A semantic account of mirative evidentials

Authors

  • Jessica Rett University of California, Los Angeles
  • Sarah Murray Cornell University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v23i0.2687

Keywords:

evidentials, mirativity, exclamation

Abstract

Many if not all evidential languages have a mirative evidential: an indirect evidential that can, in some contexts, mark mirativity (the expression of speaker surprise) instead of indirect evidence. We address several questions posed by this systematic polysemy: What is the affinity between indirect evidence and speaker surprise? What conditions the two interpretations? And how do mirative evidentials relate to other mirative markers? We propose a unified analysis of mirative evidentials where indirect evidentiality and mirativity involve a common epistemic component. A mirative interpretation requires a close temporal proximity between the speech event and the event of the speaker's learning the at-issue content.

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Published

2013-08-24

Issue

Section

Articles