La locution adverbiale d’une certaine manière: Entre modification verbale et modalité : étude synchronique

The aim of this paper is to describe the two uses of the French adverb d’une certaine manière (CM), one where it is modifies the VP, and one where it expresses modality. On the basis of the French data base Frantext, we detail, firstly, under which syntactic and semantic circumstances CM appears. In a second stage, it is shown that CM can be considered as a kind of hedge, which concerns a constituent or the whole statement, presented as a value judgment of the speaker, whose bases remain deliberately “vague”.