Syvokin G. Prosodic Means Executing Epistemic Modality in Scientific and Popular Discourse

The thesis is devoted to the problem of prosodic means functions aimed at executing epistemic modality in scientific discourse. The peculiarities of prosodic interaction with other linguistic means in English and Ukrainian are examined too. The principal prosodic characters that differentiate epistemic modality meanings at the level of oral perception and acoustics are detected. Special attention is paid to describe the mechanism of relevant prosodic parameters interaction while actualizing more than one attitude in a sense-group, to present acoustic characters correlation and compensation when prosody realizes attitudinal and some other functions (sense-groups delimitation, theme-rhyme structuring, communicative function, etc.) simultaneously. Common features and specific characters of epistemic modality prosody in the two languages are found out. The results are interpreted taking into consideration the historically approved structure of English and Ukrainian.