One =Mi: An Evidential, Epistemic Modal, and Focus Marker

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to support Faller’s (2003) claim that an enclitic -mi in Imbabura Quechua cannot be classified as a pure evidential (EV, henceforth) or as a pure epistemic modal (EM, henceforth), but encode both notions, based on elicited data from two native Imbabura Quechua speakers. This paper also observes that the marker is used as a focus marker and explores a possibility that its focus marking function can be conceptually related to the other functions in that all the functions indicate that the origo’s attention is given to more cognitively salient portion of stimuli in the given context.