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TITLE "Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance: Narrative retelling"
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Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
Pragmatics & Beyond New Series Editor Andreas H. Jucker Justus Liebig University Giessen, English Department Otto-Behaghel-Strasse 10, D-35394 Giessen, Germany e-mail:
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Volume 87 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance: Narrative retelling by Ilana Mushin
Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance Narrative retelling
Ilana Mushin University of Melbourne
John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia
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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mushin, Ilana. Evidentiality and epistemological stance : narrative retelling / Ilana Mushin. p. cm. (Pragmatics & beyond, issn 0922-842X ; new ser. 87) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Discourse analysis, Narrative. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general--Indirect discourse. 3. Knowledge, Theory of. I. Title. II. Series. P302.7 .M85 2001 401’.41--dc21 isbn 90 272 5106 1 (Eur.) / 1 58811 033 8 (US) (Hb; alk. paper)
2001025605
© 2001 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P. O. Box 36224· 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P. O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
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Table of contents
Prefacexi Acknowledgementsxv Abbreviationsxvii Chapter 1 Introduction1 1.1 Subjectivity in language and linguistics1 1.2 Subjectivity and deixis5 1.3 Subjectivity and Cognitive Grammar7 1.4 Displaced subjectivity and the deictic centre11 1.5 Summary15 Chapter 2 Evidentiality17 2.1 Evidential semantics18 2.1.1 Evidentiality as source of information18 2.1.2 Evidentiality as attitudes towards knowledge23 2.1.3 Evidentiality and deixis33 2.1.4 Summary34 2.2 Evidentiality and grammaticalisation35 2.3 Grammaticalised evidentiality in three languages40 2.3.1 Quechua41 2.3.2 Makah44 2.3.3 Lhasa Tibetan47 2.4 Summary49
viii Table of contents
Chapter 3 Epistemological stance51 3.1 Evidential pragmatics and epistemological stance52 3.2 Types of epistemological stance58 3.2.1 Personal experience59 3.2.2 Inferential66 3.2.3 Reportive69 3.2.4 Factual74 3.2.5 Imaginative76 3.2.6 Towards a typology of epistemological stances79 3.3 Summary81 Chapter 4 Epistemological stance adoption in narrative retelling85 4.1 Goals of the narrative retelling study85 4.2 The corpus87 4.3 Evaluation of the retelling corpus95 4.4 Classification of clauses and the deictic centre97 Chapter 5 Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English103 5.1 Macedonian103 5.1.1 L-form past vs. simple past104 5.1.2 Reportive frames108 5.1.3 Evidential reported speech112 5.1.4 Summary114 5.2 Japanese115 5.2.1 Reportive frames115 5.2.2 Evidential reported speech116 5.2.3 Sentence final tte119 5.2.4 Adjectival predicate rashii123 5.2.5 Summary128 5.3 English128 5.3.1 Reportive frames129 5.3.2 Other extranarrative reportive strategies129 5.3.3 Reportive adverbials132 5.3.4 Summary132 5.4 Summary133
Table of contents
Chapter 6 Reportive strategies in narrative retelling135 6.1 The reportive density index135 6.1.1 Scope of narrative reportive strategies137 6.1.2 Scope of extranarrative evidential strategies142 6.1.3 Reportive densities145 6.2 The pragmatics of reportiveness149 6.2.1 Motivations for the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance in retelling150 6.2.2 Motivations for choosing reportive strategies161 6.3 Summary168 Chapter 7 Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance173 7.1 Narrative perspective174 7.1.1 Speech and thought representation175 7.1.2 Consistency of referring expressions190 7.2 Other factors contributing to the absence of reportive coding196 7.3 Summary197 Notes199 References203 Appendix A213 Appendix B217 Language index235 Name index237 Subject index239
ix
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Preface
This book is about how people talk about the status of their knowledge — their epistemological assessment of information. The linguistic category most associated with epistemological assessment is evidentiality. Evidential forms encode information about the way in which knowledge was acquired and the subsequent relationship between speakers and their knowledge of what they talk about. Evidentials also may code the effect that this has on the assessment of knowledge as true or reliable by both speakers and their audience. Tuyuca (adapted from Barnes 1984) (1) díiga apé-wi soccer play-3sg.visual ‘He played soccer (I saw him play) (2) díiga apé-ti soccer play-3sg.nonvisual ‘He played soccer (I heard the game and him but did not see him or the game) (3) díiga apé-yi soccer play-3sg.apparent ‘He played soccer (I have seen evidence that he played but I did not see him play) (4) díiga apé-yigi soccer play-3sg.secondhand ‘He played soccer (I obtained the information from someone else) (5) díiga apé-hiyi soccer play-3sg.assumed ‘He played soccer (it is reasonable to assume that he did)
The Tuyuca (Brazil and Colombia) examples in (1)–(5) illustrate the canonical morphological evidential system. There are five evidential ‘suffixes’. The visual, non-visual, apparent and second-hand suffixes all code something about the manner in which the speaker acquired the information they talk about. The
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assumed suffix (in (5)) codes a lack of specific evidence in addition to the strength of the speaker’s belief state regarding the proposition ‘he played soccer’. The system is a grammaticalised paradigm of evidential contrasts such that Tuyuca speakers must choose an evidential suffix or the utterance will be judged incomplete. Studies of evidentiality have primarily focused on the semantics and origins of grammaticalised systems like that found in Tuyuca (e.g. Chafe & Nichols (eds) 1986; Palmer 1986; Willett 1988; Aikhenvald & Dixon 1998), with lipservice paid to non-grammatical linguistic means of coding epistemological assessment in such languages, or in languages which lack grammaticalised evidential systems (e.g. Chafe 1986 for English; Aoki 1986; Kamio 1998 for Japanese). There has been very little investigation into the discourse pragmatics of evidentiality, grammaticalised or otherwise (exceptions include DuBois 1986; Biber & Finegan 1989; Hill & Irvine 1992). This focus of research into grammaticalised, morphological evidentiality means that we have good frameworks within which to describe formal and semantic properties of evidential phenomena cross-linguistically, and a good understanding of the etymology of certain morphological systems. But we have little empirical knowledge of how they function and the processes by which evidential forms acquire grammatical properties such as obligatoriness and morphologisation. More importantly, we have little knowledge of whether speakers of different languages use the same pragmatic principles in adopting evidential strategies or whether evidential pragmatics is dependent on the evidential phenomena available to speakers of particular languages. These questions relate to the extent to which speakers are constrained by the grammars of their language and are thus linked to the larger issues of the relationship between language structure, language use and cognition. This book aims to fill the gap through an exploration of the extralinguistic and discourse factors that motivate evidential use in a particular discourse context - narrative retelling. In this work, evidential forms are characterised as expressions of the epistemological stance of some conceptualising individual, typically the speaker. Epistemological stance is a notion developed within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics (esp. Langacker 1985, 1990, 1997), an approach to the study of language that assumes that linguistic structure is a reflection of conceptual structure. In this light, speakers’ choices of evidential strategy are taken as their conceptual construal of information on the basis of the pragmatic context. Epistemological stance thus provides the conceptual basis for the distribution of evidential phenomena in discourse.
Preface xiii
As a study of how speakers use language to express their relationship to knowledge, this book contributes to the study of linguistic subjectivity — how language is used to express the ‘voices’ of speakers and to represent the consciousness of story characters in narration. Chapter 1 is an introduction to the study of linguistic subjectivity, and the status of epistemological assessment in the expression of subjective viewpoints in discourse. Chapters 2 and 3 set the theoretical scene for the study of epistemological assessment. Chapter 2 presents a review of some classic approaches to evidentiality, including some brief descriptions of some well known cases of grammaticalised evidential systems in different languages. Chapter 3 introduces the notion of epistemological stance as a useful way of characterising both the semantics and pragmatics of evidentiality cross-linguistically. The second half of this book details the results of a cross-linguistic study of epistemological assessment in narrative retelling. Chapter 4 provides a description of the text corpus and its collection. The three languages chosen for this investigation — Macedonian, Japanese and English represent different types of evidential systems. Macedonian has a morphological evidential system incorporated into its verbal tense paradigm. Japanese represents a more complex system of evidential coding — its status with respect to grammaticalisation is somewhat controversial. English is a language which lacks any grammaticalised (morphological) evidentiality. The method of text collection controlled for source of information — the way in which speaker acquired knowledge of the story events. Tellers knew what they were talking about either because they had experienced events personally or because they had been told about the events by someone else. These differences in source of information were hypothesised to motivate the construction of particular epistemological stances: personal experience for personal stories and reportive for retold stories. The linguistic strategies chosen to express the adoption of these epistemological stances in the retelling context, was predicted to occur regardless of the type of evidential system available to the reteller by virtue of the language spoken. Chapter 5 is a description of the reportive strategies that were employed by the Macedonian, Japanese and English retellers who participated in this study. The results and discussion of the empirical investigation of the pragmatics of epistemological stance adoption are detailed in Chapter 6. Analysis of the narrative retelling corpus did indeed reveal that choice, frequency and distribution of evidential strategies was not simply a function of how the speaker acquired her information. Rather it was dependent on other textual and
xiv Preface
contextual factors. Most notable of these were the role of perspective taking and the storyteller’s assessment of her role as a storyteller in the interaction. The interplay between these pressures, and its consequences for epistemological stance adoption, is the main focus of Chapter 7.
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Acknowledgements
This book has evolved from my Ph.D. thesis developed at the State University of New York at Buffalo (Mushin 1998). I would like to acknowledge all of the people at SUNY and elsewhere who helped me along that journey: David Zubin, Matthew Dryer, Len Talmy, Erwin Segal, Wendy Baldwin, Jean Pierre Koenig, Gilles Fauconnier, Victor Friedman, Rick Floyd, Matthew Davidson, and Mitsuaki Shimojo. The research would not have been possible without my Macedonian and Japanese consultants: Robert Merkov, Val Srpcanska, Kazue Watanabe, Hiromi Arai and Sayaka Abe. The research was partially supported by the Mark Diamond Research Fund. Many thanks also to Lesley Stirling, Roger Wales, Kyoko Kawasaki, Tim Curnow, Elizabeth Traugott and the two anonymous reviewers for their help in bringing the work into its current form. I am grateful to Isjtar Conen and the staff at John Benjamins for their editorial support. Above all, loving thanks goes to my family who have been unflinchingly supportive over many years, and to Rod — your loving encouragement has helped me over the final hurdle.
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Abbreviations
acc cj comp con cop dat dem excl gen hesit ip l loc neg
accusative conjectural (Japanese) complementizer connective copula (Japanese) dative demonstrative exclamation genitive hesitation word interactional particle (Japanese) L-form past (Macedonian) locative negative
nom nom obj p part perf pp prog qp rsp sp subj top
nominalizer (Japanese) nominative (Macedonian) object (Japanese) past participle perfective pluperfect progressive question particle (Japanese) reported speech particle (Japanese) simple past (Macedonian) subject (Japanese) topic (Japanese)
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Chapter 1
Introduction
The aim of this book is to investigate how people talk about the status of their knowledge, first through a critical exploration of a range of approaches to the study of linguistic evidentiality, and then through an empirical study of evidential strategies in narrative retelling. Although this book is about epistemological assessment, and the range of linguistic strategies used to express it, I begin this work with a focus on evidentiality as the linguistic category par excellence for expressing the status of one’s knowledge. Indeed, one of the aims of this work is to identify some of the pragmatic factors that motivate the grammaticalisation of evidential meanings in some languages. However, one of the crucial points made here is that the expression of epistemological assessment is not exclusively the domain of evidentiality, and that other linguistic phenomena (such as deixis and reference) may also contribute to the overall epistemological stance, one takes towards some information. Epistemological stance is an aspect of a much more general domain — the expression of subjectivity in language. Linguistic subjectivity is the interpretation of linguistic expressions in terms of some cognisant observer, thinker, emoter, and, of course, speaker. Central to the analysis of evidentiality and epistemological stance in narrative is an understanding of their subjective properties, how they may be used by speakers to set up different viewpoints, and how they might be manipulated to represent different degrees of subjectivity. As a background to the subsequent discussion of evidentiality and epistemological stance, and the empirical analysis of their pragmatic properties in narrative retelling, this chapter provides an overview of the theoretical tools which will be used here to discuss the subjective properties of epistemological assessment.
1.1 Subjectivity in language and linguistics Linguistic subjectivity has often been defined in terms of the role the speaking subject plays in linguistic production. This is succinctly put in the following quote from Finegan (1995: 1),
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… expression of self and the representation of a speaker’s (or, more generally, a locutionary agent’s) point of view in discourse — what has been called a speaker’s imprint1 … the intersection of language structure and language use in the expression of self.
The idea that language expresses aspects of a speaking self, alongside its more detached function of symbolic representation, is a fundamental concept in many areas of linguistic theory. It is part of Bühler’s (1934) tripartite model of language: Darstellung (relationship between the object and the sign), Appell (relationship between receiver and sign), and Ausdruck (relationship between the sender and the sign). Figure 1.1 is an illustration of these relationships. objects and states of aVairs Expression (Ausdruck) Sender
Sign Appeal (Appell)
Representation (Darstellung) Receiver
Figure 1.1Adaptation of Bühler’s model of the semantic functions of language
Bühler’s model recognises that language functions to take the addressee into account (Appeal), including the ways that language can be used to affect and influence the addressee. This is a major premise of speech act theory (Austin 1962; Searle 1969; Grice 1975), but it also features in most communicative models of language, where one of the sender’s goals when emitting a linguistic signal is to maximise the receiver’s ability to decode the message. The most important element of this model in the context of the current work, is an acknowledgment of the expressive (Ausdruck) function of language. It is through the expressive function that the model also recognises the subjective properties of language, grounded in both speaker and addressee, The concept “things” or the more adequate conceptual pair “objects and states of affairs” does not capture everything for which the sound is a mediating phenomenon, a mediator between the speaker and the hearer. Rather, each of the two participants has his own position in the make-up of the speech situation, namely the sender as the agent of the act of speaking, as the subject of the speech action… They [speaker and addressee] are… partners in an
Introduction
exchange, and ultimately this is the reason why it is possible that the sound as a medial product has a specific significative relationship to each, to the one and to the other severally. (Bühler 1934 [1990]: 37)
Despite this early acknowledgment that a fundamental property of language lies in ability to express aspects of the speaker’s (and addressee’s) self in a particular speech situation, western linguistic theory has tended to downplay, or even ignore, the expressive function. It has rather focussed primarily on the representative function of language — the relationship between the sign and objects and states of affairs distinct from the speaker’s perception or experience of these objects and states of affairs, and secondarily on the appellative function through the study of linguistic pragmatics (e.g. Searle 1969; Grice 1975) and the subsequent schools of speech act theory and theories of pragmatic inference. One of the results of this focus has been the tendency for many contemporary theories of formal grammar to operate on the premise that grammatical structures arise independently of any ‘speaker imprint’. At the least, generative syntacticians are typically unconcerned with how syntactic structures represent aspects of the subjective self (exceptions among formal linguists include Kuno (1987), Sells (1987) and Stirling (1993)). But, as Bühler (1934), Jakobson (1960), Austin (1962), Bienveniste (1971) and many others have observed, speakers do not just neutrally and mechanically describe states and affairs in the world when they talk, using wholly objective and predetermined linguistic constructions. This view is best summarised in Lyons (1982: 102), … the term ‘subjectivity’ refers to the way in which natural languages, in their structure and their normal manner of operation, provide for the locutionary agent’s expression of himself and of his own attitudes and beliefs… Modern Anglo-American linguistics, logic and philosophy of language has been dominated by the intellectual prejudice that language is essentially, if not solely, an instrument for the expression of propositional thought.
It is useful to consider some of the ways that the expressive function of language is manifested in the linguistic signal. The two constructed utterances in (1) illustrate some features of language that help the addressee interpret the speaker’s subjectivity in a constructed interactive context. (1) (Two colleagues meet in a hallway) A: a. Guess What! I heard he got it! Isn’t that great? b. Eric got a job
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The utterances in (1) both convey the same information to the extent that they assert that a person named Eric has found employment. However the form of the utterance in (a) is significantly different from the utterance in (b). The form of the utterance in (a) provides many clues concerning the subjectivity of the speaker towards the information in the utterance and the speech situation, clues which are lacking in (b). Some of these include: i.The exclamation guess what! conveys the speaker’s emotional state (excitedness), and also indicates that perhaps the addressee ought also to be excited by this information. There is no overt indication of speaker emotional state in (b). Guess what! also marks the following information as ‘news’ — i.e. new information worth talking about. It expresses the speaker’s opinion that the hearer would be interested in the following information — that the hearer would wish to know about Eric’s job. There is no indication of the purpose of the utterance in (b). ii.In (a) the speaker overtly indicates that she knows that Eric got a job because someone told her (I heard…). The use of a general hearsay form however implies that the source of information was probably not Eric himself. However, since she is so excited about the news, the hearer can probably infer that the source was a reliable one. There is no indication of nature and status of source of information in (b). iii.In (a), the deictic use of he and it suggests that the speaker has presupposed that the hearer already knew something about Eric’s situation (e.g. that Eric had applied for a job) and that this knowledge would be sufficiently activated in the colleague’s mind to interpret the pronouns in he got it! In turn, the colleague must assume from the assertion he got it! that she should be able to decode the pronominal references, otherwise more information would have been given (following from Grice’s (1975) maxim of quantity). The speaker’s use of the anaphoric forms in (a) with no overt antecedents in the discourse assumes a significant amount of mutual knowledge between the speech participants (Clark 1992, 1996 and elsewhere). There is no such assumption of mutual knowledge in (b) where the fact that the utterance is about Eric and the state of his employment is made quite explicit. iv.The closing of the (a) utterance with a rhetorical question Isn’t that great? invites the hearer to share in the excitement and to respond to the news (e.g. Yes, he must be quite relieved, No, that’s the job I applied for; etc). There is no indication of what the speaker wants the hearer to do with the information in (b).
Introduction
v.The overall register of the (a) utterance as an expression of excitement and happiness for Eric’s sake implies that the speaker considers the hearer to be someone to whom it is appropriate to act excited (a fellow colleague rather than an undergraduate student, for example). There is no implication of the relationship between speaker and hearer in (b). In actual language use, regardless of genre, interlocutors, language and context, utterances always reflect the subjective relationship of the speaker towards the information and towards the speech situation.2 Hearers use these linguistic cues, in conjunction with their own background knowledge, to interpret the speaker’s subjective attitudes as part of their overall comprehension process. Subjectivity is thus a necessary component of any complete model of discourse production and comprehension.
1.2 Subjectivity and deixis In order for a hearer to interpret language as a reflection of the speaker’s subjective position, they must be able to orient the information with respect to themselves and the speaker. The ability of hearers to understand the orientation of information with respect to some fixed point, typically the actual speech situation, relies on the deictic function of language. As well as acknowledging the expressive functions of language, Bühler also recognised that some linguistic signs operate as ‘signposts’ to help guide interlocutors through, “this coordinate system of ‘subjective orientation’, in which all partners in communication are and remain caught up.” (Bühler 1934 [1990]: 118). Deictic expressions are those that function to index this information to some particular context, to ground information with respect to a here, now and I, rather than represent some object or state of affairs. Deixis is therefore a tool for signalling subjectivity, and subjective expression must rely on deixis for its correct interpretation. Deixis is a central category in the study of language and its linguistic properties have been well studied (e.g. Lyons 1977; Anderson & Keenan 1985; Fillmore 1997). The linguistic signs most commonly associated with deixis are those which orient addressees to the time and place of events and the identity of participants in those events relative to the actual speech situation: tense systems and time adverbials, demonstratives and location phrases locate events in time and space, pronouns and proper names identify participants. Some accounts of
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deixis also include forms associated with the expression of speaker attitude (‘mood’ and ‘status’), and the representation of speech events (‘evidential’) (e.g. Jakobson 1957). The deictic properties of evidential forms will be discussed further in Chapter 2. Studies of deixis in linguistics have primarily focussed on its manifestation in grammatical systems. For example, Jakobson’s (1957) classification of verbal ‘shifters’ was developed to account for those deictic categories which were represented in the (verbal) morphology of Russian (with a few exceptions). Anderson & Keenan’s (1985) descriptive classification of evidential categories similarly focuses on grammatical paradigms of deictic contrasts: pronominal systems, tense systems, demonstrative systems, etc. But deixis is not only a property of grammatical categories. Fillmore’s (1997) famous work on deixis has demonstrated that many lexical forms (e.g. directional verbs) also depend on context of utterance for their interpretation, and must therefore ‘count’ as deictic. Similarly, temporal words like yesterday and tomorrow are often used as canonical examples of temporal deictic expression in English since they too can only be interpreted with respect to some understood temporal reference point. Studies of deixis in linguistics have also primarily focussed on the manifestation of spatial and temporal orientations as ‘primary’ deictic dimensions, central to the indexation of the speaker and the speech event. Objects are near to us or far away, moving towards us or away from us. Events happen before we talk about them or simultaneously with locutionary acts. The grammaticalisation of space and time with respect to these categories reflects our human conceptualisations of these phenomena. This is reflected in the emphasis on spatio-temporal deixis in studies of linguistic deixis (e.g. Jarvella & Klein 1982; Weissenborn & Klein 1982; Rauh 1983; Grenoble 1998). But deixis need not be restricted to the orientation of the speaker, or some designated self with respect to time and space. For example, Anderson & Keenan (1985) include kinship expressions and honorifics as deictic cues since they index people in terms of their social relationship with respect to the speaker. One can cast the net even wider. Choice of linguistic forms is often mitigated by the relative rank, age, sex, kin type, etc. of speech participants. For example, adults talk to children differently than children talk to adults, often to the extent that it is possible to recognise that an adult is talking to a child just by their choice of linguistic forms. Thus use of language particular to a culturally determined social relationship can be used to index information to the subjective perspective of some conceptualising individual in a particular speech situation, and therefore can be analysed as having a deictic function.
Introduction
A conclusion one could draw from casting a wide net around the notion of ‘deixis’ is that all subjective phenomena are deictic phenomena, since they function to identify a ‘speaker imprint’ — a point of origin from which to interpret all expressions. One might question then whether there is a distinction to be made between deixis on the one hand, and subjectivity on the other. Clearly there is an entangled relationship between the deictic functions of language (its ‘orientation’ or ‘indexical’ function) and its subjective properties (its ‘expressive’ function). Nevertheless it is possible to make a distinction between forms which can only be understood with reference to some point of origin, and therefore rely exclusively (or almost exclusively) on the context of utterance for their interpretation, and forms which help to set up and maintain a deictic origin, but also function to express something of its character. This is what distinguishes more prototypical deictic expressions (like I, here and now, yesterday and tomorrow) from subjective phenomena like the exclamation ‘Guess what!’ in (1). In between, there are clearly some ‘fuzzy’ cases of linguistic phenomena which do more than simply index information to some fixed reference point, but which also have clear deictic functions. Evidentiality is one phenomenon that fits somewhere within this domain and the interplay between its deictic and subjective properties will be considered further in the next chapter.
1.3 Subjectivity and Cognitive Grammar The notion that subjectivity, as outlined above, can be used as an explanation for linguistic structure is a cornerstone assumption of Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1985, 1991, 1997), and it is within this particular framework that the subjective properties of evidentiality will be analysed here. Cognitive Grammar “equates meaning with conceptualisation” (Langacker 1985: 107). Its aim is to identify and represent the conceptual structures that are conventionalised in grammatical structures. The theory assumes that while actual states of affairs exist in the world, our ability to talk about them is restricted by our cognitive capacity. Language never represents what is actually in the world, merely our construal of these states of affairs. In the framework of cognitive grammar, subjectivity is described as pertaining “to the observer role in viewing situations where the observer/observed asymmetry is maximised” (Ibid.:107). This characterisation recognises that conceptualisers (= experiencers) may indeed be a part of the construal of a state
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of affairs (for example, when things happen to the conceptualiser or the conceptualiser performs some activity). As a part of the scene, they become “onstage” objects of conceptualisation. Conceptualisers of some state of affairs may also exclude themselves, remaining merely “offstage” conceptualisers (e.g. when they describe the actions of other individuals that do not affect themselves). Thus, the most subjective utterances are those in which there is no conceptual distance between the conceptualiser and the experience, resulting in a true ‘expression’ of the conceptualiser’s ‘self ’. The most objective utterances are those in which there is a maximised distinction between the conceptualiser and the object of conceptualisation, resulting in a representation of states of affairs in the world. The diagrams in Figure 1.2 represent these maximally different construals of states of affairs as ‘viewing arrangements’. In (a), the ‘optimal viewing arrangement’, the conceptualiser (S) remains ‘offstage’ to view some object construal (O) in the scene. Since it is ‘offstage’ in the construal, information about the conceptualiser will not manifest in the linguistic signal. This arrangement represents the maximum asymmetry between conceptualiser and object of conceptualisation. The (b) diagram in Figure 1.2 represents an ‘egocentric viewing arrangement’ where the conceptualiser includes herself in the construal of the scene. Since she is now part of the conceptualisation of the state of affairs, ‘onstage’ in the construal, information about the conceptualiser will feature in the linguistic signal. The asymmetry between the conceptualiser and the object of construal is diminished in this representation. b.
a.
S
O
S
O
Figure 1.2“Optimal” and “egocentric” viewing arrangements (from Langacker 1985: 121)
Cognitive grammar also recognises that in actual speech, expressions are grounded in the context of utterance. In actual speech, it is not just the conceptualiser who may be represented inside or outside the scope of the conceptualisation. It is the whole speech situation, including its participants that can be represented as part of, or separate from, the overall object of conceptualisation. The degree to which the ground is included in the
Introduction
conceptualisation marks the extent to which it is manifest in the linguistic signal. Deictic expressions like here, now, I and you, which make overt reference to the current speech situation represent the maximum representation of the ground as part of the conceptualisation. (2) a. b. c. d.
Vanessa jumped across the table Vanessa is sitting across the table from Veronica Vanessa is sitting across the table from me. Vanessa is sitting across the table. (from Langacker 1990: 17 & 20)
The results of these differences in subjectivised conceptualisation with respect to linguistic structure are illustrated in (2). Of the four sentences in (2), (a) is the most objective event representation since it makes the most minimal reference to the conceptualiser of the description. The sentence in (b) is slightly more subjective because it includes a conceptualised path from Veronica to Vanessa as part of the conceptualiser’s construal of the scene, even though there is no actual motion in the description. Evoking a conceptualised path necessarily evokes the presence of the conceptualiser to some degree. (c) is even more subjective because the conceptualiser/speaker is herself included in the description (across from me). (d) is the most subjective of these sentences because it presupposes the conceptualiser/speaker as the point of reference without actually coding her (i.e. the default interpretation of across the table is across the table from me). Langacker’s approach to subjectivity has developed to account for synchronic grammatical structures in language. His approach thus recognises that conceptualisers may construe a scene as distinct and different from themselves (scene is “onstage”, conceptualiser is “offstage”), or they may construe information as including themselves in the scope of the conceptualisation (scene and conceptualiser are “onstage”). The more the conceptualiser is ‘presupposed’ in the construal of a scene, the more subjectified is the utterance, and more easily interpreted as an expression of the conceptualisers’ ‘self ’. This Cognitive Grammar model of subjectivity also has significant implications for understanding grammaticalisation — the process by which linguistic forms (typically lexical items) get built into the morphosyntax of languages — and processes of semantic change. Traugott’s work on grammaticalisation in English (Traugott 1989, 1995) has demonstrated the usefulness of ‘subjectification’ as an explanation for paths of grammatical and semantic change. She defines subjectification as,
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a pragmatic-semantic process whereby meanings become increasingly based in the speaker’s subjective belief/state/attitude towards the proposition, in other words, what the speaker is talking about. (Traugott 1995: 31)
The subjectification of meaning follows from other general tendencies of semantic change: the tendency for meanings to become more based on evaluation, perception or cognition (e.g. Sweetser’s (1990) mapping of the shift from deontic (psychosocial) to epistemic (psychological) modal meanings); the tendency for meanings to become more based in the context of utterance and the act of text construction (e.g. mental state verbs that become speech act verbs). Subjectification takes these changes one step further and grounds them specifically in the experience of the speaker. Subjectification thus accounts for the processes by which English modal auxiliaries (shall, will, must) and speech act verbs (insist, observe) acquired epistemic meanings that initially made reference to some kind of external evidence (“weakly subjective” – Lyons 1982), to epistemic meanings that implied the speaker’s own beliefs (“strongly subjective” – Lyons 1982). For example, Old English did not have many epistemic forms and those which could be described as epistemic were only ‘weakly subjective’, concerning “possibility in a world independent of the speaker.” (Traugott 1989: 42). It is not until the 17th and 18th centuries that epistemic forms easily interpreted as the speaker’s attitude are found. (3) and (4) are examples of strongly subjective uses of modals. (3) 1623 Middleton, Spanish Gipsie I, i.16: the fruit muste be delicious, the tree being so beautiful. (from Traugott 1989:42, citing Visser 1963–73: 1810) (4) 1762 Goldsmith, Cit. World lxxi: This must have been a sad shock to the poor disconsolate parent. (from Traugott 1989: 42, citing Visser 1963–73: 1811)
Where Langacker’s work focuses primarily on the patterns of construal that underlie subjectivity in language structure, Traugott’s work highlights the pragmatic significance of subjectivity for both language structure and language change. Epistemic meanings arise by the conventionalisation of certain conversational implicatures, If one says You must go meaning ‘You are allowed to go’ (the Old English sense of *motan), one can be following (or be inferred to be following) the maxim ‘say not more than you must’… If one says You must go in the meaning ‘You ought to go’, one can implicate that one believes/concludes that it is true that you have to go. (Traugott 1989: 50–51)
Introduction
Subjectification is a factor driving semantic change precisely because there is always a strong implicature that what the speaker says is representative of her beliefs/conclusions, and therefore her attitude. Many linguistic phenomena are sensitive to the construal of information as more or less subjective. The category of deixis (Jakobson 1957; Lyons 1977; Anderson & Keenan 1985; Fillmore 1997) is probably the most thoroughly investigated with respect to its subjective properties, and will be discussed in more detail in Section 1.4. below. Other linguistic categories of particular interest include logophoric pronouns (Sells 1987; Stirling 1993), switchreference (Stirling 1993), unbound reflexives (Zubin et al. 1990; N.Li 1992; Kemmer 1995), predicate types (Field 1997), complementiser choice (Givon 1980; N. McCawley 1978; Watanabe 1984), aspect (Wright 1995) and tense (Fleischman 1990). This list is by no means exhaustive and there are many other linguistic categories that may benefit from an analysis which takes into account the subjective properties of language. (For more recent overviews and bibliographies of the range of linguistic phenomena sensitive to subjectivity see Fludernik 1993, Stein & Wright 1995, Duchan et al. 1995.) The subjective properties of evidential forms has been addressed to some degree in the literature (Palmer 1986; Chafe 1986; Aksu-Koç & Slobin 1986; Friedman 1995). Evidential forms are indicators of subjective construal because they express the speaker (or conceptualiser)’s own perspective with respect to their knowledge of the information encoded in some proposition.
1.4 Displaced subjectivity and the deictic centre From Bühler to Langacker, the characterisations of subjectivity presented in this chapter have assumed the actual speaker as the deictic origin/conceptualiser, the zero coordinates representing here, now and I. In many, if not most, speech situations, speakers do take themselves and the current speech situation as the reference point for deictic orientation. However, it is also true that speakers may shift reference points to some coordinate that does not represent themselves as the here, now and I, resulting in the representation of someone else’s attitudes and experiences. The ability to ‘displace’ subjectivity, construing states of affairs from a vantage point other than the here and now of the speaker/conceptualiser, is a crucial property of human cognition and human language. Without this property, it would be impossible to express past events, future hopes and
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expectations, or the point of view of someone other than oneself. These are often identified in introductory Linguistics textbooks as one of the fundamental properties of human language (e.g. Finegan et al. 1992, Fromkin et al. 1999), alongside other essential properties such as arbitrariness of signs and the discreetness of symbols. Much of the work on displaced subjectivity in linguistics has focussed on deictic coding in the distinction between direct and indirect speech representation (e.g. Coulmas (ed.) 1986a; Janssen & van der Wurff (eds) 1996), as in (7) and (8) below. (7) Peter said that he had had a wild party last Saturday at his house. (8) Peter said, “I had a wild party last Saturday at my house.”
In (7), which is an example of indirect speech representation, the time of the party (last Saturday) is indexed to the time of the actual utterance (with the actual speaker) and is not related to when Peter (the reported speaker) may have said anything. Similarly, the use of third person pronouns in the content of speech clause indicates that the information about whose party and whose house is indexed to the actual speaker, not the reported speaker. The deictic orientation of the content of speech as indexed to the speaker of that utterance is maintained such that it can be argued that only the actual speaker’s subjectivity is expressed. In contrast, in (8), which is an example of direct speech representation, the time (last Saturday) and place (my house) of the party and the identity of the host (I) are indexed to the time, place and identity of the reported speech event (i.e. the time and place when Peter made the utterance). They are not indexed in any way to the time and place of the person who uttered (8). The deictic orientation of the content of speech expresses the subjective stance of the reported speaker, who might not be the actual speaker. This is a shift away from the ‘default’ deictic orientation which takes as its centre the time and place of the actual speech situation, and the identity of the actual speaker. Examples of direct speech representation like (8) are perhaps the most straightforward evidence that subjective language is not simply about the indexation of information to the identity, attitudes and experiences of the actual speaker (the zero coordinates of the here, now and I, in Bühler’s deictic field). The deictic properties of subjective language enable it to be displaced, to represent a perspective other than the current speaker. Subjectivity in language is not simply about representing the speaker’s imprint. Rather it is about the representation of some designated experiencer’s imprint, which may or may not
Introduction
0coincide with the identity of the speaker. It is for this reason that, like Langacker and others, I prefer the terms ‘conceptualiser’ or ‘experiencer’ when talking about the one whose subjectivity is being expressed. The notion of subjectivity displaced from its default deictic orientation is not restricted to the contrast between direct and indirect speech representation. The use of displaced subjectivity in discourse has long been associated with styles of literary language, as complex configurations of subjective ‘voices’ (omniscient narrator, character, character-as-narrator, etc.) are represented in fictional narrative and other literary genres. Most of the work on the linguistics of subjectivity and its displacement, and the role of discourse perspective in the choice of linguistic forms, has been published by linguistically-oriented literary theorists (e.g. Hamburger 1973; Cohn 1978; Banfield 1982; Ehrlich 1990; Fludernik 1993). They have shifted the focus of the study of subjectivity in literature from its affects on literary style to its linguistic structure. Since its origins are in literary theory, the study of the linguistics of displaced subjectivity has focussed almost exclusively on written literary narrative. However, as the analysis of narrative retelling presented in the second half of this book will demonstrate, the displacement of subjectivity is not restricted to literary discourse, but is also an essential property of narration, regardless of the medium (this point is also made in Polanyi 1982, Tannen 1989 and Labov 1997). Thus the frameworks developed to account for the relationship between linguistic structure and the subjective orientation in literary language can be applied to spoken language, albeit with some modification to account for properties of interactive discourse. The particular approach to the displacement of subjective orientation adopted in this work is a version of Deictic Centre Theory, which was developed by the SUNY Buffalo Centre for Cognitive Science to analyse displaced subjectivity in fictional narrative (Rappaport et al. 1989; Duchan et al. 1995). The ‘Deictic Centre’ approach was formulated in the context of cognitive science research to augment existing theoretical approaches to literary subjectivity with principles from linguistics, psychology and computer science. Deictic Centre Theory, … attempts to model the consequences of shifting deixis out of the here/now, I/you of face-to-face interaction, where it is anchored in real world situations, into the purely textual realm of fiction, where deixis is cut adrift from its physical moorings… (Zubin & Hewitt 1995: 130)
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The deictically oriented ‘window’ onto the narrative world crucially involves the establishment of an origin of perspective (a shifting localisation in time, space and person from which the story world is exposed to the reader/listener…” (Ibid.: 132)) and an object of perspective (“the content of the deictic window as it moves along its spatial, temporal and personal coordinates throughout the story world” (Ibid.: 132)). By definition, the object of perspective must lie somewhere within the story world. The origin of perspective however may lie anywhere within or without the story world. These properties of the deictic window are illustrated in Figure 1.3 below.
story world
origin of perspective
content, or object of perspective
Deictic Center “Window:” spatial/temporal/psychological coordinates establishing a deictic perspective in the narrated world.
Figure 1.3Object and origin of perspective (from Zubin & Hewitt 1995)
The degree to which the origin and the object of perspective are located in the same domain represents the degree to which information is perspectivised. The issue of degree of perspectivisation is particularly relevant to the study of narrative where different characters know different things, some of which are accessible to anyone in the discourse world (including the speaker and hearer in the actual speech situation) — objective facts about the story world. Other types of information are accessible to only one character (e.g. their thoughts and
Introduction
perceptions). In this case, the speaker and hearer in the actual speech situation have the ‘privilege’ of seeing into that character’s mind. Both the origin and content of perspective are interpretable only through the distribution of deictic forms, including forms with “lexicalised” deictic interpretations such as directional verbs (Fillmore 1975) and epithets (Banfield 1982). (See Wiebe 1989 for a comprehensive list.) Deictic Centre Theory is thus a practical application of the basic semantic notions of subjectivity and deixis to account for the use of language in fictional narrative. However, the principles of Deictic Centre Theory apply equally well to conversational narratives, and narratives of ‘lived experiences’. It has proven very useful for the analysis of the distribution of evidentiality and other epistemological stance coding in narrative retellings.
