Disentangling evidentiality and epistemic modality in Romance

In this article the semantics of the French, Italian and Spanish modals devoir/dovere/deber+infinitive will be analyzed, claiming that they not only express epistemic and deontic modality, but also reportive evidentiality. Comparing the three languages, it will be demonstrated that the reportive usage of devoir/dovere/deber+infinitive variously combines with the epistemic degree of assertiveness, thus providing relevant data in order to unravel the interaction between evidentiality and epistemic modality.