Reportative Evidentials Research Articles

On the co-optation of according to as an evidential in English

Abstract The use of according to + NP has rarely been the topic of any specialized research in relation to English evidentiality, although it would probably figure among the most frequent types of reportative evidentials found in written texts. One of the problems often associated with reportatives has related to the existence of the Reportative Exception (see, e.g. AnderBois 2014), referring to the fact that the speaker may not always subjectively endorse the proposition conveyed with the support of the evidential phrase. The present study reviews the history of according to + NP from Middle English onwards, after which it began to develop evidential functions, and shows how the tendency to reject the truth of the content of the proposition marked by according to + NP arose in specific contexts containing alternative information sources, comparison, or adversative clauses. It was shortly after the diachronic appearance of according to + NP in such contexts that the more periphrastic form, in accordance with + NP, began to renovate/renew the earlier, non-evidential meanings of according to + NP. The present study also attributes the development of according to + NP to a process of co-optation (e.g. Heine 2013) rather than grammaticalization.

Rumour: A Lexicographical Description of the Word Meaning From Evidentiality Perspective

Current media studies as well as the analysis of social interaction put forward the notion of rumours playing a significant role in human communication and making it a full-fledged object of linguistic analysis. The article is devoted to the description and unification of the lexicographical meaning of the word ‘rumour’ which is basic for indirect knowledge transmission. The proposed research perspective is preconditioned by the interest in uncertain knowledge and informal communication practices including such phenomena as rumors, gossip, etc., inherent in professional communication, as well as in the category of evidentiality. The empirical material comprises dictionary interpretations, the inconsistency of which stipulated the application of the ideas of lexical semantics. Componential analysis is chosen as the main method to define meanings. As a result, the polysemy of the word under study has been exposed, with its structure including five lexico-semantic variants with different types of relations. The invariant set of ‘without confirmation’, ‘uncertain origin’, ‘questionable accuracy’ components in the structure of the meanings indicates that there is a direct connection of the word semantics with the linguistic categories of evidentiality and epistemic modality. The analysis shows that when interpreting the values obtained, the concept of evidence as a source of information has an explanatory potential, the crucial factor being its distinct classification in terms of levels. The extensive typology of reportive evidentials enables to define the central meaning of the word ‘rumour’ as information characterized as transmitted knowledge, realized through informal statements, categorized as a proper reportative marked by the third level of evidence. The core ‘questionable accuracy’ seme testifies to the correlation of the reportative evidential value and the epistemic evaluation of the acquired knowledge which manifests itself in the fact that indirect mediated access to information potentiates its qualification as lacking confirmation.

The interrogative flip with illocutionary evidentials

Abstract This paper develops an account of the Cuzco Quechua reportative evidential. It is proposed that it contributes a preparatory condition in all its uses which states that the evidence holder has reportative evidence that supports the speaker raising the issue denoted by the sentence it occurs in. In declarative sentences, this results in the speech act of presenting the proposition expressed without expressing the speaker’s belief that it is true. In interrogatives, there are two readings. On the interrogative flip reading, the evidence holder is the addressee and the resulting speech act is a question supported by the speaker’s assumption that the addressee has reportative evidence for one of the answers. On the second reading, the evidence holder is the speaker, and the resulting speech act is one of asking the question on behalf of someone else. The account differs from previous accounts of the flipped reading of evidentials in questions which make them part of the answers. It is argued that analyzing the reportative’s contribution as a preparatory condition better captures the insight that the speaker chooses the evidential based on what they know about the addressee’s likely type of evidence at the time of speaking. The paper moreover argues that preparatory conditions cannot be analyzed as presuppositions in the common ground and should instead be understood as propositions the speaker takes for granted, but which may be new information to the addressee.