1.5 Summary Subjectivity has been characterised here as part of the conceptual structure of information that lies behind its linguistic ‘packaging’. The subjective construal of some state of affairs is mitigated by the limitations of the human cognitive system and is structured according to the nature of this system. To this extent, it is a cognitive notion. The subjective representation of information in particular discourse contexts is also mitigated by both the speaker’s assessment of the context (including her relationship to her interlocutor(s)) and her assessment of the information itself. Speakers legitimate their utterances by indexing the information appropriately to the relationship between interlocutors and the speaker’s involvement (or lack of involvement) in the information they communicate. The adoption of a particular subjective orientation thus relies on contextual, social and cultural knowledge necessary for the interaction, and not just knowledge of the linguistic system. To this extent, subjectivity is a pragmatic notion. Subjectivity therefore touches on both cognitive and pragmatic phenomena that motivate the deployment of linguistic forms in discourse. It is not itself a linguistic category nor does it pick out a formally identifiable set of morphemes in a language. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of systematicity in the effect of subjectivity on both the choice of linguistic forms and on their grammatical and semantic development. Understanding the nature of this systematicity, and the extralinguistic phenomena that motivate it is one of the questions driving this research into the pragmatics and linguistic expression of epistemological assessment that is the major theme of this book.
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Chapter 2
Evidentiality
This chapter presents a critical overview of evidential semantics and evidential systems as they have been defined and discussed in the Linguistics literature. The term ‘evidentiality’ has been in use for some time. Jacobsen (1986) accredits Franz Boas with the first use of the term in descriptive linguistics, applied to Kwakiutl “suffixes expressing subjective relation … those expressing subjective knowledge” (Boas 1911: 443, cited in Jacobsen (1986: 4). However, like many other labels for ‘linguistic’ categories (e.g. aspect, topic, focus), there has been considerable confusion in how to apply the term to particular linguistic phenomena. For some, evidentiality is a minor grammatical category manifested in a small number of the world’s languages. For others, evidentiality is a semantic category which may be realised grammatically, lexically or paraphrastically. For example, Floyd (1993) applies the term to a grammaticalised paradigm in Quechua (see Section 2.3.1 for a detailed description), while Biber & Finegan’s (1989) English ‘epistemic markers’ represent the range of parts of speech in English. The semantic scope of evidentiality has also been lacking a definitive analysis. For some, forms are evidential only if they specify type of source of information. For others, the core semantics of the evidential category centre around the expression of speaker attitude towards knowledge rather than the specification of knowledge acquisition. Part of the lack of consistency in the semantic characterisation of evidentiality arises from its lack of a clear definition as a grammatical category. It is therefore unclear whether forms should be characterised as evidential only if evidentiality can be analysed as part of the core semantics of a form, and not as a conventional implicature. But the lack of consistency in defining evidential meanings also arises from the lack of a clear boundary between specification of source of information and specification of speaker attitude towards the information and its source. The first half of the chapter examines how the semantics of evidentiality has been characterised in previous work, focusing particularly on how the relationship between source, speaker attitude and evidentiality. Although it is typically assumed that evidential categories involve both source of information and
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speaker commitment in their semantics, discussion of their relationship has been somewhat sporadic. A more comprehensive analysis of the relationship between source and attitude, as encoded in evidential forms, is attempted here. The second half of the chapter presents a description of grammaticalised evidential systems in three unrelated languages: Quechua, Makah and Tibetan as an illustration of different types of grammatical evidential systems that have been the focus of the study of evidentiality in linguistics so far.
2.1 Evidential semantics Chafe (1986: 262) divides approaches to evidential semantics into two types: broad and narrow. The narrow definition restricts evidential meaning to specification of types of source of information and says little else about the epistemological relationship of the information to the speaker. The broad interpretation, the one adopted in this study, is that evidentiality reflects speaker’s attitudes towards knowledge. The main differences between the two characterisations are whether one considers the core semantics of evidential forms to be about where speakers got their information from (i.e. the source of information) or whether they are about the expression of the speaker’s subjective relationship to the information they express (i.e. the status of their knowledge). This is based in part on how the information was acquired, but also on other contextual factors. 2.1.1 Evidentiality as source of information The term ‘evidentiality’ literally evokes the notion of evidence: the sources from which a speaker comes to know something that they want to express in language. Jakobson (1957 [1971]: 135) describes evidentials as coding, “… the alleged source3 of information about the narrated event.”. Bybee (1985: 184) similarly describes evidentials as “…markers that indicate something about source of the information in the proposition.” The Quechua and Tuyuca examples in (1) and (2) represent canonical evidential meanings according to source-based characterisation. (1) Quechua waala-man-shi Wankayuu-ta li-n’a tomorrow-goal-rep Huancayo-acc go-fut ‘He will go to Huancayo tomorrow, (I hear).’
(Floyd 1993: 204)
Evidentiality
(2) Tuyuca díiga apé-wi soccer play-3sg.dir ‘He played soccer (I saw him play)’ (adapted from Barnes 1984, cited in Palmer 1986)
In both (1) and (2), the forms in boldface mark that the propositional information in the sentence was acquired from some particular type of information source. In (1), the clitic -shi codes that the prediction that he will be going to Huancayo tomorrow is known because someone else told the speaker. In (2), the Tuyuca suffix -wi codes that the speaker knows that he played soccer because he actually saw the event — a direct visual perceptual experience. The source-based interpretation of evidentiality has often been used as the semantic basis for describing morphological evidential systems, like those found in Quechua and Tuyuca. The Quechua and Tuyuca evidential forms in (1) and (2) are both members of paradigmatic sets that have been described as dividing semantic space according to sources of information. Willett’s (1988) typological study of grammaticalised evidential systems has been particularly influential in maintaining a characterisation of evidentiality in terms of source of information. Although Willett does classify evidentiality as a modal category, “it participates in the expression of the speaker’s attitude.” (p. 52), his typology of evidential semantic categories is firmly grounded in types of information source — categories like visually attested, reported, inferring — rather than in types of attitudes — categories like certainty, confirmation and commitment. The source-based analysis of evidentiality seems to work well for that small subset of languages, which have paradigmatic morphological evidential marking. Typologically, these systems are the exception however (Palmer 1986). For many languages, it is unclear whether a true grammatical contrast has developed to distinguish types of information source or whether information source is merely a conventional implicature. The fuzziness of the distinction is more apparent when one casts the net wider to encompass languages with less morphologically elaborate means of coding evidential meanings, as in the case of some Balkan Slavic languages (e.g. Macedonian and Bulgarian). Macedonian and Bulgarian are two languages whose evidential forms have been analysed not only in terms of information source (e.g. Lunt 1952; Jakobson 1957; DeBray 1980), but also in terms of ‘speaker attitude’ (Friedman 1986; Fielder 1995). Since Macedonian reportive evidentiality will be considered in some detail in the second half of this book, it is useful to consider the existing semantic analyses of its evidential system here.
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The evidential system in Macedonian and Bulgarian is encoded in the system of past tense contrasts: a ‘simple past (sp)’ inflection and an ‘L-form past (l)’ construction, consisting of an inflected auxiliary (based on sum ‘to be’), and an L-participle.4 The semantic contrast in these tense forms has been described as ‘witnessed/non-witnessed’, or ‘non-reportive/reportive’ — both making reference to information source. The examples in (3) and (4) illustrate this distinction. The evidential contrast, as traditionally described, maps nicely onto Willett’s (1988) typology of evidential categories: the simple past codes information as ‘attested’ while the L-form past codes information as ‘indirect/reported’. (3) Taa mesi leb 3sg bake:sp bread ‘She baked bread (I saw her do it).’ = attested (4) Taa mesila leb 3sg bake:l bread ‘She baked bread (I didn’t see her do it/I was told).’ = indirect/reported
Friedman (1986: 168) however argues that information about the nature of the source is contextually determined in this opposition, It will be shown that evidentiality, which in the languages discussed here actually involves the speaker’s attitude toward the information — source being an implication derived from that attitude — is the chief contextual variant meaning … in the Balkan Slavic… These forms are thus not special evidential forms but rather forms contextually capable of expressing evidentiality…
Under this interpretation, the semantics of the evidential distinction in Balkan Slavic is based on the degree to which the speaker has a strong belief state with respect to the information, and is therefore prepared to ‘vouch for’ it, and not on the type of source per se. According to Friedman, interpretation of the nature of the source arises pragmatically from the conventional inference that if speakers are prepared to vouch for information, then they are likely to have directly witnessed or experienced the events/situations they describe. Information which is not ‘vouched for’ is less likely to have been experienced directly. The contrast illustrated in the translations of (3) and (4) ought to be reinterpreted as in (3¢) and (4¢). (3¢) Taa mesi leb 3sg bake:sp bread ‘She baked bread (I vouch for it).’
Evidentiality
(4¢) Taa mesila leb 3sg bake:l bread ‘She baked bread (I am not prepared to vouch for it).’
Under this interpretation, the contrast in the Balkan system is not about source of information at all, but rather about speaker attitude. However, rather than reanalyse evidentiality as the coding of speaker attitude (i.e. adopt a ‘broad’ interpretation of evidentiality), Friedman’s solution was to reanalyse the Balkan Slavic system as one that reflects status (Jakobson’s 1957 ‘shifter’ category of speaker attitude) and to avoid the term ‘evidential’. This strategy is clearly derived from the fact that Friedman was working from Jakobson’s ‘narrow’ characterisation of evidentiality (within which the Balkan system was classified as evidential and not status), and was also concerned with identifying the core semantics (‘gesamtbeteutung’) of the contrast. Friedman’s reanalysis of the Balkan ‘evidential’ system in terms of status, with ‘information source’ as an implicature, also derives from the crosslinguistic tendency for direct perceptual or private experience to result in a strong belief in the information. In contrast, information that is acquired by indirect means, such as hearsay, results in a weaker belief in the information (Givon 1982; Willett 1988). In the case of Macedonian and Bulgarian, the simple past codes a strong belief in the validity of the information, thereby implying that it was acquired by direct experience. Friedman’s analysis of Balkan Slavic illustrates some of the problems with a narrow source based interpretation of evidentiality — that it fails to capture this relatively systematic relationship between specification of source of information and type of ‘speaker attitude’ (also called ‘evaluation’, ‘validation’ or ‘commitment’). The strength of the relationship between direct experience/witness evidentials and a high degree of speaker commitment makes it tempting to analyse direct evidentiality as reflecting a more ‘subjective’ representation of information, since it encodes information that the speaker/conceptualiser was experientially involved with. Under this interpretation, indirect evidentiality would represent a less ‘subjective’ perspective, since it encodes information outside of the speaker/conceptualiser’s immediate domain of experience. However, there is plenty of evidence that the relationship between evidential categories and speaker commitment is not fixed, at least with respect to some evidential categories. While the use of a direct evidential may necessarily represent the speaker as more involved, and the use of a reportive evidential may represent the speaker as more ‘distanced’ from the event, these parameters
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are independent of whether the speaker believes in the validity of the information they report. This is especially true of reportive evidentiality where degree of speaker commitment is also connected to assessment of the reliability of the reported source. For example, (5) Barbara told me that John was cheating on his wife.
The way that interlocutors will assess their knowledge of the proposition in (5), John cheating on his wife, is wholly dependent on what they know about the reported speaker, Barbara. If Barbara is known to be a trustworthy source, then the hearer might infer that the speaker of (5) believes in the truth of John’s infidelity — a high degree of speaker commitment. If the reported speaker is known to be an untrustworthy gossip then the hearer might infer that the speaker is dubious of the truth of the information. The degree of speaker commitment in these reportive cases may also be signalled prosodically (and by facial expression in face-to-face interaction). This further suggests that the relationship between reportive evidentiality and degree of speaker commitment is not fixed by the nature of reportiveness per se. The degree to which reportive information represents a strong or weak commitment to validity also depends on the relationship between the interlocutors themselves in the current speech situation. What is at issue here is the assumption of ‘authority’ over information, where the person who has assumed ‘authority’ is understood as taking responsibility for the validity of the information. Assumption of authority, whether it is self- or socially-imposed, will inevitably affect not only the evidential categories that are used, as some of the papers in Hill & Irvine 1992 have shown, but also how they are used to implicate differing degrees of commitment. For instance, the person who has lesser authority in a speech situation might cite someone who has more authority in order to demonstrate their strong belief in the information, and perhaps to persuade their interlocutors to adopt the same degree of commitment and belief. In this context, reportive evidentiality would be used to ‘vouch for’ information, the converse of what would be expected according to Friedman’s analysis of the Balkan system. In other contexts, speakers might choose to represent information as a report in order to signal their lack of commitment or ambivalence with respect to their epistemological assessment. In these circumstances they shift responsibility for the truth of the information to the reported speaker, essentially washing their own hands of the affair. This is the expected outcome under Friedman’s analysis of the semantic/pragmatic relationship between source of information and speaker attitude towards that information.
Evidentiality
It seems then that evidential meanings analysed in terms of source of information do not behave as a coherent category with respect to their relationship to attitudinal notions like ‘commitment’. Direct evidential meanings do seem to consistently imply a high degree of speaker commitment cross-linguistically, while reportive evidentiality is independent of the degree to which speakers might ‘vouch for’ the information they assert. In terms of this relationship, only the inferential evidential category can be analysed as semantically (vs. pragmatically) representing the strength of speakers’ degrees of commitment to the validity of their knowledge (cf. reportive evidentials, where degree of commitment is contextually determined). Evidence for this is found in epistemic modal systems, which code inference as a category but which differentiate differing degrees of speaker attitude within that category. For example, in (6), the use of an English epistemic modal signals that the speaker infers that s/he was hit by the addressee but the choice of modal form (must or might) signals a difference in the degree of speaker commitment to the validity of the assertion ‘you hit me’. Similarly in the Quechua example in (7), the use of the ‘conjecture’ marker -chi signals not only that the speaker has inferred that the addressee hit him but also that the speaker makes this assertion with a certain (low) degree of ‘commitment’. (6) You must/might have hit me. (7) Quechua Qam-pis maqa-ma-shka-nki-chi you-also hit-1obj-perf-2-inf ‘You also hit me (a group of people beat me up and I think you were one of them)’ (adapted from Weber 1986: 139)
This raises the issue of whether epistemic modals should be classified as evidential at all, since their meanings seem to have more to do with speaker attitude or commitment than with specification of source of information. Under a strict ‘source-based’ account of evidentiality, their meanings would fall outside the parameters for according evidential status. However there have been alternative proposals for the scope of evidential semantics which cast a wide net to incorporate forms like the epistemic modals illustrated above. 2.1.2 Evidentiality as attitudes towards knowledge One solution to the problems associated with source-based definitions of evidential meanings is to consider these meanings to fall within the larger
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domain of ‘Epistemic Modality’ — this being the basis for linguistic categorisation. As epistemic modals, evidentials encode both speaker attitude and type of source of information — other epistemic meanings encode aspects of speaker attitude without making reference to source of information. This is the approach adopted by Palmer (1986) and Willett (1988) in their typologically based accounts of grammaticalised evidentiality. Another solution is adopted by Chafe (1986). He extends the notion of evidentiality to cover all phenomena associated with the expression of epistemological assessment, independent of its grammatical status. Let us consider these approaches in more detail. Palmer’s (1986) aim was to develop a typological account of the coding of ‘epistemic modality’ in grammatical systems. He states that the term epistemic, “…should apply not simply to modal systems that basically involve the notions of possibility and necessity, but to any modal system that indicates the degree of commitment by the speaker to what he says.” (p. 51)
Evidentiality is classified ‘narrowly’ as those forms that encode types of source of information. However Palmer’s classification differs from the source-based characterisations, described in the previous section, since it includes evidentiality under the broader rubric of ‘epistemic modality’. This classification thus explicitly acknowledges that the coding of source of information may also reflect the strength of speakers’ assessment of their knowledge resulting from the manner of knowledge acquisition. However the independence of source of information and degree of speaker commitment has already been established. Palmer’s claim that the whole ‘purpose’ of evidentiality is to code speaker commitment is therefore too strong. Degree of speaker commitment is an inference that can be drawn from evidential use, but one cannot claim that speakers use evidentials solely to express their degree of commitment. Epistemic modals, which do not distinguish types of knowledge source, fall under the rubric of ‘judgments’. These are forms that represent the reasoning of speakers that led them to the propositions expressed in an utterance — an expression of an inferential epistemological stance. Judgments are further subclassified into deductions, assumptions and speculations. English epistemic modals are judgments according to this classification. Epistemic modal systems in different languages therefore are characterised according to whether they code categories of evidentiality, judgments or both in their grammar. For example, Palmer classifies English as a language with only judgments in its grammatical system (i.e. the epistemic modal auxiliaries), while German is claimed to have both evidentials and judgments. Palmer also notes
Evidentiality
that it is rare for languages to code only evidentials in their grammar (Tuyuca is cited as an exceptional case) and that most grammatical systems of epistemic modality distinguish some combination of evidentials and judgments. It is also common for morphological evidential paradigms such as those found in Quechua, Tuyuca and many other Amerindian languages to also contain nonepistemic forms such as negative morphemes, counterfactuals, etc. Palmer’s division of labour between evidentials and judgments results in a taxonomic classification of epistemic modality: if a (grammatical) form expresses ‘speaker commitment’ then it is an epistemic modal; if it explicitly mentions source of information then it is an evidential, otherwise it is a judgment. Figure 2.1 is my formulation of Palmer’s model of Epistemic Modality as a classification of the semantics of grammatical forms. Epistemic Modality
Judgements
Evidentials
Sensory Evidence
Hearsay
Speculation
Deduction
Figure 2.1Palmer’s model of Epistemic Modality
Palmer’s goal was to classify a range of grammatical forms cross-linguistically. One advantage of his system is that it accounts for grammatical systems where a single paradigmatic set includes forms that code source of information and forms that make no reference to source of information. Despite the neatness of this classification, Palmer does note that the boundaries between evidentials and judgments are often blurred, It would be a futile exercise to try to decide whether a particular system (or even a term in a system in some cases) is evidential rather than a judgment. There is often no clear distinction because speakers’ judgments are naturally often related to the evidence they have. (Ibid.: 70)
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Some difficulties in equating evidential forms with particular interpretations of speaker belief states in the previous section have already been identified. The English examples in (8) and (9) are a further illustration of this problem, (8) It looks like it is going to rain (= Speaker has used visual evidence (e.g. dark clouds in the sky) to support the prediction that it is going to rain). (8¢) It looks like it’s going to rain, but I’ll be glad if you tell me I’m wrong. (8≤) ??It’s going to rain, but I’ll be glad if you tell me I’m wrong. (9) It looks like I’ll have to completely rewrite this chapter. (= Speaker deduced that she will have to rewrite the chapter based on a range of unspecified evidence). (9¢) It looks like I’ll have to completely rewrite this chapter, but I’ll be glad if you tell me I’m wrong. (9≤) ??I’ll have to completely rewrite this chapter, but I’ll be glad if you tell me I’m wrong.
Both (8) and (9) begin with the construction It looks like, which literally makes reference to information acquired by visual perception. Furthermore, use of It looks like in (8) and (9) has an implication that the speaker has a weaker belief state with respect to the proposition than if they had not used the construction at all. This is illustrated in (8¢) and (9¢), where the speaker opens herself to the possibility of contradiction, thus indicating a fairly weak belief state. In (8≤) and (9≤), which lack the evidential qualification, it is odd for the speaker to allow for the possibility of contradiction. The most natural interpretation of (8) is that the speaker knows that it is going to rain because s/he has seen some evidence of it (e.g. rain clouds). The construction is therefore ‘evidential’, under a ‘source of knowledge’ based interpretation. In (9) however, it is difficult to infer what kind of visual evidence was involved in concluding that the speaker will have to rewrite a chapter. My first interpretation of the evidence behind (9) is that the speaker was told (by her adviser or editor) that she would have to write the chapter over, but it may also be the speaker’s own assessment of her work. Both (8) and (9) involves situations where it can be assumed that the speaker has deduced the proposition from some kind of evidence. The nature of the source of information is less predictable in (9) than in (8), despite the use of the same epistemic modal construction. Does this make the construction It looks like… a judgment rather than an evidential? Palmer classifies deductions as a kind of judgment, yet he also concedes that use of some
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evidentials implies deductive thinking. The construction It looks like… is an example of an epistemic construction that has properties of both evidentials and judgments, depending on the context. However the same issues arise for grammaticalised epistemic modals, illustrated in (10) and (11) below. As in the examples in (8) and (9) above, the nature and recoverability of the source of information is more or less determined by the context. In (10), the context makes clear what kind of evidence was used. In (11), it is less recoverable. (10) [Looking in my purse] I must have lost my wallet! [= I have evidence that led me to the conclusion that I left my wallet at the store. The evidence is visual (i.e. I cannot see my wallet)] (11) [Hearing the football scores] Morris must be happy about his football team’s victory. [= I have evidence that led me to the conclusion that Morris would be happy about his football teams victory. (not clear what the evidence is)]
Another example of the problems in identifying ‘evidential’ forms separate from ‘judgments’ is the aforementioned Balkan Slavic past tense contrast (simple past vs. L-form). Friedman’s (1986) analysis, framed in terms of ‘speaker commitment’ rather than ‘evidentiality’, suggests that the Balkan Slavic past tense system is predominantly judgmental rather than evidential, in Palmer’s sense. (Although Palmer 1986 does not include Balkan Slavic in his survey.) However, there is a conventionalised matching of past tense forms to different types of evidence in Balkan Slavic. The use of simple past forms is associated with direct experience while the use of L-form past is typically associated with hearsay contexts. Willett’s (1988) typology of grammaticalised evidentiality provides one solution to the problems identified above with a simple ‘evidential/judgment’ classification of epistemological assessment. Willett proposed a tripartite classification of evidentiality into direct/attested, indirect/report and indirect/ inferring (each of which may be further divided into subcategories). By including the category of ‘inferring’ as an evidential category, Willett avoids the problem of deciding which forms overtly express source of information and which only imply the use of evidence to reach a conclusion.5 It is clear that the focus on grammatical systems, evident in both Willett and Palmer’s typologically based analyses of evidentiality, has led to divisions between those forms which express types of source of information and those forms which
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express speakers’ attitude towards knowledge. However, the amount of overlap and fuzzy boundaries between what counts as ‘type of evidence’ and what counts as ‘speaker commitment’ suggests that this distinction is to some extent an artefact of the questions generated by such typological research. Another significant attempt to characterise evidentiality in terms of speaker attitude is found in Chafe (1986), which is a description of English evidential coding. As English has few, if any, grammaticalised markers of evidentiality, Chafe’s characterisation is necessarily unrestricted with respect to the range of forms he considers as potentially evidential. The result is a characterisation of evidential semantics that is independent of any grammatical realisation. Chafe’s characterises evidentiality as expressions of “attitudes towards knowledge” (p. 262). Like Palmer, Chafe’s characterisation assumes the belief state of the speaker resulting from the assessment of knowledge (= ‘speaker commitment’) as the primary motivating force behind the semantics and pragmatics of evidentiality. However his classification of evidential categories is significantly different from Palmer’s subdivision of evidentials and judgments. In Chafe’s classification, evidentials reflect an inherent relationship between source of knowledge (sensory evidence, language, hypothesis) and type of knowledge (belief, induction, hearsay, deduction). These relationships are illustrated in Figure 2.2. Source of Knowledge
Mode of Knowing
??? evidence language hypothesis
belief induction hearsay deduction
reliable k n o w l e d g e unreliable
Knowledge Matched Against
verbal resources expectations
Figure 2.2Chafe’s model of Knowledge Types (Chafe 1986: 263)
The acquisition of different types of knowledge invariably leads to an assessment of its reliability, “the likelihood of its [information] being a fact” (p. 264). The assessment of reliability is therefore also a part of the meaning of evidential forms. For example induction (type of knowledge acquired by
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perceptual experience) is listed as more reliable than hearsay, which is more reliable than deduction (type of knowledge based on hypothesis). According to Chafe’s formulation then, the semantics of evidentiality is about matching of our type of knowledge, established on the basis of some source, against some measure of reliability. That evidentiality is not simply about source of information, but rather what types of knowledge result from these sources, acknowledges that evidential meanings are not simply derived from facts about the world. It implies that cognitive and pragmatic processes mediate between the way that information is actually acquired and the way we talk about the status of our knowledge. The acknowledgment of conceptual and pragmatic bases for evidential coding comes close to the notion of ‘epistemological stance’ which is outlined in the next chapter. Epistemological stance is about the construal of information with respect to the status of knowledge. To this extent it fits with Chafe’s definition of evidentiality as about ‘attitudes towards knowledge’. However the relationships between ‘source of knowledge’ and ‘mode of knowing’ in Figure 2.2 imply a direct relationship between the type of knowledge we have and the way we talk about it, ignoring the subjective and indexical properties of evidentiality. This model implies, for example, that reportive information must be talked about with reportive marking. There is little room for the kinds of mismatches between source of knowledge evidential expression that occur in actual discourse. Chafe makes a distinction between induction, the type of knowledge based on evidence, and deduction, the type of knowledge based on hypothesis. Since induction is based on some kind of evidence, it includes evidential expressions of both direct perception (which specifies the type of evidence) and inference (which does not indicate the nature of the evidence). In contrast, deduction involves reasoning beyond inference from evidence since is matches the evidence against some kind of hypothesis. These evidential contrasts are represented in (12a–c). (12) (from Chafe 1986: 266, 267, 269) a. I see her coming down the hill (Induction: Sensory Experience) b. It must have been a kid (Induction: Inference) c. Adults presumably are capable of purely logical thought. (Deduction)
Chafe’s model does not account for the fact that all modes of knowing must be based on some kind of evidence. The difference between sensory experience, inference and deduction is not so much a difference in modes of knowing as the
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degree to which the speaker has assimilated the information and integrated different kinds of evidence to formulate her representation of some state of affairs. The model also does not acknowledge that even beliefs and opinions must have some basis in evidence. In (13), one must infer that the speaker has some reason, some evidence, for forming the opinion that she had been misjudging another person, even if that evidence is not made explicit by the epistemic construction ‘I think’. (13) I think that a lot of the time I’ve been misjudging her. (from Chafe 1986: 266)
Finally, while Chafe’s model represents how different types of evidence relate to types of knowledge and to degrees of reliability, and provides examples from discourse to illustrate the range of linguistic devices that were used in his corpus, it does not systematically develop the relationship between use of forms and the evidential meanings they convey. Some of the examples are categorised inconsistently, suggesting the lack of a systematic means of classification (14) The idea that Christ followed this pattern, and Moses, I suppose. (15) Well Schaeffer it seems had just found the latest article from the Smithsonian.
Chafe classifies (14) as a belief/opinion, marked with the parenthetical I suppose. However this sentence can also be interpreted as a deduction based on hypothesis (I presume/hypothesise could be substituted for I suppose here). The example in (15) however is classified as hearsay even though the parenthetical it seems does not directly convey information acquired by someone else’s utterance. Descriptions of evidential systems in individual languages have shown that the specification of the nature of the source varies from a clear semantic component (e.g. Quechua reportive clitic -shi) to a pragmatic inference (e.g. Balkan Slavic). These differences can be represented as a scale which measures the strength of the pragmatic connection between the nature of source of information and the amount of contextual information required to recover this information from the use of the evidential form. At one end of the scale are forms that have one and only one interpretation of source of information, regardless of context. The Quechua form -shi is almost always only used for information whose source was someone else’s utterance (Floyd 1993). In the middle of the scale are forms for which source is inferred from context, but there is a default interpretation of source type. For example, evidence associated with the use of the English construction it looks
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like… depends on both the nature of the embedded information and the context of utterance, but the default interpretation is that the form was acquired by visual evidence. Similarly, the source of information associated with use of the Balkan Slavic L-form past must be inferred by context, but the default interpretation of the L-form past is that information was acquired by hearsay (Friedman 1986). At the far end of the scale are forms whose use implies that knowledge of the information was acquired by some means (as opposed to being inherently known), but the nature of the evidence is difficult to recover. These are truly inferential forms which focus on the speaker’s own cognitive processes as they assess the available evidence. English epistemic must is a form of this type — its use implies that the speaker had some evidence for the proposition expressed, but the nature of the evidence is not implicated in the use of the form unless there is strong contexualisation. Context Free Interpretation of Source Quechua -shi
Highly Contextualized Interpretation of Source Balkan Slavic -L form
English Epistemic Must
Figure 2.3Relationship between degree of context and interpretation of source
The scale in Figure 2.3 represents the degree to which source of information is recoverable from the use of an evidential form, independent from context. In a context-free study, the number of forms that can be classified as narrowly evidential is small, since they can only include those forms that code source of information regardless of context. In a discourse based study of evidential use, all of the types of forms described above are ‘evidential’ since they all express information about the speaker’s assessment of the nature of the source, even if the actual source is not specified. The broad definitions of evidentiality in both Chafe (1986) and Palmer (1986) focused on the expression of a speaker’s belief in the validity of their knowledge as the primary meaning of evidential forms. Here it has been argued that speakers’ commitment to their belief in the validity of information is an epiphenomenon to the more basic role of evidentiality as a marker of epistemological classification and assessment, and that ‘speaker commitment’ is not an inherent part of evidential meaning.6 Of evidential categories, only inferring
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evidential forms were shown to inherently code speaker’s belief in the validity of information. The association of speaker beliefs with inferential forms suggests a converse relationship between the degree to which source and speaker commitment is recoverable from the choice of evidential forms. Evidential forms that encode specific information about the nature of the source of information are less likely to also encode specific information about epistemological status. In contrast, evidential forms for which the source of information is only recoverable in context are more likely to encode a consistent degree of speaker commitment. For example, forms like English epistemic must, which was high on the contextuality scale in Figure 2.3, necessarily involve some interpretation of the speaker’s belief state (here a strong commitment to the information being valid). Conversely, forms like Quechua -shi, which are low on the contextuality scale of source interpretation do not necessarily code the speaker’s belief state (merely reportiveness). Note that the hypothesis does not predict what degree of commitment a highly contextual evidential will encode. It may be high (as in epistemic must — Peter must be having a party), or it may be low (as in epistemic might — Peter might be having a party). Figure 2.4 below is an augmentation of Figure 2.3 that accommodates the relationship between degree of contextualisation required for the interpretation of source and the degree to which the use of the form implies a particular degree of speaker commitment. Highly Contextualised Interpretation of Source
Context Free Interpretation of Source
Quechua -shi
Weak implication of degree of speaker commitment
Balkan Slavic -L form
English Epistemic Must
Strong implication of degree of speaker commitment
Figure 2.4Relationship between context, interpretation of source and implication of attitude
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The relationship between source of information and speaker commitment presented above avoids both the assignment of evidential forms into discreet categories (like evidentials and judgments) and the assertion of a necessary link between source of information and speaker commitment. Most of the studies of evidentiality presented in this chapter have focused solely on the semantic properties of grammatical evidentials. They have focused only on those categories that have grammatical reflexes in language, and have shifted focus away from evidentiality expressed by other means and the status of information that lacks overt evidential coding. This may explain the lack of discussion of the expression of ‘fact’ or ‘culturally shared knowledge’, which are categories of knowledge that often lack any evidential coding. But the broad characterisation of evidentiality as the categorisation of attitudes towards knowledge is not restricted to grammaticalised forms. Nevertheless the fact that evidential categories may be expressed grammatically, and that the categories which have become grammaticalised are fairly robust cross-linguistically is significant. It indicates the salience of epistemological status as a conceptual category and the salience of coding particular knowledge types in different language communities. 2.1.3 Evidentiality and deixis The identification of evidential semantics with epistemic modality provides one dimension of classification. Evidentiality can also be characterised as a deictic category, one that functions to index information to some point of origin (Bühler’s ‘origo’). Some types of deixis function to index information to the spatio-temporal coordinates of the origo (eg. demonstratives and temporal adverbs). Other types of deixis index information to the participants in the speaking event (e.g. first and second person pronouns). Evidential markers are deictic because they index information to the conceptualiser who makes an epistemological judgement. In context, the choice of evidential categories (e.g. witness or report) serves to select the deictic origin — the one from which all temporal, spatial and identifying information can be calculated. The deictic properties of grammatical evidential markers have been recognised for a number of languages (e.g. Jakobson (1957) for Bulgarian, Schlichter (1986) for Wintu, Woodbury (1986) for Sherpa, Floyd (1993) for Quechua, Grenoble (1998) for Russian). However, descriptions of the deictic nature of evidentiality have been given relatively little focus in the literature, compared with its epistemic modal nature. Perhaps this is because evidentiality
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is not a prototypical deictic category. The semantics of prototypical deictic markers like personal pronouns I and you, can only be understood in terms of indexicality. That is, they have no meaning outside of their function to point out the current speaker and addressee. Evidential markers clearly have some semantic content independent of their indexical function — the categories of source of information and their associated meanings of epistemological assessment that have been discussed in the earlier sections of this chapter. These epistemic aspects of evidential meaning imbue evidential forms with subjective meanings that go beyond simply the establishment and maintenance of the ‘origo’, determining whose epistemological perspective is being expressed. The epistemic modal aspect of evidential meaning does not however detract from the usefulness of evidentiality to enable the speaker to maintain and shift the point of origin from which the propositional information modified by the evidential marker. For example, the Quechua reportive evidential clitic -shi in (1) (repeated below) enables the hearer of this utterance to index the propositional information he will go to Huancayo tomorrow to an origo that is someone other than the current speaker (the origin of the hearsay), in addition to its meaning as a marker of information acquired by someone else’s linguistic input. Use of the direct evidential clitic -mi in this context would point to the current speaker as the origo of the information (perhaps implying that the current speaker had divine knowledge of the subject’s intention to go to Huancayo). (1) Quechua waala-man-shi Wankayuu-ta li-n’a tomorrow-goal-rep Huancayo-acc go-fut ‘He will go to Huancayo tomorrow, (I hear).
(Floyd 1993: 204)
It is these deictic properties that allow evidentiality to be used as a tool to represent information from particular perspectives, to mark shifts in discourse perspective, and to enable hearers to interpret the status of information with respect to some person’s epistemological assessment of it. Some of the applications of these functions will be addressed in the latter chapters of this book. 2.1.4 Summary I have outlined some of the issues associated with the characterisation of evidentiality as a semantic category focussing in particular on two aspects of evidential meaning that have been discussed in the Linguistics literature on
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evidentiality: modal (including specification of source of information and speaker/conceptualises’ assessment of information based on their knowledge status); and deictic (indexical functions). One of the main themes of this discussion has been to highlight how difficult it is to provide a coherent description of evidential meaning within a strictly semantic model. As an index of some conceptualiser’s subjective viewpoint (e.g. so-called ‘speaker attitude’), evidentiality is bound up with the contextualisation of language in real world contexts. Like other deictic categories, the semantics of evidentiality can only be understood alongside a detailed account of its pragmatic properties. Once we understand how evidential markers are used by speakers, we will be in a better position to understand both the meanings of particular evidential markers and the range of meanings that are encoded in grammaticalised evidential systems.
2.2 Evidentiality and grammaticalisation The linguistic study of evidentiality has been primarily concerned with the status of evidential forms and evidential meanings in morphological systems — systems in which a paradigmatic contrast in evidential meanings can be found. These are generally regarded as being grammatical evidential systems, in the sense that they form paradigmatic meaning contrasts, and are typically described as obligatory components of clause structure. Studies of grammatical evidential systems have focused on the underlying semantics of the forms (Givon 1982; Anderson 1986), on the development of a typology of evidential categories (Palmer 1986; Willett 1988) and on the processes which have led to their status as a grammatical category (Schlichter 1986; Gordon 1986; Mithun 1986; Thurgood 1986; Nichols 1986; Willett 1988; Traugott 1989). Truly independent grammatical evidential systems are rare in the world’s languages and their absence in European languages has led to a confusion of descriptions in languages, especially Amerindian languages, where such systems are clearly present. The characterisation of evidentiality as a grammatical category in a language is complicated by the extent to which discrete evidential meanings may be mapped onto a discrete set of morphemes. It is often that case that evidential meanings are fused with other grammatical meanings within the same paradigm. For example, some grammatical tense and aspect systems may acquire evidential meanings (e.g. DeLancey 1986; Friedman 1986; Woodbury 1986; Willett 1988). This is the case in Balkan Slavic, where the L-form past
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tense has a conventionalised evidential meaning in addition to its meaning as a tense marker. Are these forms less grammatically evidential as evidential systems that do not reflect other, non-evidential grammatical meanings? Palmer (1986) did not include such systems in his discussion of evidential meanings. However, Willett (1988) did include languages like Bulgarian in his survey. Evidential meanings are also manifested in a wide range of lexical forms and paraphrastic constructions. These may occur in addition to morphological evidential forms in a language, but will be utilised even in languages that lack a clear paradigmatic set of evidential distinctions. For example, in Japanese (Aoki 1986) evidential meanings are coded with lexical nominals, adverbials and predicates, grammatical particles and morphological verb derivation. The same evidential meaning can be coded with more than one type of form, as in (16) where the nominal soo (da) and the sentence final particle tte both code that the information it is going to rain was acquired by hearsay. The difference between soo da and tte is pragmatic: soo da tends to be used in formal and literate contexts while tte only occurs in informal conversational language. (16) ame ga huru soo da / tte rain subj fall hearsay ‘(It said that) it is going to rain.’
