RECONCEPTUALIZING THE REALIS/IRREALIS DISTINCTION: SEMANTIC GROUNDING, EPISTEMIC COMMITMENT, AND CROSS-LINGUISTIC VARIATION

The realis/irrealis distinction represents one of the most debated and theoretically ambiguous categories in contemporary linguistic theory. Despite its widespread attestation across genetically and typologically diverse languages, scholars remain divided regarding its semantic content and grammatical status. This article examines four major theoretical approaches to the realis/irrealis opposition. The first interprets irrealis as part of a broader “mega-modality” encompassing various types of non-factual meaning. The second collapses the distinction into the general domain of modality, treating realis and irrealis as terminological variants of established modal categories. The third approach considers them distinct modal categories with their own grammatical and semantic integrity. The fourth rejects their modal status altogether, analyzing them instead as values of an independent grammatical category grounded in ontological or epistemic reality status. Special attention is devoted to semantically oriented analyses, particularly Elliott’s proposal that the realis/irrealis opposition encodes degrees of factuality and speaker commitment, as well as Schiller’s ontological interpretation emphasizing perceived versus non-perceived reality. By critically evaluating these competing frameworks, the article seeks to clarify the conceptual boundaries between modality, factuality, tense–aspect systems, and evidentiality. The study argues that a coherent typology of reality status must integrate semantic, functional, and cross-linguistic evidence in order to account for both language-specific variation and broader theoretical generalization.

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