Evidentiality in Proto-Indo-European? Building a Case
نویسنده
چکیده
Many languages show systematic marking for evidentiality, indicating the source of a speaker’s information, the modality by which that information was gained, and the speaker’s stance towards the veracity of the information. Among the meanings expressed through such markings are quotativity, distance, reportedness, surprise, eyevs. ear-witness, and in general any sort of “mediation” by the speaker of the information conveyed. Although such markings are found in several branches of Indo-European, the relevant evidence is generally restricted to relatively recent language stages; moreover, language contact often seems responsible for the emergence of evidentiality in these languages. Thus, earlier stages of Indo-European are usually considered of no particular importance in the study of evidentiality, and the later manifestations of evidentiality in the family are not typically taken to warrant such categories for the proto-language. Still, presumably, all languages have some way of expressing the notions embodied in evidentiality systems, so one can wonder if there are any relevant indications for how PIE expressed them. This paper explores some suggestive facts concerning evidentiality for PIE that taken together legitimize asking if PIE indeed – contrary to the usual thinking – was an evidentiality-marking language.
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