The variation in the means by which languages encode evidential meanings raises the question: Why should evidential meanings be incorporated into the structure of the language — either as a separate grammatical paradigm or as part of the complex meaning of another verbal category? Adequate characterisations of the meanings and functions of evidentiality as a linguistic category need not assume any degree of grammaticalisation. Nevertheless, there is clearly something significant about the fact that evidentiality has become a grammatical category in some languages — a restricted choice speakers must make in order to fulfil the rules of their grammar. In order to answer the question of why evidential meanings do become built into the grammar of languages, we need to establish some criteria for recognizing grammatical evidentiality in individual languages. But identifying properties of grammatical status have purposes more far reaching than typological classification. Any study which aims to capture processes of language change, especially the processes of grammaticalisation must be able to qualitatively describe the state of linguistic forms synchronically, addressing the question ‘at what stage in the grammaticalisation process is such and such a form?’. The method of describing the grammatical status of evidential forms
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outlined below is aimed at providing a consistent way of answering that question. This will be followed by illustrative descriptions of such systems in three languages well known for their evidential systems: Makah, Quechua and Tibetan. Hopper (1991) offers a challenge for any attempt to identify grammatical states within a dynamic framework of grammaticalisation, If grammar is not a discrete, modular set of relationships, it would seem to follow that no set of changes can be identified which distinctively characterise grammaticization as opposed to, say, lexical change or phonological change in general. The only way to identify instances of grammaticization would be in relation to a prior definition of grammar; but there appear to be no clear ways in which the borders which separate grammatical from lexical and other phenomena can be meaningfully and consistently drawn.7 Hopper (1991: 19)
In this statement, Hopper implies that, given the fact of continuous language change, it is useless to try and identify synchronic grammar. His interest lies in the processes by which lexical forms acquire the properties associated with grammatical forms in the evolution of language. It is true that the boundaries between what is grammatical and what is lexical are not easily drawn. However it is possible to gather formal, semantic and pragmatic criteria which together present a picture of a fully grammaticalised linguistic item in contrast with items that display fewer grammatical characteristics. The following list provides a guide to checking the grammatical status of forms cross-linguistically. Forms which conform to all of the criteria may be described as fully grammaticalised. Forms which do not conform to any of the criteria are unambiguously lexical. It is assumed however that many forms will conform to only a subset of the listed criteria, occurring somewhere between fully grammatical and fully lexical status. In these cases, the forms are considered to be ‘partially’ grammaticalised. It is also theoretically possible for a single form to behave more like a grammatical form under certain discourse conditions and behave more like a lexical item in other contexts. An example of this type would be verbal forms which can operate as primary predicators (main verbs) but also may occur in verbal clusters or as auxiliary verbs in certain contexts. The list thus provides a means of identifying both the grammatical status and the grammatical type of sets of evidential forms in different languages by its characterisation in terms of a limited set of properties. Grammatical status informs us of the degree to which a form is grammaticalised (forms which satisfy all criteria are the most grammaticalised). Grammatical type informs us of the general structural properties of the form in question. For example, the
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past tense suffix -ed in English is highly grammaticalised according to the listed criteria. Its particular configuration of grammatical properties allows it to be classified as a verbal inflectional morpheme. Once identified and classified, it is then possible to formulate hypotheses about the behaviour of these forms in discourse based on their configuration of grammatical properties. The classification system adopts five independent properties to determine the grammatical status of linguistic forms. These are based on current theoretical principles of grammaticalisation (e.g. Lehmann 1985; Traugott & Heine (eds) 1991; Hopper & Traugott 1993).
a. Closed class A closed class is a small set of forms to which it is difficult to add new forms. In contrast, lexical categories are ‘open’ in the sense that they are an unlimited set which is easy to through creative word generation and regular derivational processes. For example, prepositions comprise a closed class in English. Prepositions are limited in number and new prepositions are only occasionally and gradually added to the current set. In contrast, nouns are an open class to which it is easy to add forms either by creative use of language or by regular morphological derivation. Closed class items are thus more grammaticalised than open class items.
b. Morphosyntactic restrictiveness Grammaticalised forms tend to occur in fixed morphosyntactic slots. If the form is morphologically bound as an affix, then it occurs in a fixed slot in the word, typically in paradigmatic contrast with affixes of the same grammatical category (e.g. tense suffixes in Macedonian - saka ‘want’ (3sg.pres), sakashe ‘wanted’ (3sg.sp), sakala ‘she (had) wanted (apparently)’ (3sg.l) ). If the form is morphologically bound as a clitic then it occurs in a syntactically defined position, also in paradigmatic contrast with other clitics of the same category (e.g. Quechua evidential clitics — see Section 2.3.1). Free forms are restricted in their combinatory properties. Combinations of lexical forms produce compounds whose meaning as a whole is different and not totally predictable from its parts. The semantics of combinations of grammaticalised forms are more transparent and predictable than the compounding process for lexical items (e.g. preposition into vs. compound fishpaste). Furthermore the combinatory power of lexical forms is far greater than for grammaticalised
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forms. Virtually all nouns and verbs can contribute to compounds in English whereas only a few prepositions combine with each other and with open class items (into, across from, a shoe-in, a stakeout, a turn-off, etc.)
c. ‘Bleached’ semantics The semantics of grammaticalised forms are typically described in terms of abstract schematic representations. For example, the semantics of prepositions in English typically code abstract spatial relations between concrete items. Furthermore the use of grammaticalised forms tends to have predictable semantic consequences (e.g. progressive aspect morphology predictably adds a meaning of continuance over time to any event verb). Lexical items tend to have more complex meanings that are not predictable from the use of that item (i.e. they are more contextually sensitive).
d. Hyperextension of use Fully grammaticalised forms occur obligatorily when the morphosyntactic and semantic conditions for their use are met, regardless of whether they contribute to the message pragmatically. For example, all verbs must be tense-marked in English even if the time of the event relative to the time of speaking can be determined by other linguistic and pragmatic factors. They are hyperextended because their use is determined by the language rather than the dictates of the context and communicative intent of the speaker. Forms which are not fully grammaticalised may only occur when their use actually contributes something to the message. For example, although Mandarin Chinese lacks a fully grammaticalised tense system, speakers may use temporal adverbials to indicate time of event when the context demands it. These adverbials are not typically analysed as grammatical forms even though their use is highly restricted. In contrast, English must code tense in every main clause.
e. Reduced form Grammaticalised forms may be free morphemes (e.g. prepositions), but there is a cross-linguistic tendency for grammatical forms to be less phonologically robust than full lexical items (e.g. they are likely to manifest as clitics or affixes). In contrast, lexical items tend to be free morphemes, or the roots of multimorphemic words.
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These five properties are intended to identify grammaticalised morphological forms in synchronic language use. It is not intended to be exhaustive. It is clearly biased in favour of grammaticalised morpheme classes, the manifestation of most evidential systems described as ‘grammaticalised’. These properties are less useful for the analysis of syntactic constructions in terms of grammaticalisation. However the list was developed on the basis of well-attested evidence of the processes by which lexical items move towards grammaticalisation (e.g. Traugott & Heine (eds) 1991; Hopper & Traugott 1993). This work shows that the process of grammaticalisation involves movement towards all five of the properties outlined in the checklist above: a. Movement to a closed class — As lexical forms become specialised for specific grammatical purposes they lose properties associated with their original lexical class and develop new properties independent of that class. (i.e. ‘decategorialization’ Hopper & Traugott 1993) b. Movement to Morphosyntactic Restriction — “paradigmaticization” and “fixation” (Lehmann 1985) c. Movement to more ‘Bleached’ Semantics — “generalization of meaning” (Hopper & Traugott 1993) d. Hyperextension of Use — “obligatorification” (Lehmann 1985) e. Movement towards Form Reduction — Tendency for free morphemes to become bound as they become more grammaticalised (“Condensation” Lehmann 1985, noun–affix, verb–affix paths described in Hopper & Traugott 1993). These criteria for identifying grammaticalised forms were designed to be universally applicable. Like most meanings associated with grammatical categories (e.g. tense, aspects, number, gender etc.), the cross linguistic coding of evidential meanings spans the gamut of linguistic phenomena from lexical verbs to adverbs to uninflected particles to clitics and also derivational and inflectional affixes.
2.3 Grammaticalised evidentiality in three languages This section illustrates the descriptive usefulness of the five properties of grammaticalisation by examining the grammatical status of evidential markers in three unrelated languages for which grammaticalised evidentiality has been described — Quechua (Andean), Makah (Wakashan) and Lhasa Tibetan
Evidentiality
(Tibeto-Burman). These three languages are typologically representative of the range of grammatical (morphological) evidential systems found in the world’s languages.8 The formal and semantic properties of the grammatical evidential markers in each of the three languages is matched against the criteria for grammaticalisation established to determine the degree of grammaticalisation (its grammatical status) and the nature of the grammaticalised system (its grammatical type). It must be stressed that the following descriptions of the grammatical evidential forms in these languages are only a part of the complete set of linguistic strategies a speaker may use to express evidential meanings. Just as the existence of a fully grammaticalised tense system in English does not preclude the existence and use of other lexical temporal deictic terms (e.g. temporal adverbials), the existence of a grammaticalised evidential category (or categories) does not mean that the language lacks other means of marking evidentiality. The tendency in linguistics has been to identify categories on the basis of their formal properties rather than their functional properties. The two may overlap, which is interesting, but it is rarely the case that the burden of a particular communicative function is carried by only one type of form. 2.3.1 Quechua Quechua is a highly agglutinative suffixing language.9 Evidential forms are bound enclitic morphemes. There are three clitics: -mi ‘direct experience, -shi ‘reported/hearsay’ and -ch(r)a/-chi ‘inference’. Both Weber (1986) and Floyd (1993) concur that the semantics of the evidential forms prototypically invoke some relationship between the speaker and the propositional information in terms of the source of that information: for -mi, the source is direct witness or experience; for -shi, the source is another speaker; for -chra /-chi, the source is some indirect external evidence which allows for speaker conjecture. The sentence in (17) illustrates this contrast. Note that the use of evidentials does not affect the propositional information that ‘it will die’. The only difference between (a), (b) and (c) is the invoked relationship between the speaker and the information in terms of the nature and status of the source of that information. (17) wañu-nqa-paq-mi (a)/shi (b)/chi (c) die-3fut-fut-evid a. said by the diviner ‘(I assert that) it will die’
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b. said by someone who brings the diviner’s prediction ‘(I was told that) it will die’ c. said in response to the diviner or to the messenger ‘(perhaps) it will die’ (from Weber (1986: 138))
Quechua evidential forms are described as clitics rather than suffixes because they can attach to lexemes of any word class. In (18), the first instance of the evidential clitic -mi is attached to a noun phrase while the second -mi is attached to a verb. (18) Hatratruu-mi wataraykaa. wataykamar-mi aywamusha on:bush-dir I:am:tied tying:me-dir she:went ‘I am tied on a bush. Having tied me (here), she went.’ (from Weber 1986: 145)
Weber (1986) argues that although evidential clitics often occur on the first word of a clause, their position in a sentence is governed by the ‘information profile’ of that sentence. Evidential clitics occur on rhematic material only and cannot precede forms which are marked as ‘topic’ with the clitic -qa, as in the extreme example of (19) where the reportive evidential clitic -shi is ‘pushed’ to the end of the clause by a sequence of -qa marked words. (19) chawrana-qa puntatruu-qa trayaruptin-qa wamrata-qa mayna-shi so:already-top at.the.peak-top arriving-top child-top already-rep diosnichi-qa heqarkaykachisha syelutana-shi our:God-top had:taken:her:up to:heaven:already-rep ‘When she (the witch) reached her peak, God had already taken the child up into heaven.’ (from Weber 1986: 145)
The Quechua evidential system has been described as ‘obligatory’, in the sense that all acceptable Quechua sentences require an evidential clitic. The obligatory use of evidentials in Quechua is illustrated in (20), which contrast the acceptability of (a) (clitic only) and (b) (clitic and verb of perception) with the unacceptability of (c) (verb of perception, no clitic). The direct evidence clitic -m(i) must be used, even when the source of information is explicitly represented paraphrastically.10 (20) a.
Akshru-kta-m talpu-la potato-acc-dir plant-past ‘He planted potatoes (i.e. the speaker saw him planting)’
Evidentiality
b. Akshru talpu-ya-a-ta-m lika-la-a potato plant-imperf-pmot-acc-dir see-past-1 ‘I saw him planting potatoes.’ c. *Akshru talpu-ya-a-ta lika-la-a potato plant-imperf-pmot-acc-dir see-past-1 *‘I saw him planting potatoes.’ (from Floyd (1993: 75))
Floyd does note that Quechua utterances often occur with no evidential coding in ‘free-flowing’ conversation. However, speakers listening to taped conversation do not judge such language use to be acceptable, or at least ‘good Quechua’, even when they are judging their own utterances. Floyd notes that they will typically correct such language to an utterance that is coded with an evidential clitic. This is evidence that even if speakers do not use grammatical evidential coding in every sentence or utterance, the category of evidentiality is deeply salient and part of speakers’ knowledge of what constitutes ‘proper’ use of Quechua. So just as tense is an obligatory deictic category in English, evidentiality is an obligatory deictic category in Quechua. Table 2.1 matches the description of Quechua presented here against the criteria for grammaticalisation. Table 2.1Summary of Quechua evidential clitics Criteria a.Closed class
Grammatical properties of forms Yes
Only three evidential forms (a small number of other clitics may fill this slot eg. negative -cha)
b.Restricted morphosyntax Yes
Evidential clitics occur on the first non -qa marked constituent. Use of -qa is dependent on information structure. (cf. Weber 1986)
c.Bleached semantics
Yes
Evidential meanings are highly schematic and context sensitive (Floyd 1993)
d.Hyperextended use
Yes
Evidentials occur even in the presence of specific references to source of information.
e.Reduced form
Yes
Evidential forms are bound and uninflected.
There is plenty of evidence that the set of Quechua evidential clitics is fully grammaticalised. Grammatical evidential systems like the Quechuan one are found mainly in the Western Hemisphere (North and South America) where
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many languages with paradigmatic sets of bound evidential morphemes have been described. (Although the evidential system described for the Australian language Ngiyambaa (Donaldson 1980) also seems to fit into this type.) It should be noted that this summary of the properties of grammatical evidential forms in Quechua is not a description of the whole evidential system. There are ways of coding evidential meanings other than the three clitics. Despite the claim of grammatical obligatoriness, not all clauses of Quechua discourse are coded with an evidential clitic in actual discourse. This could mean that there is no evidential coding for those clauses. However it could also mean that other evidential strategies are used. Unfortunately descriptions of Quechua have tended to downplay or ignore other kinds of evidential strategies in favour of the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of the grammatical system. 2.3.2 Makah Makah (Wakashan) is a polysynthetic language with a rich set of bound morphemes that have been described as evidential (Jacobsen 1986). They include: -pi.d “inference from physical evidence, usually the result of the inferred action, which has not itself been witnessed” (22); -q’adi “evidence obtained from hearing, in the absence of direct experience or visual observation” (23); -wa˜t “indicates hearsay, and occurs constantly in the narration of tales and myths” (24); -xa˜-…-š » “probability inferred from unspecified evidence” (25); -a˜…šk’ub “belated awareness of a fact” (26). The absence of a form indicates direct experience (21). (21) wiki.c’axaw » ‘It’s bad weather’ (seen or experienced directly) (22) wiki.c’axakpi.d » ‘It looks like bad weather’ (with an inference from physical evidence) (23) wiki.c’axakq’ad‘ » ‘i ‘It sounds like bad weather’ (on the evidence of hearing) (24) wiki.c’axakwa.d » ‘I’m told there’s bad weather’ (the quotative) (25) wiki.c’axak » xa.š » ‘It’s probably bad weather’ (general inference from unspecified evidence) (26) wiki.c’axakšk’ub » ‘My goodness! It’s bad weather!’ (surprise/sudden realisation) (from Jacobsen 1986: 10, 19 and Davidson (p.c.))
Evidentiality
Jacobsen characterises these forms as “… outer layer suffixes that occur just preceding the pronominal endings, and following suffixes indicating causative, passive and tense.” (Jacobsen 1986: 11), but they may in fact have the morphological status of clitics. Whether clitic or suffix, the forms demonstrate a high degree of morphosyntactic restrictiveness. Like Quechua, Makah speakers intuitively feel that evidential coding is a required part of an utterance, even when their use is pragmatically redundant. Even decontextualised forms given in elicitation sessions tend be marked evidentially. For example, when asked how to say “the wood burned” in Makah, a speaker used the -pi.d suffix to indicate that even out of context, she was required to indicate that she could only know that the wood burned because she had some physical evidence (e.g. charred logs). This speaker did not accept the same form when it lacked the evidential clitic (Davidson p.c.). This is evidence that the use of evidentials is a language requirement rather than a speaker choice and that evidentiality is a hyperextended category in this language. Further evidence for the hyperextension of evidential clitics in Makah comes from the fact that the absence of an evidential clitic implies that the information was directly experienced. This is consistent with Willett’s (1988) claim that if an evidential category lacks formal manifestation, then it will be the direct experience category (c.f Quechua which marks direct evidence with the clitic -mi). Two analyses are possible: direct experience is coded with a zero clitic; or there is an assumption by speakers of the language that the lack of an evidential clitic means that the speaker is representing information as personal experience (i.e. it is a default category). Either way, it appears that utterances are always understood as carrying some evidential force whether or not there is a clitic present. Table 2.2 presents a summary of the grammatical status of Makah evidential clitics Makah also has a nominal derivational suffix -ckwi which derives a noun referring to the physical results of an action. In certain contexts, the form is used to imply that the remains are evidence for that prior action, as in (27). (27) bukwacˇck‘‘i ‘It was a deer (when seeing tracks).’ (cf. bukwacˇ ‘It’s a deer’) (from Jacobsen 1986: 20)
Although this derivational affix is very specialised in its evidential use, it is a good illustration of the pervasiveness of evidentiality throughout different parts of a language. Table 2.3 lists my analysis of the status of -ckwi as a grammaticalised evidential marker. The grammatical status of the Makah evidential system is similar to
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Table 2.2Makah evidential clitics Criteria a.Closed class
Grammatical properties of forms Yes
Evidentials are included in a limited set of positionbound clitics.
b.Restricted morphosyntax Yes
Evidential clitics occur in fixed positions in the clitic complex which always occurs following the first word in a syntactic unit.
c.Bleached semantics
Yes
Evidential meanings are highly generalised and context sensitive
d.Hyperextended use
Yes
All utterances appear to have evidential meanings. Forms uttered in isolation are evidentially marked
e.Reduced form
Yes
Origins of evidential clitics are traceable to lexical verbs.
Table 2.3Makah evidential derivational suffix Criteria a.Closed class
Grammatical properties of forms Yes
Suffix is one of a large set of derivational affixes, but the set is finite.
b.Restricted morphosyntax Yes
Suffix is bound in a fixed word position.
c.Bleached semantics
?
Meaning is relatively abstract, but more specific than many kinds of derivation.
d.Hyperextended use
No
Suffix is not automatically used in context since it can be replaced with an evidential clitic like -pi.d
e.Reduced form
Yes
Bound suffix derived from
Quechua in terms of its paradigmatic status and properties of hyperextension. The Makah system clearly makes more evidential distinctions than the Quechua tripartite system: the category of ‘direct experience’, coded with -mi in Quechua, separates auditory perception from all other kinds of perceptual experiences; inferential evidence is subdivided into inference from information in the immediate physical environment (i.e. information that the speaker has available to them at the time of the inference), and inference from general cultural knowledge. Makah also distinguishes a category which expresses the notion of mirativity (Delancey 1997) — information which has not yet been
Evidentiality
properly assimilated into the speaker’s consciousness11 — a category not formally distinguished in the Quechua system. 2.3.3 Lhasa Tibetan Paradigmatic sets of evidential morphemes, exemplified by the above discussion of the Quechua and Makah systems, comprise one type of grammatical evidential system. Another type arises when forms which are already grammatical in a language acquire evidential meaning while still maintaining their other prior grammatical meaning(s). Several Tibeto-Burman languages have such a system (e.g. Lhasa Tibetan – Delancey 1986, 1991; Newari – Hargreaves 1989; Bendix 1992; Amdo Tibetan – Sun Jackson 1993; Akha – Thurgood 1986). In these languages, there is a complicated association of evidential categories with use of tense/aspect categories, person, intentionality and volitionality. In Lhasa Tibetan (Delancey 1986, 1991), “typical evidential categories” are expressed by the choice of perfective auxiliary + copula ((28) and(31)) or perfective suffix ((29) and (30)). (28) ]a-s yi-ge bri-pa-yin I-erg letter write-perf ‘I wrote a letter.’ [1st person volitional (= direct experience/personal experience)] (29) ]a na-byu] ] I sick-perf ‘I got sick’ [1st person non-volitional (=experienced but not conscious experience’.)] (30) k’o] gis yi-ge bri-so] ] s/he erg letter write-perf ‘S/he wrote a letter (I saw it happen).’ [first hand knowledge of an event not involving the speaker (= direct witness)] (31) k’o] gis yi-ge bri-pa-red s/he erg letter write-perf ‘S/he wrote a letter (it seems).’ [“reports a fact a speaker knows only by inference.” (p. 210)] (from Delancey 1986).
The evidential categories expressed in the Lhasa system are quite different from Makah and Quechua. (28) and (29) illustrate a distinction between events
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which are personally experienced. The auxiliary pa-yin in (28) denotes a personally experienced event over which the speaker had some kind of conscious control. The sentence in (29) also denotes an event that was personally experienced but the choice of the perfective suffix -byu] means that the event was not under the control of the speaker/experiencer. This reflects a slightly different evidential meaning than that expressed in (28); one in which the interpretation of the experiencer as complete controller is downplayed. Although the use of these perfective forms is highly correlated with first person contexts, they are not grammatically restricted to first person subjects only. The non-first person uses are highly marked however and only used for certain rhetorical purposes. In Lhasa, the category of ‘direct experience’, coded with a clitic in Quechua and unmarked in Makah, is split into two types depending on the experiencer’s volitional and intentional relationship to the information in question. The examples in (30) and (31) illustrate more canonical evidential categories of direct visual perception and inference. The perfective suffix -so] is similar in meaning to Makah clitic -p.id. The perfective auxiliary + copula construction -pa-red is similar to Makah -xa:-…-š » and Quechua -chra. Clearly there are many interesting things to be observed about the semantics and pragmatics of the set of Lhasa Tibetan perfective forms. Of primary interest here however is the grammatical properties of these evidential contrasts. Unlike Quechua and Makah, evidentiality in Tibetan is not a property of a set of forms distinct from other categories. In this language, evidentiality is a property of the morphological aspectual system and is intrinsically connected with the expression of perfective events. The criteria for grammatical status can be applied to the evidential elements of the Lhasa Tibetan aspectual system. The forms are bound to the verb in a fixed position and are therefore morphologically restricted. Evidential coding is further restricted applying only in perfective contexts. But when a perfective aspect is chosen, the speaker is forced to make a choice of evidential category. This is evidence of the hyperextension of evidentiality in Tibetan since the language forces the speaker to make an evidential choice whenever a perfective event is expressed. The evidential distinctions are part of a closed class of the language — the marking of morphological aspect. They are semantically abstract and the interpretation of their meanings is highly context dependent. Table 2.4 presents a summary of the grammatical properties of the Lhasa Tibetan system. All of these properties suggest that evidentiality is fully grammaticalised in Lhasa Tibetan despite the absence of a separate paradigm of evidential forms and the restriction of evidential coding to perfective contexts.
Evidentiality
Table 2.4Lhasa Tibetan aspect/evidential morphology Criteria a.Closed class
Grammatical properties of forms Yes
Very limited set of aspectual markers
Yes
Perfective morphemes occur in fixed position. Evidentiality is only expressed through perfective morphemes.
Yes
Highly Abstract and context sensitive.
Yes
An evidential choice must be made when perfective aspect is chosen.
Yes
Forms are bound suffixes and uninflected copulas
b.Restricted morphosyntax
c.Bleached semantics d.Hyperextended use e.Reduced form
2.4 Summary The first part of this chapter was concerned with the characterisation of evidentiality as a notional linguistic category, embracing concepts of source of information, speaker attitude and deictic orientation. The second part of the chapter was concerned with the identification and characterisation of grammatical evidential systems cross-linguistically. It is necessary to establish clear criteria for measuring the degree of grammaticalisation of any evidential marker, or set of evidential markers partly because the degree of grammaticalisation of evidential forms is hypothesised to have an effect on the deployment of evidential marking in discourse. These criteria were applied to the evidential systems of three unrelated languages. Each of these languages had a set of evidential forms which fulfilled all of the criteria for grammaticalisation, but the systems also differed in striking ways: in the semantics of the evidential categories that were grammaticalised; in the degree to which their use could be described as hyperextended in the grammar; in the degree of fusion of evidentiality with other grammatical categories. These characterisations represent only the grammatical morphology of the overall evidential system in these languages. It is assumed that the range of evidential meanings will be codable with a range of linguistic devices in addition to the grammatical system, just as temporal deixis is coded in English with grammatical tense (-ed), temporal adverbs (now, after) and temporal prepositional and noun phrases (on Saturday, Friday night, etc.). The grammatical tense is required on all verbs and the use of the lexical forms is motivated by pragmatic considerations.
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In the first part of this chapter I argued that the study of evidential meaning in terms of the relationships between source of information and type of speaker attitude requires a better understanding of speakers’ use of evidential forms in different contexts — a deeper understanding of evidential pragmatics than has been available to date. Certainly the deictic properties of evidential forms, while touched upon in many accounts, have yet to be thoroughly explored. A coherent framework for describing the pragmatics of evidential systems is also essential for developing a better understanding of the processes by which morphological evidential systems develop. We also need to understand better how fully grammaticalised evidential systems interact with less grammaticalised strategies; the contexts in which particular evidential strategies are selected; and, perhaps most importantly, whether there is any real difference in evidential pragmatics between languages with fully grammaticalised evidential systems and those without. These are the points that will be addressed in the rest of this book. The next chapter provides a framework for exploring these questions further.
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Chapter 3
Epistemological stance
The discussion of evidential semantics and grammatical evidentiality in the last chapter raises three questions concerning the nature of evidentiality as a linguistic category: 1. The scope of evidential meaning — is evidentiality simply about the specification of source of information (the narrow view), or is it also about speakers’ assessment of their knowledge (the broad view)? 2. The inventory of evidential forms — are evidentials only those forms which constitute a morphological paradigm of evidential oppositions, or should any form which can express an evidential meaning be included in a description of the evidential ‘system’ of a language? 3. The pragmatics of evidentiality — do people use evidential forms to simply express source of information (and any associated evaluative implications), or do they have other functions in discourse? This book is mainly concerned with the third of these questions — how people use the evidential strategies available to them in discourse. A thorough knowledge of evidential pragmatics is also seen as fundamental to our ability to address the other two questions concerning the scope of evidential meanings and the linguistic properties of evidential forms. We cannot know the scope and organisation of evidential meanings without taking into account the ways in which people use language to express aspects of epistemological status. Similarly, we cannot address the motivations for grammatical evidential meanings to evolve in languages without an understanding of their pragmatics. In order to address questions about the pragmatics of evidentiality, I have found it useful to ‘stand back’ from talking about evidential systems per se, and to talk rather about ‘the ways in which speakers talk about their epistemological status’. In this way, the object of investigation is recast as a thing that speakers do, rather than a predetermined set of form/meaning correspondences (e.g. a morphological system or a set of lexical items).
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It is in this context that the notion of epistemological stance was developed as a way of talking about meanings related to evidential systems, without deciding a priori what counts as ‘evidential’ in any particular language. The usefulness of epistemological stance as a way of talking about evidential meaning and its utilisation in discourse cross-linguistically is illustrated by the empirical study of narrative retelling that forms the second part of this work. This chapter presents an overview of the principles that lie behind the notion of epistemological stance, which is then used as the framework for talking about linguistic behaviour in the retelling data. The first part of this chapter presents some arguments for the notion of epistemological stance as the pragmatic basis of linguistic evidentiality. The second part of the chapter presents an outline of epistemological stance types.
3.1 Evidential pragmatics and epistemological stance Much, if not most, of language use is about talking about things one knows about, regardless of how that knowledge may have been acquired and how speakers might assess the quality of that knowledge. Evidential forms are the linguistic forms par excellence which capture the expression of a speakers’ relationship to their knowledge (this was Chafe’s (1986) formulation of evidential meanings). But the relationship between speakers and their knowledge of what they talk about is more complex than simply mapping sources of information (and any conventionalised associated attitudes) onto linguistic forms. In addition to paying attention to how they have come to know what they know, speakers must also assess the context in which they have chosen, or are required to, talk about such topics. In terms of conceptual structure, one can say that when verbally representing a piece of knowledge, speakers necessarily take a stand on how they acquired the information, how they know it. This stand is their epistemological stance towards the information. Epistemological stance is thus a necessary part of the construal of information, operating in conjunction with other necessary parts (e.g. an understanding of spatio-temporal coordinates, the relationship between the speaker and addressee(s), etc.). Epistemological stance is about both the underlying pragmatic pressures that motivate the the conceptualisation of information in terms of a speaker’s assessment of her knowledge, and the internal structure of these conceptualisations that result in a variety of mappings onto linguistic structure.
Epistemological stance
As a conceptual structure, epistemological stance is independent of linguistic form and may be expressed by any of grammatical, lexical or paraphrastic means. But the motivations that speakers have to adopt a particular epistemological stance is a pragmatic issue — one which can only be addressed through an analysis of speakers’ linguistic strategies used to represent the status of their knowledge. The two pieces of evidence that I draw on to motivate the use of epistemological stance to account for evidential pragmatics, independent of the linguistic category of evidentiality are: a. Even a superficial glance at the ways in which people use evidential coding indicate that, even in languages with highly grammaticalised evidential systems, speakers’ use of evidential forms does not necessarily reflect the actual means by which they acquired information. b. There is a high degree of conventional interaction between evidentiality and other (i.e. non-evidential) linguistic categories which suggests that the expression of speakers’ epistemological assessment goes beyond its manifestation in evidential forms. The pragmatic basis for mismatches between source of information and evidential coding is the main theme of Chapter 7, in which the findings from the retelling study are discussed. Discussion of a range of linguistic strategies that are used in languages to express the adoption of particular epistemological stances is taken up in the second part of this chapter (Section 3.2), and will be described in more detail for narrative retelling in Macedonian, Japanese and English in Chapter 5. In the rest of this section is an explanation these two general points about epistemological stance which provides some theoretical background to the empirically-based discussions that come later. The first point relates to the fact that while epistemological stance may reflect the actual historical (objective) origin of speakers’ knowledge, it may equally reflect a more subjective construal based on their current recall and on pressures and interests associated with the current speech situation. So in (1), the propositional information the miners are going out on strike is evidentially marked with apparently, which typically implies information acquired by report. But this does not mean that the information was in fact acquired by report. One could utter this statement even if one were part of the strikeorganising committee (thereby having direct experience upon which to base this assertion), perhaps for the purpose of downplaying a direct involvement. The utterance in (1) expresses a reportive epistemological stance towards the propositional information, but the information was acquired from direct experience.
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(1) Apparently the miners are going out on strike.
The mismatch between actual source of information and the evidential category selected exists even in cases where the coding of evidentiality is a part of the grammatical structure of a language (e.g. Quechua, Makah and Tibetan, described in the previous chapter). In these languages the choice of evidential forms is often described as a direct representation of the source of information. However it is clear from the distribution of such evidential forms in discourse in these languages that source of information alone does not determine the form selected. The Quechua examples in (2) and (3) illustrate the mismatch between actual source and evidential coding in grammaticalised evidential systems. The clitic -mi is typically described as coding information that was directly experienced by the speaker (Weber 1986; Floyd 1993), as in (2). (2) Taki-ya-n-mi sing-imperf-3-dir ‘He’s singing (i.e. the speaker heard him singing).’ (from Floyd 1993: 75)
The sentence in (3) is from a text where the speaker is talking about how her father got a deformed foot. The speaker was not present during any of the events she describes and thus could not have obtained any of the information by direct personal experience. (3) chay-pii-mi papaa-mii-si
chraki palta-n nana-y-ta allayku-yku-la that-abl-dir father-1pl-also foot palm-3pl hurt-inf-acc begin-asp-past
‘That’s why/when the bottom of my father’s foot began to hurt.’ (from Floyd 1993: 102)
If choice of evidential form was merely a function of the actual source of information, then examples like (3) ought to be considered unacceptable. This is clearly not the case in (3) which occured in spontaneous discourse. The adoption of an epistemological stance of personal experience in (3), as reflected in the choice of evidential clitic -mi, has a particular rhetorical effect. The hearer must infer that the speaker has some particular reason for assuming a personal experience epistemological stance for information she has not actually personally experienced. In this case, she might infer, as Floyd (1993: 102) suggests, that the reason why the speaker’s father’s foot began to hurt is a ‘valid and true’ reason.
Epistemological stance
So while the adoption of an epistemological stance is an automatic response to attending to some body of information, the type of epistemological stance is not automatic, even when evidential coding is grammaticalised. The representation of epistemological stances that do not match with the actual source of information can be used as a powerful rhetorical tool, especially in those languages with a evidential system, like that found in Quechua, where speakers are expected to overtly code their epistemological stance in every utterance. Mismatches between actual source of information and evidential category selection may also be a function of an indeterminacy of information source. In real life situations it is often difficult to identify one particular source from which some knowledge was acquired. Much of the information we know about is acquired through exposure from more than one source. For example I may know that Peter is going to have a party on Saturday because (a) he told me he was when I bumped into him, (b) Alexis also told me that Peter was going to have a party, (c) I received an invitation to the party in the mail, and (d) I noticed Peter buying party supplies at the supermarket. While I might decide that one of these sources of information is more accurate or valid than the others, it is not the case that I know about Peter’s party from one source. How I choose to talk about Peter’s forthcoming party is therefore a reflection of which type of source I decide is most appropriate to evoke in the discourse context. For example, I might represent the information about the party as hearsay if I am not sure whether someone I am talking to has been invited (I hear that Peter is going to have a party, have you heard anything like that?). I might take a more experiential stance if I want to boast about my knowledge of the party over someone else’s (Guess What! There’s a party happening at Peter’s on Saturday!). Alternatively I avoid evoking any particular type of source, presenting the information more ‘factually’ (objectively) if I consider the source to be irrelevant. (Peter is having a party on Saturday). The second reason to support the notion of epistemological stance as a framework for investigating linguistic evidentiality, is that it allows for forms not typically associated with evidentiality to be linked with a speakers’ expression of their epistemological assessment of information. So while morphological evidential markers can be described as those forms that have grammaticalised the expressions of particular epistemological stances, the adoption of an epistemological stance will have effects on other aspects of linguistic structure. This claim is supported by the results of the narrative retelling study, and will be elucidated further in Chapter 7.
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In some languages the relationship between non-evidential grammatical categories and epistemological stance has become so conventionalised as to have been described as a grammatical rule. This has been the case for the ‘conjunct/disjunct’ system described for many Tibeto-Burman languages (e.g. DeLancey 1992). The data in (4) are from Newari and the analysis is based on Bendix’s (1992) description of this system. The ‘evidential’ system of Newari functions very similarly to the Tibetan system described in Section 2.3.3. and should be taken as representative of conjunct/disjunct systems in general. Verbal inflections are used to distinguish information that is personally experienced — ‘internal’ (as in (4a)), from information which must be acquired by ‘external’ means — perception, hearsay or inference — (as in (4b, c)). The semantic differences between internal and external inflections restricts their combinations with person marking. Typically, the internal form can only occur in 1st person statements (4a) and 2nd person questions (4b¢). Both are contexts in which the referent of the sentence subject is also the experiencer of the information. In contrast, the external form only occurs with 2nd and 3rd person statements (4b, c) and 1st and 3rd person questions (4a¢, c¢), contexts where the referent of the sentence subject did not directly experience the event in question. The link between the categories of person and evidentiality is so strong in Newari that until relatively recently these verbal inflections were analysed as agreement markers (e.g. Hale 1980), that distinguished first person subjects (4a) from second and third person subjects (4b, c). This analysis was considerably complicated by the fact that the ‘agreement’ marking is reversed in yes/no questions for first and second persons (4a¢, b¢) and was eventually abandonded in favor of the evidential-type analysis presented here. (4) Newari (Tibeto-Burman: Bendix 1992) a.
ji won-a 1sg go-int ‘I go, I used to go, I went, I have gone.’
a¢.
ji won-o la 1sg go-ext q ‘Did I go? (Have I gone?)
b. cho won-o 2sg go-ext ‘You went, you have gone.’
b¢.
cho won-a la 2sg go-int q ‘Did you go?, Do you go?’
c.
c¢.
wo won-o la 3sg go-ext q ‘Did s/he go, etc?’
wo won-o 3sg go-ext ‘S/he went, s/he has gone.’
