Epistemic marking and multiple perspective : an introduction

This paper discusses forms of epistemic marking that instantiate multiple perspective constructions (see Evans 2005). Such forms express the speaker’s and the addressee’s simultaneous epistemic perspectives from the point of view of the speaker, crucially relying on the assumptions of the speaker with regard to the addressee’s knowledge. The analysis of forms considers established semanto-pragmatic concepts, such as semantic scope, mitigation strategies and communicative intention (as marked by sentence-type) in the exploration of forms. In addition, the notion of knowledge asymmetry is discussed alongside the concepts of epistemic status and stance as tools for a semantic analysis of investigated forms

Epistemic marking in Ika (Arwako)

The paper describes epistemic marking in Ika (Arwako-Chibchan, Colombia) and proposes an analysis in terms of a typologically unusual pattern called conjunct/disjunct, which has been attested for a small number of Asian and South American languages. Canonically, conjunct occurs with first person subjects in statements and with second person in questions, as opposed to any other combination of subject and sentence-type, which is disjunct. The pattern found in Ika both conforms to expectations and, at the same time, contributes to a more nuanced analysis of the functional motivations of the conjunct/disjunct pattern. In Ika, conjunct marking encodes the speaker's direct access to an event that involves either (or both) of the speech participants. In addition, conjunct/disjunct marking interacts predictably with a second set of epistemic markers that encode asymmetries in the epistemic authority of the speaker and the addressee. The analysis builds on first-hand data but remains tentative, awaiting further investigation.

The role of 'perspective' in epistemic marking

The paper focuses on inter-personal aspects of the context in the analysis of evidential and related epistemic marking systems. While evidentiality is defined by its capacity to qualify the speaker's indexical point of view in terms of information source, it is argued that other aspects of the context are important to analyze evidentiality both conceptually and grammatically. These distinct, analytical components concern the illocutionary status of a given marker and its scope properties. The importance of the hearer's point of view in pragmatics and semantics is well attested and constitutes a convincing argument for an increased emphasis on the perspective of the hearer/addressee in analyses of epistemic marking, such as evidentiality. The paper discusses available accounts of evidentials that attend to the perspective of the addressee and also introduces lesser-known epistemic marking systems that share a functional space with evidentiality.