Evidentiality

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As evidentiality is known in linguistics in a statement with grammatical means expressed specify where the speaker knowledge of the information contained in his statement of information has. It concerns the relationship between speaker and proposition . The term originally comes from comparative linguistics . It was introduced to represent the semantic dimension, which is important in Amerindian , Austro-Asian and Slavic languages , and which serves to characterize the information source from which the speaker has taken the information necessary for his verbalization. Evidentiality is therefore coupled on the one hand with the reference to such a source of information and on the other hand with the epistemic attitude of the speaker.

The term is thus related to other terms such as modality and speech reproduction . Even if, for example, no or only incomplete (grammatical) evidentiality categories were developed in the Germanic and Romance languages , all languages ​​leave the possibility open of other means of providing information on the origin of the speaker's knowledge.

distribution

Around a quarter of all languages ​​in the world mark evidentiality. In Quechua , for example, the marking of evidentiality is mandatory. This means that in Quechua the speaker must indicate with the help of suffixes for each statement whether he himself is the source of the knowledge (direct evidence, expressed with -m / -mi ) or whether he has heard the information from others (indirect evidence, expressed with -sh / -shi or, in southern Quechua , -s / -si ). There is also the suffix -ch / -cha used to express doubt (“maybe”, “probably”).

A common misconception is the relationship between evidentiality and truth. Evidentiality does not limit the truthfulness of the statement, and the speaker does not use an indirect evidential marker to distance himself from the content of the statement; it is only about the source of the information. If, on the other hand, a speaker uses a false evidential marker when making a statement, his fellow human beings would probably accuse him of lying, for example because he then falsely pretends that he was there (or was not there).

There are different evidential systems with different numbers of subdivisions for evidentiality. For example, the following sources of information are possible: seen, heard, told, conclusions , etc.

literature

  • Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald : Evidentiality. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-920433-0 .
  • Wallace L. Chafe & Johanna Nichols (Eds.): Evidentiality: The linguistic encoding of epistemology. Ablex, Norwood (NJ) 1986
  • Bernard Comrie: Evidentials: Semantics and history. In: Lars Johanson & Bo Utas (Eds.): Evidentials: Turkic, Iranian and neighboring languages. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-11-016158-3 .
  • Scott DeLancey: The mirative and evidentiality. In: Journal of Pragmatics. Vol. 33, 2001, pp. 369-382.
  • Zlatka Guentchéva (Ed.): L'Énonciation médiatisée (= Bibliothèque de l'information grammaticale. 35). Editions Peeters, Louvain, 1996, ISBN 90-6831-861-6 ; ISBN 2-87723-244-1 .
  • Lars Johanson & Bo Utas (Eds.): Evidentials: Turkic, Iranian and neighboring languages. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-11-016158-3 .
  • FR Palmer : Mood and modality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986, ISBN 0-521-26516-9 ; 2nd edition 2001, ISBN 0-521-31930-7 .
  • Thomas L. Willet: A cross-linguistic survey of the grammaticalization of evidentiality. In: Studies in Language. Vol. 12, 1988, pp. 51-97.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gesina Volkmann: World view and language. Epistemic relativization using the example of Spanish. Narr Francke Attempto, Tübingen 2005, ISBN 3-8233-6101-5 , p. 75