Patterns of evidentials use in dream narratives

The article presents a study on evidentials use in dream reports collected from online dream journals. First, I discuss the relation between the categories of stance and evidentiality. Specifically, I define evidentiality for the needs of this research as a semantic category that labels the source of information in the English language. Evidentiality encompasses perception, reportative evidentiality, and inferential judgment. The role of evidentials in rendering the dream experience is considerable due to the quasi-perceptual and specific experientiality of dreaming. Therefore, the core categories of evidentiality were singled out for this study, such as revelative, sensory and sensory-inferential, reportative, non-sensory inferential and mirative (marking unexpected information). The sample was then manually processed to count the relative frequencies of the means rendering these subcategories of evidentiality. The main findings reside in the role of revelative evidentials in marking the status of dream vs. real narrative spaces. Additionally, the classic assumption about the visuality of dreams was confirmed by the high number of visual perceptual evidentials, while audial and other perceptual mode instances are much fewer in the sample. Finally, the choice of evidential subcategories in dream reports is conditioned by the narrators’ need to account for vague recollection of dreaming experience with the preference for simpler inferential forms. In turn, the category of mirativity (i.e. labeling of unexpected information) is discussed as a prospective research avenue due to its rich potential in subtle yet informative marking of the speaker’s reaction to the information communicated or to the channel of obtaining it.

According to NP: A Diachronic Perspective on a Skeptical Evidential

One of the problems challenging formal semantic studies of evidentiality is that reportative evidentials are not always representative of the speaker’s endorsement of the truth of the propositions they qualify. Accordingly, many of the functions of the reportative evidential according to NP in English are often ambiguous as to the speaker’s endorsement of the propositions over which they have scope. The present study, using three diachronic corpora, traces the evolution of evidential meanings in according to NP since Middle English times from its origins in a progressive aspect construction and its later shift from a manner adverbial function to a reportative evidential used to justify the speaker’s subjective beliefs. The article shows that the presence of comparative contexts, multiple information sources, or co-occurrence with adversative clauses contributes to the use of the reportative as a dubitative, marking the gradual objectification of the proposition qualified by according to and coinciding closely with the introduction of the complex preposition in accordance with in the late eighteenth century. I argue that the diachronic development of according to NP as an evidential marker represents a case of co-optation rather than grammaticalization.

Reportative evidentiality, tense, and negation in Kadiwéu

with tense in main and embedded clauses. The data in this paper come from elicitation and from narratives collected at different times since the 1990’s. The facts show that there is a restriction in co-occurrence between future tense and the quotative relational only in embedded clauses. Otherwise, the reportative evidential can co-occur with a future tense marker. Moreover, this work investigates the syntactic position of the reportative evidential examining its placement in relation to negative markers and complementizers. Negation offers strong evidence that the evidential one is at the sentential level, since it interacts syntactically and morphologically with negation. Kadiwéu is a language from the Chaco area, located between Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia. It belongs to the Guaikuruan linguistic family.

Speech reports and evidence

In our communication we often make reference to what other people have said. We do so for a variety of different reasons and we draw upon a variety of different constructions. Following earlier joint work together with Emar Maier, I propose a classification of speech reports along two dimensions: at-issueness and eventivity, resulting in four classes of speech reports. I explore the notion of reportative evidentiality against the background of this landscape. I propose that a speech report is used in an evidential way if the actual speaker seems to intend to convey that the fact that the reported speaker uttered this sentence increases the probability of the reported content being true. I furthermore argue that there is a natural link between the class of non-eventive, not-at-issue speech reports and evidentiality. Non-eventive, not-at-issue speech reports are naturally used to provide evidence because (i) the reported content is grammatically marked as the main point, which will be interpreted as a (weak or hedged) proposal to update the common ground, and (ii) other uses of speech reports (e.g. vivid characterizitions of dialogues between characters in a story) are not available due to their non-eventivity. Interestingly, if we switch to this pragmasemantic perspective, some expressions that are traditionally called ‘evidential’ loose their evidential status.

