Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Italian epistemic marker “mi sa” [to me it knows] compared to “so” [I know], “non so” [I don’t know], “non so se” [I don’t know whether], “credo” [I believe], “penso” [I think].

In this research 2 closely intertwined Studies – the first of which serves as a pilot for the second one – on the Italian epistemic marker mi sa [lit. to me it knows] are presented. This marker, which seems to have no equivalent in other European languages, has received little attention in the literature. Specifically, no investigations have been conducted: • on the occurrences of mi sa in contemporary spoken corpora; • on the epistemic relationship between mi sa and other modal expressions that use the verb sapere [to know] in the first person singular of the simple present (so [I know], non so [I do not know], non so se [I do not know whether]); • on the supposed epistemic synonymy of mi sa with credo [I believe] and penso [I think]. Study 1 filled the first gap by analyzing the occurrences of mi sa detected in the Italian spoken corpus KIParla (a contemporary and upgradable corpus collecting more than 100 hours of conversations, freely accessible at https://kiparla.it). Their analysis led to the identification of six types of structures, which can be reduced to two main ones, differing in meaning and morphology: • mi sa che + proposition, e.g., mi sa che mi si è fermato l’orologio [I think that my watch stopped] (97.9%, including the plain form mi sa che + proposition 60.6%, mi sa parenthetical 26.6%, mi sa + elliptical proposition 5.3%, mi sa che [pending] 4.3% and mi sa di no 1.1%) and • mi sa di [metaphorical], e.g., mi sa tanto di collegio [to me it looks a lot like a boarding school] (2.1%). Starting from the results of Study 1, Study 2 was developed to fill the second and third gap through the qualitative and quantitative analysis of a questionnaire specifically designed and administered online. It was completed by 201 participants, almost all were native Italian speakers (92.04%; 4.48% were bilingual; only 3.48% were not Italian mother-tongue). As for the epistemic relationships between the six epistemic markers and the supposed epistemic synonymy, the statistical analysis revealed that for the majority of the participants: • in the epistemic continuum that goes from unknowledge to uncertainty and then to knowledge, non so [I do not know] refers to unknowledge; non so se [I do not know whether], mi sa [to me it knows], credo [I believe] and penso [I think] to uncertainty; so [I know] to knowledge; • mi sa [to me it knows], credo [I believe] and penso [I think] are synonyms from an epistemic perspective; • non so se [I do not know whether] is much more uncertain than mi sa [to me it knows], credo [I believe] and penso[I think]. These four epistemic markers seem to occupy a different position along the uncertainty continuum ranging between two poles: doubt (high uncertainty - non so se p [I do not know whether p]) and belief (low uncertainty - mi sa [to me it knows], credo [I believe] and penso [I think] that p).