Indirect evidentiality and the expression of the speaker’s stance in Romanian

Abstract

The study aims to emphasize how lexical particles and grammatical constructions express indirect evidentiality and the speaker’s stance in Romanian. As with the other Romance languages, Romanian contains the grammatical means to express the speaker’s knowledge source, such as the Conditional Mood, a prototypical quotative/reportative evidential marking, or the Subjunctive and the Future, which, together with the Presumptive, a modal form specific to this linguistic system alone, function as markers of indirect evidentiality of the inferential type. Additionally, each of these forms can be augmented by a rich lexicalized system of adverbs and particles. For example, pesemne [‘probably’, literally on + signs], poate [‘may be’; a regressive form from the third person singular of the verb a se putea < Late Latin *potere (Classical Latin posse)], probabil [‘probably’, < a borrowing from the Fr. probable and the Lat. probabilis] are lexical particles of inferential evidentiality, and cică [‘supposedly’; a lexicalized form from the expression [se zi]ce că – literally it said that], pasămite [‘apparently’ whose etymology is controversial] and chipurile [‘supposedly’; a borrowing from Hungarian, literally ‘faces’] are means of quotative/reportative evidentiality. This lexical and grammatical system marking indirect evidentiality will be analyzed with respect to their grammaticalization processes, but also addressing the discursive behaviour.