad y (‘it appears to be x, but in reality is y’) with inferential interpretation and with a construction al parecer with physical meaning (es al parecer rómbico; ‘it looks rhombic’). Our data suggests that only the occurrences of the grammaticalized discourse particle al parecer were purely evidential. Furthermore, it shows that the evidential meaning of the particle developed toward more indirect evidentiality during the process of fixation. In the context of the genre analyzed, all three constructions of al parecer reflect the changes in the scientific writing practices: from basing the evidences on personal observation to relying on the experiment and reporting from the common knowledge.