The semantics and pragmatics of modal adverbs: Grammaticalization and (inter)subjectification of perhaps

•The seventeenth century is the critical period for the development as a modal marker.•The decline of its outdone rivals is compensated by the establishment of perhaps.•Perhaps serves as a marker with various pragmatic function in contemporary English.•The development is characterized by grammaticalization and (inter)subjectification. In the present study, I trace the shift of the modal adverb perhaps and its outdone rivals (i.e., peradventure, percase, and perchance) through the history of English. This analysis is based primarily on the OED and its quotation database, complemented by additional data from different datasets, namely, A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760 in Early Modern English and the Brown family of corpora in contemporary English. After extracting instances of perhaps and related expressions from the datasets above, this study examines the following contextual factors: (i) the position occupied by the items in a clause, (ii) the combination of modal verbs in the same clause, and (iii) their parenthetical use. By analyzing the combined data, I provide a time chart for these adverbs and their competition for prevalence. The findings for the increasingly predominant perhaps demonstrate the grammaticalization of its epistemic function as a modal adverb and more recent (inter)subjectification to include pragmatic meanings concerning the relational basis between speaker and addressee.