In recent years, the category of evidentiality has also come into use for the description of Romance languages and of German. This has been contingent on a change in its interpretation from a typological category to a semantic-pragmatic category, which allows an application to languages lacking specialised morphemes for the expression of evidentiality. We consider evidentiality to be a structural dimension of grammar, the values of which are expressed by types of constructions that code the source of information which a speaker imparts. If we look at the situation in Romance languages and in German, drawing a boundary between epistemic modality and evidentiality presents problems that are difficult to solve. Adding markers of the source of the speaker's knowledge often limits the degree of responsibility of the speaker for the content of the utterance. Evidential adverbs are a frequently used means of marking the source of the speaker's knowledge. The evidential meaning is generalised to marking any source of knowledge, what can be regarded as a result of a process of pragmaticalisation. The use of certain means which also carry out evidential markings can even contribute to the blurring of the different kinds of evidentiality. German also has modal verbs which in conjunction with the perfect tense of the verb have a predominantly evidential use (sollen and wollen). But even here the evidential marking is not without influence on the modality of the utterance. The Romance languages, however, do not have such specialised verbs for expressing evidentiality in certain contexts. To do this, they mark evidentiality -often context bound -by verb forms such as the conditional and the imperfect tense. This article shall contrast the different architectures used in expressing evidentiality in German and in the Romance languages.
Intersección entre la evidencialidad y la atenuación: el pretérito imperfecto evidencial y el futuro narrativo INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN EVIDENTIALITY AND ATTENUATION: THE EVIDENTIAL IMPERFECT AND NARRATIVE FUTURE Gerda HAßLERUniversidad de Potsdam ResumenAdemás de los recursos léxicos que se encuentran parcialmente de camino a la pragmaticalización, la atenuación, como un fenómeno pragmático-discursivo, puede realizarse mediante formas verbales del indicativo, las mismas que pueden ser utilizadas sin su valor temporal prototípico. El pretérito imperfecto, por ejemplo, asume la función de un marcador evidencial, sobre todo, en textos narrativos y periodísticos, para indicar que la información procede de una tercera fuente. De esta manera, el locutor se distancia de sus enunciados y realiza simultáneamente una atenuación del contenido proposicional. Esta función del pretérito imperfecto se explica por su aspectualidad imperfectiva, que conduce a la modalidad debido a su indeterminación semántica. Es más infrecuente, en español, el uso del futuro narrativo que expresa situaciones pasadas con respecto al momento de habla, pero que también hace referencia a situaciones venideras desde un momento en el pasado, las que son presupuestas por el locutor. En esta contribución, se estudiará el valor evidencial del pretérito imperfecto y del futuro, así como el papel que desempeñan en la atenuación.Palabras clave: pretérito imperfecto, futuro narrativo, aspectualidad, atenuación, evidencialidad, responsabilidad del hablante Abstract:In addition to lexical means which are partially on the way to pragmaticalization, attenuation as a pragmatic discourse phenomenon can be expressed by verbal forms of the indicative mood which can be used without their prototypical temporal value. For example, the imperfect past tense assumes the function of an evidential marker, especially in narrative and journalistic texts, and indicates that the information comes from a secondary source. By using the imperfect past tense the speaker distances themself from his utterance and at the same time he provides an attenuation of its propositional content. This function of the past imperfect tense can be explained by imperfective aspectuality, which leads to modality due to its semantic indeterminacy. In Spanish the narrative future is less frequent. This use of the future designates situations in the past and it takes into account the speech moment, but also future situations seen from a moment in the past, adopted by the speaker. The evidential value of the Spanish imperfect past and future tense, as well as their function in attenuation will be studied in this contribution. La atenuación, como un fenómeno pragmático-discursivo. puede realizarse mediante formas verbales del indicativo, las mismas que pueden ser usadas sin su valor temporal prototípico y que podrían encontrarse en un proceso de pragmaticalización. En esta contribución no se estudiarán los marcadores léxicos 1 de atenuación ni tampoco el subjuntivo como modo de la irrealidad, sino que el ...
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