Epistemological stance
Conventionalised relationships between person and evidential categories have also been observed for Japanese (e.g. Aoki 1986; Iwasaki 1993; Kamio 1994). Systematic relationships between tense and evidential categories have also been observed (e.g. Woodbury 1986). In Chapter 7 I show how the choice of referring expressions for story characters in narration is also reflective of the expression of epistemological stance. The notion of epistemological stance thus provides a way of talking about the predictability and perhaps universality of such relationships, incorporating non-evidential linguistic categories (such as tense, person and reference) into a comprehensive account of how people talk about the status of their knowledge. So talking about evidential meanings in terms of people’s assessment of the status of their knowledge, their epistemological stance, recognises the multifunctionality of linguistic expressions. This is a departure from the tendency in linguistic analysis to identify categories on the basis of their formal rather than their functional properties. The two may overlap, which is interesting, but it is rarely the case that the burden of a particular communicative function is carried by only one type of form. The notion of epistemological stance gives us tools to talk about a communicative function independent of its linguistic realisation in any particular language and across languages more generally. The usefulness of this division cannot be underestimated in the task of cross-linguistic comparisons of discourse strategies, such as the study of narrative retelling presented in the second half of the book. Although the notion of epistemological stance recognises the independence of source of information, speaker attitude towards that information and the resulting linguistic coding, it also recognises that these relationships are typically conventionalised within speech communities. For example, it may be usual for members of a speech community to adopt an epistemological stance reflecting personal experience when they talk about information that has been acquired by sensory experience. It also may be conventional for speakers of the same language not to adopt a personal experience epistemological stance for information that has been told to them by someone else. This is clearly the case in a language like Quechua where the relationship between actual sensory experience (the ‘real world’) and a personal experience epistemological stance (‘the conceptualised world’) is grammatically packaged into the ‘direct experience’ evidential clitic -mi, which is judged by speakers to be ungrammatical (as opposed to just ‘odd’) in contexts of hearsay. Nevertheless, the mismatch between actual source of information and adoption of epistemological stance, illustrated in (1) and (3) above, is evidence
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of the function of language to reflect conceptual structure, rather than reflect actual states of affairs in the world. In both cases, the mismatch was explained by factors independent of the nature of the source of information itself. In (1), for example, direct experience was expressed as hearsay (with apparently) so that the speaker could avoid responsibility for knowing too much about a miner’s strike. The choices speakers make with respect to epistemological stance highlight the role of pragmatic factors in the construal of information with respect to its source and epistemological status. The Quechua and English examples above support a model where epistemological stance mediates between speakers’ actual acquisition of information and how they talk about it. Speakers are motivated to adopt a particular epistemological stance partially on the basis of their source of information, but also on the basis of their rhetorical intentions, on how they want their own utterance to be understood and treated in the moment of the interaction. When multiple sources are at issue, speakers may weigh up the status of the information overall, or they may select one type of source as the basis for the stance they adopt. Their choice in this respect is also dependent on their overall communicative goals. Of course this does not rule out the adoption of an epistemological stance which does indeed reflect the nature of the actual source of information. It is only after a particular epistemological stance has been adopted that the appropriate linguistic coding is selected. Figure 3.1 represents relationship between source of information, discourse context, epistemological stance and evidentiality as it has been described in this section. The actual source of information is afforded a special status in this model. Although there are many factors which may motivate speakers to represent the nature and status of the source of information differently from its actual manner of acquisition, the epistemological stance adopted is still a reflection of the speaker’s construal of this source, and their assessment of their knowledge based on the method(s) of acquisition, according to the particulars of an interactive setting. It is the intersection of these variables which motivates the adoption of a particular epistemological stance, which will result in, among other things, the selection of conventional evidential coding.
3.2 Types of epistemological stance Epistemological stance, defined as the construal of information with respect to a speaker’s assessment of their epistemological status, is assumed to be a
Epistemological stance
Actual source of Information (Invariant)
Interactional Setting
Speaker Assessement of Actual Source
Speaker Assessement of Interaction
Adoption of Epistemological Stance
Linguistic Choices
Figure 3.1Model of epistemological stance adoption
universal concept. However the range of epistemological stances that might be adopted to represent a particular state of affairs is dependent on the conceptualising individual’s assessment of how they acquired their information based on both cultural conventions and interactive goals. While it is impossible to determine a priori what epistemological stances might be adopted in a given communicative context, it is possible to identify some different types of epistemological stances, based on simple linguistic evidence. The following subsections present a hypothetical non-exhaustive list of some different types of epistemological stances: personal experience (private and perceptual), reportive, inferential, factual and imaginative. These epistemological stances are hypothesised to be universal in the sense that speakers of all languages have the ability to represent them as part of their construal of states of affairs. The contexts in which these stances are actually adopted is predicted to vary significantly cross-linguistically however. 3.2.1 Personal experience The adoption of a personal experience epistemological stance towards information involves its representation as the product of the conceptualiser’s direct and conscious perceptual experience. In many cases the speaker is the only person who has access to the ‘truth’ of the information. These are private states, like emotions and sensations. In other instances, the information may be something the speaker has directly but not exclusively experienced, something that other people might have experienced if they were also present. These are contexts where the conceptualiser has witnessed an externally perceivable event. In these cases, the adoption of a personal experience epistemological stance represents information as the speaker’s version of events.
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(5) Yippee! After months of throwing my money away I just won the lottery! Boy am I relieved!
A personal experience epistemological stance can be linguistically realised in many ways. The most obvious linguistic correlates of personal experience are first person reference, the use of ‘expressive’ language (as discussed above) and the mention of private states and speaker intentions. All of these properties are illustrated in (5) where the speaker talks about her own experience of winning the lottery in the context of her own life, highlighting not only her feelings about the event (i.e. relief) but also its place in the context of her life (that she has been trying to win for some time and has lot a lot of money in the mean time). The exclamations yippee and boy contribute an affective meaning to the utterance by expressively representing her relief and excitement. The conjunct/disjunct system of Newari (repeated below) can be described in terms of a personal experience epistemological stance. (6) Newari (Tibeto-Burman: Bendix 1992) a. ji won-a 1sg go-int ‘I go, I used to go, I went, I have gone.’ b. wo won-o 3sg go-ext ‘S/he went, s/he has gone.’ c. ji-n yat-o 1sg-erg do-ext ‘I seem to have done it (drunk /hypnotised, etc)’
The sentences in (6) illustrate the grammatical coding of a personal experience epistemological stance in Newari (Tibeto-Burman). The internal (= ‘conjunct’) verb suffix “… expresses the proposition being true… and having direct experience of intention to perform the action.” (Bendix 1992: 229). The external (= ‘disjunct’) verb suffix, “ expresses… having experience of observing incontravertible evidence” (Bendix 1992: 230). The examples in (a) and (b) illustrate the ‘unmarked’ use of the internal/external distinction in declarative sentences — internal with first person conscious experiencers and external forms with second and third person experiencers. In (c), although the speaker is the experiencer, their use of the external verb suffix expresses their lack of conscious experience and intention in the event described. The internal form in Newari can thus be analysed as a grammatical marker of the personal experience epistemological stance.
Epistemological stance
Languages also differ in the range of contexts for which the adoption of a personal experience epistemological stance is appropriate. In Newari, the ‘internal’ form can only be used for information that is either a private state of the conceptualiser (an emotion or feeling) or if it is an externally perceivable event, it must describe an event under the control of the conceptualiser. Externally perceivable events which are not under the control of the conceptualiser are marked with the ‘external’ form, the same form used to describe other peoples’ experiences. The sentences in (7a, b) illustrate this contrast. The event described in (a) is one that was consicously instigated by the subject while the event described in (b) was not under the conscious control of the subject. (7) Newari (from Bendix 1992: 236) a. ji dyon-a I go.to.sleep-int ‘I went to bed/sleep’ b. ji dyon-o I go.to.sleep-ext ‘I fell asleep’
In Korean, the distinction between personal subjective experience and external observable experience is marked by predicate valency (and case marking) — a more transitive ‘agentive’ construction and a less transitive ‘experiential’ construction, illustrated in (8). (8) Korean (from Chun & Zubin 1990: 81) a. Suni-ka/nun Toli-lul coahanta Suni-nom/top Toli-acc like:ag ‘Suni likes Toli.’ b. Suni-eykey/ka/nun Toli-ka coh-ta Suni-dat/nom/top Toli-nom likeable:exp ‘Toli is likable to Suni.’
In (8a), the ‘agentive’ form of the predicate, in conjunction with nominative/ accusative case marking, objectifies the scene, implying that Suni’s liking of Toli is an externally observable situation. In (8b), the use of ‘experiential’ predicate morphology, in conjunction with nominative/dative case marking presents the scene as Suni’s subjective experience of liking Toli, the representation of a personal experience epistemological stance. Agentive and experiential constructions show similar restrictions on person marking as was described for Newari: the experiential construction is more natural in 2nd person questions while the
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agentive construction is more natural in 2nd and 3rd person statements. These patterns are illustrated in (9). (9) Korean (from Chun & Zubin 1990: 84) Na-nun ne-wa Changho-ka kathi issnon kes-ul poass-nuntey I-top you-and Changho-nom together being-acc saw-and ‘I saw you with Changho and…’ a. b. c. d. e. f.
Na-nun Changho-lul cohahae Na-nun Changho-ka coha ??Ne-nun Changho-ha coha Ne-nun Changho-ka coha ??Changho-nun ne-ka coha Changho-nun ne-lul cohani
‘I like Changho. (ag)’ ‘I like Changho. (exp)’ ??‘You like Changho. (exp)’ ?‘Do you like Changho? (exp)’ ??‘Does Changho like you? (exp)’ ‘Does Changho like you? (agt).’
Unlike the pattern described for Newari, there is no formal restriction on the use of agentive or experiential constructions in first person statements ((9a, b) above). Recall that in such contexts in Newari, the ‘internal’ verb inflection was greatly preferred. Use of the external verb inflection was restricted to contexts where the speaker did not have consicous knowledge or control over the events described. Although the Korean agentive construction overlaps with the Newari external inflection to some degree, its use in 1st person contexts does not necessarily imply a lack of conscious control on the speaker’s part. If anything, it implies a greater degree of agency or volition that might result in some observable evidence (i.e. for (9a) that there are ways that some objective observer might be able to deduce that the speaker likes Changho). Like the Newari internal inflection, use of the Korean experiential construction with 1st person does however represent more clearly the subjective experience of the speaker — a representation of some private state which would otherwise be unknowable to an objective observer. This comparison of the expression of personal experience in two unrelated languages demonstrates the variability in what counts as ‘personal experience’ for a personal experience epistemological stance. Both languages have grammaticalised a distinction between private states and externally perceivable events. However where the Newari verbal inflection system contrasts all states and activities instigated by the speaker (including private states and agentive activities) with the speaker’s perceptual experiences of the external world (e.g. witness), Korean separates wholly subjective personal experiences from those which could be deduced from perceptual evidence in the real world, even when they also involve the speaker as the primary focus of the utterance.
Epistemological stance
In contrast, English does not make a grammatical distinction between private states and externally perceivable events. The contexts in which it is appropriate to adopt a personal experience epistmological stance seem to differ from those described for Newari and Korean. These are illustrated in the following examples in (10) (10) a. b. c. d. e.
Ouch! I just stubbed my toe! That hurt! Jessica stubbed her toe just now. It looks like she is in pain. Ouch! I saw Jessica stubbing her toe just now! That hurt! ??Ouch! Apparently Jessica stubbed her toe yesterday. That hurt! ??Ouch! I heard that Jessica stubbed her toe yesterday. That hurt!
The utterance in (10a) describes a situation where the speaker has stubbed her own toe. This is a tactile event that directly affects the speaker. The information is clearly presented from a personal experience epistemological stance, signalled by the use of expressive language that affectively describes not only what happened but also what it felt like. The utterances in (10b) and (10c) describe situations where the speaker has witnessed someone else stubbing their toe. She has direct experience of the event to the extent that she has a visually perceived experience of it. Unlike the situation in (10a), the speaker is not directly affected by the event itself (although she might empathise with the pain she is in). The difference between (10a) on the one hand and (10b) and (10c) on the other hand is an example of the difference between internal and external perception. In (10b), the speaker presents a description of what she witnessed, together with an inference that the person she witnessed is in pain. Although it is clear from the phrase “It looks like..”, that the situation is known to the speaker because she saw the event, it is not clear that she is taking a stance of personal experience towards it. In particular, she makes no direct reference in the first sentence of the utterance of her role as perceiver. The fact that the speaker makes an inference about the level of Jessica’s pain based on this visual evidence suggests rather that she did not represent such information from a personal experience epistemological stance, but rather construed the information in terms of more objective criteria (resulting in a more ‘objective’ construal, in Langacker’s sense (Section 1.3)). In (10c), the speaker does construe at least aspects of the event she has just witnessed, the experience of another person, as her own experience. This example represents a more ‘subjective’ construal of the scene, in Langacker’s sense, since the conceptualiser overtly refers to herself as a perceiver, linguistic-
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ally including herself as part of the construal of the situation. The affective exclamation ouch! and the exclamative phrase that hurt! both convey not only that the speaker was witness to the event, but that she was (sympathetically) feeling what the actual toe-stubber felt. In other words, not only does the speaker represent the information that Jessica stubbed her toe more subjectively by including herself in the representation as witness, the use of affective language represents a closer relationship to the experience than would ordinarily be expected for a mere witness. This type of juxtaposition of linguistic strategies gives the impression that the speaker is able to feel what the experiencer feels, a sign that she has adopted a personal experience epistemological stance towards information that was not acquired by direct experience, without claiming to be the actual experiencer. The felicitous adoption of a personal experience epistemological stance in English in a context where the speaker has only witnessed the event described and was not actually affected by it is different from the contexts described for Newari and Korean grammatical marking of a personal experience stance. In Newari, the adoption of a personal experience stance, signalled with internal verb inflectional morphology, was felicitous only when the speaker had some internal and controlled experience of the event. In Korean, personal experience could be subdivided into private experiences (the most personal of personal experiences) which are less volitional (and less transitive) than publically observable personal experiences, coded transitively with agentive predicate morphology and nom/acc case marking. The utterances in (10d) and (10e) represent situations where the speaker has acquired the information that Jessica stubbed her toe some time after the event. The ‘distance’ from the event means that the affective language that was perfectly acceptable when the speaker experienced or directly witnessed the event becomes much less acceptable. This is taken as evidence that a personal experience epistemological stance has not been adopted. In (10e) the speaker uses the adverb apparently to code the information as not acquired by direct experience or witness of the event. She does not mention her role in the acquisition of information, and thus presents a more objective construal of the information. In (10e), the speaker does include herself and how she acquired the information in the utterance. While this is a more subjective representation of information (since it codes the role of the conceptualiser) it is still not representative of a personal experience stance towards the information that Jessica stubbed her toe. The evidence that this is not a personal experience stance comes from the infelicitous use of affective language. In
Epistemological stance
(10c), which did represent a personal experience stance, the speaker had coded in the utterance not only that she had witnessed the event but also the pain that she would be experiencing if she were in Jessica’s position. The use of a personal experience epistemological stance to code information that in some senses is not ‘private’ (i.e. knowable only to the experiencer) can be used as a rhetorical device to represent information as more empathetic. Adoption of personal experience epistemological stance typically also gives an impression of certainty and confidence — it is the speaker’s own version of information. It would be odd, for example, to challenge information presented from this stance. In fact, the notion of ‘challengeability’ of information is a useful heuristic for the adoption of different kinds of epistemological stances. In both (11) and (12), the speaker reports her direct experience. The information in (11) is something that B is unlikely to know independently from being told by A — a private state. The information that A had a car accident in (12) is an externally perceivable event that B would have witnessed if she were present. Despite these differences, without further context, it sounds odd for B to refute what A has asserted as personal experience (11) (private state) A: I’m exhausted! B: No you’re not. (12) (public event) A: I had a car accident last week B: No, you didn’t
There are, of course, situations where speakers may be convinced of the validity of their personal experience information at the time of speaking but later discover that they are mistaken. In (13), speaker A, a student, assumes a personal experience stance towards the information that she failed. In this particular context however the professor (B) is in a position to know more about the relevant information than the student. Under these circumstances, it is fine for the professor to challenge the validity of the utterance. (13) A: [student about to receive graded exam] I know I failed. B: [professor] No, you didn’t
The strangeness of challenging information presented as personal experience confirms that this stance generally reflects the speaker’s willingness to take responsibility for the information. Challenges may arise, but they felicitously
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arise only when the challenger is in a position to know more about the original speaker’s experience than the original speaker. 3.2.2 Inferential Adoption of an inferential epistemological stance is expressed in the representation of information as inferred or deduced based on some body of evidence. An inferential epistemological stance may be adopted when speakers use a range of information types acquired by direct perception to form a conclusion — a product of their own reasoning. This is illustrated in (14) where the speaker’s inferential epistemological stance towards the information that Peter is having a party on Saturday night is signalled by epistemic must. The implications of this utterance are that the speaker had reasoned that Peter was having the party based on some strong evidence (e.g. she saw Peter buying party supplies, she knows that Peter is busy on Saturday based on what he told her, etc.). (14) Peter must be having a party on Saturday night.
Forms associated with an inferential epistemological stance in English are epistemic modals (e.g. must, might, can) and adverbials (e.g. probably, undoubtedly, possibly). The differences between these forms lies in the degree to which the speaker has a strong belief in, or commitment to, the validity of the information. For example, the use of must in (14) indicates that the speaker had a strong belief that the inference they drew was a valid one. The adoption of an inferential epistemological stance does not itself imply a particular strength of belief however, just that the knowledge has been assessed in terms of both the available external evidence and the speaker/conceptualiser’s own capacity for reasoning. Since an inferential epistemological stance is adopted on the basis of the speaker’s assessment of different kinds of evidence, it is felicitous to challenge the conclusion if the challenger feels that they have better evidence, as in (15), where the use of must signals that speaker A is fairly certain of the facts based on whatever evidence she has, and (16), where the use of possibly signals that speaker A is less certain of the facts than in (15). (15) A: Peter must be having a party on Saturday night. B: No, he’s not. (I don’t know how you concluded that!) (16) A: Peter is possibly having a party on Saturday night. B: No, he’s not. (He told me he decided not to.)
Epistemological stance
An inferential epistemological stance expresses a relatively ‘subjective’ construal of information because it includes an aspect of the conceptualiser (i.e. allusion to their reasoning process) within the scope of the construal. It is less subjective than a personal experience stance, in which the conceptualiser is wholly included within the scope of the construal. For this reason, in contexts in which knowledge is actually acquired by direct experience, the adoption of an inferential epistemological stance represents the information as more ‘distanced’ from the speaker’s own experience. This is illustrated in (17) where the speaker is talking about her own actions but signals the adoption of an inferential epistemological stance with must. (17) I must have broken the window.
The example in (17) suggests that the speaker was somehow unaware of the fact that she broke the window at the time it broke (e.g. if she were drunk or particularly unobservant). Her unawareness of the experience at the time lessens her motivation to construe the fact that she was the breaker of the window from a personal experience epistemological stance, since she can only use the resulting evidence available (e.g. shards of the window, knowledge of her movements, what other people told her, etc.) to make an assessment of the status of her knowledge with respect to the broken window. The adoption of an inferential epistemological stance has been described here as the construal of information as the product of a reasoning process, regardless of the type of conclusion that might arise from such a process. As such, it is theoretically independent of the strength of the speaker/conceptualiser’s belief state in the validity of their conclusions. For example, both the English epistemic modals in (18) and (19) are taken as evidence of the adoption of an inferential epistemological stance, though the use of must in (18) indicates a strong belief in the validity of the inference while the use of might in (19) indicates a weaker belief in the validity of the inference. (18) Peter must be having a party (e.g. I have seen him buying party supplies so I’m sure that it is true.) (19) Peter might be having a party (e.g. It’s his birthday next week and he sometimes holds birthday parties, but I don’t have compelling evidence that he is having a party.)
The fact that speakers do make a qualitative assessment of their commitment to their conclusions suggests an additional complexity in the type of inferential stance adopted — one in which knowledge is assessed not only in terms of an
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of how the knowledge was acquired (e.g. by a synthesis of available external evidence and human reasoning), but also in terms of the strength of the conclusion, based on the (unspecified) evidence. Cross-linguistically, forms which express an inferential epistemological stance are those which have traditionally fallen under the rubric of ‘epistemic modality’. English has a rich inventory of such forms — auxiliary verbs, adverbials, and verbs — and many other languages have similar ranges of grammatical expressions which contribute to the representation of information as the product of a reasoning process concerning unspecified external evidence. In some languages, the adoption of an inferential epistemological stance is expressed in the verbal morphology. Wintu, like Makah (Section 2.3.2), has a number of suffixes associated with inferences constructed from different kinds of evidence. For example, the suffix -re. “… indicates that the speaker believes his statement to be true because of circumstantial sensory evidence.” (Schlichter 1986: 51), as in (20). In contrast, the suffix -‘el “denotes that the speaker believes his proposition to be true because of his experience with similar situations, regular patters, or repeated circumstances common in human life.” (Schlichter 1986: 52), as in (21). (20) heke ma.n hara.kire.m somewhere ex go-com.dub ‘He must have gone somewhere (I don’t see him).’ (from Schlichter 1986: 51) (21) ‘Gmto.n nuqa.‘‘el berries ripe ‘The berries must be ripe (it’s that time of year).’ (from Schlichter 1986: 53)
Although the suffixes distinguish conclusions based on different kinds of evidence, they both represent a strong belief on the part of the speaker that they have arrived at the correct conclusion. The grammaticalisation of inferential forms is evidence of the salience of inference as a type of epistemological stance in some languages. Inferencing is a basic part of the building of knowledge represenations (variously known as ‘frames’ – Minsky 1974; ‘scripts’ – Schank 1984; ‘mental models’ – JohnsonLaird 1981). Inferencing allows people to access ‘background’ information which is not overtly present either in the immediate physical environment — to fill in the gaps of their imperfect mental representations. These ‘gaps’ can be as mundane as inferring that an aforementioned room has a door, walls and a
Epistemological stance
ceiling. They can be as complex as inferring that someone has been in a particular place based on the colour of mud splashed on their trousers, or the smell of their hair, or the expression on their face. While our knowledge of such things does require a constant drawing upon our ability to infer information from overtly presented ‘evidence’, it does not necessitate the constant adoption of an inferential epistemological stance towards it. Like all of the epistemological stances described here, the adoption of the inferential epistemological stance derives in part from the assessment of information source (e.g. as a ‘reasoning process’), but it also relies on the speaker/conceptualiser’s motivation to draw attention to the fact that the information is know by inference. This motivation can only be explained in terms of how and when people use such expressions in actual discourse. 3.2.3 Reportive The adoption of a reportive epistemological stance represents information as acquired by virtue of what someone else has said. Like an inferential epistemological stance, the reportive epistemological stance is adopted to represent knowledge of information that is not part of the speaker/conceptualiser’s direct experience of the information but rather information that has become known after the fact. However, unlike an inferential epistemological stance, which does not refer to the specific evidence that a speaker/conceptualiser has used to draw an inference, a reportive epistemological stance specifies the type of evidence that has motivated the adoption of the stance as linguistic evidence. The adoption of a reportive epistemological stance may be expressed linguistically in several ways. It is most explicitly signalled by embedding the information under some speech act predicate that attributes the information to some other speaker. In English, representation of other people’s utterances can be indirect, representing the ‘gist’ of the previous utterance (as in (22a)) or direct, representing the purported exact words of the previous utterance (as in (22b)). (22) a. John says that Peter is having a party on Saturday night. b. John said “Peter is having a party on Saturday night.”
It has been claimed that all languages have the means of representing information as the product of an utterance by direct speech representation, while the universality of indirect speech representation is less clear (Li 1986). Certainly both direct and indirect speech representation phenomena have been described
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for an enormous range of languages (e.g. Coulmas 1986a; Lucy 1993; Janssen & Van Der Wurff 1996). Although certain properties of reported speech representation are clearly language specific, some fundamental properties of direct speech are shared across languages: use of an (optional) framing clause containing a speech act predicate and some reference to the reported speaker; a shift in deictic centre from the time and place of the actual speech act, and the identity of the current speaker, to the time and place of the reported speech act, and the identity of the reported speaker; potential use of ‘expressive’ language (Banfield 1982). It is assumed that most, if not all, languages will utilise reported speech representation, direct or otherwise, as the most explicit means of expressing the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance.12 The pragmatics of reported speech representation as a reflection of a reportive epistemological stance will be examined more closely in the chapters reporting the results of the narrative retelling study. Languages may also employ means other than reported speech representation to express a reportive epistemological stance. Many languages also have grammaticalised means of coding information as the product of someone else’s utterance. These are the forms which have been called ‘reportive evidentials’ elsewhere in the literature. A selection of these is illustrated in the examples below: (23) Quechua Lishi-shi prista-ka-mu-la Lishi-rep borrow-ref-afar-past ‘Lishi borrowed it (I was told).’ (24) Wintu Xinel kirke.m die com.dub ‘He has died (I’m told).’ (25) Cayuga thayekya’khohá’ ˛ ake˛’. he-went-to chop-wood they say ‘They say he went to chop wood.’ (26) Ngiyambaa Nindu-dhan girambiyi you+nom-ling evid sick+past ‘You are said to have been sick.’
(Floyd 1993: 199)
(Schlichter 1986: 49)
(Mithun 1986: 103)
(Donaldson 1980: 276)
Epistemological stance
(27) Japanese Taroo wa doyoobi ni paati o suru-n-da tte Taroo top Saturday loc party obj do-nom-cop rsp ‘I heard that Peter is having a party on Saturday’
Grammaticalised markers of reportiveness commonly historically derive from speech act predicates in reported speech representation (Mushin 1997, Grenoble 1998). However there are several significant differences between these strategies for expressing the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance: a.the reportive evidential clitic replaces any overt predication of speech (i.e the propositions are not syntactically embedded under a speech predicate); b.reported speech representation typically involves the explicit mention of the reported speaker while use of the reportive clitic simply reports the information as the product of some prior utterance unconnected to any purported original speaker; c.reported speech representation typically involves some shift in deictic coding to the time, place and identity of the reported speech act (and reported speaker) while use of a reportive clitic does not motivate any shift in the deictic centre (it shares this property with wholly indirect reported speech representation as in (a) above). A reportive epistemological stance may also be reflected in ‘evidential’ forms which do not specifically make reference to information as the product of a speech act but which nevertheless conventionally imply that information was acquired from what someone else said. The Balkan Slavic L-form past tense, described as an ‘indirect evidential’ in Willett’s (1988) classification, is an example of a form which is not historically related to reported speech representation (it derives from the Common Slavic perfect tense), but which nevertheless is conventionally interpreted as reflecting a reportive epistemological stance. Although the L-form past has a range of meanings, most of which are associated with expression of the speaker’s disinclinaction to ‘vouch for’ information, its default interpretation in conversation is that the speaker knows about the information because they have heard it from someone else. This conventionalised interepration has resulted in analyses of the L-form as a reportive form in earlier grammars of Macedonian and Bulgarian (including Jakobson’s 1957 analysis of the Bulgarian L-form as a ‘true evidential’). The reportive connotations of the Macedonian L-form past will be discussed in
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more detail in Chapter 5 as it relates to the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance in narrative retelling. Whether it is expressed through reported speech representation (direct or indirect), some grammaticalised reportive marker, or some other evidential marker conventionally used in hearsay contexts, adoption of a reportive epistemological stance always reflects the representation of information as the product of what someone other than the current speaker has said. This original linguistic source may or may not be identifiable but it is always implied. Since reportive epistemological stance is about the representation of information as acquired from a source other than the actual speaker, it is typically odd to adopt a reportive epistemological stance towards information acquired by personal experience. (28) ??I heard that I’m exhausted. (29) ??I heard that I had a car accident.
The utterances in (28) and (29) represent the same propositional information as (11) and (12) above (which illustrated the adoption of a personal experience epistemological stance), but these are now represented as being known by virtue of hearing the information from someone else. The results are utterances for which it is hard to contrive a context which would result in a felicitous interpretation. This is because information about people’s private states, and their personal experiences are not typically acquired by hearsay, nor are people typically embued with the authority to talk about someone else’s personal experience. Of course, there are contexts where a reportive epistemological stance is appropriate to adopt towards information that is about one’s own personal experience, but these are precisely the contexts where the source of information is in some position of authority with respect to their knowledge. For example, the speaker might utter (28) if her doctor has informed her that she is exhausted and in need of a vacation. In this scenario the speaker has delegated knowledge of her feelings to another person who is socially authorised to make assertions about aspects of other people’s private states. Similarly, the speaker might utter (29) if she was knocked unconscious and was told that she was in an accident when she came to in the hospital. Note that both of these describe scenarios where the speaker was not aware of the experience, only finding out about it by virtue of what someone else said. This is similar to the patterns described for Newari in the previous section where speakers code information as ‘personally experienced’ (i.e with internal verb inflection) only when the
Epistemological stance
experiencer can be construed as the volitional instigator of an action or event. It is also similar to the situation described as the contextualisation of (17), where the speaker adopts an inferential epistemological stance towards her knowledge of breaking a window because she has no conscious memory of her involvement in the event. In terms of ‘challengability’, knowledge of information which is construed as an epistemological stance of personal experience can be considered unchallengable because it represents information as private experience of the speaker, often unknowable to outside observers. The degree to which information represented from a reportive epistemological stance is challengable is more complex than the personal experience epistemological stance. The challengability of such information relies both on the knowlege state of the challenger (i.e. if they know more about the information than the current speaker), and also on the status of the originator of the information. An utterance like (30), for example, where the source of information is considered reliable, is less likely to be challenged than an utterance like (31), where the source is of dubious character. (30) A: Sue [usually honest person] told me that she was having an affair. B: ??No, she’s not. (31) A: John [jealous ex-boyfriend] told me that Sue was having an affair. B: No, she’s not.
The adoption of a reportive epistemological stance can have the rhetorical effect of making the speaker seem less responsible for the information. In English, the function of reportive coding has been described ‘distancing’ or ‘detaching’ the actual speaker from the information described as reportive (e.g. Clark & Gerrig 1990; Mayes 1990). For example, the speaker might utter either (30) or (31) if she wanted to avoid being mistaken as the originator of a rumour. Although the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance necessarily codes information as at least one step removed from the speakers direct experience, it does not necessarily code the information as unreliable or uncertain. The extent to which information expressed from a reportive epistemological stance can be considered reliable lies in the identity of the source and not in its reportiveness per se. The speaker might utter (30), which cites a reliable source, if she wanted to bolster her expression of certainty that she knew about an affair. She might utter (31), citing a less reliable source, if she wanted to express more skepticism about the status of her knowledge. Furthermore, the degree to which (30) and (31) may be understood with respect to the
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speaker’s degree of certainty relies totally on the degree to which the hearer knows that Sue is a more reliable source than John in this instance. In terms of conceptual structure, adoption of a reportive epistemological stance represents a relatively objective construal of information because it shifts focus away from the conceptualiser as the origin of the information by attributing it to what someone else has said. Certainly it represents a more objectified conceptual structure than an inferential epistemological stance which represents information as the product of the speaker/conceptualiser’s own thought processes. However information represented from a reportive epistemological stance is not wholly objectively construed. In order to represent information as the product of what someone else has said, the speaker/conceptualiser must evoke some aspect of themselves as the person who ‘heard’ the information. Although adoption of a reportive epistemological stance means that speakers do not subjectively represent themselves as a direct source, either by direct experience or reasoning process, they are ‘present’ as the recipient of the information via what someone else has said. 3.2.4 Factual Adoption of a factual epistemological stance is reflected in the absence of any representation of the source of information (and its status) in the construal. Adoption of a factual epistemological stance typically implies either that the information is assumed to be known by anyone in the speech community as general cultural knowledge or, more generally, that the source of information is unimportant to the establishment of the validity of the information. In English, universally accepted ‘world truths’ are best represented from a factual epistemological stance. In (32) and (33) below, the English sentences represent truths that are accepted universally (or at least by members of certain English-speaking communities). The (a) sentences are epistemologically neutral while the (b) and (c) sentences draw attention to the way that knowledge of this information was acquired. The (b) sentences represent the univerally accepted information from a reportive epistemological stance. The (c) sentences represent the information as an opinion, a construct that is situated with the speaker, but not necessarily the rest of the community. (32) a. b. c.
Two plus two equals four ??Two plus two equals four, according to by first grade teacher. ??I am under the impression that two plus two equals four.
Epistemological stance
(33) a. b. c.
Rain is wet. ??Apparently rain is wet. ??Rain is wet, I think.
Adoption of a factual epistemological stance requires that the conceptualiser disassociate herself from the representation, resulting in a maximally objective construal, in Langacker’s ‘optimal viewing arrangement’. In other words, the speaker does not ‘own up’ to the fact that what they are talking about is their own representation of events, and not a description of the events themselves. The rhetorical effect of this disassociation is to represent information as ‘factual’ and hence unchallengable. The unchallengeability of information presented from a factual epistemological stance makes it highly suitable as a means of expressing culturally shared knowledge. The factual stance adopted in (34) is of this type. It represents information commonly known by the speech community via a range of public sources (e.g. the media, public announcement, etc.). The bare challenge to the information that the Olympic games were held in Sydney in the year 2000 is infelicitous, since anyone in the community should know the assertion to be true. Note that the clarification question in (35), requesting information about how A acquired the information is also somewhat infelicitous since anyone in the community should also know the type of source for this culturally salient assertion. (34) A: The Olympic games were held in Sydney, Australia in the year 2000. B: ??No they weren’t. (35) A: The Olympic games were held in Sydney, Australia in the year 2000. B: ??How do you know?
The adoption of a factual epistemological stance need not represent knowledge assumed to be either culturally shared (as in the case of ‘universal’ truths) or culturally salient (as in the case of public information). (36) represents information from a factual epistemological stance that is not presupposed to be culturally shared. The fact that the speaker can be questioned with regard to source of information is evidence that the information is not yet ‘public property’. Similarly, although the information in (37) is presented as fact, it can be challenged by a speaker who believes that they have more reliable sources. This type of ‘qualified’ challenge is still strange when the information is truly in the public domain, as in (38), where it is not possible for B to have heard differently from A (unless B misheard, or had been socially isolated for a considerable period of time).
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(36) A: Peter is having a party on Saturday. B: Who told you?/How do you know? (37) A: Peter is having a party on Saturday. B: No he’s not. He told me just now that he cancelled it. (38) A: The Olympic games were held in Sydney, Australia in the year 2000. B: ??No they weren’t. They were held in Albuquerque.
In English, information which was actually acquired from some specific source or sources, rather than being in the domain of ‘public knowledge’ (e.g the information in (36)) may be also be presented as fact. However, there are languages for which it can be argued that no information is presented as purely factual, without any reference to some kind of source of information. These are languages with highly grammaticalised evidential systems such as Quechua (Floyd 1993), and Jaqi languages (Hardman 1986). In the Jaqi languages, for example, even folktales describing events purported to have taken place in the distant past must be represented as ‘non-personal’ knowledge, indicating that the speaker did not witness the information, nor did she infer the information based on what she did witness. 3.2.5 Imaginative The epistemological stances described so far — personal experience (both private state and perceptual experience), inferential, reportive and factual — all involve the representation of knowledge that is the speaker’s construal of information acquired in the real world (e.g. representations of actual events) according to its manner of acquisition and the degree to which it is represented as publically or privately knowable in the real world. In contrast, an imaginative epistemological stance represents information as embedded in some fictional storyworld. The adoption of an imaginative stance expresses something like “suspend all disbelief and accept what I say as factual because this information is not grounded in the real world”. The imaginative epistemological stance is thus well-suited to the depiction of events as fictional or hypothetical, as in (39) and (40). (39) There once was a king and he had three daughters… (40) It would be great if you came to Peter’s party!
The example in (39) conventionally signals the start of a fictional story that is not purported to be grounded in any real world event. The example in (40)
Epistemological stance
signals a hypothetical situation with the use of a conditional construction. This is something that the speaker would like to become reality, but which she must acknowledge is not yet reality. The adoption of an imaginative epistemological stance blends aspects of the personal experience and factual stances. It is similar to a personal experience stance because it licenses the speaker to talk about ‘private’ information that is typically inaccessable to someone other than the conceptualiser. Unlike a personal experience stance, however, an imaginative stance does not purport to reflect the speaker’s own personal experience. On the contrary, an imaginative stance is used to talk about information that involves other people and events. The adoption of an imaginative stance to talk about direct personal experience implies that the speaker wants to distance themselves from the experience. This is illustrated in (41). (41) Jack: Jill:
Who ate the last cookie? Well Jill was walking past the cookie jar and lo and behold a cookie materialised in her hand. What was she to do? She couldn’t very well abandon it?