EVIDENTIALITY IN TEXTS OF THE JOURNALISTIC STYLE IN THE MODERN GERMAN LANGUAGE

The article is dedicated to examining the peculiarities of employing the category of evidentiality in texts of the journalistic style in the modern German language. Life in society is impossible without communication between people. As communicants, they exchange various information, expressing their views, emotions, and attempting to convey their own point of view to their interlocutors. Often, communicants pass on information, other people's thoughts, assumptions, and so on. Therefore, in the modern communicative process, there arises a need to specify the source of certain information. The main purpose of this is an attempt to lend greater credibility and authority to the message. For German-language journalistic style, the use of inferential and reportative evidentiality is characteristic. We believe that these types are determined by the fact that indicating the source of information is an integral component of professional media text. This is because journalists, when including the opinions of others (politicians, celebrities, or ordinary witnesses) in their materials, can present an event in light of various ideologies, provide it with a certain assessment, and thus influence the audience's opinion. Indicating the source of information is an indispensable feature of a media text, as it allows for the confirmation or refutation of the credibility of certain information. Evidential markers help readers verify the facts and opinions presented by the journalist, and based on this, form their own opinion. Citing sources is a central characteristic of a media text, providing it with the necessary objectivity. This is why evidentiality, as a linguistic category, plays a leading role in the information space of any developed linguistic culture.

Reportive evidentiality. A perception-based complement approach to digital discourse in Spanish and English

The present study builds on the evidential overtones of the main verbs of physical perception (visual) ver and see taking decir and say-reportive complements retrieved from a self-compiled Google corpus in Spanish and English. This opens up for research the possibility of a verdecir and seesay evidentiality in Spanish and English digital discourse. The analysis of the results confirms that the main verbs of direct vision ver and see take evidential values and provide justificatory support to the reported and quoted information provided by the decir and say post-complements based on the characteristics of the visual sources of knowledge, the meanings taken by the main perception verbs and the verbs of saying, and their complementation patterns of evidential perception.

Evidentiality through reported speech: Pragma-linguistic factors affecting its reliability

This study focuses on reportative evidential that contains statements of a specific and commonly known individual with interlocutors regarding the quality of evidence s/he claimed to have, his/her trustworthiness as a person, linguistic markers, turn designs, emotional state, epistemic authority, as factors which determine the reliability of information vouched through reported speech. We collected 28 conversations in which informants were asked to convey information derived from someone well or weakly known. Topics were chiefly related to events expected to occur, films and other informative assertions. Then, respondents delivered their main reasons about (not) trusting the reported speech/speaker and regarding the modals within RS or in the assessment part. They were urged to share common conclusions about its reliability. We found out that epistemological assessment of reported speech originally derived by a well-known person is crucially related to the reported speaker’s usual shown sincerity, words chosen, while of a weakly known individual with his/her competency and quality of evidence, which can define the information as “first-hand” or not worth considering.

Uma análise para a distinção entre evidencialidade e modalidade epistémica o caso dos adjetivos alegado e suposto e respetivas formas adverbiais

The modal and evidential domains are not always easily distinguishable. Even though some languages do have specific modal and evidential markers, European Portuguese does not behave the same way, having, therefore, several ways and mechanisms to mark both evidentiality and modality. The present study, based on examples retrieved from the European Portuguese corpus CETEMpúblico, thus, intends to evaluate if the traditionally considered modal adjectives, suposto (supposed) and alegado (alledged), and their corresponding adverbial forms, can convey evidential values and contribute to signal a distinction between the two domains. The examples show that these adjectives and adverbs behave distinctively from each other: suposto (and supostamente) conveys suppositional evidentiality, while alegado (and alegadamente) conveys reportative evidentiality. Even though the preferred interpretation is an evidential one, they both allow for an epistemic modal reading. This means, put differently, that, although these adjectives and adverbs have the capacity to represent both domains, modality seems to always come second: the transmission of evidential values is therefore stronger than the expression of epistemic modal values (of uncertainty). However, the epistemic reading of alegado, in particular, seems to be related to the fact that the author does not mean to compromise him/herself with the veracity of the proposition, rather than convey a certain degree of uncertainty.

