Grammatical evidentiality and the unprepared mind
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Tyler Peterson
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to investigate how evidentials are used to reflect the unprepared mind of the speaker. Lexical evidentials are typically used by speakers to encode the kinds of evidence they have for making statements about states, events and actions they did not personally witness or were a part of. However, under certain conditions evidentials can be used to express the surprise of the speaker. This is known in the literature under the label mirativity. The empirical factors that condition the mirative use of an evidential are first determined, and then using an information and schema-theoretic analysis it is shown that mirativity is the linguistic reflex of a series of mental events involving the processing of new information, coupled with other contextual factors involving speaker knowledge.
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to investigate how evidentials are used to reflect the unprepared mind of the speaker. Lexical evidentials are typically used by speakers to encode the kinds of evidence they have for making statements about states, events and actions they did not personally witness or were a part of. However, under certain conditions evidentials can be used to express the surprise of the speaker. This is known in the literature under the label mirativity. The empirical factors that condition the mirative use of an evidential are first determined, and then using an information and schema-theoretic analysis it is shown that mirativity is the linguistic reflex of a series of mental events involving the processing of new information, coupled with other contextual factors involving speaker knowledge.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Surprise as a conceptual category 7
- The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise” 27
- Grammatical evidentiality and the unprepared mind 51
- Operationalizing mirativity 91
- The computer-mediated expression of surprise 121
- Surprise routines in scientific writing 153
- Surprise in the GRID 173
- Surprise and human-agent interactions 197
- Expressing and describing surprise 215
- Index 245
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Surprise as a conceptual category 7
- The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise” 27
- Grammatical evidentiality and the unprepared mind 51
- Operationalizing mirativity 91
- The computer-mediated expression of surprise 121
- Surprise routines in scientific writing 153
- Surprise in the GRID 173
- Surprise and human-agent interactions 197
- Expressing and describing surprise 215
- Index 245