The adoption of an imaginative epistemological stance is also similar to the adoption of a factual epistemological stance because it downplays the nature of the source of information and the way in which the speaker acquired the information. Information that is deictically centered within the storyworld is accepted as fact, even if it represents something that the audience believes does not exist in the ‘real’ world (e.g. unicorns, flying carpets, etc.). Like information expressed from a personal experience epistemological stance and a factual epistemological stance, information represented from an imaginative epistemological stance is typically unchallengable. Where information represented as personal experience was unchallengable because it represents something only the speaker/conceptualiser knows, and information represented as fact is unchallengable because it represents something that everyone is supposed to know, information represented as ‘imaginative’ is unchallengable because it does not claim to be about the real world and therefore there is nothing to challenge. In (42) the information that there was a princess is presented in the conventional frame of a fictional fairy tale (once upon a time…). The use of this frame expresses to the hearer that the following information should not be understood as a representation of some real world situation, that the hearer should suspend any disbelief and accept whatever the speaker says as ‘true’ for that story. Under
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these circumstances, it is difficult to effectively challenge the veracity of the narrative information. Similarly, as (43) demonstrates, it is difficult to challenge information presented as hypthothetical since it too is not grounded in any reality but is based on some creative representation of the speaker. (42) A: Once upon a time there was a princess…. B: ??No there wasn’t. (43) A: In another universe, pigs would fly B: ??No, they wouldn’t
Different cultures have different storytelling styles. However despite the widespread cultural salience of folklore and creative storytelling, it has proven difficult to find a language which has a grammatical morpheme which codes an imaginative epistemological stance (i.e. in contrast with grammatical markers of personal experience, witness, hearsay, etc). It is still possible however to identify the imaginative epistemological stance through its linguistic expression. Adoption of an imaginative epistemological stance by definition displaces the deictic centre from somewhere in the representation of the ‘real’ world to its location in the representation of a story world. This can be signalled by deictic shift alone without any further grammatical expression particular to the expression of an imaginative epistemological stance. The adoption of an imaginative epistemological stance may be further signalled by conventionalised expressions. The English phrase once upon a time conventionally functions to transport the audience into a fictional storyworld, even though the phrase literally suggests that the events of the narrative took place at some unspecified time in the past. In some languages (e.g. Quechua), such storytelling is coded with a special past tense form ‘narrative past’ or ‘remote past’ which situates the information at some distant and unspecified past time — a ‘mythical’ past. One of the advantages to the adoption of an imaginative epistemological stance is that it allows speakers to represent the private states of other individuals (i.e. the consciousness of characters in the story world), without explicitly indicating that the information was not one’s own (as was the case with inferential and reportive epistemological stances when adopted to talk about other peoples’ personal experiences). Information represented from an imaginative epistemological stance can utilise all the ‘expressive’ devices normally reserved for the representation of information from personal experience. For example, Jill’s utterance in (41) above contains both expressive devices like lo
Epistemological stance
and behold, as well as representations of her own thoughts as if she were a character in a story (e.g. What was she to do?). From a storyteller’s perspective, an imaginative epistemological stance stance is always construed as maximally objective. Since an imaginative epistemological stance represents information as the product of the storyteller’s creative imagination, and hence not grounded in the conception of a real world state of affairs, speaker/conceptualisers are not themselves represented in the construal.13 The result would look something like (44), a construction which cannot be interpreted as representing fiction. (44) ??I know/imagine/made up that there once was a princess.
Finally it should be stressed that although the adoption of an imaginative epistemological stance represents information as ‘factual’ within a fictional story world, fictional stories need not be told from an imaginative epistemological stance. For example, some stories may be told as direct experience or witness — the teller represents the information as if they were there to witness the events of the story. In Quechua, folktales are conventially marked with the hearsay evidential clitic, conventionally representing storyworld information as hearsay even when it is culturally shared knowledge. 3.2.6 Towards a typology of epistemological stances The different types of epistemological stance — personal experience (subcategorised into private experience and witness), reportive, inferential, factual and imaginative represent a range of ways that a speaker can position themselves with respect to their knowledge of a state of affairs. Evidence for the existence of these particular epistemological stances comes from their tendency to become grammaticalised in languages which have grammatical evidential systems. It is also possible to identify linguistic phenomena cross-linguistically which code particular types of source of information (e.g. reported speech representation for a reportive epistemological stance, use of expressive language in an imaginative epistemological stance). This list of epistemological stance types is not intended to be exhaustive. It is possible, for example, that there other types of epistemological stance that are constructed by speakers languages other than English that are not constructed by English speakers. Epistemological stance itself is a cognitive (and thus universal) concept, but the actual adoption of different epistemological stances in context is mitigated by cultural and linguistic differences.
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The differences between the epistemological stances identified here have been described in terms of both the conceptualiser’s role in the construal (i.e. if they are represented as part of the construal) and the degree to which the purported source of information (and its status) is also included in the representation. The more that the conceptualiser is represented as part of the construal, the more ‘subjective’ the representation. Under this interpretation, adoption of a personal experience epistemological stance, which represents the strongest connection between the representation of the state of affairs to be described and the representation of the conceptualiser’s role is the most subjective of epistemological stance types. Adoption of a stance of direct perception (witness) is slightly less subjective because although the speaker overtly acknowledges their role in their knowledge of information, there is an assymmetry between the representation of that knowledge and the representation of the conceptualiser in the construal. The inferential epistemological stance represents a less subjective construal than either private or perceptual experience. The speaker does not directly acknowledge her experiential role in the acquisition of knowledge but does acknowledge the cognitive effort that she applied to develop their construal, and the resulting belief state that is constructed from this cognitive effort. Adoption of a reportive epistemological stance is still less subjective than any type of personal experience stance because although the conceptualiser’s presence is evoked by claiming that the source was another utterance (that the conceptualiser heard), and the conceptualiser may indeed be included in the representation of information (I heard that…), there is more distance between the conceptualiser and the representation of the information. Neither the factual epistemological stance nor the imaginative epistemological stance express any information about the conceptualiser. However it can be argued that the imaginative epistemological stance is more subjective than the factual epistemological stance by virtue of being the creative product of a conceptualiser (even if that conceptualiser is effaced from the construal). Furthermore, information represented from an imaginative epistemological stance may represent the subjective construal of a story world character independent from the actual storyteller. In contrast, a factual epistemological stance stance simply represents information as if it were describing facts about the world and not some conceptualiser’s version of those facts. The differences between these stances with respect to subjectivity are illustrated in Figure 3.2.
Epistemological stance
Subjective
Objective
Conceptualiser is Evoked
Conceptualiser is effaced. Perceptual Experience
Private Experience
Reportive Inferential
Factual
Imaginative
Figure 3.2Degree of subjectivity and epistemological stance types
3.3 Summary This chapter has taken a step back from the narrow examination of linguistic evidential systems to instead begin the exploration of the more general pragmatic question: how do people talk about the status of their knowledge, especially in terms of the evidence upon which they base their epistemological assessments? It was argued that the mismatch between actual source of information and the ways that speakers talk about the status of their knowledge indicated that the choice of evidential strategies adopted by speakers relied on a pragmatically determined construct, that went beyond the application of semantico-grammatical rules. It was also suggested that the expression of epistemological assessment involves more than just use of the grammatical and lexical forms which have traditionally been described as ‘evidential’ in the linguistics literature. Both of these points were used as evidence for the notion of epistemological stance, which was characterised as the speakers conceptualisation of information based on their construal of the nature and status of their knowledge in the context of language use. Epistemological stance may be expressed by linguistic means which go beyond the traditional definitions of ‘evidential’ forms — means such as deictic configurations, choice of referring expressions and use of ‘expressive’ language — and some of these strategies will be examined in the following chapters with respect to narrative retelling. Nonetheless, the relationship between adoption of epistemological stance and its linguistic expression does tend to be conventionalised in evidential coding across languages. In some languages, the hyperextended use of a particular evidential form automatically points to the type and status of the source of information. For example, in Quechua, utterances coded with the clitic -mi are immediately interpreted as personal experience (including visual perception of events), while the use of -shi means that information was acquired second-hand by report.
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In other languages, the hyperextended use of a particular evidential form literally points to the fact that some kind of evidence was used to reach some conclusion. Other contextual cues are used to determine the type of source. For example, the inferential L-form past in Balkan Slavic literally means only that information was not directly experienced (and therefore the speaker cannot ‘vouch for’ its validity). It does not point to any particular type of indirect experience. However the source of knowledge when L-forms are used in Balkan Slavic is typically interpreted as hearsay, expressing the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance, in the absence of other contextual cues. Although there is a high degree of conventionalisation between source and epistemological stance; epistemological stance and evidential coding, these are not necessary relationships. There are pragmatic factors, independent of the assessment of type and status of the source, which influence the choice of evidential coding. Choice of epistemological stance, and the linguistic strategies used to express it, also rely on the speaker’s rhetorical purpose, the extent to which they want to claim authority over information, and their immediate interactive goals. The model of discourse production incorporating the choice of epistemological stance and its subsequent linguistic effects is illustrated in Figure 3.3. Actual source of Information (Invariant)
Speaker Assessement of Actual Source Adoption of Epistemological Stance
Interactional Setting
Linguistic Output
Speaker Assessment of Interaction
Cultural Conventions
Linguistic Choices
Figure 3.3The Big Picture
Figure 3.3 represents the general picture that was outlined in the first three chapters of this book: extralinguistic factors that lead to the adoption of an epistemological stance (the source of information, the interactive setting, the
Epistemological stance
cultural setting, and the speaker’s assessment of all three variables; the effect that the adoption of an epistemological stance has on choice of linguistic forms (evidential coding matches the choice of epistemological stance). This work is a study of the pragmatics of linguistic expressions. It is primarily concerned with factors that effect the choice of linguistic forms. Some of these factors are built into the structure of a language itself. These are the grammatical rules which dictate what forms are available and unavailable for use. However, as is illustrated in Figure 3.3, in actual language use, a myriad of contextual, cultural and conceptual factors conspire to limit a speaker’s linguistic choices. The model raises the important question of how these extralinguistic factors interplay to limit linguistic choice. As mentioned earlier, the answer to this question has important implications not only for understanding language use but also in understanding the development of language structure — how it is that we find that certain relationships between type of epistemological assessment and types of linguistic expressions become conventionalised in different languages, and that the same types of patterns of grammaticalisation can be recognised cross-linguistically. The study of narrative retelling which forms the basis of the rest of this work was designed with these questions in mind. It constrains the discourse context so that we can better focus on the pragmatics of epistemological stance adoption, and also on the linguistic manifestations of such epistemological stances in particular textual and interactional environments.
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TITLE "Epistemological stance adoption in narrative retelling"
SUBJECT "Pragmatics & Beyond, New Series, Volume 87"
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Chapter 4
Epistemological stance adoption in narrative retelling
4.1 Goals of the narrative retelling study Epistemological stance provides a way of talking about evidential meanings independent of their formal manifestation in any language. It represents evidential meanings as pragmatically motivated conceptual categories expressible in a number of ways both within one language and across languages. Epistemological stance allows one to ask questions about the range of linguistic phenomena that might be used to reflect different epistemological stances and the motivations for different evidential strategies in particular discourse contexts. In seeking answers to these questions we come closer to a better understanding not only of the conceptual and pragmatic factors that drive the choice of linguistic strategies to express epistemological assessment, but also the conceptual and pragmatic factors that might motivate the evolution of evidentiality as a grammatical category, and account for the typological similarities which have been observed. The study of epistemological stance adoption in narrative retellings in Macedonian, Japanese and English was designed with these questions in mind. These languages differ from each other both in the range of strategies available to speakers to express different epistemological stances, and in their grammatical status. It stands back from focussing on evidentiality as a linguistic category to investigate the linguistic strategies that are adopted when particular kinds of epistemological assessment are at issue. This comparison of how speakers talk about the status of their knowledge when retelling a story in three languages provides insight into the role of grammatical evidentiality in comparison with other strategies, and the relationship between grammatical status of evidential expressions and evidential pragmatics. The Narrative Retelling study is an investigation of epistemological stance adoption in a fixed discourse context — retelling someone else’s story of personal experience. This is a canonical context for the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance towards the story information, since that information was
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acquired by the reteller by virtue of hearing it from someone else. The issues examined in this study therefore focus on the adoption of reportive epistemological stance: the range of strategies used in each language to reflect a reportive epistemological stance; the motivations for deviating from a reportive epistemological stance in this context; what other epistemological stances are adopted; and the effects of adopting a reportive epistemological stance on other (i.e. non-evidential) aspects of language use and discourse structure. The reportive epistemological stance has been chosen as the focus of investigation over other types of epistemological stances primarily because it is well documented that all languages use some systematic means to code information as the product of an utterance (e.g. through the representation of speech as reported speech (Li 1986)). However it is also recognised that the range of contexts in which it is appropriate to adopt a reportive epistemological stance may vary from language to language, and the range of forms available for coding information as the product of someone else’s utterance may vary crosslinguistically. Recall also that reportiveness was identified as a separate crosslinguistic evidential category in Willett (1988). Many languages have developed grammatical morphemes that code information as the product of someone else’s utterance, expressing a reportive epistemological stance (e.g. Quechua -shi, Makah -wa.d). A comparison of deployments of reportive marking in languages with grammatical reportiveness with languages which rely on other means to code reportiveness, like reported speech, is easier to operationalise than comparison of markers of a personal experience stance, or of another kind of ‘non-personal’ epistemological stance across languages. This investigation of epistemological stance adoption in narrative retelling was further narrowed by the selection of three languages for investigation — Macedonian, English and Japanese. Each of these languages represents a different type of evidential system and a different set of potential reportive forms. Macedonian has a fully grammaticalised evidential contrast in past tense contexts; English lacks grammaticalised evidentiality; Japanese has some forms which have some of the properties of grammaticalisation but which are not generally analysed as hyperextended in their use. Narrative is a useful discourse genre to use as the database in an investigation of epistemological stance in an interactive setting because it has a well defined linear structure (a succession of temporally ordered events) and typically some ‘point’, about which the story is constructed (Labov 1972; Polanyi 1989). Both of these factors make narrative an easier form of discourse to remember and retell than, say, passages of conversational discourse. There is
Epistemological stance adoption in narrative retelling
considerable psycholinguistic evidence for the claim that well-structured stories are more easily remembered than non-narrative utterances (e.g. Thorndyke 1977; Mandler & Johnson 1977; Mandler 1982). Memorability was extremely important to the design of this study which compares personal experience stories with retellings of those stories. The first part of this chapter outlines the methods of text elicitation and annotation and the make up of the resulting corpus. The second part of the chapter outlines the model of narrative structure adopted throughout the investigation.
4.2 The corpus In order to investigate the deployment of epistemological stance adoption cross-linguistically, it was necessary to collect a comparable corpus of texts in each of the three languages of investigation. The text elicitation methodology was designed to create a balance between control of contextual variables and the naturalness of the resulting language. The corpus of retellings was therefore elicited and recorded in each of the languages in a controlled environment. The method was designed to motivate speakers to adopt a reportive epistemological stance, and hence to use reportive strategies in their telling without specifically instructing them to do so. The text elicitation methodology was designed to be repeatable with instructions given to participants that could easily translate across the three languages. Although there were good reasons for requiring that the text elicitation methodology control for a number of contextual factors, the methodology was also designed to retain a degree of naturalness in the elicitation context, motivating speakers to use language that they might use in spontaneous conversation. For example, the narratives were retold to people with whom the reteller was already familiar. There have been several cross-linguistic studies of linguistic structure in narrative. Comparable narratives were collected by using the same nonlinguistic input as the source for the story. The Pear Stories project (Chafe 1980), for example, used a silent film in order to collect versions of the ‘same’ story across several different languages. A wordless picture book ‘The Frog Story’ has also been used in several cross-linguistic discourse projects (e.g. Slobin & Berman 1994). Participants in these studies were asked to view a film or examine the pictures in the book and then tell the story of what they saw.
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Studies of narrative production based on non-linguistic input have provided useful insight into many functional aspects of language structure (e.g. functions of referential strategies, information packaging, event structure and temporal organisation). In these studies, it was possible to use exactly the same source of narrative information across languages because the input information was not itself linguistic. In contrast, the current investigation of reportive epistemological stance adoption in narrative production required that the input source of information be another telling of a story, a linguistic source, which was coherent, natural and culturally salient for each language group under investigation. This requirement resulted in the use of different input sources of information for each of the three languages. The narrative chosen as the initial source of narrative information was a personal experience story, elicited from the teller by asking her to think of something interesting and exciting that had happened to her in the past. She was also asked to think of a story that would be unknown to her audience. This method was based on Labov’s (1972) elicitation of personal experience narratives. The collection of personal experience stories fulfilled the requirement that the input narrative, from which the retellings would be constructed, be reasonably natural — something the teller might volunteer in a conversational context. The corpus of personal experience stories represent a set of narratives that represent narrative events as either consciously instigated by the teller, directly affecting the teller, or at least witnessed by the teller. Furthermore, they also represented events that were not instigated or witnessed by the person hearing the story, nor was the person hearing the story directly affected by these events. It was hypothesised that a person who heard the personal experience story would therefore attribute the story to the original teller/experiencer and adopt a reportive epistemological stance to retell the story to a third party. They would not represent the events story as something they had witnessed or experienced themselves. Although it was predicted that retellers of someone else’s personal experience story would not adopt a personal experience stance towards the information in the story, this did not preclude the possibility that they would adopt some other non-reportive epistemological stance towards story information. For example, it was theoretically possible that retellers would adopt an imaginative epistemological stance towards the story, resulting in the representation of the story as a ‘fictional’ account of the narrative. It was hypothesised however that retellers would be unlikely to adopt an imaginative epistemological stance towards the retelling of a personal experience story precisely because they
Epistemological stance adoption in narrative retelling
knew that the events in the story were actually experienced by the original teller and not themselves fictional. The text elicitation methodology was therefore designed to make sure that retellers knew that they story they heard was a ‘true’ story. The method by which the narrative retellings were elicited was based on the children’s party game ‘Broken Telephone’ (or ‘Chinese Whispers’). In that game, a sentence is whispered around a circle of participants. The resulting sentence is compared with the original, with the expectation that the sentence will have transformed over the course of its journey. This study used a personal experience story as its input linguistic material. The reteller was exposed to the input personal experience story in one of two ways. In some cases, the original experiencer/teller told her story directly to the reteller. This method preserved the naturalness of face to face interaction but allowed only one retelling for each personal experience story — it was impossible for the original teller to repeat verbatim the story she had just told to someone else. However, in order to compare different speakers’ epistemological stance types for the same story it was important to collect multiple versions of the same input story. Therefore a prerecorded personal experience story was also used. These prerecorded stories were collected independently of the retelling elicitation sessions. They consisted of both elicited stories and spontaneous conversational narratives of between 5 to 10 minutes. All personal experience stories were told to a native speaker of the language in question, not to the researcher or directly to the tape. Synopses of these stories are given in Appendix A. Both prerecorded stories and ‘live’ personal stories were recorded under similar conditions and represented an informal style of storytelling typically associated with conversational contexts. That is, they were the products of two friends talking with each other, one of whom was telling a story of personal experience. The difference lay in the way that the reteller was exposed to them. A tape recording represents a disembodied voice. It is not possible for the reteller to interrupt as she is listening (e.g. to clarify some information or to add her own evaluative comments), nor is it possible to her to gain information from non-verbal cues. Furthermore, although some of the retellers did recognise the voice on the tape as a member of their own social group, in most cases, the retellers did not know the person who told the prerecorded story. In contrast, retellers always knew the participant who told the ‘live’ personal experience story.
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The difference between hearing an unknown voice on a tape and hearing a live account of personal experience from a known person may have various effects on the subsequent retellings of those stories. The lack of non-verbal cues and the inability for the reteller to respond to a prerecorded original teller to clarify parts of the story may result in a less coherent retelling than if the original telling had been viewed ‘live’. However it was not possible in this study to determine all the systematic differences that the physical presence of the original teller makes to the retelling of that story by someone else. This parameter was considered significant for this study only to the extent that it affected the choice of epistemological stance adoption by retellers. These situations will be discussed in later chapters as they arise. It was hypothesised that prior acquaintance with the original teller would have a more significant effect on the choice of evidential strategies used in a retelling than whether the story was told ‘live’ or was prerecorded. If one does not have any kind of personal relationship with the original experiencer, then one’s entire knowledge of the storyteller is based solely on information coded in the story itself. If a reteller knows the identity original teller however, then they have access to knowledge that goes beyond the information contained in the story. For example, they may be able to make assumptions about the experiencer/teller’s motivations (e.g. She opened the door — typical of her); they may feel more comfortable evaluating the actions of the experiencer/teller (e.g. She stupidly opened the door). The intrusion of the reteller’s own attitudes towards the events of the story based on what she knows about the previous teller diminishes the reportive flavour of a text. A ‘pure’ reportive text presents all information simply as a retelling. It was hypothesised that an unknown voice on a tape would evoke a more reportive text than any telling (live or prerecorded) by a member of the reteller’s own social group. Unfortunately this hypothesis could not be easily tested in this study. Most of the recordings were retellings based on the prerecorded personal experience stories. In some cases, the retellers recognised the voice on the tape. Given the size of the corpus, it was difficult to separate the variable of prior acquaintance from the variable of mode of telling. I discuss these variables in my analysis of the corpora where they appear to be a strong mitigating factor in the choice of epistemological stance adoption. All participants in this study were female members of the same ‘speech community’ as the original teller. Choosing members of the same ‘speech community’ meant that retellers all spoke the same dialect and could assume a large amount of shared cultural knowledge.
Epistemological stance adoption in narrative retelling
The Macedonian participants were all middle-aged women who had left Macedonia at least 20 years prior to the time of recording to settle in Australia and Canada (although many of them had returned to visit over the years). Although these women had been separated from Macedonia and had long resided in an English speaking country, their expatriate communities are sufficiently strong and large to preserve Macedonian as their primary language for everyday communication (e.g. at home, in church, socially). Macedonian was clearly the preferred community language and most of the participants’ English ability was very poor, despite their long residence in Australia or Canada. There is considerable dialect variation in Macedonian. Much of this variation is lexical and phonological. Friedman (1988) has suggested that there is some variation in the use of different tense paradigms across dialects, directly affecting the evidential system. The Macedonian retellings used in this study represent a particular dialect from the villages around the town of Bitola in southwestern Macedonia and from Bitola itself. It should be stressed however that their dialect differs from the contemporary Bitola dialect since they left their villages more than 20 years previously. The English and Japanese participants were all undergraduate and graduate students at the University at Buffalo, aged in their 20s. The Japanese participants were all foreign students who had resided in the states a short while and who socialised almost exclusively with other Japanese speakers. All retellers were recruited in social groups to ensure that there was some degree of familiarity. They were therefore comfortable talking with each other and had some degree of familiarity with each other’s speech style. In some cases, the relationship was quite intimate (several of the English and Japanese participants were college roommates or close friends; two of the English participants were sisters), while in other cases, the participants were merely acquaintances or fellow members of the same social group. The fact that participants always knew to whom they would be retelling the story lessened the formality of the text elicitation scenario, encouraging retellers to speak as they would in a more spontaneous conversational setting. It is possible that the participants retold stories to each other (as gossip, etc.) in everyday conversation anyway, which would also lessen the formality of the text elicitation context. Given these parameters, it seemed reasonable to assume that the evidential strategies used by participants did represent their everyday use of language — not some highly formal or stilted style that might be used in ‘classroom’ or ‘experimental’ contexts. The recording sessions took place for the most part in participants’ homes, dorm rooms or social club/churches — places where the
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participants were comfortable. A few sessions were conducted in the Linguistics department on campus, a place that the participants were already familiar with, being undergraduate students of Linguistics subjects. The text elicitation sessions were conducted in pairs and groups of three or four participants. Members of pairs were assigned the roles of a designated reteller and an audience. A prerecorded personal experience story was used as input in these cases. Designated retellers were told to listen to a person on a tape who would be telling a true story. They were therefore already expecting to hear a personal experience story. They were also told prior to listening to the tape that they should listen carefully and to try and remember as much of the story as possible since they were to retell the story to another person. These instructions were designed so that the reteller knew from the outset that she must construct a retelling, and diminished the likelihood that she would feel unable to perform the task after hearing the tape. Participants were not told the exact purpose of the elicitation prior to the recording session. The task was presented as a memory task (“Tell her as much of the story as you can remember”) and if participants asked prior to the recording what the study was about, they were told that the research was focused on what gets left out as a story is retold down a speaker chain. Many of the participants were familiar with the “Broken Telephone” format as a party game and assumed that the goals of this research were similar to the goals of the game. Immediately after hearing the story on tape, the designated audience was brought into the room and she was instructed to listen to the story told to her. The designated reteller was instructed to tell her friend the story she had just heard. This version was recorded. It should be noted that the person designated as the ‘audience’ was present when the instructions to retell the story were given. Furthermore, the original tape recorder was still present when she entered the room. Therefore there was ample contextual evidence that the elicitation task involved a retelling of something on a tape even before the reteller began her version. The contexualisation of the text elicitation was designed to reinforce the fact that the task involved a retelling and thus increase the retellers’ motivation to adopt a consistent reportive epistemological stance towards the story. An alternative possibility was that the extralinguistic contextualisation of the retelling task would suppress reportive coding in the narrative as pragmatically redundant. The fact that this generally did not happen is evidence for the strength of the relationship between actual acquisition of knowledge and adoption of particular
Epistemological stance adoption in narrative retelling
epistemological stances towards that knowledge. The elicitation method was almost identical for the groups of three participants, except that the first designated ‘audience’ was told that she had to remember as much of the story as possible to retell to the third participant in the group. Thus two types of retellings were collected in these recording sessions: a first generation retelling reconstructed from hearing a personal experience story; and a second generation retelling reconstructed from hearing a retelling of a personal experience story. These two types of retellings were collected to investigate whether distance from the original source of information affected general patterns of epistemological stance adoption. In groups of four participants, one participant was designated as the ‘teller’ of a personal experience story, and was asked to tell a story about something that had happened to her that the others in the group did not know about. She told her story to the second participant (designated reteller1), who retold it to the third reteller (designated reteller2), who retold it to the fourth participant (designated audience). Only in these groups of four participants was the original teller present to tell her story. Figure 4.1 summarises the three types of elicitation scenarios. Two Participants Tape
Reteller
Audience
Three Participants Tape
Reteller1
Reteller2
Audience
Reteller1
Reteller2
Audience
Four Participants Teller
Figure 4.1Text elicitation paradigms
The retelling corpuses for each language used in this study involved the retellings of one prerecorded personal experience story and two personal experiences stories that were told ‘live’ by the original teller.
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The total number of texts in each corpus is given in Table 4.1 (prerecorded and ‘live’ groups not distinguished). The differences in the size of the overall corpuses are attributable to the fact that some of the retellers failed to follow directions, resulting in unsuitable texts. This occurred most frequently during the collection of the Macedonian corpus where retellers often told their own stories (similar to the one they had heard) instead of retelling the other person’s story. The problem usually lay with the fact that the retellers couldn’t understand why it was more interesting to record the same story over and over rather than collect as many different personal stories as there were speakers, and so were less cooperative in the task of retelling. Each ‘story’ (personal version and retellings) was assigned a title and a two letter abbreviation, prefaced by the first letter of the language (e.g. the Japanese ‘Car Rental’ story was abbreviated as JCR). Multiple retellings were assigned a subscript letter following the title (e.g. the first sequence of JCR to be recorded was JCRa, the second sequence was JCRb, etc.). First generation retellings were assigned a “1”, second generation retellings were assigned a “2” (e.g. the first generation retelling of JCRa was JCRa1, the second generation retelling of JCRa was JCRa2). The Macedonian and Japanese corpuses were transcribed and translated with the aid of a linguistically trained native speaker. The orthographies were chosen to function as closely to English orthographic as possible (e.g. ‘sh’ = [w], ‘ch’ = [v], ‘zh’ = [Š], ‘j’ = [3] in Japanese, [j] in Macedonian). This did not always mirror standard orthographic conventions for Macedonian and Japanese since neither of these languages uses the Roman script natively. Each non-English text was given a free English translation and a word-by-word gloss with grammatical morphemes in small capitals (abbreviations are provided at the beginning of the book). Texts were divided into ‘units’: clauses and ‘pause groups’ (which did not correspond with the notion of a clause but which nevertheless represented a distinct utterance, like an exclamation). Each unit was entered as a separate record and assigned both a text number and a unit number within that text. The units were coded as ‘clauses’, ‘phrases’, ‘exclamations’, or ‘unfinished’. A Table 4.1Size of text corpus Language Macedonian English Japanese
Personal
Retelling1
Retelling2
Total retellings
3 3 3
6 6 7
6 4 6
12 10 13
Epistemological stance adoption in narrative retelling
unit was coded as ‘unfinished’ if the teller was interrupted (by the audience or by herself). It did not include unfinished words within complete units. Only clauses were used for the subsequent analyses of type, frequency and distribution of epistemological stance expression presented in the following chapters. The exclusion of non-clausal units from the analysis was not expected to effect the analysis of epistemological stance adoption and evidential coding because the linguistic phenomena associated with epistemological stance examined here, grammaticalised or otherwise, typically only occurred within clauses. For example, the Macedonian ‘evidential’ L-form past only occurs in clauses because it is a finite verb inflection. Clauses were by far the most frequent unit type (81% of Macedonian units, 80% of Japanese units, and 87% of English units), often also corresponding with pause units.
4.3 Evaluation of the retelling corpus Although there was a considerable amount of variation in the linguistic strategies each reteller used to signal their epistemological stance towards the story they told (see Chapters 5 and 6 for a full discussion), it is clear that all were being faithful to the task of retelling. Retellers did not, for example, report a similar story of their own experience. They did not significantly embellish the story with extra events and interactions between characters that were not in the original. Regardless of the evidential strategies adopted in their versions, it was clear that each reteller was in fact engaged in retelling the story of someone else’s personal experience, as it was told to them. This is a context in which a strong preference for the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance was expected. The kinds of variation found across retellings in this study were entirely consistent with the results of earlier studies of narrative retelling, from Bartlett (1932) onwards. Retellings were generally much shorter than the original; retellers tended not to reconstruct a verbatim repetition of the story; story events tended to be more schematically represented. Nevertheless, the resulting narratives were clearly retellings of the original story since all events in the retelling could be linked back, either directly or by inference, to information acquired from the original version of the story. (1) Macedonian a. Go mesiv toj lebot 3sg.acc knead:1sg.p dem bread:def
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b. Skisna ubavo sour:3sg.p well c. Go razmesiv 3sg.acc knead.again:1sg.p d. Go naprajv somuni destina 3sg.acc make:1sg.p loaves ten e. Svekor mi ja nagori furnata F-in-law 1sg.dat 3sg.acc light:3sg.p oven:def f. Go opekavme 3sg.acc cook:1pl.p ‘(a) I kneaded that bread. (b) It rose nicely. (c) I kneaded it again. (d) I made ten loaves. (e) My father-in-law lit the oven. (f) We cooked it.’ (MBS) retold as I ovaa nevestata go mesila lebot. and dem bride:def 3sg.acc knead(L) bread:def And this bride baked the bread. (MBSa1) (2) Japanese ironna nanka senmonyogo mitai na koto o ii-dashite many something technical seeming thing obj say-start-con ‘plus’ sono hito no eigo ga~ mitai na kanji de sa plus that person gen English subj seeming smthng.like that ip zenzen wakara-nakute totally understand-neg-con And he started talking about many technical seeming things. Plus that person’s English was like [you know] and I couldn’t understand it at all (JCR) retold as nanka senmonyoogo toka hanasarechatte waka-na-katta-n technical like talk-caus-pp-con understand-neg-p-nom da tte cop rsp [But] apparently they talked to her using technical terms and she couldn’t understand at all (JCRc2) (3) English It was raining outside And she thought “Oh my God the roof is leaking It’s come through the attic
Epistemological stance adoption in narrative retelling
Through the bedroom above the~ the kitchen And is l~ It’s dripping into a pot in the sink or something.” retold as So now she’s all nervous Cos it was raining out And she thought that there was a leak So she figured it went in through the attic and then downst~ Down into the bathroom and now into the kitchen
(EMS)
(EMSc1)
The preceding examples from each of the corpuses illustrate the connection between the retellings and the original version of the story that was retold. In (1), from the Macedonian corpus, the sequence of events associated with baking bread, explicitly listed in the original story, are implied in the more general narrative event clause in the retelling — I ovaa nevestata go mesila lebot ‘And this bride baked the bread’. The example from the Japanese corpus in (2) retains all of the narrative meaning from the original (the information that ‘they’ used technical language and that the protagonist (= the original teller) could not understand ‘them’. The English passage in (3) is an example of narrative information that was directly represented as the character’s thought process in the original version of the story but was retold as a sequence of more ‘objective’ narrative clauses. Although the retelling of this passage did not use direct thought representation, it did retain the narrative information that the character of the mother thought that there was a leak, and that the leak had flowed through several rooms in the house. The shift in mode of representation from the highly subjective direct thought to the more objective mode of indirect representation (And she thought that there was a leak) does not detract from the faithful reporting of narrative information that was present in the story that the reteller heard. 4.4 Classification of clauses and the deictic centre The model of narrative structure adopted in this study makes a primary distinction between ‘narrative’ and ‘extranarrative’ information. Information which could be linked to information in the previous telling of the story, either as a direct repetition of what the previous teller said or as an inference based on what the previous teller said, was classified as ‘narrative’. Information which expressed a retellers’ own experience of hearing someone else’s story, their own
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‘evaluations’ of the narrative material (e.g. whether the story was told well, whether it made sense, etc.), or their ‘online’ experience as a reteller was classified as ‘extranarrative’. This designation shares much with Labov’s (1972) model of narrative structure which distinguished ‘internal evaluation’, which was lexically and syntactically coded within the sequence of narrative events, and ‘external evaluation’ which was coded paraphrastically ‘outside’ of the coding of the sequence of narrative events. Narrative units which directly represented the speech of characters as they spoke in the story, were coded separately as ‘content’ units. Content units are a type of narrative unit because they represent information that was in the previous telling of the story, but there are important formal differences between the content of direct speech and other narrative units which motivated their classification as a separate category. These formal properties include the presence of a framing clause identifying the reported speaker and the speech event, total shift in deictic centre to the time, place and identity of the speaking character, and use of ‘expressive’ syntax and other ‘expressive’ devices (Banfield 1982).14 Although the speech of story characters in retelling is information acquired by the reteller from the previous teller, the direct representation of story characters’ speech effaces the presence of the reteller in the retelling, and represents the characters’ epistemological stance, not the reteller’s. The following examples illustrate narrative, content and extranarrative units for each of the languages of investigation. (4) Macedonian a. Narrative I go mesila nevestata lebot sve and 3sg.acc knead:l bride:def bread:def everything And the bride kneaded the bread and everything. (MBSc2) b. Content I taa mu veli deka “E de bre Blagoja and 3nom 3dat say:3sg that excl excl excl Blagoja ne mi se pogodi zelnikot.” neg 1sg.dat refl make.well:3sg.sp zelnik:def And she says to him that, “Hey Blagoja, the zelnik did not turn out well for me.” (MZS1) c. Extranarrative Ovaa lenta se rasprava za edna mlada nevesta dem tape refl discuss:3sg ben one young bride This tape talks about a young bride. (MBSb1)
Epistemological stance adoption in narrative retelling
(5) Japanese a. Narrative sagashita-n da-kedo nai-n da tte zenzen look.for-p-nom cop-but neg-nom cop rsp not.at.all And she looked (for it) but there was no (hotel like that), apparently. (JLBb1) b. Content hora koko ni kuupon ga aru kara look here loc coupon subj be.located conj “Look! Here is a coupon!…” (JCRb1) c. Extranarrative soo-yuu sekenbanashi no yoo na that.kind prattle nom ip ip It’s that kind [of story], just prattle (JCRa1) (6) English a. Narrative And one day her mother made soup b. Content So they call X’s parents Like “(a) What shall we do! (b) what shall we do! (c) My bed’s on fire!” c. Extranarrative She gave a lot of detail and I can’t remember it all.
(EMSc1)
(EBS2) (EMSa1)
The difference between narrative, extranarrative and content units can be usefully characterised in the framework of ‘Deictic Centre Theory’ (Zubin & Hewitt 1995), described in Chapter 1. Deictic Centre Theory assumes a model of a story world as a mental representation of all information associated with the narrative events, the setting of the narrative and the identities of the story characters. All linguistic information associated with narration has a deictic profile that allows this information to be represented and interpreted from different perspectives. This ‘deictic profile’ is determined in two dimensions: the origin of perspective, “…a shifting localisation in time, space and person from which the story world is exposed to the reader/listener” (Zubin & Hewitt 1995: 132); and the object of perspective, “the content of the deictic window as it moves along its spatial, temporal and personal coordinates throughout the story world” (Ibid.: 132).
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Under a Deictic Centre Theory interpretation, narrative units represent information whose object of perspective is within the story world, but whose origin of perspective lies outside of the storyworld (with the time, place and identity of the current narrator). Narrative units in the retelling corpus are therefore expected to be represented from a reportive epistemological stance since they encode the reteller as origin of perspective whose object of perspective was acquired from someone else’s telling of the story. Extranarrative units also represent information whose origin of perspective lies outside of the story world with the here and now of the event of retelling. Unlike narrative units however, the object of perspective in extranarrative units also lies outside of the story world, either with the here and now of the retelling context or with the where and when of the hearing of the story by the previous teller (i.e. when the reteller acquired the story). Extranarrative units are therefore expected to be represented from a personal experience epistemological stance (i.e. the experiences of the reteller as a reteller in the current context and as a former hearer of the story). Like other narrative units, content units represent information whose object of perspective lies within the story world, as a speaking event in the story. Unlike canonical narrative units however, the origin of perspective of content units also lies within the story world — with the where and when of that speaking event in the story and with the who of the speaking character. Content units therefore represent the epistemological stance of the speaking character and would therefore be expected to use reportive strategies only when the characters themselves are represented as adopting a reportive epistemological stance. The deictic properties of the unit types are summarised in Table 4.2: Table 4.2Deictic profile of text units Unit type
Origin of perspective Object of perspective Expected epistemological stance
Extranarrative External Narrative External Content Internal
External Internal Internal
Personal Experience Reportive Variable
Of the three types of units found in this classification, only narrative units (i.e. those units that represented information found in the previous telling of the story that maintained a deictic anchor with the reteller) were expected to
Epistemological stance adoption in narrative retelling
represent a reportive epistemological stance in narrative retelling. However it is important to stress that information that was present in the previous version of the story could in fact be retold as either narrative or content units. This is illustrated in the English example in (3) above where direct representation of thought (i.e. content units) in the original story was retold as indirect thought (i.e. narrative units) in the retelling. It was therefore important to consider both narrative and content units in the analysis of epistemological stance adoption (and the linguistic strategies chosen to code epistemological stance) in the narrative retellings. Extranarrative units can provide important cues for the reteller’s epistemological stance towards narrative information. Indeed many strategies for expressing epistemological stance are extranarrative in their deictic profile since they can convey information about the how the reteller acquired their story and the extent to which they were committed to adopting a reportive epistemological stance towards narrative information. It was therefore also important to examine extranarrative units in the analysis of epistemological stance adoption in retelling.