The landscape of speech reporting

Languages offer various ways to report what someone said. There is now a vast but heterogeneous literature on speech report constructions scattered throughout the semantics literature. We offer a bird’s eye view of the entire landscape of reporting and propose a classification along two dimensions: at-issue vs. not-at-issue, and eventive vs. non-eventive. This bird’s eye perspective leads to genuinely new insights, for instance on the nature of quotative evidentials and reportative moods, viz., that they are both eventive, and hence semantically more like some types of direct and indirect speech than reportative evidentials and modals are. EARLY ACCESS

Эвиденциальность пересказывательности в турецком и японском языках

The purpose of the study is to identify similarities and differences between markers of indirect evidentiality, namely, reportative evidentiality in the Turkish and Japanese languages, using -mış (Turkish), -soudesu, -rashii (Japanese) as examples. Scientific novelty of this topic is accounted for by absence of comparative studies that consider markers of indirect evidentiality in terms of the way they are expressed, their role in a sentence, additional grammatical meanings, semantics, as well as connection of the evidentiality category to other categories. As a result, it is possible to say that evidentiality has typological similarities in the two languages, however, the way and form of expressing markers of indirect evidentiality are different, furthermore, the evidentiality category in the two languages is connected to different grammatical categories.

Acquisition, Loss and Innovation in Chuquisaca Quechua—What Happened to Evidential Marking?

Variation among closely related languages may reveal the inner workings of language acquisition, loss and innovation. This study of the existing literature and of selected interviews from recent narrative corpora compares the marking of evidentiality and epistemic modality in Chuquisaca, Bolivian Quechua with its closely related variety in Cuzco, Peru and investigates three hypotheses: that morpho-syntactic attrition proceeds in reverse order of child language acquisition, that convergence characterizes the emergence of grammatical forms different from L1 and L2 in contact situations, and that the Quechua languages are undergoing typological shift toward more isolating morphology. It appears that reportive -sis disappeared first in Bolivia, with eyewitness/validator -min retaining only the validator function. This finding seems to concord with reverse acquisition since it has previously been claimed that epistemic marking is acquired earlier than evidential marking in Cuzco. Meanwhile, Spanish and Quechua in nearby Cochabamba are claimed to mark reportive evidentiality via freestanding verbs of saying. I explore the reportive use of ñiy ‘to say’ in Chuquisaca as compared to Cochabamba and Cuzco and suggest the need for comparative statistical studies of evidential and epistemic marking in Southern Quechua.

Evidentiality and humor in Spanish

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to shed light on the evidentiality functions used by the comedian Andreu Buenafuente during his monologues in Spanish (2007–2011). Firstly, some hypotheses are proposed: (1) genre may determine pragmatic evidentiality functions; (2) evidentials are integrated into a monologue’s expository-argumentative structure; (3) several evidentiality strategies may be distinguished with regard to this structural role; (4) one of these strategies in humorous texts consists of acting as a humorous evidentiality marker. Secondly, reportative evidentials (Willet, 1988;Plungian 2001;Dendale & Tasmowski, 2001, p. 343) such assegún, según dicen, dicen que(‘[they/people]) say’) andse ve que(lit. ‘it is seen that/apparently’), and a direct attested evidential,claro(‘of course’), are analyzed. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses serve as the basis to confirm the hypotheses posed and finally to propose a semantic-pragmatic framework for evidentials and evidentialty in Andreu Buenafuente’s humorous monologues. The corpus comprises 203 printed monologues from the booksSigo diciendo(‘I still say’) (2009),Digo yo(‘So I say’) (2010) andHablar es gratis(‘Speaking is free of charge’) (2011).

