Epistemic mustn’t in English

Abstract

It is a widespread claim in the literature that there does not exist an epistemic use of the modal verb mustn’t in English. Instead, the form can’t is said to fill the gap in the system. This paper shows that there is an epistemic use of mustn’t in Present-day English, investigates the contexts in which it appears and compares the use of epistemic can’t and mustn’t.

Keywords

• mustn’t
• epistemic
• inference
• deduction