The Semantics of Northern Ostyak Evidentials
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper deals with the semantics of the Evidential marker in Northern Ostyak. As far as I know, the semantics of grammaticalized Evidentials has not been studied in detail for the (eastern) Uralic languages, although in the modal system of some of them the Evidential category plays an important role. I will analyze the different meanings of the Ostyak Evidentials, and suggest that the apparent variety of meanings can be deduced from one basic prototype. This model, I believe, may have a descriptive cross-linguistic value. Furthermore, it supports two points sometimes raised in the linguistic literature: that the Evidentials should be treated separately from the epistemics; and that often they go back historically to the Perfect.
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