あきらかに and らしい describing the same event


> おばさんもあきらかに危険に気づいたらしく、 ...  
>  It seemed that his aunt had also evidently noticed the danger and ...

Do あきらかに and らしく play nicely together in this sentence? It seems a bit
contratdictory to me. あきらかに is suggesting that the thing is obviously true
whereas らしく seems to be making that a mere conjecture.




Probably what you are missing is that あきらかに is always (as far as I can think
of) a sentence modifier.

彼女は明らかに危険に気付いた can be translated _She clearly noticed the danger_ , which has
an ambiguity: (1) clearly noticed or (2) it is clear that she noticed. あきらかに
does not have this ambiguity and it is always (2). (I think _obviously_ works
similarly. It is always to the speaker that the thing is obvious).

らしい in 彼女は明らかに危険に気付いたらしい is a kind of weakener, making things indirect, as
often happens in Japanese. Literally, it is _It **seemed** clear that she
noticed the danger_ (as opposed to _It **was** clear..._). As a translation,
the second one in Eiríkr Útlendi's answer may be more natural.

So all in all, you interpreted it correctly but what you see as a
contradiction is not necessarily so.

* * *

FYI.

  * 彼女ははっきりと危険に気付いた

This one only means _She saw the danger clearly_ or _The danger was obvious to
her_. Appending らしい does not pose any contradiction - _It seemed (to me) that
the danger was obvious to her._

  * 彼女は明らかに眠っていた She was obviously asleep/It was obvious that she was asleep.

Here there is no ambiguity due to the meaning of _asleep_ (though _obviously
asleep_ may be less idiomatic). Note 彼女ははっきりと眠っていた is odd (as _to sleep
clearly_ is).

As a sentence modifier, 明らかに can be put in front. 明らかに彼女は... does not change
anything in the above sentences.




I suspect this might be a matter of parsing.

I think you're looking at the phrase like this:

> おばさんもあきらかに（危険に気づいた）らしく

In this case, the あきらかに and らしく both apply to the core 危険に気付いた: she both
"clearly" noticed the danger, but also only "apparently" noticed it, and we
wind up with the apparent contradiction that you note.

Instead, we could parse this like so:

> おばさんも（あきらかに危険に気づいた）らしく

In this case, the あきらかに applies to the 危険に気付いた portion, and the らしく then
applies to this longer phrase: "it seems like" the aunt "clearly" noticed the
danger. Looked at this way, we avoid the contradiction.

Curious what others think, and I hope this helps. :)