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AUTHOR ""
TITLE "Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English"
SUBJECT "Pragmatics & Beyond, New Series, Volume 87"
KEYWORDS ""
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Chapter 5
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English15
Two means by which speakers can signal that they have adopted a reportive epistemological stance towards information were identified in Section 3.2.3. These were reported speech representation and reportive evidential morphemes. Reported speech representation was claimed as a universal linguistic means of indicating the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance. Not all languages have grammatical morphemes which code the epistemological status of information as ‘reportive’, but it can be claimed that the core function of such morphology, in languages which have it, is to express a speaker’s adoption of a reportive epistemological stance. The identification of reported speech representation and reportive evidential morphemes as canonical indicators of a reportive epistemological stance does not preclude the possibility that languages may have other means by which speakers can signal that they have adopted a reportive epistemological stance. In this chapter I describe of the range the linguistic devices that were used by speakers of Macedonian, Japanese and English in the Narrative Retelling task to indicate to their audience that the story they told was a retelling based on what someone else had told them (i.e. indicating the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance towards story information). These descriptions are based only those strategies which were actually used by the retellers in the task of retelling, and not on hypothetical indicators of reportiveness, or ones which may occur in other contexts.
5.1 Macedonian Macedonian was chosen as one of the languages of investigation because of its well described grammaticalised system of evidential coding (introduced in Section 2.1.1, and described in more detail in Section 5.1.1. below). It was predicted that since a grammatical system was available to code story information as originating from someone else’s telling of the story in that language,
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speakers would make extensive use of it. Certainly there was widespread use of this system in the Macedonian corpus but other reportive strategies were also used — reportive framing and evidential direct speech. 5.1.1
L-form past vs. simple past
It has long been observed that the choice of past tense forms in some Balkan Slavic languages (primarily Macedonian and Bulgarian) is motivated by the speaker’s epistemological state. In contexts where the speaker has direct experience of the events described, a simple past form is chosen, as in (1). If the speaker has not had direct experience of events described, but has learned about them through hearsay or inference, an L-form past is chosen, as in (2). (1) Taa go mesi lebot 3sg 3sg make.bread:3sg.sp bread:def ‘She baked the bread (I saw her do it/I vouch for it).’ (2) Taa go mesila lebot 3sg 3sg make.bread:l bread:def ‘She baked the bread (that’s what she told me/supposedly/that’s what I heard)’
The L-form past derives from an old Slavic perfect participle. In 1st and 2nd person, the L-form still occurs with a sum ‘be’ auxiliary, as in (3). (3) i ste gi zapalile kolite i ste pochnele and aux:2pl 3pl.acc start:l cars and aux:2pl start:l da vozite to drive:2pl and you started the cars and you started driving
(MCA3)
In Macedonian, the auxiliary is no longer used in 3rd person contexts (as in (2) above), although in closely related Bulgarian, the 3rd person auxiliary is still maintained in some contexts. The semantics of the Macedonian simple past/L-form contrast has been the subject of some debate in the Macedonian descriptive literature. Much of the discussion has focused on how the meaning of the L-form itself should be characterised. Lunt (1952) described the difference in terms of ‘distancing’,
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English 105
…these forms [L-forms] show an action viewed as distanced in time or reality. This may be realised in two ways. The speaker may be disclaiming responsibility for the accuracy of the statement by specifying that he was not a witness to the event, or he may be stating an action which started or took place in the past but which is still relevant at the moment of utterance. (Lunt 1952: 91)
Thus the L-form is described as encoding a range of meanings. One type of meaning is associated with the epistemological status of information — the relinquishment of responsibility for unwitnessed information. Other meanings, such as the description of actions which took place in the distant past, are related to the old perfect meaning of the form and do not seem to have evidential implications. In contrast, Lunt (1952) describes the simple past as always encoding that the action was ‘witnessed’ with no implications about the ‘distance’ of the event from the time of speaking, nor of its relevance to the present context. (DeBray 1980 also describes the distinction between simple past and L-form past in terms of a witnessed/non-witnessed distinction.) Friedman (1986) identifies two shortcomings of Lunt’s analysis: that the alternation between simple past and L-form represents a semantic contrast in speaker attitude rather than evidence (and therefore the witnessed/nonwitnessed distinction should be analysed as a pragmatically determined contrast, not a semantic one); and that the semantic difference between simple past and L-form does not involve a binary opposition of contrasting evidential values. Rather, the simple past is positively marked, while the L-form (which covers a broader range of meanings) is analysed as unmarked in this category (see Section 2.1.1). Under Friedman’s analysis, simple pasts are used only in contexts where speakers are prepared to ‘confirm’ or ‘vouch for’ information, an implication being that if a speaker is able to vouch for information, then they must have had direct perceptual or experiential knowledge of it. Theoretically, speakers may use the simple past even when they have not witnessed the event, if they want to stress their intention to ‘vouch for’ information. (cf. ‘prepared minds’ AksuKoç & Slobin (1986)). For example, although the most common interpretation of the sentence in (1) above is that the speaker saw the subject baking bread, it can also be interpreted as representing a context where the speaker did not see the subject baking bread, but is still able to ‘vouch for’ the fact (for example, if the speaker were just confirming a commonly held expectation that the subject was going to bake bread — and in fact she did).
106 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
The passage in (4) is a text example of the use of simple past in a context where the speaker does not have direct experience of an event. The speaker is describing a car accident that he directly experienced (as the victim). He ‘knows’ that the driver of the other vehicle was drunk because he (the driver) was seen coming out of a bar. The speaker never spoke to the driver, nor did he see him drinking alcohol. His knowledge of the drunkenness of the driver is not from direct experience but from a number of different evidence sources (possibly including a police report). Despite the lack of direct experiential evidence, the speaker uses a simple past rather than an L-form to stress that he is vouching for the validity of the assertion (with the added rhetorical punch that he was the victim of this car accident). (4) beshe pijan znam oti beshe pijan be:3sg.sp drunk know:1sg comp be:3sg.sp drunk He was drunk. I know that he was drunk.
(MCA)
In contrast, while the L-form past does not encode ‘non-confirmable/nonwitnessed’ as part of its core semantics, its use in contrast with the simple past implies that the speaker does not vouch for the information. A further implication from this contrast is that the speaker did not directly perceive or experience the events described. Thus use of the L-form past connotes that the speaker infers the information from some indirect evidence. In (5) below (from the same ‘car accident’ text as (4)), the speaker uses an L-form to imply that he did not actually witness the drunk driver opening the door of the car (although he is able to ‘vouch for’ the fact that the driver ended up back in the bar). In this example, the use of the L-form does not obviously imply however that the speaker knew about the door opening because they had been told so by someone else. (5) toj ja otvoril vratata i pravo vo barot 3sg.nom 3sg.acc open:l door:def and straight loc bar:def da ti odi pak da pie to ? go:3sg again to drink He (had) opened the door and straight into the bar he went (goes) again to drink. (MCA)
It is possible to give a characterisation of the semantics of the simple past/ L-form past distinction in terms of its deictic properties. Under this interpretation, the simple past functions deictically (a) to temporally index the time of the event as prior to the speaking time, and (b) to epistemologically index the event to the experiencer of that event. In contrast, the L-form functions deictically (a)
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English 107
to temporally index the time of the event as prior to the speaking time, and (b) to epistemologically delink the event to the experiencer. In other words, the L-form does not index the information to any specific source or type of source but rather asserts that the information is not indexed to the experiencer. This analysis wholly consistent with Friedman’s (1986) characterisation of the semantic differences between the forms. The contrast between simple pasts and L-forms in Macedonian is an example of grammaticalised evidentiality in the same sense that Lhasa Tibetan past perfectives and auxiliaries were described as grammatical markers of evidentiality. In both cases, evidential meanings are expressed in a closed class of bound suffixes which are also used for temporal deictic orientation. The semantics of these forms is clearly highly schematic and the evidential meaning of the L-form past is relatively context-dependent. In past tense contexts speakers are required by the grammar of their language to make a choice of forms which distinguish epistemological deictic orientation. They may avoid past tense altogether but once past temporal deictic orientation is selected, speakers must either deictically link the information to the experiencer (using simple past), or assert no epistemological link to the experiencer (using L-form).16 Table 5.1 presents a summary of the grammatical status of the Macedonian past tense paradigm using the criteria for grammatical status listed in Chapter 2. Table 5.1Grammatical status of Macedonian past tense system (simple past/L-form) Criteria a.Closed class
Grammatical properties of forms Yes
Evidential contrast within inflectional category.
b.Restricted morphosyntax Yes
Evidential marking must occur with use of past tense.
c.Bleached semantics
Yes
Schematic meaning of epistemological deictic orientation.
d.Hyperextended use
Yes
All past tense verbs must have some evidential marking even if it is not pragmatically necessary.
e.Reduced form
Yes
Verbal Suffix
Friedman’s (1986) analysis of Balkan Slavic past tenses denies the explicit coding of type of source of information by either the simple past or the L-form past — they code ‘attitude’ rather than ‘evidentiality’. The pragmatics of both
108 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
inflectional paradigms however suggest that speakers do choose simple pasts or L-forms according to the type of epistemological stance adopted. The use of simple past forms to index information to direct experience and witness is wholly consistent with the adoption of a personal/perceptual experience epistemological stance. The use of L-forms to assert the delinking of information to direct experience is consistent with the adoption of an epistemological stance that denies personal involvement (e.g. a reportive epistemological stance or an inferential epistemological stance). In the particular context of text elicitation used in this study, the audience already knew before the reteller even began her narration that the source of the story came from a previous teller. Therefore the only possible interpretation of the L-form past in this context is as a marker of reportiveness. Although the use of present forms in past contexts is an accepted narrative style in Macedonian (Lunt 1952; Friedman 1977), past tense forms are the default tense used in narration, particularly to code completed narrative events. Since speakers are required to choose past tense verb forms according to their epistemological stance, it was expected that retellers would consistently use L-form pasts as their main past-tense marking strategy for identifying the story as a retelling, reflecting the consistent adoption of a reportive epistemological stance. Recall that epistemological stances need not reflect the actual source of information. The construal of information with respect to epistemological stance is also motivated by other contextual factors. The expectation that L-forms would be used as the main reportive strategy does not exclude the possibility that retellers would fail to adopt a reportive epistemological stance altogether, resulting in an absence of L-form pasts. For example, retellers may choose to avoid past tense forms altogether by use of historic present; they may choose to present the story as their own experience. It was expected that when retellers faithfully fulfil the task of retelling a story that originated as another person’s personal experience, adopting a reportive epistemological stance, that they would consistently use L-form pasts in preference to other strategies. This expectation was only partially supported by the distribution of L-forms in the retelling corpus and this finding will be discussed in detail in the following chapters. 5.1.2 Reportive frames Some retellers began their version of the story with an overt reference to how they acquired the story, overtly framing the story as a retelling. The use of reportive frames is illustrated in (6) and (7) below.
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English 109
(6) zhenava shto zborva ne e prikaska ami woman:def what tell:3sg neg be:3sg story but e zhiva vistina koga bila mlada nevesta be:3sg live truth when be:l young bride svekrva mu rekla da mesat leb mother-in-law 3dat say:l to knead:3pl bread What this woman is telling is not a story but the living truth. When she was a young bride her mother-in-law told her to bake bread. (MBSd1) (7) Ovaa lenta se rasprava za edna mlada nevesta… dem tape refl discuss:3sg ben one young bride I ovaa nevestata zela leb da mesi and dem bride:def take:l bread to knead This tape talks about a young bride… And this bride took on the task of kneading bread. (MBSb1)
In (6), the teller explicitly establishes ‘this woman’ as the source of the story (and furthermore that the story is a ‘true’ story and not a fictional account). In (7), the reteller refers to the tape itself as source of information. Since people know from world knowledge that a tape often has voices recorded on it, this information implies that the story was acquired by hearing someone else’s version of it (the verb rasprava ‘discuss’ also reinforces this interpretation). These opening strategies are ‘extranarrative’ because they represent information about the reteller’s experience as the hearer of the story. So while the reportive frame itself reflects a personal experience or factual epistemological stance, it also expresses the reteller’s intention to represent the subsequent telling of the story from a reportive epistemological stance. Once the reportive frame is established, both retellers shift from non-past verb forms to L-form pasts — the verb form expected when a reteller has adopted a reportive epistemological stance. A slightly different example of reportive framing is illustrated in (8) where the reteller begins her version of the story by syntactically embedding narrative information as the content of indirect reported speech. (8) X mi kazhuvashe sega deka sakashe nova kola X 1dat tell:3sg.sp now that want:3sg.sp new car da se kupe I prvo go prasha tatko i… to refl buy:3sg and first 3acc ask:3sg.sp father 3dat X told me now that she wanted to buy a new car. And first she asked her father… (MNC1)
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The content of the reported speech is offset by the presence of a complementiser deka ‘that’, which signals that the content of speech is embedded under the main speech act predicate. This is different from the examples in (6) and (7) above where the objects of the main verbs of speaking in the initial clauses were simple noun phrases rather than subordinate clauses. Furthermore, the informational content of the reported speech passage in (8) is coded with simple past forms rather than the L-form past forms found in (6) and (7). The simple pasts in (8) are licensed by the syntax of reported speech in Macedonian which prefers concordance of tense in main and subordinate clauses — in this context their use does not signal the adoption of a personal experience stance towards the story information. In fact, the use of simple past in (8) does indeed signal that the reteller has adopted a reportive epistemological stance because she has syntactically embedded the story information under a predicate of saying attributed to the original teller. The predicate kazhuva ‘say/tell’ shifts epistemological deixis of the subsequent simple past forms from current teller-as-experiencer to reported speaker-as-experiencer. The simple past is thus reflective of the previous teller’s epistemological stance, which was one of personal experience. The previous teller as experiencer of the events in the story is expected to use simple past forms. Further evidence that the teller in (8) was adopting a reportive epistemological stance, even when simple past forms were used after the reportive frame, is the subsequent use of L-form pasts in this text, illustrated in (9). (9) I posle tatko i rekol deka kje odat na ‘auction’ … and later father 3sg.dat say:l that will go:3pl loc auction And later her father said that they will go to an auction… (MNC1)
Only one Macedonian reteller failed to use L-form pasts at all in retelling once the reportive frame was established. This was the retelling of the text in (8), a retelling reconstructed from a retelling, given in part in (10). (10) X reche deka saka da kupi kola X say:3sg.sp that want:3sg.sp to buy:3sg car I ja prasha majka mu Majka mu mu reche and 3sg ask:3sg.sp mother 3sg mother 3sg 3sg say:3sg.sp X said that she wanted to buy a car. And she asked her mother. Her mother said… (MNC2)
Although the teller in (10) refers to the original teller by name as the source of the story, thus evoking the reportive context, she never supports a reportive epi-
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English
stemological stance with the use of L-forms. She maintains the use of simple pasts throughout her retelling with no further cues of reportiveness. Why should a Macedonian speaker who is clearly aware that she is reporting what someone else said fail to consistently code the narrative with reportive marking? One explanation for the continued lack of L-form pasts in this particular version is that the teller considered the entire narrative to be embedded under the reportive frame established as the first line of the telling. Her total lack of other reportive cues suggests however that the choice of simple past over L-form past was a deliberate strategy to detract from the reportiveness of the narrative information and to present the story as ‘vouched for’. This analysis is plausible because the teller in (10) knew the original speaker very well and also already knew some details of her experience in getting the car. It is possible that the reteller was trying to convey an aura of confidence and authority in her version of the story based on her prior knowledge of events. This analysis is supported by the ‘mirative’ analysis of the simple past/L-form distinction proposed in Friedman (1995), where simple pasts were more likely to be used for information that was completely ‘assimilated in the speakers consciousness’, even if it had not been personally experienced (DeLancey (1997) and Slobin & Aksu-Koç (1986)). Simple pasts are less likely in contexts where the speaker talked about information that had just entered into their consciousness (e.g. surprise). Under this analysis, the use of the simple past is appropriate if the reteller in (10) did in fact have prior knowledge of the original teller’s experience. Whatever the reason, the complete absence of reportive marking after the first line in (10) is evidence that despite the grammatical status of epistemological stance in Macedonian past tense choices, the forms are not automatically chosen to match the source of information (otherwise L-forms would automatically be chosen in retellings). The teller in (10) was no doubt aware that she was retelling a story told to her by someone else (in this case, not the original teller). However, she chose to downplay the reportiveness of the information for pragmatic reasons that might have been compromised if L-form pasts had been used. Most of the Macedonian retellers did begin their versions of the story with some kind of reportive framing. However, there were some cases where retellers did not extranarratively contextualise the story they told as a retelling in this way — they simply began their retelling with consistent use of L-form pasts, as in (11). In the context of the recording session, where it was clear that the retelling’s source was someone else’s story, use of L-form is enough of a linguistic cue to establish and maintain a reportive epistemological stance.
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(11) Si bila edna nevesta I svekra mu mu rekla refl be:l one bride and M-in-law 3dat 3dat say:l da mesat leb to knead:3pl bread There once was a bride. And her mother-in-law told her to knead bread. (MBSc1)
5.1.3 Evidential reported speech Another strategy that retellers used to express the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance towards story information was the representation the story (or parts of the story) as a quote attributed to the previous teller of the story. The passages in (12) and (13) are examples of this ‘evidential direct speech’ strategy. (12) I veli “Jas ostanav doma. Go mesiv lebot…” and say:3sg 1nom stay:1sg.sp home 3acc knead:1sg.sp bread:def And she[previous teller] says, “I stayed at home. I kneaded the bread…” (MBS1) (13) I veli “Tatko mi beshe posle na krajot” veli and say:3sg father 1sg.dat be:3sg.sp last loc end:def say:3sg “A listatsijata pochna od pet ilijadi. I nagore” veli and auction:def start:3sg.sp gen five thousand and up say:3sg “krenavme do kaj sedum” veli “i pol ilijadi” veli rise:1pl.sp dat loc seven say:3sg and half thousand say:3sg And she [previous teller] says, “My father was last in the end.” She [previous teller] says, “and the auction started from $5000 and up” she [previous teller] says. “We raised (it) to seven,” she [previous teller] says, “and a half thousand.” she [previous teller] says. (MNC1)
Like most languages, Macedonian codes direct speech by representing the content of the reported speaker’s speech act as an iconic representation of that speech act. All deixis within the content of speech is interpreted as relative to the time, place and identity of the reported speaker as they spoke. The content of speech in direct speech thus purports to be a replica of the exact words the reported speaker uttered. Macedonian direct speech also typically occurs with a framing clause containing a speech act verb and some reference to the reported speaker.
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English
(14) Mu veli “Daj zelnikot” I taa mu veli deka 3sg.dat say:3sg give:imp zelnik:def and 3nom 3dat say:3sg that “E de bre Blagoja ne mi se pogodi excl excl excl Blagoja neg 1sg.dat refl make.well:3sg.sp zelnikot.” zelnik:def ‘He says to her, “Bring (us) the zelnik.” And she says to him that, “Hey Blagoja, the zelnik was not made well.”’ (MZS1)
The passage in (14) is a canonical example of direct speech from the Macedonian corpus — a conversational exchange between two characters in the story. The first line contains a framing clause, mu veli ‘he says to her’, which indexes ‘he’ as the speaking character. This is followed by an imperative clause which represents the order given by that character to bring the zelnik. The second passage of speech also consists of a framing clause indexing ‘she’ the speaker to the following content of speech. The first person dative pronoun mi is interpreted as referring to the reported speaker (‘she’) and not the current teller. The use of ‘expressive’ devices such as imperative syntax and exclamatives are also associated with a direct mode of speech representation (Banfield 1982). Both (12) and (13) above are also unproblematically analysed as examples of direct speech representation. In (12), for example, the first person reference (Jas ‘I’) and verb agreement (ostanav ‘I remained’, mesiv ‘I kneaded’) both refer back to the reported speaker and not to the actual speaker. The lack of expressive devices in both (12) and (13) is attributable to the fact that the represented speech act is an act of narration, and not a represented conversation between story characters. The main difference between examples like (12) and (13) on the one hand and (14) on the other hand is the nature of the reported speaker and their relationship to the narrative. The passage in (14) is an example of narrative direct speech. The reported speaker is a character in the story, the words that they speak are deictically centred within the story, and the speech act itself is analysable as an event in the story world. In contrast, the direct speech passages in (12) and (13) above do not represent individual events in the story, but rather the act of narration itself. The reported speaker is not a character in the story but rather the person who told the story. These are examples of evidential direct speech. Only evidential direct speech reflects the teller’s reportive epistemological stance.
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Direct speech involves a complete deictic shift from current speaker to reported speaker. This includes a shift from reflecting the one’s own stance as a current speaker to representing the stance of the reported speaker. Thus direct speech purports to represent the epistemological stance of the reported speaker. In (12) and (13), both from first generation retellings, the content of speech is reflective of a personal experience epistemological stance. L-forms would be predicted only if the original teller represented information from a reportive perspective. Although theoretically possible, this never occurred in my corpus. 5.1.4 Summary Three retelling strategies were identified for the Macedonian corpus which indicate to the audience that the reteller has construed of the story as a retelling — a report of what someone else has said — reflecting the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance towards narrative information. Reportive framing extranarratively evokes the reteller’s commitment to retelling the story as a retelling, explicitly grounding the subsequent narration in the context of retelling a story acquired by hearing it from someone else. The use of L-form past as the ‘default’ past tense form, the verb form conventionally associated with information acquired reportively, is a grammatical means of representing the story as the product of someone else’s telling (and someone else’s experience) that maintains the reteller as the centre of deixis with respect to narrative information. Evidential direct speech exploits the total deictic shift function of direct speech representation to completely efface the presence of the reteller, reconstructing narrative information as a purported verbatim rendition of what the previous teller said. Although each of these strategies can be described as ‘reportive’, in the sense that they reflect the reteller’s adoption of a reportive epistemological stance, there are significant differences between them with respect to their deictic properties and to their narrative status. These differences will have consequences for both narrative structure and narrative style. The pragmatics of the choice of epistemological stance representation strategy will be addressed in the next chapter.
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English
5.2 Japanese The study of reportive epistemological stance adoption in Japanese already has some basis in the Japanese linguistics literature. There are general studies of Japanese evidentiality (e.g. Aoki 1986; Ohta 1991; Kamio 1994), and related work on the expression of speaker ‘attitudes’ (e.g. Maynard 1993). This body of literature has already identified epistemological status as a significant pragmatic factor in the choice of linguistic forms, and it was predicted that Japanese retellers would make prodigious use of evidential strategies in the process of narrative retelling. As expected, Japanese retellers did make use of a number of different strategies for signalling that the story they retold was a retelling of what someone else had said. Extranarrative strategies of reportive framing and evidential reported speech were very similar to those extranarrative strategies described for the Macedonian retellings. Two narrative evidential strategies were also identified as reflective of a reportive epistemological stance: the sentence final particle tte, which has many properties of a grammatical marker of reportive evidentiality; and the adjectival predicate rashii which in the context of retelling also evokes the fact that information was acquired through linguistic evidence. 5.2.1 Reportive frames Some retellers introduced their version of the story with a precis of how they acquired the story, framing what they were about to relate as a retelling. (15) kono hanashi wa X-san to Y-san no aida de this story top X and Y gen time loc aida no hanashi o rokuon sareta mono time gen story obj recording-pass-p thing This story is something that was recorded between X and Y.
(JCRb1)
(16) ano ne ano X san tte yuu hito ga ite X rsp say person subj be.located:con kanojo onaji “Linguistics Department” no hito na-n dakedo 3sg same gen person cop-nom cop-but kanojo ga ne sono hanashi o ne teepu ni fukikonda no ne 3sg subj ip that story obj ip tape loc record-p nom ip kanojo no keeken un ano ne 3sg gen experience ip Guess what there is a person called X. She’s in the same linguistics department. She taped this story, her experience. (JLBb1)
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In (15), the reteller begins her version of the story with a reference to how the story was originally told — a recorded segment of a conversation between two other people (clearly with whom the reteller was familiar since she knew their names). In (16), the reteller does not assume that her addressee knows the original teller and provides some background information before describing the kind of story that she is about to tell (i.e. that it is a story recorded by the original teller of her own experience). Reportive frames help to contextualise the story by giving the listener some information about its origins. By making explicit reference to the fact that the story was acquired from someone else’s telling of it, the reteller signals their conscious intention to represent the story as a retelling. Since it represents the reteller’s own experience of hearing the story, the reportive frame itself is not a conclusive indicator that the reteller has adopted a reportive epistemological stance towards all of the narrative information. However it does set up a context in which it a reportive epistemological stance towards the actual narrative information might be expected. 5.2.2 Evidential reported speech Like Macedonian, Japanese retellers also used evidential reported speech as a means of indicating the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance. Recall that evidential reported speech was easily identified in Macedonian because its use coincided with a total shift in deixis from current reteller as deictic origin to previous teller as deictic origin, typically grounded with a framing clause of direct speech (veli ‘she says’). The content of speech in Macedonian evidential reported speech was thus presented as personal experience — a representation of the previous narrator recounting her own experience. Evidential reported speech was in complementary distribution with the L-form past tense, reinforcing its role as a strategy for coding reportiveness. Japanese reported speech, while similar to its Macedonian counterpart, has its own unique features, as listed below: a. The main verb of the clause is a verb of speaking (typically yuu ‘say’). b. The main verb is connected to the content of speech with a complementiser to (often tte in informal speech). c. The reported speaker is marked as a topic or subject of the verb of speaking. d. Speech act verb + complementiser typically occurs at the end of the reported speech passage.
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English
The examples in (17) and (18) illustrate the common forms of reported speech in Japanese. The reference to the reported speaker and to the speech act predicate are in boldface. Together they create a frame for the content of speech. (17) kore wa shitsurei da yo to iwarete this top rude cop ip rsp say-pass-con And I was told “ It’s not fair!”/And I was told it wasn’t fair.
(JFS)
(18) de ne keesastu ga nani shiteru-n da tte yuu kara part ip police subj what do-prog-nom cop rsp say conj Then the police asked “What are you doing here.”/Then the police asked what I was doing (there). (JLB)
The passages in (19) and (20) are examples of Japanese use of evidential reported speech, similar to the Macedonian use of reported speech to express a reportive epistemological stance. (19) sore.de yappari Amerikajin wa kechi dakara and after.all Americans top stingy so soo.yuu no ga umai ne tte itte-ite nom subj skilled ip rsp say-prog And, as we know, Americans are stingy so she[previous teller] was saying that they are good at that kind of thing. (JCRa1) (20) moshi kanojo ni tanonda to shite mo soo.yuu fuu na if 3sg loc ask-p part do-con also like.this ip koto ni wa nara-na-katta wa tte itte nom loc top become-neg-p ip rsp say-con If she[previous teller] had asked her the same thing, she couldn’t have figured out what to do, she[previous teller] said. (JCRb1)
Unlike Macedonian, Japanese tends not to code personal and temporal deictic shifts consistently in reported speech representation. Deictic orientation is one of the main cues for determining whether represented speech is ‘direct’ (a constructed replica of the original utterance) or ‘indirect’ (a representation of the ‘gist’ of the original utterance). The lack of deictic cues thus makes it difficult to determine whether Japanese evidential reported speech is categorically direct or indirect representation.17 A categorical distinction between direct and indirect speech representation in Japanese may not be necessary to determine the degree to which a passage of reported speech is more or less like direct speech representation. Cues other than deictic orientation may be used for this purpose, especially the use of
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‘expressive’ language (Banfield 1982). Using this criteria, it is possible to analyse the examples of evidential reported speech in (19) and (20) as direct speech representation. For example, the interactive particles ne (in (18)), and wa (in (19)) that precede the framing clause suggest a more expressive representation of the previous teller’s account — a more direct mode of representation. The analysis of these passages of evidential reported speech as representing a more direct mode of representation has important implications for its analysis as a marker of a reportive epistemological stance. This issue will be addressed further in the next chapter. Japanese evidential reported speech, like its Macedonian counterpart, is an extranarrative evidential strategy because the framing clauses of the reported speech passages reflect the reteller’s personal experience as the one who heard the story (and therefore has the authority to quote from personal experience of hearing the story). However not all instances of extranarrative reported speech frames reflected the reteller’s reportive epistemological stance towards the narrative. The passages in (21), (22) and (23) are examples of another kind of reported speech framing context that differs from the examples of evidential reported speech in (19) and (20). In these examples, the framing construction, tte yuu, is followed by the nominal hanashi ‘telling/story’. (21) de Amerikajin wa kechi dakara nanka soo.yuu koto ni atama ga and Americans top stingy therefore nom loc head subj hataraku-n da ne tte yuu o-hanashi datta to omo use-nom cop ip rsp say story cop-p rsp think And Americans are economical so he could do it, it’s said in the story, I think. (JCRb2) (22) dakara Maaku ga ika.ni gambatte kureta ka so Mark subj how do.one’s.best-con give-p qp tte yuu hanashi rashii-n da yo ne rsp say story seem-nom cop ip ip So the story was about how Mark did his best for her, it seems.
(JCRc2)
(23) futari de rentakaa o kariyoo to yuu hanashi two part car.rental obj rent-cj rsp say story ni natta-n da-kedo loc become-p-nom cop-but And it turns out that they decided to rent a car, it’s said in the story. (JCRc2)
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English
The construction tte yuu hanashi frames the narrative information as a story without specifically indexing the narrative information to the previous teller of the story. It functions to reinforce the information as a story, not necessarily a retelling of a story. This construction is not primarily associated with retold or hearsay information, and may be used in fictional and personal narratives with equal acceptability. For this reason, although tte yuu hanashi shares many properties with other reported speech framing clauses, it was not counted as introducing evidential reported speech for the purposes of reflecting a reportive epistemological stance. 5.2.3 Sentence final tte Sentence final tte is a particle which has sometimes been described as an ‘informal’ or ‘conversational’ variant of soo da, a nominal evidential construction typically associated with hearsay (Aoki 1986; Ohta 1991; Lampkin 1995). The hearsay function of tte, translated here as ‘apparently’, is illustrated in (24) and (25) where each reteller codes narrative information as something she heard from someone else. (24) torakku no ushiro ni nokkete mora-tta-n da tte truck gen back loc get.on-con receive-p-nom cop rsp Apparently she got on the back of the truck
(JLBa2)
(25) jaa hajimemasu onna.no.hito ga futari ita-n da tte excl begin woman subj two be.located-p-nom cop rsp Let’s Start. Apparently there are two women… (JCRc2)
Sentence final tte is syntactically part of the narrative utterance and is therefore classified as a narrative evidential strategy, coding information as acquired by hearsay without deictically shifting outside of the narrative story world. The passages in (24) and (25) therefore reflect the reteller’s reportive epistemological stance towards the narrative information. The form tte has several syntactic and discourse functions, not all of which signal the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance. As a complementiser, tte is virtually synonymous with the reported speech complementiser to (Okamoto 1995; Suzuki 1997). Like to, tte is used as a complementiser to attach the content of reported speech or thought to the main clause of speaking. The passages in (26) and (27) illustrate the parallelism in function between complementisers to and tte as they function to link the content of thought with a main verb of cognition, omou ‘think’.
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(26) de toriaezu musende.yonde kureta kara to omotte and so radio-con give-p conj rsp think-con jiitto matte-tara ne without.moving wait-cond ip I waited patiently for a taxi, thinking because the man called one for me. (JLB) (27) de nanka kanojo mo ie ni kaetta kara konai kara and 3sg also home loc return-p conj come-neg conj tte omotte rsp think-con Since she had already come home and I thought [assumed] she wouldn’t come out again. (JLB)
The tte/to complementiser also has functions other than the introduction of reported speech or thought, some of which are represented in my corpus. The passage in (28) illustrates two non-reported speech uses of tte. In the first instance, tte is used to connect two NPs and to introduce ‘Jafu’ as the name of a company. In the second instance, tte is used to present ‘J-A-F-U’ as the (romanised) spelling of ‘Jafu’. These uses of tte suggest that the particle is a marked of general linguistic ‘representation’ (e.g. representation of a name or of a spelling of a name), not just speech representation. (28) Jafu tte kaisha shiteru nanka Jafu Jafu rsp company know-prog Jafu J-A-F-U tte kaite J-A-F-U rsp write-con ‘Do you know Jafu? “Jafu”, spelled J-A-F-U’
(JCRc2)
A comprehensive analysis of the semantics and pragmatics of tte would require full consideration of its discourse functions. These are discussed in more detail in Maynard (1993), Itani (1996) and Suzuki (1997). The purpose here however is to describe the properties of tte as a linguistic marker of a reportive epistemological stance. Since its non-reported speech uses do not function to index some content of speech/thought with its source, and are therefore not analysable as evidential, they will not be discussed further here. The reportive evidential functions of the particle tte relate to its speech representation functions. Of tte and to, tte was by far the more frequent reported speech/thought complementiser in the retelling corpus (ratio 8:1), even though to is typically regarded as the unmarked reported speech complementiser, occurring in both speech and writing. In these contexts, however
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English
it is the entire reported speech framing construction (complementiser + speech act verb), and not the use of tte alone, that indexes content of speech/thought to the reported speaker/thinker. Only the sentence final uses of tte, illustrated in (24) and (25), index narrative information to some previous teller of the story, but without explicit mention of either the speech act itself or the actual reported speaker (as is expected in canonical reported speech representation). So although sentence final tte may derive historically from the reported speech complementiser, and synchronically it still has this function, its properties as a sentence final particle are closer to a grammatical hearsay evidential morpheme, as is found in many languages with more fully grammaticalised evidential systems, than as a reported speech marker.18 Certainly there is a close relationship between reportive evidentiality and reported speech. One of the sources of grammatical reportive evidentials across languages is verbs of speaking in reported speech (Hardman 1986; Gordon 1986; Jacobsen 1986; Willett 1988; Mushin 1997). Both reported speech and reportive evidentiality involve some reference to a prior utterance. However there are some fundamental differences between the notional categories of reported speech and reportive evidentiality, as illustrated in the English and Japanese examples (29) and (30) below. (29) Reported Speech: English a. Peter said that he was going to have a party on Saturday b. Peter said “I’m going to have a party on Saturday” Japanese c. Piita wa (kondo no) doyoobi ni paati o suru to itta Peter top (next gen) Saturday loc party obj do rsp say-p (30) Reportive evidentiality: English a. Apparently Peter is having a party on Saturday. Japanese b. Piita wa doyoobi ni paati o suru(-n da) tte Peter top Saturday loc party obj do-nom cop rsp
Reported speech has a dual function. It contextualises information as the product of a former speech act and also represents the propositional content of that former event. This is true of both direct speech representation, where the
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propositional content is an iconic representation of the former utterance, and indirect speech representation, where the propositional content is represented as a summary of the actual former utterance. Reported speech is typically a complex syntactic construction that incorporates both aspects of the semantics of reported speech. The speech act predicate is typically a main clause consistent with the deictic orientation of the prior discourse. The content of speech is usually marked by special morphosyntax and/or by shifts in deictic coding. As a main clause predicate, it can be argued that the event of speaking is substantially foregrounded in reported speech. As the subject of reported speech passage, the identity of the reported speaker is also foregrounded. When propositional information is expressed as reportive evidentiality, as in (30), it draws attention to the fact that the source of this information was the product of another person’s utterance. To this extent it is like reported speech. Unlike reported speech however, it does not foreground the former speech act itself, but rather maintains focus on the propositional information — what someone was supposed to have said. While the identity of the original speaker may be known in context, reportive constructions typically make no reference to the former speaker as source. So while reportive evidentiality codes information as something that was originally said, it backgrounds the fact of the speech event and highlights the propositional information as most relevant to the discourse. The passage in (31) is an example of a reported speech passage in a retelling that was itself represented as acquired by hearsay. The embeddedness of reported speech under a reportive marker is further evidence of their general semantic and pragmatic differences. It is also a good illustration of the different functions of the particle tte. The entire speech act framed by the complementiser + speech verb construction, tte itta ‘(she) said’ is coded as reportive by the sentence final use of tte which makes no overt reference to the person who originally told the story. (31) soko no tonari ni Burger King ga aru kara there gen next.to loc Burger King subj be.located conj soko de machiawase.shiyo tte itta-n da tte there part rendevous-cj rsp say-p-nom cop rsp There is a Burger King next to the hotel so “Let’s meet there” she said, apparently. (JLBb1)
What is the grammatical status of sentence final tte as an evidential marker? Certainly sentence final tte fulfils many of the criteria for grammatical status that were established in Chapter 2.
