Evidentiality and Information Source in Signed Languages

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter examines evidentiality in signed languages. Data comes primarily from three signed languages—American Sign Language (ASL), Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), and Catalan Sign Language (LSC). The relationship between evidentiality, epistemic modality, and mirativity is examined across the expression of perceptual information as an evidential source, inference, and reported speech. It is suggested that evidentiality relies on simulation and subjectification. Finally, a proposal is offered that evidentiality, epistemic modality, and mirativity are primarily expressed through grammaticalized facial markers in signed languages, rather than by means of manual signs. These markers allow for simultaneous expression of grammatical markers. In signed languages, therefore, not only are the semantic components of evidentiality, epistemic modality, and mirativity integrated, so too are the phonological means of expression.