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Evidentiality Revisited: Cognitive grammar, functional and discourse-pragmatic perspectives
Edited by Juana I. Marín-Arrese, Gerda Haßler and Marta Carretero
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 271] 2017
► pp. 57–83

Chapter 2
Evidentiality reconsidered

| University of Antwerp

This article reconsiders the semantic status of the traditional concept of evidentiality, typically featuring ‘experientiality’ as the coding of directness of information, and ‘inferentiality’ and ‘hearsay’ as the marking of two different types of indirect information sources, as well as of two less traditional categories often associated with evidentiality, viz. ‘mirativity’ and ‘subjectivity’. It argues that these dimensions do not constitute a semantically coherent domain. While inferentiality belongs in the system of ‘qualifications of SoAs’ (traditionally: ‘TAM markers’), and can be considered akin to categories such as deontic and epistemic modality (i.e., to be ‘attitudinal’), the four other dimensions have a very different nature, which positions them outside the ‘normal’ qualificational system.

Keywords: evidentiality, inferentiality, hearsay, experientiality, mirativity, subjectivity, attitudes, epistemic modality, qualificational dimensions, qualificational hierarchy
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The ‘theoretical’ background
    • 2.1A broad perspective on the field of expressive devices
    • 2.2The qualificational hierarchy
    • 2.3The analysis of the modal categories
  • 3.The ‘classical’ evidential categories
    • 3.1The classical evidential categories in the literature
    • 3.2A reanalysis
    • 3.3The status of the different traditional evidential categories
  • 4.Mirativity and (inter)subjectivity – and hearsay and experienced again
    • 4.1A brief characterization of mirativity and (inter)subjectivity
    • 4.2The semantic properties of mirativity and (inter)subjectivity
    • 4.3The status of mirativity and (inter)subjectivity – and of hearsay and experienced
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 March 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.271.03nuy
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