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English
a.it is a member of a closed class in paradigmatic opposition to the more ‘formal’ reported speech complementiser to (although sentence final to does not function as a reportive marker — Okamoto 1995). b.by definition, sentence final tte is very restricted in its morphosyntax, even more than other ‘sentence final’ particles. It must always occur last in the sentence, following all other particles. c.the semantics of sentence-final tte is highly schematic — it indexes information to some previous speech act (by a different speaker) without explicitly referring to the original speaker or to the speech act. d.although it was a very frequently used particle in the retelling corpus, the status of sentence final tte as a hyperextended marker is not immediately clear. Certainly sentence final tte did not occur in every instance where its syntactic and semantic selectional criteria were fulfilled. Nevertheless, its frequency and distribution in the retelling corpus were sufficient to allow the hypothesis that sentence final tte is becoming hyperextended and may indeed ultimately function obligatorily to coding information as the product of hearsay. Further details of the frequency and distribution of sentence final tte in the retelling corpus will be given in the next chapter. e.it is also unclear to what extent tte can be analysed as a ‘reduced form’. It is a free morpheme which is most frequently found in the construction tte yuu (tte + say). This construction occurs as a framing clause for reported speech, as discussed earlier, but it also has a number of other ‘clause combining’ functions (many of which are discussed in Maynard 1993). Historically tte yuu is the earlier construction — Okamoto (1995) analyses tte as a contracted form of to yuu no wa ‘what is called’ — the sentence-final tte can therefore be analysed as a reduction of this construction (a loss of the verb component). On the other hand, it is also possible to analyse tte as a separate particle even in the tte yuu construction. Under this interpretation, it is not necessary to analyse tte as a reduced form. Table 5.2 summarises the grammatical properties of sentence-final tte. The morphosyntactic and semantic properties of sentence final tte indicate a fairly robust grammatical status as a hearsay evidential marker. 5.2.4 Adjectival predicate rashii The adjectival predicate rashii, often translated as ‘seems’, is a lexical inferential
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Table 5.2Sentence-final tte Criteria a.Closed class
Grammatical properties of forms Yes
tte is part of a small set of ‘representational’ particles (to, toka, tte)
b.Restricted morphosyntax Yes
tte can only occur sentence-finally. It cannot be followed by other sentence-final ‘interactional’ particles.
c.Bleached semantics
Yes
the semantics of sentence final tte are highly schematic and can be defined in deictic terms.
d.Hyperextended use
?
unclear
e.Reduced form
?
unclear
evidential marker, one which codes information as the product of the speaker’s inferential processes based on some kind of external evidence (Aoki 1986). As a syntactic predicate, rashii occurs within narrative clauses so that like sentence final tte, rashii operates as a narrative evidential strategy. There are however significant syntactic and semantic differences between sentence final tte and rashii. As an inferential form, rashii implies that the propositional information it modifies is partially the creative mental input of the current teller (who does the inferring). Purely reportive forms like tte and reportive framing present information as completely divorced from the mental input of the current teller — they simply report that something was said. However, in the context of narrative retelling, rashii is interpreted as ‘inference based on what the previous teller said’ and so to this extent it reflects the reteller’s commitment to faithfully frame their story as a retelling, reflecting a reportive epistemological stance. The use of rashii in retellings thus preserves a reportive flavour while simultaneously marking information as the product of the reteller’s conception of the information — it is the retellers inference, not a representation of an inference of the previous teller. The passage in (32) is an example of this use (33) is the equivalent passage from the original story. The use of rashii in the original (personal experience) version of the story is motivated by the fact that the teller is talking about the emotional state of one of the story characters — information which the teller can only know by observation of the individual’s behaviour and/or by what that character might have said about his emotional state (i.e. that he didn’t like the role he was given in the film).
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English
(32) de sono yaku tte yuu no ga honto wa ano kare~ and that role rsp say nom subj really top 3sg honto wa motto hora ni shuyaku mitai yari-ta-kat-tara really top more you.see loc main.role seem do-want-p-conj rashii-n da-kedo seem-nom cop-but And the character was really~ It seems he really he wanted to play a starring role. (JFSa1) (33) ko katate sh~ mado kara katate shika misenai no ne one.arm window from one.arm only show-neg nom ip sore ga ki.ni.iranakatta rashi-kute that subj like-neg-p seem-con (His role was) only to show his arm from the window and he didn’t like it, it seems. (JFS)
In (32), the information that the story character in question wanted to play the main role in the film is not directly mentioned in the previous telling. All the reteller heard was that this person was annoyed at the small size of the part he was given in the movie, and from there inferred that he actually wanted to be the main character. This is not a straight reportive use of rashii since the actual teller does not simply report or represent what they claim to have been told. Rather, they add their own inferences about aspects of the story based on evidence from the story (i.e. if the person was unhappy with his role then he wanted to be the main character). In (32), rashii was used to modify narrative information in a first generation retelling to present it as an inference based on hearsay. Rashii also occurred second generation retellings (i.e. a retelling of a retelling) to modify reportive frames as originally products of hearsay. This use of rashii would be infelicitous in a first generation retelling since in this context the teller does have direct access to what the original teller said. The passage in (34) is an example of a second generation use of rashii in a reportive frame. (35) is the equivalent passage in the previous telling (a first generation retelling). (34) rentaru ka shuuri ka tte yuu kanji rashii-n da-kedo rental or repair or rsp say type seem-nom cop-but [It seems] she said it was a rental or repair [or something like that] (JCRa2)
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(35) de hitori no ko ga [XXX] kinoo ka mae ni and one gen girl subj yesterday or front loc kinoo ah sono hi atta koto ka na yesterday that day be.located-p nom qp ip kinoo atta dekigoto ka nanka o hanashite ite yesterday be.located-p event or something obj talkprog-con to nanka kuruma no koto de nanka and car gen nom part something shuri nanoka [dooka] yoku wakara-nai kedo XXX repair something completely understand-neg but One girl is talking about things which happened to her yesterday or the day when she was talking. [Something] about a car. I’m not sure whether is about repairing or renting. (JCRa1)
In (34), rashii is used to indicate that the current speaker infers that the original speaker said that the story was either about renting or repairing [a car]. She can only infer that the original speaker said this because she heard the story as a retelling and did not hear the original. (35) is the equivalent passage in the first generation retelling. Note that the first generation reteller herself is not sure she understood what she heard correctly. The use of rashii in (34) may have been doubly motivated by the fact that the teller was presented with uncertain information from which she was forced to reconstruct her own version. Although rashii was typically interpreted as ‘inference from hearsay’ in the context of retelling, it should be noted that rashii-modified clauses did not always reflect information actually acquired by inference. In (36), the reteller expresses that she ‘infers’ that the character in the film was the main character’s father. However a comparison of this information with the equivalent passage in the original story (in (37)) shows that the reteller is simply reporting information that she heard. She is not actually inferring anything since all of the information she reports (i.e. that the film character in question was the main character’s father) was overtly expressed in the previous telling. This is a good example of a mismatch between actual method of knowledge acquisition and adoption of epistemological stance. (36) de sono yaku tte yuu no wa otoosan no yaku datta and that role rsp say nom top father gen role cop-p rashii no ne seem nom ip And the character was the main character’s father, it seems. (impl. that’s what I heard). (JFSa1)
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English 127
(37) dakedo sono kuruma no naka no hi~~ naka no yaku but that car gen inside gen (person) inside gen role tte yuu no wa otoosan yaku na no yo rsp say nom top father role part nom ip But the character who is in the car is the main character’s father.
(JFS)
Examples like (36) suggest that rashii does indeed function as a reportive evidential, specifically indexing information to some previous speech event, and, when asked, Japanese native speakers were typically happy to substitute ‘true’ reportive forms like sentence final tte for rashii in retelling contexts. Under this interpretation, rashii in retellings should be included in the inventory of evidential strategies used by Japanese retellers to establish and maintain a reportive epistemological stance towards the story they tell. However the use of rashii does have additional implications in retellings besides the coding of reportiveness. These implications derive from its basic meaning as an inferential evidential and therefore are not applicable to purely reportive evidentials like sentence final tte. As a marker of inferred information, rashii implies that the reteller has contributed some mental effort in reconstructing the narrative. For example, in (32) she has used the information that the story character was annoyed together with the information that he was not the starring role in the film (he was the main character’s father) to infer that the story character wanted to be in the starring role. This kind of inferencing is a sign that the reteller has constructed a coherent representation of the story in her own mind. This coherence is reflected in her choice of rashii to code the information as second-hand. In contrast, the choice of tte as a reportive marker in (38), repeated below, merely presents the information that the character got on the truck as something that the previous speaker said. (39) is the equivalent passage in the previous telling that motivates the use of tte in the retelling. (38) torakku no ushiro ni nokkete mora-tta-n da tte truck gen back loc get.on-con receive-p-nom cop rsp Apparently she got on the back of the truck
(JLBa2)
(39) ma torakku datta kara excl truck cop-p conj sono ushiro de ii tte itte torakku no ushiro ni notte that back part good rsp say-con truck gen back loc get.in-con [But] It was a truck so she said, “It’s OK to be in the back.” and she got in the back. (JLBa1)
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Tte only implies that the information itself was in the previous telling. It cannot imply that the teller took parts of what was said in the previous telling to construct an inference that the character got back in the truck. The choice of tte as a reportive marker therefore signals the teller’s commitment to simply repeat what she can remember the previous teller said, rather than attempt to construct her own version of the story based on what the previous teller said. 5.2.5 Summary Examination of the Japanese retelling corpus revealed a range of linguistic strategies, both narrative and extranarrative that were employed to reflect the reportive epistemological stance of the reteller. The extranarrative strategies of reportive framing and evidential reported speech were remarkably similar to those extranarrative strategies described for the Macedonian data — an interesting result given the unrelatedness of the languages. Two narrative strategies for expressing reportiveness were also identified based on both their semantic properties and the frequency of their distribution in the retelling corpus. The relatively grammaticalised sentence final tte was the most frequent and that there is evidence that sentence final tte is indeed becoming a default reportive evidential marker, at least in informal language contexts. The adjective predicate rashii was also used relatively frequently in the corpus to code information as the product of inference based on what the previous teller had said. Its pragmatics with respect to epistemological stance are far more complex than sentence final tte, since its meaning combines aspects of both reportive and inferential epistemological stances. It is this complexity which may account for why it was used less frequently in the retelling corpus than sentence final tte as a narrative reportive strategy.
5.3 English English has been described as lacking clear grammatical markers of evidentiality (e.g. Chafe 1986; Biber & Finegan 1988). None of its verbal categories contrast types of epistemological status (cf. Macedonian simple past/L-form past tense contrast), nor does English have a grammaticalised reportive marker that codes information as the product of some prior utterance (cf. Japanese sentence final particle tte). Indeed corpus-based investigations of evidential distribution in English discourse have indicated that most types of English discourse are
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English 129
‘faceless’, distinctive by their relative lack of epistemic evaluation (Biber & Finegan 1988, 1989). The results from the retelling study support this ‘faceless’ characterisation of English discourse. They show that forms indicating the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance were use far less frequently than in Macedonian and Japanese. The exact nature of the difference in frequency and distribution, and the reasons for this difference are discussed in the next two chapters. Although there seemed to be an avoidance of reportive coding in the English corpus, a range of strategies, both narrative and extranarrative, could be identified. That is, there were identifiable means by which speakers expressed that the story they were telling was the product of someone else’s telling, reflecting the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance towards the story they told. 5.3.1 Reportive frames Like both Macedonian and Japanese retellings, some English retellers introduced their version of the story as a retelling of what someone else had told her. Examples of English reportive frames are given in (40) and (41). In both examples, the opening line of the retelling is a description of what the reteller had heard on a tape — a woman telling a story — from which their own version was constructed. The reportive frame establishes the retellers’ intention to retell the story as a retelling of what she heard (and to make that explicit to her audience), and signals the intention to adopt a reportive epistemological stance. (40) okay um So this woman is telling this story about how um… that there’s always been these… vermin problems or rat problems in their house and…
(EMSa1)
(41) It was a lady she was telling a story or something and what was she saying ? {trying to remember} First she started talking about her house…
(EMSd1)
5.3.2 Other extranarrative reportive strategies Reportive frames, by definition, occur prior to the telling of the story. They correspond somewhat with Labov’s (1972: 363) notion of abstract, “… one or
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two clauses summarising the whole story”. Reportive frames contextualise the retelling as a retelling before any narrative information is divulged. The contextualisation of the story as a retelling is not restricted to the beginning of the retelling however. The passages in (42) and (43) occur after the narrative sequence has begun. In both cases, the reteller interrupts her retelling of the narrative to inform the audience that the story was originally told by the person who is the character of the ‘daughter’ (the daughter’s telling the story/the daughter I guess is the one telling the story). The use of the inferential I guess in (43) here is motivated by the fact that this passage is from a second generation retelling — one in which the reteller heard the story as a retelling, not as the original personal experience story. Her knowledge that the daughter is the character telling the story derives not from her personal experience of hearing the original story but rather is based on what she could surmise from what the previous teller said. In this example, this extranarrative contextualisation of the story as a retelling is further reinforced by the phrase as I recall, which reflects the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance — one in which the reteller is trying to be faithful to her source by remembering accurately what she heard. (42) the mother went into the kitchen put the soup into the refrigerator then went back into the living room with the husband and her daughter the daughter’s telling the story and they’d hear like a “plop” sound “What’s that?”
(EMSc1)
(43) as I recall it it was a grandmother’s house and now there’s the mother and the daughter I guess is the one telling the story
(EMSa2)
None of the English retellers used evidential direct speech as a strategy for representing the story they told as a retelling (cf. Macedonian and Japanese retellers). There were some examples of evidential indirect speech however. In these cases, parts of the narrative were represented as the product of some previous telling by being syntactically embedded under a verb of speech (she said that…). The use of evidential indirect speech is illustrated in the passage in (44). (44) and she said that the cat never used to do that right when the father saw that he~ you know
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English
he shushed it away and figured that the cat was trying to get some meat right but when he looked to see what was happening it was a mouse @@ it was a mouse she said that the mouse looked like Elvis coz it had all grease on it you know and um and it was like the mouse was inside the the the pot and she said it was big [the pot]
(EMSd1)
The extranarrative reportive strategies identified in the English retelling corpus function to draw attention to the fact that the story being told is the product of someone else’s telling and that the reteller is committed to the task of telling the story as a retelling. The reportive framing strategies used prior to, as well as during, the retelling of the narrative draw attention to the source of the story — the identity of the original teller — as well as the fact of the retelling. The use of evidential indirect speech in (44) presupposes the framing of the story as a retelling, but nevertheless draws attention to particular parts of the narrative as the product of what the original teller said. The extranarrative reportive strategies described here also differ in terms of their degree of subjectivity as a construal of information as reportive. The passage in (43) illustrates a highly objectified representation of the story — one in which the reteller makes overt reference to herself (as I recall…). But even when reportive frames are not self-referential (as in (41) and (44)), they are still relatively objective modes of representation since they draw attention to the conditions under which the reteller acquired the narrative information (i.e. the reteller’s experience as an audience to the story), deictically orienting the information to the time and place of the previous telling of the story, rather than the time and place of the narrative events themselves. In this sense, evidential indirect speech is also a relatively objective mode of representation, since it too indexes the content of speech (syntactically an embedded clause), to the previous telling of the story.
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5.3.3 Reportive adverbials As noted earlier, English uncontroversially lacks a grammaticalised system of evidential coding to systematically reflect the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance. However, English does have a rich inventory of adverbials of ‘propositional attitude’, some of which were used to express the reportive epistemological stance of the reteller.19 These are illustrated in (45)–(47) below. Since they modify narrative propositions with respect to the reteller’s epistemological status from within the boundaries of narrative syntax, these adverbials were classified as a narrative evidential strategy in English. (45) so she sends the husband in he’s looking around and he notices that the cat’s one the stove and apparently the cat never gets on the stove so he goes over to the cat and he looks in the pot (46) so apparently the mouse was trying to like hop across to get out of this big old soup pot.
(EMSa2)
(47) and and I guess it’s an old house that~ evidently it must have been handed down from generation
(EMSa2)
The use of adverbials of propositional attitude to indicate a reportive epistemological stance differs from the use of extranarrative strategies because unlike extranarrative strategies, there is no overt mention of the reteller or the reteller’s experience of acquiring the story. Furthermore, the use of the adverbials does not coincide with other deictic shifts that locate the centre of deixis outside of the narrative story world. 5.3.4 Summary The evidence from the English retelling corpus shows that despite the lack of a grammaticalised evidential system, such as the Macedonian past tense, and the lack of a conventionalised reportive marker, such as the Japanese sentence final particle tte, English retellers did take advantage, albeit sporadically, of a range of evidential strategies available to them to reflect the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance. The extranarrative strategies were quite consistent with the patterns found in Macedonian and Japanese (except for the absence of evidential direct speech as a strategy), while narrative strategies were limited to adverbials of propositional attitude.
Reportive epistemological stance realisation in Macedonian, Japanese and English
5.4 Summary This chapter presented a description of the strategies that signalled that the retellers of the Macedonian, Japanese and English retellings had adopted a reportive epistemological stance towards the narrative they reconstructed. Only those strategies found in the corpus were listed and it is therefore likely that they do not represent the entire range of reportive evidential strategies for each language. The range of types of reportive strategies employed even in this limited context indicates a great deal of variation in approach from language to language and from individual reteller to individual reteller. Nevertheless, despite the variations, some striking patterns were observed. Retellers of all three languages made use of both narrative and extranarrative evidential strategies, where ‘extranarrative’ was characterised as information whose spatio-temporal deictic centre lay outside of the storyworld, and ‘narrative’ was characterised as information whose spatio-temporal deictic centre lay inside the storyworld. Extranarrative strategies of reportive framing and evidential reported speech were used by retellers in all three languages (with some variation in the type of reported speech representation in evidential reported speech). Narrative strategies were more language specific. Both Macedonian and Japanese have grammaticalised means of coding narrative information as the product of a previous telling of the story by someone other than the reteller. English speakers do not have grammaticalised means available for this purpose. The identification of multiple reportive strategies for each language supports the formulation of epistemological stance as a cognitive/pragmatic phenomenon, independent of any actual linguistic realisation. However recognition of the range of linguistic devices used by speakers in this context of narrative retelling only answers part of a question about the impact of epistemological stance adoption on language use and language structure. It answers how a reportive epistemological stance is signalled in Macedonian, Japanese and English. It does not answer the question of to what extent a reportive epistemological stance is signalled throughout the narrative retelling; and what motivates the use of particular reportive strategies in the context of narrative retelling. These are the questions to be addressed in the next chapter.
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AUTHOR ""
TITLE "Reportive strategies in narrative retelling"
SUBJECT "Pragmatics & Beyond, New Series, Volume 87"
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Chapter 6
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling
This chapter analyses the distribution of reportive strategies in each of the three languages of investigation. The results of this analysis paint a detailed picture of the patterns of reportive epistemological stance adoption across the three languages of investigation: how it interacts and competes with other epistemological stances; how the pragmatics of discourse structure and discourse context come to affect not only the epistemological stance adopted but also the linguistic strategy chosen to reflect that stance. Of particular interest to this study are questions about the factors which motivate both the consistent adoption of a reportive epistemological stance in a narrative retelling context and the linguistic strategies chosen to reflect that epistemological stance: how universal or language/culture specific are these choices? How do they relate to the grammatical status of reportiveness in each of the languages? What do these results tell us about the relationship between pragmatics and grammar? What do these results tell us about the adoption of epistemological stance?
6.1 The reportive density index The range of reportive strategies identified in Chapter 5 as available to speakers of all three languages of investigation, shows that retellers made use of both narrative and extranarrative strategies to indicate their commitment to retelling the story as a report of somebody else’s experience, known from hearing the story told by someone else. The extranarrative strategies of reportive framing and evidential reported speech were relatively similar across all three languages. Narrative strategies differed more noticeably as they varied according to the grammatical status of the reportive forms. The classification of reportive strategies into different types, narrative and extranarrative, gives us part of the picture of what it means to reflect the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance towards a retold narrative. Analysis of the frequency and distribution of these strategies constitutes the
136 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
next stage of the investigation. The results of this analysis provide evidence not only for patterns of epistemological stance adoption by retellers in three languages, but also the pragmatic status of the different linguistic strategies used to express that epistemological stance. The observation that retellers speaking three different languages choose from a range of reportive strategies is taken as evidence that epistemological stances are conceptual structures whose linguistic manifestation is dependent on the balance between numerous pragmatic and structural factors. The data did show that the existence of a more fully grammaticalised system resulted in a more consistent and frequent coding of a reportive epistemological stance in retelling. However this did not mean that retellers were locked into using the grammaticalised forms to the exclusion of other evidential strategies, nor did it mean that they only represented narrative information from a reportive epistemological stance. Thus an analysis of evidential coding as the direct mapping of assessment of knowledge acquisition and knowledge status onto linguistic structure is not supported by the data, even in languages like Macedonian which have a fully grammaticalised system for representing a reportive epistemological stance. A casual glance at the retelling texts in all three languages is enough to observe that there was significant variation in not only the types of reportive strategies adopted (from speaker to speaker, language to language), but also in the frequency of reportive coding throughout each retelling. Explanations for the variation in amount of reportive coding range from structural restrictions (the number of narrative clauses over which evidential strategies have ‘scope’) to discourse factors (shifts in narrative perspective affecting the representation of epistemological stances) to other pragmatic factors (e.g. retellers’ assessment of their role as a reteller affecting their epistemological stance towards the story). Before it was possible to investigate the variation in frequency, distribution and type of reportive strategy in retelling more rigorously, it was necessary to have ways to measure the amount of each retelling that was explicitly expressed as reportive that can be applied equally and consistently for Macedonian, Japanese and English retellings. With this end in mind, a ‘reportive density index’ was calculated for each retelling text in each language that represents the rate of reportive coding per narrative clause. A reportive density index of 1.00 means that every narrative clause in the retelling was under the scope of some reportive marker. A higher reportive density index thus corresponds to a large amount of narrative information that was directly under the scope of a reportive marker, and therefore represented
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling
from a reportive epistemological stance. A lower reportive density index corresponds to a small amount of narrative information that was represented from a reportive epistemological stance. The calculation of evidential density in retelling applies exclusively to narrative clauses, since they represent information acquired from the previous storyteller and not from the reteller’s personal experience of events in the story world. Extranarrative clauses may refer to the current or previous act of narration and the current teller’s experience of hearing the previous story or telling her current version of the story. Extranarrative clauses do not in themselves refer to events and situations in the storyworld represented by the storyteller and told to her by the previous teller and therefore do not contain information that is expected to be expressed from a reportive epistemological stance. Similarly, clauses that directly represented the content of characters’ speech and thought in the narrative were also excluded from the calculation of reportive density. Although content clauses do represent information that is deictically centred within the storyworld, and therefore are part of the narrative, the information is presented entirely from the speaking/thinking character’s perspective. It therefore assumes the epistemological stance of that character, so that if there is evidence that a reportive epistemological stance has been adopted, it must be interpreted as an aspect of the speaking character’s subjectivity, and not the current teller. 6.1.1 Scope of narrative reportive strategies Calculations of ‘scope’ for each evidential strategy varied according to the discourse and syntactic properties of the different types of reportive identified for each language. Lexical reportive strategies (e.g. Japanese rashii and English adverbials evidently and apparently) had scope only over the narrative clause in which they occurred, as in (1) and (2). (1) de mitsuketa no ga Ikuko-chan to Natsumoto-kun and find-p nom subj Ikuko and Natsumoto de umaku ita rashii no ne and well-prog-p seem nom ip And finally she found Ikuko and Natsumoto and apparently the film went well. (JFSa1)
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(2) so she sends the husband in he’s looking around and he notices that the cat’s one the stove and apparently the cat never gets on the stove so he goes over to the cat and he looks in the pot
(EMSa1)
Similarly, Macedonian L-forms were also calculated as having scope only over the clause in which they occurred. Prior or subsequent narrative clauses required independent reportive marking if they were to be interpreted as coding the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance, as in (3). (3) Bila nekoja nevesta mlada. Mesila leb. Svekrvata be:l some bride young knead:l bread M-in-law:def poshla na pazar go:l loc market There was a young bride. She had baked some bread. The mother-in-law had gone to market. (MBSc2)
The scope of Japanese sentence final particle tte, identified as a partially grammaticalised narrative reportive strategy, was complicated by some facts of Japanese syntax. Spoken Japanese narrative discourse rarely consists of single independent finite clausal units. Japanese has many methods of linking of clauses in discourse. Some of these are illustrated in the passage in (4). de “Red Roof Inn” ni saishoo tsuretette moratta-n and “Red Roof Inn loc first take-prog-con receive-p-nom da kedo cop but b. zenzen Burger King mo nanimo nai shi not.at.all ‘Burger King’ also nothing neg and c. de “koko ja nai” toka itte X san ga ittara and “here cop-neg like say-con X subj say-cond d. de “koko ja nai aah ja nai koko ja nai” toka itte and “here cop-neg cop-neg here cop-neg like say-con e. de kekkyoku sono ‘police’ no hito mo okori dashichatte and finally that police gen person also angry show-pp-con f. nanka irairashatte something be.annoyed-con g. de tonikaku “Red Roof Inn” de oro-sare-ta no ka na. and anyway “Red Roof Inn inst put.down-caus-p nom ip ip
(4) a.
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling 139
(a) And she got a ride to “Red Roof Inn” first but (b) there was no Burger King and.(c) so X said like, “This is not the place, not the place.”, (d) she said “This is not the place.” and (e) eventually the policeman started to get angry, and (f) he was irritated (g) And anyway I think she was dropped off. (JLBa1)
The forms in boldface in (4), free forms and suffixes, illustrate several different kinds of Japanese connective that combine this sequence of main clauses into a multi-clausal syntactic unit. The verbs in (b), (c), (d), (e) and (f) have conjunctive connective suffixes. (a) ends with a disjunctive connective particle kedo ‘but’. (a), (c), (d), (e) and (g) all begin with a narrative connective de ‘and then’ that emphasises the continuation of the narrative temporal sequence. (g) ends with a sequence of non-connective sentence-final particles (no ka na) that signals the completion of the connected sequence. Japanese has long been described as a ‘clause chaining’ language, where clauses are morphologically linked and only the final verb in the chain is marked with finite tense aspect morphology. Main verbs within a clause chain typically occur with the connective suffixes -te, -tara, -tari or -to, and a few other suffixes (Kuno 1973; Watanabe 1994; Myhill & Hibiya 1988; Iwasaki 1993; Hasegawa 1996). Of these connective suffixes -te and -tara are most common means of clause combining in narrative. They have been often described in terms of switch reference — -te indicates that the subject of the current clause continues from the previous clause while -tara marks a change in subject from the previous clause. The types of connections marked with verbal suffixes like -te and -tara form easily definable clause chains which end when a tensed verb form is reached. Connective particles like shi and kedo have slightly different clause linking properties. Both forms follow a plain (present) form of the verb. Furthermore, kedo typically followed the modal predicate -n da construction — a form which is typically associated with utterance finality (Iwasaki 1985). Shi was rarely used in my corpus. However kedo occurred frequently and its particular morphosyntactic and pragmatic properties are worth considering in more detail. Kedo ‘but’ is itself typically analysed as a sentence final particle. Its primary meaning is as a logical connector. In (a), kedo codes the logical connection between the proposition that the character got a ride to the motel “Red Roof Inn” first and the proposition that there was no Burger King there. The connection between these two propositions is significant to the narrative because the character was expecting to be taken to a Burger King situated near a motel. Most instances of kedo in the narrative retellings were as logical connectors
140 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
of narrative information. (5) and (6) further illustrate the function of kedo as a narrative connective. (5) sore de ironna toko ni goken gurai denwa.shita-n da kedo that and various place loc five about telephone-p-nom cop but soo.yuu “special”.yoogo tte yuu ka tokubetsu na muzukashii special words rsp say or special part difficult eigo de shaberarette English loc talk-pass-con So she called about five different places, but she was talked to in something like ‘special words’, in very special, difficult English. (JCRc1) (6) soshitara ichidai takushii ga atta-n da kedo then one taxi subj be.located-p-nom cop but hoka no hito ga tottechatte… another gen person subj take-pp-con Then there was one taxi, but someone else took it…
(JLBb1)
Kedo may also occur at the ends of utterances with the implication that more information follows, but that such information is left unsaid. This is the ‘nonlogical’, ‘suspended clause’, or ‘hedging’ function of kedo described by Ohta (1991), Ohori (1995) and Itani (1996), illustrated in (7). (7) Udookai-tte.ie.ba watashi are o omoidashimasu kedo ne athletic.meet-top I that obj recall ip ‘Athletic meet? I recall that (incident) [impl. there is more to tell] (from Ohori 1995: 208)
Ohori (1995) discusses a range of clause linking forms in Japanese which may be suspended as the final element in an utterance. Some of these ‘suspended’ forms are reduced idioms. He analyses suspended kedo as meaning “Though X, that’s not the whole story”, implying that the speaker has omitted some relevant information. The ‘suspended’ function of kedo is mainly associated with conversational language. Suspended kedo did occur in the retelling corpus, typically to code some kind of extranarrative ‘aside’. (8) is an example from the retelling corpus. (8) n.de toriaezu sagashite mo nai kara~~ nanka and anyway look.for-con also neg conj soko ga sa~ noosu no chikaku no “Red Roof Inn” tte there subj North gen near gen Red Roof Inn rsp shitteru know-prog
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling
And anyway they were looking for (the motel) but there was no (motel) like~ the hotel was~ Do you know “Red Roof Inn” near North Campus? B: shiranai know-neg I don’t know [it]. A: shiranai nanka “Mariott” no ura no hen ni aru-n know-neg Marriott gen back gen place loc be.located-nom da kedo nanka ja soko ni itte tomete moratte cop but excl there loc go-con stop-con receive-con kikoo tte yuu-n da tte ask-cj rsp say-nom cop rsp You don’t know. It’s at the back of the Marriott. He told her to stop at [Red Roof Inn] and ask, apparently. (JLBb1)
In (8), the reteller interrupts her telling of the story to explain to her current audience the location of a particular motel. Although the identity of the motel was mentioned in the original story she heard, the location was not discussed. This knowledge comes from the current teller’s own familiarity with the motel and its location. Her explanation of the location is marked with kedo. However immediately following kedo, she returns to the narrative (marked with reportive tte). There is no logical connection between the extranarrative explanation of the location of the motel, and the continuation of the narrative time line. Only instances of kedo that clearly linked narrative clauses (illustrated in (5) and (6) above) were counted as connectors in a narrative clause chain. Examples of kedo which were not followed by some logical counterpart in the corpus (even if such a counterpart were inferable) were counted as sentence final forms. The identification of sentence-final kedo forms based on the semantics of the preceding and following sentences was also generally supported by intonational evidence. Connected kedo sentences often were not followed by a pause and had intonation contours which were indistinguishable from other connected forms. Sentence-final kedo was usually followed by a pause and had intonation contours that were distinct from those found in connected clauses. As extranarrative clauses, suspended kedo clauses typically represented the personal evaluation of the current teller and were not expected to occur with reportive coding. As a connective particle, kedo clearly has a different syntactic status than canonical narrative connective suffixes like -te and -tara. For example, kedo often co-occurs with the ‘extended predicate’ construction -n da, while -te and -tara cannot occur following -n da. Both connector kedo and sentence-final tte
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tended to cooccur with -n da. Although this coocurrence makes kedo look more like a final form, the evidence from intonation, semantics and from the fact that other connectives (e.g. kara, shi) can follow -n da is enough to preserve the analysis of kedo as a connective. From a pragmatic perspective however, both types clearly signal some continuation of the unfolding narrative. In both cases, the audience senses that the chain of narration is not complete, that the speaker is not at the ‘end’ of her utterance. Only clauses ending in non-connective sentence final particles (ne, yo, sa, wa, ka na, and tte), or a total absence of particles and a finite verb were analysed as endpoints to some narrative chain sequence. Since sentence-final tte by definition can only occur at the end of a clause chain sequence, it is claimed that tte has pragmatic scope over an entire clause chain and not just over the single clause directly preceding it. All clauses in a chain that ended in reportive tte are therefore counted as under the scope of the particle. For example, in (9) below, clauses (a), (b) and (c) are all analysed as pragmatically under the scope of tte in (c). Clauses (d) and (e) are both pragmatically under the scope of tte in (e). The scope is ‘pragmatic’, rather than syntactic or semantic, because sentence-final reportive tte does not directly effect the syntax of the clauses under its scope. The use of reportive tte directs the audience to interpret all clauses in the chain as a report of someone else’s utterance. (9) a.
de ma jibun ni mairu no kankaku ga nakute and excl self loc miles gen sense subj neg-con b. kiromeetoru no kankaku de sugoi chikai na kilometres gen sense inst very near part c. tte omotta-n da tte rsp think-p-nom cop rsp d. sore de mo “suitcase” futatsu motte that and also suitcase two hold-con e. koo aruki hajime-ta-n da tte this walk begin-p-nom cop rsp (a) “I have no sense of miles” and (b) it [the motel] was very close on the kilometre scale, she thought, apparently. (d) Anyway, despite everything, carrying two suitcases, (e) she started walking, apparently.
