Characterizing evidentiality
-
Claudia M. Brugman
and
Monica Macaulay
Abstract
This article examines theoretical and typological characterizations of evidentials. Based on the literature and newly analyzed data from Karuk (a Native American language of California), we argue that two properties are criterial: (i) marking source of evidence and (ii) membership in grammatical systems. Other properties vary crosslinguistically: presence of epistemic, illocutionary, or mirative meaning; speaker deixis; obligatoriness; complementarity of meaning with other items; and truth-conditionality. The values of these variable properties cannot be assumed but must be empirically determined for individual items and languages. Our characterization can serve as a guide for research, examination of the relationship between evidentiality and other categories, and typological work on evidentials.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to our anonymous reviewers, and to Tom Conners, Anne David, Andrew Garrett, Amalia Gnanadesikan, Gwen Hyslop, Joe Salmons, Lila San Roque, and Peggy Speas for valuable advice. They of course bear no responsibility for our conclusions.
Abbreviations:
In general we maintain the original orthography and abbreviations from each source (for Karuk and other examples), although we have omitted some of the superfluous diacritics from the older sources on Karuk. Acute accent marks in the Karuk data indicate a high tone; circumflex indicates a high-low falling tone. Abbreviations and symbols used in the examples (Karuk and otherwise) are: 1/2/3=1st/2nd/3rd person ant=anterior; c=current (evidence); cop=copula; cs=contrasted subject; det=determiner; dir=(not glossed by author but presumably) direct; dur=durative; ev=evidential; hr.ev=nonsight sensory evidential; hs=hearsay; imp=(not glossed by author but presumably) imperfective; infer=inferential evidential; infr=inferred; ints1=intensifier 1; iter=iterative; mid=middle intransitivizer; nf=non-feminine; nom=nominalizer; nonvis=non-visual; p=previous (evidence); pfv=perfective; pl=plural; pr=pair; prog=progressive; q=interrogative; quot=quotative; rp=recent past; see.ev=sight sensory evidential; sens.ev=general sensory evidential; sg=singular; sns=non-visual sensory; spec=specificity; sub=subordinator; vis=visual.;
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