Abstract
English is generally considered to lack grammaticalized evidential markers (Aikhenvald 2004. Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press). However, Mélac (2022. The grammaticalization of evidentiality in English. English Language and Linguistics 26(2). 331–359) argues that certain uses of seem and other English verbs have grammaticalized as evidentials. He also offers several other examples of what he calls “(semi-)grammaticalized” evidentials. In this article I provide evidence that English also has grammaticalized evidential strategies in the choice between the present and past tenses when either is possible in a particular context, as well as in the use of certain determiners with proper names referring to specific individuals. The relevant contexts involve representation of particular points of view relating broadly to information source through tense and determiner choices. This analysis supports the work of researchers such as Figueras-Bates and Kotwica (2020. Introduction: Evidentiality, epistemicity and mitigation in Spanish. Corpus Pragmatics 4. 1–9: 13), among others, that evidentiality is best seen as “a discursive-pragmatic phenomenon.”
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Eric Mélac for his help with references and to the two reviewers for their very helpful comments. Thanks also to Paul Neubauer for his technical assistance and consultation on data. All errors are my own responsibility.
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© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- The pragmatics of evidentiality: markers, strategies and implications for linguistic theory
- Articles
- Conjectural questions in Sm’algyax
- The epistemic conditional in polar questions as an argumentative strategy
- Evidentials and dubitatives in Finnish: perspective shift in questions and embedded contexts
- Evidential strategies in English: not just lexical
- Romanian presumptive in interaction: evidentiality and beyond
- Some notes on the role of modal particles in weil+V2-clauses in German
- The evidential meaning of presupposition and implicature between retractability and deniability of information
- The interrogative flip with illocutionary evidentials
- Once known, always known. Turn-final sai in North-East regional Italian
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- The pragmatics of evidentiality: markers, strategies and implications for linguistic theory
- Articles
- Conjectural questions in Sm’algyax
- The epistemic conditional in polar questions as an argumentative strategy
- Evidentials and dubitatives in Finnish: perspective shift in questions and embedded contexts
- Evidential strategies in English: not just lexical
- Romanian presumptive in interaction: evidentiality and beyond
- Some notes on the role of modal particles in weil+V2-clauses in German
- The evidential meaning of presupposition and implicature between retractability and deniability of information
- The interrogative flip with illocutionary evidentials
- Once known, always known. Turn-final sai in North-East regional Italian