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Direct evidentiality and discourse in Southern Aymara.
- Source :
- Natural Language Semantics; Mar2024, Vol. 32 Issue 1, p1-34, 34p
- Publication Year :
- 2024
-
Abstract
- This paper discusses the discourse contrasts that arise in connection to direct evidentiality in Southern Aymara (henceforth, Aymara), an understudied Andean language. Aymara has two direct evidentials, the enclitic =wa and the covert morpheme -∅, which are used whenever the speaker has the best possible grounds for some proposition. I make the novel observation that a sentence with =wa can be felicitously uttered if the speaker attempts to update the common ground by addressing an issue on the table. In fact, the sentence with =wa that is uttered must be congruent with prior discourse; I tie this to the claim that =wa is a (presentational) focus marker (Proulx in Language Sciences 9(1):91–102, 1987). This paper thus claims that =wa is a marker that combines evidentiality and focus. In contrast, uttering a sentence with -∅ entails that the speaker's contribution is already in the common ground, which likens this evidential to common ground management operators—there is no congruence requirement in this case. I identify which construction can be used in different discourse settings (conversation openers and telling anecdotes). I implement a formal analysis based on Farkas and Bruce (Journal of Semantics 27:81–118, 2010) and Faller (Semantics and Pragmatics 12(8):1–53, 2019) that links evidentiality and discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- DISCOURSE
LINGUISTICS
SCIENTIFIC language
PRAGMATICS
SEMANTICS
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 0925854X
- Volume :
- 32
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Natural Language Semantics
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 175280830
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-023-09220-1