On the interactional dimension of evidentials: The case of the Spanish evidential discourse markers

Abstract

Spanish has a series of evidential discourse markers that combine the lexical semantics of visual perception with reference to inference or hearsay, for example, evidentemente 'evidently', por lo visto 'visibly, seemingly', al parecer 'seemingly' and se ve (que) 'one sees that, apparently'. The main aim of this article is to examine the grammatical, semantic and interactional properties of these four evidential discourse markers in informal and formal spoken Spanish. From a semantic point of view, we study the evidential values expressed by these markers (i.e. direct evidence, reportative, inference) and discuss the correlations between them. From a functional point of view, we analyse the evidential markers on the basis of discourse-interactional criteria such as illocutionary force, position in the turn and kind of turn. From a grammatical point of view, we address the preferences in terms of person and Tense/Aspect/Modality (TAM) experienced by these evidential markers in discourse. The main result of our analysis is that, as far as the semantic and discourse properties are concerned, evidentemente differs from por lo visto, al parecer and se ve que. The former seems to refer primarily to shared thoughts, developing a reading that goes beyond any of the traditionally distinguished evidential values. The three other markers, by contrast, refer to indirect evidence, often combining the evidential values of reported knowledge and inference. In talk-in-interaction, the two types of markers behave differently: evidentemente does not enhance turn-taking, whereas the other markers leave room for the co-participant to give his or her view of the state of affairs.

Incongruencia epistémica, partículas intensificadoras y elaboración de la información

“…A pesar de la abundante producción científica generada por los EEI en el ámbito anglosajón, todavía son escasos los estudios para el español que asumen esta perspectiva de análisis (Cornillie & Gras, 2015;Vázquez Carranza, 2009García-Ramón, 2018a, 2018b. El objetivo del presente trabajo es describir un patrón discursivo recurrente en el que las partículas asertivas intensificadoras del acuerdo ('claro', 'desde luego', 'efectivamente', 'en efecto', 'evidentemente', 'naturalmente', 'por supuesto', 'sin duda') actualizan significados secundarios los cuales, se argumenta, están relacionados con la señalización de incongruencias epistémicas.…”

Evidential and epistemic adverbials in Lithuanian: evidence from intra-linguistic and cross-linguistic analysis

“…They have been thoroughly investigated in terms of their meaning, functions in discourse, structural and scopal properties in Germanic (Nuyts 2001;Wierzbicka 2006;Mortensen 2006;Simon-Vandenbergen & Aijmer 2007;Celle 2009;Carretero & Zamorano-Mansilla 2013), Romance (Marín-Arrese 2007Squartini 2008;Cornillie 2009Cornillie , 2010Cornillie & Gras 2015), Slavic (Tutak 2003;Wiemer 2006;Letuchiy 2010;Wiemer & Kampf 2012) and Baltic languages (Wiemer 2007(Wiemer , 2010Chojnicka 2012;Ruskan 2013Ruskan , 2015Šolienė 2013Usonienė 2013Usonienė , 2015Usonienė , 2016. In a number of the studies mentioned, evidential and epistemic adverbials have been considered within the conceptually distinct categories of evidentiality and epistemic modality.…”

'A lo mejor and igual'. Epistemic and Non-Epistemic Meanings

“…As for a lo mejor, 194 paragraphs were not included as modal occurrences, which means a 12.67% of the total amount (1531 texts). These unexpected results lead us to hypothesize that these markers, used in faceto-face interaction, should be explained by their interactional purpose, continuing in the line of the previous studies carried out by De Cock 2015, Cornillie and Gras Manzano 2015, Cabedo Nebot and Cornillie 2011and Cornillie 2010, among others. For the purpose of accounting for the use of a lo mejor and igual in this interactional dimension, all the paragraphs were checked in order to study the co-occurrence of this adverbial phrase with other modal markers, cognitive verbs (creo, pienso 'I think'), different kinds of argumentation markers (sin embargo 'however', pero 'but', porque 'because', por eso 'so/ that's why'…) and metadiscursive markers (es decir 'that is', mira 'look', vamos 'come on'/ 'anyway' -depending of the sentence -, claro 'of course', bueno 'well', etc.…”

“…Their presence in conversational Spanish reveals an interactional function previously attested in corpus-based studies (Cornillie 2010;Cabedo Nebot and Cornillie 2011;Cornillie and Gras Manzano 2015;DeCock 2015). These interactional properties have proven very useful in the explanation of semantic meanings that are not yet recorded by dictionaries and show the need of analysis that look at modal markers in their textual dimension.…”