Examining the Mirative and Nonliteral Uses of Evidentials∗

This paper presents an analysis of how evidentiality contributes to both the mirative and metaphorical interpretations of sentences. The connection between evidentiality and mirativity has received some attention in the literature, particularily in various language grammars and typological studies, yet the category of mirativity has still not found a place within any theory of meaning. In a nutshell, mirativity refers to the grammatical marking of a proposition as representing information which is new and perhaps surprising to the speaker (DeLancey 1997, 2001). A mirative interpretation is associated with the evidential ’ nakw in the Tsimshianic language, Gitksan (1):