The semantics of evidentials / Sarah E. Murray.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Murray, Sarah E., author.

Series:

Oxford studies in semantics and pragmatics ; 9.

Oxford studies in semantics and pragmatics ; [9]

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Evidentials (Linguistics).

Semantics.

Physical Description:

xvi, 172 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2017.

Summary:

This book provides a compositional, truth-conditional, crosslinguistic semantics for evidentiality, the linguistic encoding of the source of information on which a statement is based. Central to the proposed theory is the distinction between what propositional content is at-issue and what content is not-at-issue. Evidentials contribute not-at-issue content, and can affect the level of commitment a sentence makes to the main proposition, contributed by sentential mood. In this volume, Sarah Murray builds on recent work in the formal semantics of evidentials and related phenomena, and proposes a semantics that does not appeal to separate dimensions of illocutionary meaning. Instead, she argues that all sentences make three contributions: at-issue content, not-at-issue content, and an illocutionary relation. At-issue content is presented and made available for subsequent anaphora, but is not directly added to the common ground; not-at-issue content directly updates the common ground; and the illocutionary relation uses the at-issue content to impose structure on the common ground, which, depending on the clause type, can trigger further updates. 0The analysis is supported by extensive empirical data from Cheyenne, drawn from the author's own fieldwork, as well as from English and a variety of other languages.

Contents:

1 Introduction 1

2 A semantic classification of evidentials 9

2.1 Challengeability and commitment 11

2.1.1 Direct and indirect challengeability 11

2.1.2 Commitment to scope 17

2.1.3 Commitment to evidence 21

2.1.4 Summary 25

2.2 Embedding and projection 26

2.2.1 Negation 28

2.2.2 Tense and modality 31

2.2.3 Conditionals 34

2.2.4 Embedding verbs 38

2.2.5 Summary 42

2.3 Interaction with questions 43

2.3.1 Polar interrogatives 44

2.3.2 Content interrogatives 47

2.3.3 Summary 50

2.4 Summary and theoretical implications 52

3 Evidentials and varieties of update 59

3.1 A semantics for sentential mood: sentences without evidentials 60

3.2 Declarative sentences with evidentials 67

3.2.1 The direct evidential 68

3.2.2 The reportative evidential 70

3.2.3 The inferential evidential 74

3.2.4 Conjunctions as sequential update 76

3.3 Interrogative sentences with evidentials 82

3.3.1 Polar interrogatives with evidentials 83

3.3.2 Content interrogatives with evidentials 87

3.4 Accounting for crosslinguistic patterns 89

3.4.1 Challengeability and commitment 90

3.4.2 Embedding and projection 92

3.4.3 Interaction with questions 94

3.5 Summary 95

4 Declarative sentences 97

4.1 Framework: Update with Modal Centering 97

4.2 Declarative mood 102

4.3 Declaratives with evidentials 106

4.3.1 The direct evidential 107

4.3.2 The reportative evidential 111

4.3.3 The inferential evidential 115

4.4 Conjunction as sequential update 116

4.5 Challengeability and commitment diagnostics 118

4.6 Summary 121

5 Interrogative sentences 125

5.1 Interrogative mood 125

5.2 Polar interrogatives with evidentials 130

5.3 Content interrogatives with evidentials 135

5.4 Summary 140

6 Conclusion 143.

Notes:

Series number taken from book jacket.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 161-168) and index.

ISBN:

0199681570

9780199681570

0199681589

9780199681587

OCLC:

949911925