Chapter published in:
Evidence for Evidentiality
Edited by Ad Foolen, Helen de Hoop and Gijs Mulder
[Human Cognitive Processing 61] 2018
► pp. 145–172

Chapter 6
Uralic perspectives on experimental evidence for evidentials

Early interpretation of the Estonian evidential morpheme

| Károliá Gáspár University
| Tallinn University
| Tallinn University

The chapter gives an overview on evidentiality in the Uralic languages. It then focuses on a behavioral experiment testing the processing of Estonian evidentials by four- and six-year-old children. The predominantly agglutinative Estonian, a Uralic language spoken in Europe, has an evidential morpheme on verbs (typical of various non-European languages), combining evidentiality and epistemic modality (typical in various European languages). We examine the effect of the Estonian evidential on preschoolers’ exploratory play, contrasting it with the effect of unmarked indicative sentences. Initially, the novel morpheme causes increased play, but the effect disappears as the acquisition of the indirect evidential meaning progresses. Novel grammar raises expectations of communicative intent in young children and makes them try out (or generalize over) statements.

Keywords: acquisition, agglutination, behavioral experiment, epistemic modality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Evidentiality in Uralic languages
    • 2.1Direct and indirect evidentials (Samoyedic languages)
    • 2.2Evidential strategies (Permic languages, Ob-Ugric languages)
    • 2.3Morphological indirect evidentials (Southern Baltic Finnic)
    • 2.4No evidentials but adverbs, verbs, and modal morphemes (Hungarian, Erzya, Finnish, Saamic)
  • 3.The evidential ‑vat and other ways of expressing evidentiality in Estonian
  • 4.The acquisition of evidentiality
  • 5.The acquisition of Estonian evidentials
  • 6.Method
    • 6.1Procedure
    • 6.2Participants
    • 6.3Coding
  • 7.Results
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgment
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 19 July 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.61.07tam
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