When the owner of information is unsure: Epistemic uncertainty influences evidentiality processing in Turkish

Seçkin Arslan

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102989

Seçkin Arslan

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102989

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Abstract

This study deals with the extent to which epistemic uncertainty influences processing of grammatical evidentiality – the linguistic reference to information source – in Turkish native speakers. Across a series of sentence reading experiments administered to groups of Turkish adult native speakers, this study showed that indirect evidentiality in firsthand witnessing contexts evoked greater post-interpretive disruptions (Experiment 1), and were found largely unfavourable (Experiment 2), suggesting that in Turkish, speaking about one's own information with indirect evidentiality leads to an inherent effect. Furthermore, a first-person's witnessed information marked with direct evidentiality is found to be rather unacceptable or unsettling under low epistemic certainty conditions, where the speaker is unsure of his/her own witnessing (Experiment 3), whilst a non-first-person's information blends well with uncertainty constraints for which, Turkish readers strongly favour the assumption marker (Experiment 4). This study indicates that Turkish speakers’ sensitivity to uses of evidentiality is influenced by the ‘uncertainty of information owner’. There is a semantic overlap and a complex interface between evidentiality and epistemic modality in Turkish, and this interface is mediated by the ownership of information (first-person versus non-first-person) and the owner's uncertainty about his/her information. Further implications are discussed.

Highlights

Evidentiality refers to the linguistic marking of the types of information sources a speaker has access to for the event being referred to in one's statement
The native Turkish readers’ acceptability judgement scores showed that they were sensitive to the mismatches between the information source given and the evidential form appended at the critical verb
Turkish readers’ sensitivity to the incompatibility of indirect evidentiality within first-hand witnessing contexts overrides the uncertainty of the speaker's own witnessing, casting doubt on the idea that indirect evidentiality in Turkish inherently implies a lower degree of reliability

Summary

Introduction

Evidentiality refers to the linguistic marking of the types of information sources a speaker has access to for the event being referred to in one's statement (see, e.g., Aikhenvald, 2004, Lazard, 2001, Willett, 1988, Plungian, 2001, Aikhenvald, 2003, Johanson and Utas, 2000). This paper addresses the interface of evidentiality and epistemic certainty. Consider the choice of modal verbs and adverbs in English: ‘‘Probably it might/may/ will rain tomorrow afternoon.’’ The certainty of a state can be expressed via lexical adverbs (e.g., ‘probably’) or through grammaticalized modal verbs (e.g., ‘might’) and affixes. Arslan / Lingua 247 (2020) 102989 modality’, which involves the speaker's evaluation or attitude to the likelihood that an event or state might occur (Nuyts, 2001a, Halliday, 1970, Palmer, 2001, Papafragou, 2006, Lyons, 1977)

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