Modality, evidentiality and (inter)subjectivity

This paper examines the epistemic-evidential meanings of the Spanish modals tener que ‘have to’ and haber de ‘must’ using data from the Corpus del Español . These verbs are regarded as near-synonyms, related to the notion of speaker commitment, and, when differentiating between them, previous studies frequently resort to register variation (e.g., RAE-ASALE, 2009 , Blas Arroyo & Vellón, 2014 ). However, the results in the present study reveal that the dimension of (inter)subjectivity better accounts for the differences between the verbs: whereas haber de is used for intersubjective as well as subjective and non-subjective meanings, tener que is highly specialized for subjective uses. The semantic-pragmatic restriction of tener que makes it unidiomatic or pragmatically unsuitable as a substitute for haber de in many contexts. Hence, in this line of argumentation, haber de has found a true niche in epistemic-evidential contexts.