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Chapter 11. The role of sentence type in Ika (Arwako) egophoric marking

  • Henrik Bergqvist
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Egophoricity
This chapter is in the book Egophoricity

Abstract

The chapter focuses on the role of sentence type and subject person in accounting for egophoric marking in Ika, an Arwako-Chibchan language spoken in northern Colombia. Egophoric marking in Ika is only found in declarative clauses for which the speaker either assumes the role of epistemic authority, or where the speaker shares this role with the addressee. Interrogatives are treated as non-egophoric with all subject persons, as they do not encode the speaker’s assumptions about possible answers. This restriction, together with ones that pertain to predicate type and temporal frame of reference, point to epistemic/observational access as an important parameter in a system where public acts and personal attributes involving the speaker and/or the addressee are the only ones available for egophoric marking. Drawing on a model of dialogical stance-taking (Du Bois 2007), the notion of “complex epistemic perspective” (see Bergqvist 2016) is introduced to identify which perspective configurations allow for egophoric marking.

Abstract

The chapter focuses on the role of sentence type and subject person in accounting for egophoric marking in Ika, an Arwako-Chibchan language spoken in northern Colombia. Egophoric marking in Ika is only found in declarative clauses for which the speaker either assumes the role of epistemic authority, or where the speaker shares this role with the addressee. Interrogatives are treated as non-egophoric with all subject persons, as they do not encode the speaker’s assumptions about possible answers. This restriction, together with ones that pertain to predicate type and temporal frame of reference, point to epistemic/observational access as an important parameter in a system where public acts and personal attributes involving the speaker and/or the addressee are the only ones available for egophoric marking. Drawing on a model of dialogical stance-taking (Du Bois 2007), the notion of “complex epistemic perspective” (see Bergqvist 2016) is introduced to identify which perspective configurations allow for egophoric marking.

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