Functions of Language - Volume 27, Issue 1, 2020

This article focuses on two types of constructional effects of indirect evidential marking in Harakmbut (isolate, Peru). Both types originate in a clash of interpretation: the use of indirect evidential marking indicates a shift of perspective away from the speaker (as if they did not witness the event, thus disclaiming epistemic authority), while the events referred to are in principle directly accessible to them. As the signalled shift is not fully realized in interpretation, the effects will be characterized as showing perspective persistence. The first type involves constructions with a first person agent, and indirect evidential marking is found to produce the interpretation that the speaker performed the action referred to unintentionally, finding out about the outcome of this action only later. Other types of non-volitional events – without pragmatic inference on the part of the speaker – are found not to carry indirect evidential marking; they use different linguistic means to signal non-volitionality. The second type involves constructions with impersonal predicates referring to the cycle of the sun, and the use of indirect evidential marking yields emphasis on the completion of the event referred to. It is proposed that both types of effects can be explained in terms of endpoint emphasis (cf. DeLancey 1985).

This paper focuses on a specific type of perspective-indexing constructions in Tibetic and neighboring languages, namely a type of verbal marker that is consistently construed from the perspective of the speaker in statements, the addressee in questions, and the source (= the original/reported speaker) in reported speech clauses. As these markers indicate how one obtained the information profiled in a sentence and may thus be viewed as a type of evidential, they cannot at the same time establish reference to any participant of the current speech act and thus by default reflect the perspective of the ‘informant’ of the respective sentence type. If we define the encountered distinctions in relation to a cause-effect vector in the sense of DeLancey (1986), these languages all contain what we may call an ‘insider’ marker indicating access to the entire vector including its causal origin and an ‘outsider’ marker indicating access only to its effect end. Whereas the insider markers typically occur when the informant is the subject and the outsider markers when s/he is not, the present paper discusses the different ways in which Tibetic and neighboring languages deviate from this basic pattern, and argues that these differences reflect the fact that the markers in the latter languages were only secondarily evidentialized in reported speech clauses, likely due to contact with Tibetic.

In a reported intentionality construction, intentionality is expressed as reported speech/thought (‘s/he says/thinks, ’). The quoted clause must contain a first person form and refer to the future. Reported intentionality displays perspective persistence and an accompanying apparent form-meaning mismatch, as it structurally marks the speech-act participant perspective of the volitional agent despite idiomatically translating only from the perspective of the current speaker. While this construction has been examined in languages around the world, this is the first treatment for the Trans-Himalayan (or Sino-Tibetan/Tibeto-Burman) language family. Monsang (South-Central; Northeast India) is shown to have a reported intentionality construction of the cross-linguistic type. In addition, there is a desiderative construction in the language that does not display perspective persistence but is argued to reconstruct back to a reported intentionality construction. Further evidence from synchronic and diachronic quotative constructions in Monsang is presented that illustrates the prominence of quotative-derived expressions of intentionality in Monsang verbal morphology.