Evidential Modification of a Statement in a News Discourse: A Functional Aspect

The results of a study of the modalization of statements in terms of reportative evidentiality in the news discourse based on the material of Russian, English and German-language articles are presented in the article. Particular attention is paid to the functions of quoted or reported speech and indicators of reportative evidentiality, which are considered as two components that make up the structural-semantic whole of statements with quotation inclusions. The novelty of the study is in an attempt to conduct a comprehensive study of the functional aspect of reportative-evidential modification of the utterance. The relevance of the study is due to the importance of the information and news genres of media discourse in modern society, as well as the insufficient development of the functional aspect of reportative-evidential modalization of the utterance in the news discourse for all the high frequency of quotation inclusions in the texts of this genre. A classification is proposed that includes eight functions: three functions of the evidential framework (meta-informing, increasing the recipient's trust in the reliability of the message and delegation of responsibility) and five functions of quoted and reported speech (informative, synthesizing, expressive-evaluative, nominative, argumentative). The conclusion about the interconnectedness of the selected functions among themselves, as well as about the possibility of implementing several functions within the framework of one utterance and in each case introducing into the utterance both reported speech and reportative evidentials is drawn.

Reportative evidentiality and attribution in Romanian fairy tales

AbstractThis study sets out to examine how reportative evidentiality and attribution are achieved in Romanian fairy tales. By comparing and contrasting reportative and attribution expressions, the current research aims to determine the deictic function of these constructions, the pragmatic motivations of the speaker for evidential usage as well as the lexicalization, richness and functional diversity of these expressions in the Romanian language. In fairy tales, the content, actants, constructed reported discourse, sources of information and reproduction of speech vary widely, thus the relationship between evidentiality and attribution can be richly explored from a syntactic, lexical and a pragmatic/interactional/functional perspective. Research findings suggest, among other things, that Romanian fairy tales integrate evidential and attributive preferences that are reflective of a regional practicality of the genre as a form of communication, that there is cognitive implication of the storyteller in the process of evidential choice and that evidential values are associated with particular constructions that allow for evidentiality and attribution to operate as effective discourse strategies in the realization of the interpersonal functions in the tales. With regard to Romanian fairy tales, such evidential expressions help clarify, validate and evaluate sources of information, operating as prompters in a perspective-taking dynamic process.

In evidence: Linguistic transformations of events in police interview reports

The aim of this article is to examine how police investigators reproduce interviewees’ utterances in narratives, in direct and indirect reported speech, and by enclosing words in reports in quotation marks. Drawing on a larger study of professional writing, the pertinent research question for the current investigation is how writing techniques in police interview reports convey evidential value in the form of reported utterances. A corpus of police reports on domestic violence is explored from the theoretical perspectives of critical discourse analysis, polyvocality and reportative evidentiality. A new analytical framework for polyvocal texts is developed in terms of utterance, source and framer. The results show that it is difficult to determine whether or not words placed within quotation marks are meant to present verbatim quotes. Another finding is that police investigators are not consistent in documenting utterances from different sources, or in showing whether utterances are embedded in other utterances. This may obscure the structure of the original events and the source of crucial utterances, resulting in unclear evidential status for police reports.

Reportative evidentiality from interactions between an embedded mood and a sensory evidential

Reportative evidentiality from interactions between an embedded mood and a sensory evidential

Does the source matter?

AbstractThis article provides an insight into the expression of reportative evidentiality in Spanish scientific articles published between 1799 and 1920. Central to the discussion is the presence and specificity of sources in reportative constructions. While contemporary scientific discourse prioritizes the use of specific, reportative-quotative evidentials, this is not a constant feature of articles analyzed in this study. In order to trace this historical variation, we established a classification of reportative constructions according to the specificity of the evidence they convey and we conducted both qualitative and quantitative analyses. According to our results, different specificity patterns were prominent in different temporal stages of the period under review. We argue that this can be interpreted in light of the growth and changing practices of the scientific community.