6.1.2 Scope of extranarrative evidential strategies Calculation of reportive density for extranarrative reportive strategies (i.e. evidential reported speech and reportive framing) is more complicated than the
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling 143
calculations of reportive density for narrative reportive strategies. Since extranarrative evidential strategies are deictically centred outside of the story world, and may not even be syntactically linked to narrative clauses, it is more difficult to established fixed means of measuring the number of narrative clauses over which extranarrative evidential coding has scope. The method used in this study is at least consistent for the three languages under investigation here. Narrative information that was represented as the speech of the previous teller was analysed as under the scope of evidential reported speech. The framing clauses of evidential reported speech (direct or indirect) were not counted in the calculation of reportive evidential density, since they themselves were extranarrative clauses. However, the narrative clauses embedded under these framing clauses were counted as representing information from a reportive epistemological stance. In the case of evidential direct speech, the representation of reportiveness also corresponded with a shift in deictic centre from the time and place of the retelling (representing the ‘voice’ of the reteller) to the time and place of the original telling (representing the ‘voice’ of the original teller). This allowed for a relatively easy calculation of narrative clauses which fell under the scope of the reportive framing clause. In contrast with evidential direct speech, narrative clauses embedded under evidential indirect speech frames maintained the deictic centre of the here and now of the retelling (i.e. they did not represent the ‘voice’ of the original teller). The scope of reportiveness was therefore less clearly marked beyond the narrative clause syntactically embedded within it. This study therefore took a conservative approach to the analysis of the scope of evidential indirect speech and only counted clauses that were syntactically subordinate to the main framing clause of indirect speech. The English passage in (10) begins with narrative clauses which are not marked with any evidential coding. The extranarrative framing clause in (c) codes the following subordinate clause that the cat never used to do that as the gist of what the original teller said. There is no clear linguistic evidence that the subsequent narrative clauses ((e)–(g)) are also representations of the gist of what the original teller said so only (d) was analysed as being under the scope of the reportive framing clause. In fact, there is some evidence that the reteller has shifted her deictic centre back from representing what the original teller had said to the here and now of her own retelling in the use of right directly after the indirect speech passage. The reteller uses right here to check that her audience is following the story. The analysis of reportive evidential indirect
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speech is similar to that given to Japanese sentence final tte, where the reportive scope of tte was calculated on the basis of syntactic evidence. (10) a. b. c. d.
and and when the father went into the kitchen he saw the cat on top of the stove and she[previous teller] said that the cat never used to do that right e. when the father saw that he~ you know f. he shushed it away g. and figured that the cat was trying to get some meat right
(EMSd1)
Reportive framing, the other extranarrative reportive evidential strategy described in the previous chapter, functions to contextualise the narrative as a retelling. It signals the reteller’s commitment to retelling the story that they heard as a product of what the previous teller said, and not as a product of their own creative retelling process. It signals the reteller’s intention to adopt a reportive epistemological stance towards the story they tell, setting up a context where narrative information is expected to be consistently coded as reportive. (11) a.
zhenava shto zborva ne e prikaska woman:def what tell:3sg neg be:3sg story ami e zhiva vistina but be:3sg live truth b. koga bila mlada nevesta when be:l young bride c. svekrva mu rekla da mesat leb mother-in-law 3dat say:l to knead:3pl bread What this woman is telling is not a story but the living truth. When she was a young bride her mother-in-law told her to bake bread. (MBSd1)
The passage in (11) is a canonical example of the role of reportive framing in setting up the shift to a reportive epistemological stance once the narrative has begun. The reteller begins her account at (a) with the contextualisation of the story as what the original teller was relating, and that the story was a true account. Both pieces of information contribute to the establishment of the
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling
reteller’s intention to report as accurately as possible what she heard and not to invent her own version of the story. The subsequent narrative clauses are then marked with L-form past tense to signal that the reteller has in fact adopted a reportive epistemological stance towards the narrative information. It seems then that reportive framing functions similarly to the framing clauses of evidential reportive speech in signalling a shift from the extranarrative epistemological stance of the reteller’s own experience as a reteller to the epistemological stance adopted towards narrative information. In evidential direct speech, the shift was signalled by a total deictic shift to the original telling. In evidential indirect speech, the shift was signalled by syntactic embedding. In reportive framing, the shift is signalled by consistent use of narrative reportive evidential strategies. Since narrative information introduced by a reportive frame is expected to be doubly marked as reportive, the presence or absence of a reportive frame at the beginning of a retelling was not factored into the calculation of reportive density. 6.1.3 Reportive densities The following tables present the numbers of reportive epistemological stance markers and reportive density index for each language. The results do show considerable individual variation in both the choice of reportive strategies and in the amount of narrative information that fell under the scope of a reportive device. Even taking individual variation into account, some interesting generalisations can be made about patterns of epistemological stance adoption in each language. Macedonian and Japanese showed a similar rate of reportive evidential coding — about half of narrative clauses over the whole retelling corpus fell under the scope of some marker of reportiveness. The overall reportive evidential density index for English retelling was far lower than both Macedonian and Japanese. At least one retelling text in each language had a reportive evidential density index between 0.00 and 0.10, suggesting that for those texts, the reteller did not adopt a reportive epistemological stance towards the narrative information, even though they were actively engaged in retelling someone else’s story. This pattern was clearly the exception rather than the rule for Macedonian and Japanese speakers. For English speakers, consistent coding of narrative information as reportive was the exception. No retelling text had a reportive evidential density index of 1.00 (although two of the Macedonian texts came close to this number), indicating that even
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146 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
Table 6.1Macedonian reportive density Text
Narrative clauses
L-form
Scope
Extranarr. frame
Scope
Total
Density
MBSa1 MBSa2 MBSb1 MBSb2 MBSc1 MBSc2 MBSd1 MBSd2 MZS1 MZS2 MNC1 MNC2
37 35 31 48 34 28 28 46 37 19 33 22
7 13 15 20 7 16 3 15 20 13 10 –
7 13 15 20 7 16 3 15 20 13 10 –
– – – – 9 – 7 – – – 2 1
– – – – 25 – 24 – – – 7 1
7 13 15 20 32 16 27 15 20 13 17 1
0.19 0.37 0.48 0.42 0.94 0.57 0.96 0.33 0.54 0.68 0.52 0.05
Total
398
139
139
19
57
196
0.49
Table 6.2Japanese reportive density Text
Narrative tte/soo Scope clauses
rashii
Scope
Ext. frame
Scope
Total
JCRa1 JCRa2 JCRb1 JCRb2 JCRc1 JCRc2 JCRd2 JFSa1 JFSa2 JFSb1 JLBa1 JLBa2 JLBb1
19 12 38 18 35 51 32 27 29 54 83 41 165
– 1 1 – – 14 2 3 3 8 4 5 35
– 2 9 – – 39 6 3 3 23 10 16 99
– – – – 3 2 – 5 1 3 – 4 10
– – – – 3 2 5 1 3 – 4 10
4 4 6 – 3 – 2 – 1 2 2 – –
15 4 17 – 8 – 2 6 4 25 – –
15 6 26 – 11 41 8 8 10 30 35 20 109
0.78 0.50 0.70 0.00 0.31 0.80 0.25 0.29 0.34 0.55 0.42 0.49 0.66
Total
600
74
210
28
28
25
81
319
0.53
in cases where the reteller had been careful to maintain an explicit link with her source of the story, there were circumstances in the process of story reconstruction which motivated a movement away from coding information explicitly as
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling 147
Table 6.3English reportive density Text EMSa1 EMSa2 EMSb1 EMSb2 EMSc1 EMSd1 EBS1 EBS2 EGS1 EGS2 Total
Narrative clauses
Adverbial
Scope
Ext. frame
Scope
Total
Density
68 74 61 45 71 61 95 74 60 43
2 3 – – – – 1 2 – –
2 3 – – – – 1 2 – –
– – – 1 – 6 1 – 2 3
– – – 1 – 15 12 – 3 5
2 3 – 1 – 15 13 2 3 5
0.03 0.04 0.00 0.02 0.00 0.25 0.14 0.03 0.05 0.12
652
8
8
13
36
44
0.07
the product of someone else’s’ speech. In most cases, the reportive evidential density index was much lower, reinforcing the analysis that there are discourse pressures at play which interfered with consistent epistemological stance adoption in narrative retelling. This issue will be taken up in detail in the next chapter. The calculation of reportive evidential density in the retelling corpus indicates that Macedonian and Japanese retellers engaged in very similar patterns of reportive strategies. Retellers of both languages made use of narrative and extranarrative reportive strategies but in both cases there was a preference for narrative reportive strategies over extranarrative reportive strategies: 71% of Macedonian narrative clauses under the scope of a reportive device were under the scope of reportive L-form past verb inflections; 66% of Japanese narrative clauses under the scope of a reportive device were under the scope of the reportive sentence-final tte. All but one of the Macedonian retellings made some use of L-forms while 10 of the 13 Japanese retellings made some use of sentence-final tte. These results were in marked contrast with the use of reportive strategies found in the English retelling corpus where grammatical reportive evidential strategies were absent and the reportive coding that was adopted was of a very low density in all retellings. The high density of the L-form past in the Macedonian retelling corpus is related to its grammatical properties as an inflectional category. One of the properties of fully grammaticalised linguistic phenomena is that they are predicted to occur whenever their semantic and syntactic criteria are met (= ‘hyperextended use’). The Macedonian L-form was classified as a grammaticalised
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‘indirect’ evidential marker (in Willett’s (1988) sense) partially because speakers of Macedonian intuitively feel that a sentence which expresses a past time proposition (e.g. she baked the bread) which was not directly witnessed or experienced by the speaker requires an L-form inflection on the verb. In the context of narrative retelling, the L-form is expected to occur in all narrative clauses as the required means of coding past time events as reportive. The high frequency of L-forms throughout the Macedonian retelling corpus is, in this sense, unsurprising. The same cannot be said for the Japanese sentence final particle tte. Although it was also analysed as relatively grammaticalised, according to the criteria for grammatical status outlined in Chapter 2, Japanese sentence final tte and L-form past tense have very different grammatical statuses with respect to their properties as a reportive marker. Recall that the Macedonian L-form historically derives from the Old Slavic perfect tense form which has shifted meaning over time to encode resulting states of events, thence inferences about the events based on that resulting state and finally, to encode the more general meaning that the resulting state describes an event of which the speaker did not have personal experience. But the L-form is conventionally associated with hearsay contexts, and represents a reportive epistemological stance in addition to its original ‘inferential’ meaning. It is because of its origins as a perfect marker that the L-form is still grammatically part of the obligatory verb inflection paradigm of Macedonian, coding past tense in addition to its evidential meanings. In contrast, Japanese sentence final tte also functions as a complementiser linking reported speech to its speech act verb in contemporary ‘informal’ spoken Japanese. Its status as a grammatical marker of reportive evidentiality is clearly derived from its properties as a marker of reported speech (as outlined in Section 5.3.2). Synchronically, sentence final tte has syntactic and semantic properties of a grammatical form: membership of a closed class; highly restrictive morphosyntax; ‘bleached’ semantics. However, unlike Macedonian L-form, sentence final tte does not constitute part of an obligatory grammatical category in Japanese. So while it can be claimed that Japanese has grammaticalised means of expressing a reportive epistemological stance, it is difficult to argue that the semantic field of evidentiality is distinguished as a grammatical category in Japanese (or at least is a dimension of meaning within an obligatory and paradigmatic category in that language). To this extent, the evidential ‘system’ of Japanese resembles that of English, which also displays a wide range of
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling 149
strategies by which speakers may express different epistemological stances, but which lacks a paradigmatic obligatory grammatical category that encodes evidential meanings. However, the gulf of difference in reportive density between Japanese and English in this retelling context indicates that speakers of these languages were making different assessments concerning the appropriateness of their linguistic strategies for expressing epistemological stances. The grammatical status of the Macedonian L-form can be used to explain its relatively high density index, since speakers must make a commitment to a particular epistemological stance whenever past tense is required. Theoretically, the L-form is the unmarked verb inflection in narrative retelling since it is the unmarked narrative tense, and it is the default evidential category for information not witnessed or ‘vouched for’ by the speaker. However, this analysis does not explain why Macedonian speakers made use of other reportive strategies, notably the extranarrative strategy of evidential reported speech, as alternatives to the unmarked L-form strategy, nor does it explain why half of the narrative clauses in the corpus were not under the scope of any evidential marker, despite the fact that evidential meanings are built into the grammar of that language. In addition, the grammatical status of evidential forms cannot be used at all as an explanation for the clear preference for sentence final tte in the Japanese retelling corpus over the other identified reportive strategies (i.e. the reportive inferential predicate rashii and extranarrative evidential reported speech) since the grammar of Japanese does not force speakers into selecting sentence final tte whenever its syntactic and semantic properties are met. The sporadic uses of reportive coding in the English retellings must also be accounted for. In the context of this three-language corpus we must ask why speakers of English fail to consistently mark their retellings as the product of someone else’s storytelling. For explanations of these patterns of language use, we must look closer at the pragmatics of reportiveness.
6.2 The pragmatics of reportiveness Explanations for the overall relative high density of reportive evidential strategies in Japanese and Macedonian, the preference for more grammaticalised evidential strategies over other strategies, and the relative low density of reportive evidential coding in the English corpus, extend beyond simply understanding the formal and semantic properties of the individual forms. They are to be found in the pragmatics of the retelling context — the textual and
150 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
extralinguistic factors which motivate speakers to select particular linguistic strategies to construct a coherent text which best expresses their intentions in the communicative context. The pragmatic analysis of reportiveness developed in this work focuses on two important aspects of the communicative context as primary factors which motivate the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance, and the choice of linguistic strategy once that epistemological stance has been adopted. a. the cultural imperatives that guide speakers to make particular linguistic choices based on what is socially and culturally appropriate. b. the coherence imperatives that motivate retellers to reconstruct a comprehensible and ‘listenable’ story, and to represent the narrative information in a way that reflects a felicitous epistemological interpretation of the story. The first of these factors is about the ability of speakers within their own speech community to know what is an appropriate epistemological stance to adopt in different contexts, and to accurately judge the effects that the adoption of that epistemological stance will have on the audience’s interpretation of the text. The nature and role of this type of knowledge, and its effects on the adoption of reportive epistemological stance in Japanese, Macedonian and English is explored in Section 6.2.1 below. The ‘coherence’ factor takes into account the fact that the production of narrative retellings is constrained by cognitive processes associated with discourse production in general, and narrative production in particular. The results from this retellings study indicate that is these pressures which have the most effect on the particular linguistic strategy chosen to express epistemological stance. For example, coherence factors are taken to be a primary motivator behind the choice between narrative and extranarrative strategies for expressing a reportive epistemological stance. Unlike cultural imperatives, discourse coherence pressures are assumed to be constant across the three languages, since they involve constraints of human cognition rather than constraints relative to cultural or individual experience. The discourse pragmatic factors which lie behind choice of reportive strategy will be discussed in Section 6.2.2. 6.2.1 Motivations for the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance in retelling Analyses of the socio-cultural pragmatics of evidentiality have often associated evidential use with the expression of speaker authority (e.g. DuBois 1986; Hill
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling
& Irvine 1992). The patterns of epistemological stance adoption in narrative retellings can also be explained in terms of the kinds of authority retellers assume over the story they must reconstruct. In general, our judgment of the veracity of information lies in our belief that people indicate their degree of authority over what they talk about. In this context, epistemological stance selection becomes a powerful tool for speakers to represent their assessment of their authority over information, subsequently influencing how hearers will construct their own epistemological assessment of the information (the degree to which they accept the validity of the utterance and the degree to which they may then assume authority over the information when they repeat it to someone else). The relationship between type of epistemological stance and the degree of authority reflected in the adoption of that epistemological stance is hypothesised to be reasonably stable across languages. This relationship was discussed in Chapter 3 in terms of the challengeability of information represented from different epistemological stances. There is an inverse relationship between the degree of authority and the degree of challengeability of information. For example, it is assumed that the greatest amount of authority, and the lowest degree of challengeability is granted to information expressed from a personal experience epistemological stance. That is, the best way to represent information as both ‘authoritative’ and ‘unchallengeable’ is to express it as a product of one’s own experience. Adoption of a reportive epistemological stance is associated with less of a degree of authority on the part of the speaker than information represented from a personal experience epistemological stance since the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance makes a positive claim that the information derives from someone else (not the current speaker). In fact, adoption of a reportive epistemological stance may be used as a means for speakers to avoid assessing the degree of their authority over information since the information derives from the speech act (and therefore the epistemological assessment) of the original (reported) speaker. Assessment of the validity of such information by hearers must be made on the basis of the hearer’s knowledge of the information source (the original speaker) and the extent to the original source can be considered an authority with respect to the information. In the context of the retelling of someone else’s personal experience, authority for the story lies squarely with the original teller (who directly experienced the events), and not with the current reteller, when a reportive epistemological stance is adopted. While the relationships between type of epistemological stance and type of
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authority are assumed to be relatively consistent across cultures, it is expected that there will be significant differences from speech community to speech community in the contexts that adoption of particular epistemological stances are appropriate. Some of these differences are apparent from the results of the retelling study, and are considered in more detail below. The discussion focuses in particular on the Japanese and English data since for neither of these languages can we claim that the motivation for adopting a reportive epistemological stance derives from the grammatical structure of their language (cf. Macedonian). This discussion of the socio-pragmatic factors in the adoption of epistemological stance in the specific context of retelling begins with the Japanese corpus since there is a already a vast literature within the Japanese linguistics tradition that describes the relationship between Japanese culture and Japanese language. Despite the lack of a clear grammatical class of evidential forms, the formal, semantic and pragmatics properties of evidentiality have been of great interest in Japanese linguistics (e.g. Kuroda 1973; Akatsuka 1985; Aoki 1986; Ohta 1991; Maynard 1992; Iwasaki 1993; Kamio 1998).20 The notion of speaker authority as a fundamental component in the pragmatics of Japanese evidentiality has been explored in some detail in Kamio’s (1979, 1994, 1995, 1998) theory of “Territory of Information”. The notion of territory of information was developed in particular to explain the felicity conditions which lie behind the appropriate uses of Japanese sentence final evidential forms (including sentence final tte and rashii). The basis of Kamio’s theory is that, if a given piece of information … is equal or closer to the speaker/hearer than a specified value n, it is considered to fall into the speaker’s and/or the hearer’s territory to some degree(s). Depending on where it is located, a certain form of utterance must be used to express it. (Kamio 1995: 236)
For every utterance speakers must calculate in whose domain authority for the information lies. Sentence structure, and in particular the choice of sentence final forms, is dependent on this calculation. For example, information which is in the speaker’s territory of information, but not the hearer’s, is coded with a ‘direct form’ of the predicate (typically a bare predicate). In (12), the bare adjective conveys information about the speaker’s state of mind — her own loneliness — something the hearer cannot have access to unless the speaker reveals it. (12) Sabishii (bare adjective) lonely ‘I am lonely’ (my private experience)
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling
If the speaker wants to make a statement about someone else’s state of mind (i.e. information that is in neither the speaker nor the hearer’s territory of information), they must use an ‘indirect form’ that expresses some information about how the speaker came to know something that is not in their territory of information. The verbal derivation garu ‘shows signs of ’ in (13) illustrates one evidential strategy for talking about other people’s internal states by appealing to some external evidence that allows the speaker to infer the subject’s internal state. This ‘external evidence’ is often assumed to be visual, but it need not be. (13) Kare wa sabishi-gatteiru (derived verb) 3sg top lonely-gar-sta:nonpast ‘He is lonely’ (observing signs of his being lonely.)
The nominal yoo and adjective rashii may also be used in this context. Speakers can also use ‘reportive’ forms (the nominal soo or particle tte) to express that information is in neither the speaker’s nor the hearer’s territory, but was acquired from someone else’s utterance.21 Japanese speakers’ territory of information extends beyond the boundary of their own internal thoughts, perceptions and emotions. Information which is about people ‘close’ to the speaker (e.g. their children or spouses), their professional expertise or geographic locations with which they are familiar also fall into the domain of the speaker’s territory. For example, Kamio claims that a sentence like (14), which conveys information about a third person’s internal state but which lacks evidential marking, is appropriate if the speaker is Taroo’s father or a psychiatrist making a professional diagnosis. (14) Taroo wa sabishii desu Taroo top lonely cop ‘Taroo is lonely.’
However there are contexts where neither of two speakers has direct experience of the state of affairs described in a utterance but only one of those speakers can speak using a direct form. For example, the example in (15), which is a factual statement about population growth, is felicitous for someone living close to the area of Yaizu, but infelicitous for a person living in Tokyo, even if both read the same newspaper to acquire the information. (15) Yaizu no zinkoo wa zyuuman o koeta_/-yo/-n da gen population top 100,000 obj exceed-p direct ‘The population of Yaizu has exceeded one hundred thousand.’ (from Kamio 1979: 220)
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Kamio (1979: 222) claims that “the speaker’s territory is essentially of the situational or ‘instantaneous’ nature”. The felicitous uses of sentences like (15) are therefore a function of whether the information in the sentence is assessed by speakers in a particular discourse context to fall within their territory, thereby granting them the authority to speak of it without indirect evidential modification. The information in (15) is judged to be within the territory of someone who lives close to Yaizu but not in the territory of someone who lives in Tokyo. The assessment of particular utterances with regard to the speaker’s territory of information is made by the speaker. However, in order to be seen as appropriate they must follow the conventions of the speech community in determining what counts as information within the speaker’s territory. According to Kamio, the Japanese speaker’s territory includes private experience, direct perception, information given as the answer to a direct question, and information that is felt to ‘belong’ to the speaker by virtue of their relative spatiotemporal proximity. The consistent deployment of reportive strategies in Japanese narrative retelling is easily explained in terms of territory of information. The retellers in this study were guided towards talking about information outside of their territory, by virtue of being asked to retell someone else’s personal experience story. The degree to which retellers adopted a reportive epistemological stance is hypothesised to vary according to the relationship between the source of the story, the reteller and the audience. In this study, all retellers were in relationships which did not typically allow speakers to assume others’ territory of information. The results might be different if the reteller were a close relative of the original storyteller however. Japanese speakers are required by convention to explicitly code information outside of their territory with some kind of ‘indirect’ (evidential) marking. Japanese retellers are thus constrained by the general pragmatics principles of information territory to adopt a non-experiential epistemological stance towards information that they have not personally experienced. Among nonexperiential epistemological stances, the reportive epistemological stance is the most appropriate to adopt in narrative retelling since it most accurately and explicitly reflects the fact that the story is a retelling based on someone else’s version — it represents information not only outside of the current reteller’s territory but also places it within someone else’s territory of information (the source of the story). In contrast, the low reportive evidential density found in the English retelling corpus suggests that English retellers were far less concerned than
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling
Japanese retellers to represent the story as information ‘outside of their territory of information’. (There are, of course, contexts in the English speaking world which do require a careful delineation of information territories — legal discourse, academic discourse, certain kinds of gossip.) This result was initially surprising since retellers were clearly aware that they were someone else’s story. This was evident in the use of an extranarrative explicit mention of the source of the story at select moments in the retelling. (Only the teller of EMSb1 (and subsequently the teller of EMSb2) totally avoided any reference to the original teller as the source of information.) In (16) and (17), the retellers resort to identification of the source of the story as a means of clarifying the relationships between the story characters. They appear to be most concerned with the relationship of the original teller to the other characters in the story. One possible motivation for this break in the narrative is that at this point in the telling of the story, the character of the mother is the most ‘active’ character, not the character of the daughter (= original teller/experiencer). The explicit mention of the daughter-character as the originator of the story is an indication of the retellers awareness of the discrepancy between the most active character in the story (the mother) and the source of the story (the daughter). The retellers appear to be avoiding a confusion concerning who the story is about and who is the source of the story. (16) as I recall it was a grandmother’s house and now there’s the mother and the daughter I guess is the one telling the story… but okay so you’ve got this mom who’s in the kitchen she’s making chicken soup (EMSa2) (17) the mother went into the kitchen put the soup into the refrigerator then went back into the living room with the husband and her daughter the daughter’s telling the story and they’d hear like a “plop” sound “What’s that?”
(EMSc1)
In both examples the reteller immediately resumed the telling of the story as a story (vs. as a retelling) as if there had been no interruption. This is evidence that these retellers were more committed to telling the story as a story and
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resorted to a more reportive mode only when they had a compelling reason to do so. Furthermore, retellers were faithful in their attempts to retell the story that was told to them since they did not make up new episodes that were not in the original, or directly inferable from the original story. So even though they were clearly aware of their responsibilities as retellers, they were not very concerned with representing the story as the product of someone else’s experience. The low reportive evidential density in the English corpus suggests that unlike the Japanese retelling context, these English retellers were not driven by a socio-cultural imperative to consistently maintain a reportive epistemological stance — one that would place the narrative information within someone else’s territory of information and outside the current reteller’s information territory. While a reportive epistemological stance was clearly evoked at local points in most retellings, retellers were clearly unconcerned with consistent indexation of the retelling to its source. The lack of reportive coding in the English retelling corpus in fact suggests that retellers were more concerned with representing the story as a story, unconnected to any particular source, rather than explicitly as a retelling of someone else’s story. Retellers were clearly concerned with reporting the story that they had heard but were less concerned with attributing the information to some previous teller. Their concern was to maintain their autonomy as the teller of the story rather than as the conduit through which someone else’s story could be expressed. In fact, the evidence from the retelling corpus suggests that English retellers were generally more committed to adopting an imaginative epistemological stance towards the story (described in Section 3.2.5), where the source of information is left unexpressed and the events of the story are presented as products of the teller’s creative storytelling process. Recall that the imaginative epistemological stance is expressed by a number of linguistic cues that combine aspects of the perceptual/personal experience stance and the factual epistemological stance. Like personal experience epistemological stance, imaginative stance uses ‘expressive’ language (e.g. language associated with represented speech and thought). Adoption of an imaginative stance in narration allows the storyteller to represent the experiences of any character in the storyworld. Like the factual epistemological stance, adoption of an imaginative stance means that the information is not deictically linked with any particular source, nor is it represented as a conclusion based on evidence. In contrast, a reportive epistemological stance is deictically linked to some previous teller. The current teller is restricted to taking the perspective of that
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling
previous teller/experiencer and cannot represent aspects of the story outside of what the previous teller told her. To do so would be a departure from the reportive epistemological stance. Table 6.4 summarises the deictic differences between a reportive epistemological stance and an imaginative epistemological stance. Table 6.4Deictic properties of reportive and imaginative epistemological stances Epistemological stance
Represented source Deictic centre (evidential coding)
Perspective Knowledge shifts? limitations?
Reportive Imaginative
Original teller Unspecified
No Yes
Original teller Variable
Yes No
‘Deictic centre’ = Who is the conceptualiser? ‘ Knowledge limitations’ = Is the conceptualise omniscient?
The passages in (18) and (19) illustrate the adoption of an imaginative epistemological stance in retelling. In both passages, all of the information was explicit or inferable in the previous (original) version of the story yet in neither example is there any evidence that the story is a retelling. Evidence that an imaginative epistemological stance has been adopted include: the representation of characters’ cognitive and perceptual processes through psychonarration (e.g. she decided X, she starts to hear X); use of present and present progressive forms (e.g. she walks through the hallway, she’s too scared…); use of ‘expressive’ language (e.g. repetition — she’s waiting waiting waiting, she starts to hear this ‘plop plop plop’ sound). (18) well X decided that she had to go to the bathroom then and you know she decided she could hold it until the next bathroom time which was about another half hour or so so she’s waiting waiting waiting and she really has to go to the bathroom but she’s too scared to ask Sister Kathy because Sister Kathy’s really strict (19) she goes into the kitchen and after a little while she starts to hear this *plop plop plop* sound and she thinks maybe a faucet’s dripping so she goes back and um
(EGS1)
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into the kitchen she walks through the hallway gets there and she checks the faucet and it’s not dripping so she’s like okay
(EMSc1)
Adoption of an imaginative epistemological stance towards a story about someone else’s personal experience, acquired from hearing it second-hand or third-hand, indicates that English speakers are able to assume authority over narrative information by virtue of being the storyteller, regardless of the origin of that information, without apparently violating any cultural conventions. This is the fundamental difference between Japanese and English retellers which results in a high density of reportive evidentiality in the Japanese corpus and a low density of reportive evidentiality in the English corpus. Some retellers who primarily adopted an imaginative epistemological stance in retelling did in fact use reportive coding at certain points in the narrative. These ‘lapses’ from the ‘default’ imaginative storytelling mode to a more reportive style are symptomatic of the fact that no matter how much the teller was trying to tell her own version of the story, she could not escape from the fact that she only knew what she was talking about from what someone else had told her. In other words, there were times when she had to ‘own up’ to not being the original source of the story. The passages in (16) and (17) above illustrate one context where the teller was forced to reveal the source of the story in order to avoid a potential confusion concerning who the story was about (the mother or the daughter). However there were some other contexts where speakers who had primarily adopted an imaginative epistemological stance towards the narrative information assumed a more reportive epistemological stance for rhetorical purposes. These are illustrated in (20) and (21) below. (20) and and I guess it’s an old house that~ evidently it must have been handed down from generation coz~ as I recall it it was a grandmother’s house and now there’s the mother and the daughter I guess is the one telling the story
(EMSa2)
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In (20) the teller was still trying to reconstruct the relationship between the house and the people who lived in it from the version of the story she was told (which was not the original version but a first generation retelling). She modified the information that it was the grandmother’s house with the information that this is how she remembered it. This implies that it may have been something different. The use of the ‘reportive’ adverbial evidently here does not simply function to evoke reportiveness since it is surrounded by markers of the reteller’s own inference and deduction (I guess, must have been). These imply that she was actively constructing her own version of the story based on what she had heard. The concentrated use of deductive and reportive forms, culminating in an actual reference to the original teller of the story as source, is a sign that the current teller was still constructing a conceptual representation of whose house it is, how old it was etc. She was trying to retell the story as a story but when she came to a part of the story that did not yet make sense to her, she fell back to trying to link the information back to the source and by highlighting the fact that she was retelling a story told to her and not actually making it up. (21) so she sends the husband in he’s looking around and he notices that the cat’s one the stove and apparently the cat never gets on the stove so he goes over to the cat and he looks in the pot
(EMSa1)
The passage in (21) is another example of the use of reportive marking in a text that did not ever overtly mention the fact of retelling. The reteller had clearly adopted an imaginative epistemological stance towards the narrative information, evident by the use of present tense forms that vividly evoke the events in the storyworld. However the second last line in (21), asserting that the cat never usually got on the stove was coded with apparently, a clear reportive adverbial in this context. Why should the teller interrupt her imaginative presentation of the storyworld with a marker that links the information back to some previous teller? One analysis is that the use of this evidential form where none had been used previously highlights the information as highly significant for the plot of the story. Note that each clause preceding the use of the evidential marks a discreet event in the story leading up to the climax of discovering the mouse in the soup (at this point in the story no character knows who or what is making the ‘plop plop plop’ sound in the kitchen). The information that the cat never gets up on the stove is important because it explains the father’s motivation for
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going over to look at the pot. (The original teller said that her father thought that the cat was going to steal some chicken and went to shoo it off the stove.) Furthermore, this information is not part of the temporal progression of the narrative (it describes background information about the cat), nor is it something that the current teller can infer from events in the narrative. Labov (1972) claimed that the amount of ‘evaluation’ in narrative increases closer to the climax. But Labov’s study only examined personal experience stories where evaluation was associated with speakers’ personal involvement to the events in the story. In retellings, where the tellers have no personal involvement with the events in the story, evaluation must primarily be about the status of information with respect to its source and thence its validity. In (21) the reteller reportively grounds the generalisation about the cat, temporarily shifting her epistemological stance from imaginative to reportive to heighten the climactic effect of the episode. In this light it is interesting to note that one of the most climactic and memorable parts of the original story, the discovery of the mouse (in (22)), was the information most consistently coded with some kind of reportive evidential marking in the retellings of the story, typically some overt reference to the previous teller ((23)–(28)). (22) it’s got chicken fat all over it its hair~ in all of its fur and its ears are slicked back and its whiskers it looks like Elvis ¨
(EMS)
(23) th~ th~ the description was that the cat~ ¨ that the mouse~ the poor mouse X~ was just covered in fat you know I mean so its hair was all slicked back and its whiskers and its~ so the cat looked~ but th~ the mouse looked like Elvis [sniff] ¨
(EMSa1)
(24) the mouse was covered in fat and the w~ evidently ¨ this is what [previous speaker] said ¨ the woman claimed that the mouse looked like Elvis ¨
(EMSa2)
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling
(25) its hair’s slicked back it looked like Elvis
(EMSb1)
(26) I guess it’s ears are all slicked back it’s hair~ [previous speaker] said it looks like Elvis ¨
(EMSb2)
(27) and his ears were all slicked back like Elvis ¨ and @@@@ that’s what she said ¨
(EMSc1)
(28) she said the mouse looked like Elvis ¨ coz it had all grease on it
(EMSd1)
The narrative information that the mouse in the soup looked like Elvis not only signals the climax of the story, it also represents the subjective judgement of the original speaker — her interpretation of how the mouse looked. This section has presented a number of factors which motivated the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance towards narrative retelling. In Macedonian, the grammaticalised distinction between direct experience and hearsay strongly motivates retellers to adopt a global reportive epistemological stance — the relationship between hearsay information and the reportive epistemological stance is conventionalised in this language. In Japanese, the motivation for adopting a reportive epistemological stance does not come from the conventionalisation of linguistic structures, but rather from cultural conventions. The results from the Japanese retelling corpus completely support the characterisation of epistemological stance as the representation of knowledge assessment based on the context of language use and the expectations placed by cultural values. They show that the grammatical status of forms is not the primary motivating force behind the use of linguistic strategies to talk about epistemological assessment. The patterns of epistemological stance adoption in the English retelling corpus (a preference for adopting an imaginative epistemological stance rather than the expected reportive epistemological stance) confirmed that knowledge of the actual source of information was not a necessary force motivating the selection of epistemological stance. 6.2.2 Motivations for choosing reportive strategies In the previous section I accounted for the patterns of reportive density in narrative retelling by appealing to a number of grammatical, cultural and
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discourse factors. These explained why a consistently coded reportive epistemological stance should be preferred or dispreferred when speakers take on the task of recounting a story of someone else’s personal experience. In this section I present some explanations for the distribution of linguistic strategies in the retelling corpus used to express a reportive epistemological stance — why one type of reportive strategy might be selected over other types. The discussion in this section is limited to the Japanese and Macedonian retellings only, since, as reported above, English retellers made very little use of reportive coding in the retelling discourse context. Tables 6.5 and 6.6 present the distribution of evidential strategies in the Japanese and Macedonian corpuses: Table 6.5Distribution of reportive evidential strategies in the Japanese corpus Evidential strategy Extranarrative reported speech + tte Rashii + tte Extranarrative reported speech, rashii, tte Rashii + frame Extranarrative reported speech only No reportive evidential strategy Tte only Rashii only
No. of texts 4 4 2 1 1 1 – –
Table 6.6Distribution of reportive evidential strategies in the Macedonian corpus Evidential strategy Reportive Frame + Evidential Reported Speech + L-form Evidential Reportive Speech + L-form Evidential Reported speech only Reportive Frame only L-form only No reportive evidential strategy. Reportive Frame + L-form Reportive Frame + Evidential Reported Speech
No. of texts – 3 – 1 8 – – –
Both Japanese and Macedonian retellers made use of narrative and extranarrative evidential strategies as alternative means of reflecting a reportive epi-
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling 163
stemological stance. Japanese retellers made use of a wider range of narrative reportive evidential strategies — especially sentence final tte and rashii — while Macedonian retellers made use of the simple past/L-form past tense contrast as the primary means of coding a reportive epistemological stance internal to the narrative structure. Of the different reportive evidential strategies available to Japanese speakers, sentence final tte was clearly preferred in this retelling context, although no reteller used sentence final tte exclusively as a reportive evidential cue. The majority of retellers used some combination of sentence final tte and either evidential reported speech or rashii (or a combination of all three strategies). This is further evidence that retellers were motivated to represent the story they told as a retelling, consistent with the ‘territory of information’ analysis of Japanese reportive pragmatics. The choice of reportive strategy here clearly relies on pragmatic factors which go beyond the simple calculation of information territory. In particular, it also relies on the degree of retellers ‘psychological distance’ from the narrative information and the maintenance of a balance between a representation of the original teller’s ‘voice’ and the reteller’s own voice in her version of the story. Recall that the main semantic difference between sentence final tte and rashii is that while tte implies that narrative information was overtly represented in the previous telling; rashii implies that the narrative information was inferable from what was said in the previous telling. Of the two types of narrative evidential strategies, tte represents a greater ‘psychological distance’ (Suzuki 1998) from the narrative information than rashii — a greater emphasis on the fact that the narrative information lies outside of the speaker’s territory of information. Under this analysis, a preferred use of tte in retelling is a sign that the reteller is focussed on accurately representing the story that they had just heard in terms of what they heard, a strong commitment to being faithful to the original source of the story with no implication of their own understanding of the narrative information. A preferred use of rashii as a narrative evidential strategy is a sign that the reteller is not only committed to telling the story as a retelling, but also that she is able to assimilate the narrative information they heard into her own coherent conceptual model of the story. The fact that sentence final tte occurred three times as frequently in the retelling corpus as rashii is evidence that when faced with telling a story of someone else’s personal experience, these Japanese speakers were more concerned with representing narrative information as the product of that person’s
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experience, rather than focusing on themselves as the producer of a coherent retelling of the story. However, rashii did occur consistently in the retellings and six of the thirteen narrative retellers used both tte and rashii in their versions of the story. This suggests that despite the overall preference for distancing oneself from someone else’s experience through the choice of tte as an reportive strategy, retellers were still committed to reconstructing a coherent text that reflected their own understanding of what they heard. I have already outlined some systematic semantic/pragmatics differences between the reported speech and reportive evidential functions of sentence final tte. I argued that in retelling contexts, the use of sentence final tte (in particular the construction -n da tte) focused on narrative information as the product of some previous telling without drawing attention to who the teller was. In contrast, reported speech overtly represents the narrative information as a speech event, drawing attention to the process by which the information was acquired. The reportive evidential use of sentence final tte does not purport to represent the voice of the original teller — merely the fact that the information derived from some other teller. Reported speech, on the other hand, does purport to represent the original teller’s voice. Evidence for the difference lies in the use of ‘interactional particles’ ne and wa in (29) and (30) (repeated from (18) and (19) in Chapter 5), particles that evoke aspects of the relationship between speaker and hearer, in the representation of speech content. (29) sore.de yappari Amerikajin wa kechi dakara and after.all Americans top stingy so soo.yuu no ga umai ne tte itte-ite nom subj skilled ip rsp say-prog And, as we know, Americans are stingy so she[previous teller] was saying that they are good at that kind of thing. (JCRa1) (30) moshi kanojo ni tanonda to shite mo soo.yuu fuu na if 3sg loc ask-p part do-con also like.this ip koto ni wa nara-na-katta wa tte itte nom loc top become-neg-p ip rsp say-con If she[previous teller] had asked her the same thing, she couldn’t have figured out what to do, she[previous teller] said. (JCRb1)
These particles cannot cooccur with the reportive evidential function of sentence final tte, as in (31) below.
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(31) *sore.de yappari Amerikajin wa kechi dakara and after.all Americans top stingy so soo.yuu no ga umai ne tte nom subj skilled ip rsp
Evidential reported speech is thus a more ‘expressive’ reportive strategy than narrative evidential strategies, such as sentence final tte and rashii. Its use evokes the original telling of the story as a ‘live’ event in a way that is not possible with tte or rashii (cf. the ‘involvement’ function of speech representation – Wierzbicka 1974). Earlier it was argued that sentence final tte imposed more psychological distance between original teller and reteller than rashii because the use of rashii expressed the reteller’s active involvement in reconstructing the narrative. But the use of sentence final tte as an evidential device does still reflect something of the reteller’s presence. Narrative information modified by sentence final tte is still deictically oriented to the time and place of the retelling and the identity of the reteller, with little attention paid to the time and place of the original telling and the identity of the original teller. In extranarrative reported speech the deictic orientation of the narrative information is (partially) shifted to the original telling, thereby effacing (or at least partially effacing) the reteller as a source of the story, thus reducing their involvement in the construction of the narrative. The profiles of the three Japanese reportive evidential strategies are summarised in Table 6.7. Table 6.7Pragmatic profile of Japanese narrative and extranarrative reportive evidential strategies Evidential reported speech Sentence final tte rashii Territory of Information
− reteller (actual speaker)
− reteller
− reteller
Primary Deictic Centre
Original Teller
Reteller
Reteller
Default Evidential Category Hearsay/Report
Hearsay/Report
Inference
Relative ‘Psychological Distance’ between reteller and original teller
Medium
Low
High
The evidential uses of reported speech in the retelling corpus clearly take advantage of the expressive and distancing properties described above. The narrative information represented in the reported speech passages in (29) and
166 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
(30) both refer to evaluations of the original teller towards aspects of the story world. The passage in (29) refers to the original speaker’s opinion of Americans (that they are good at finding the lowest price for things — i.e. stingy). The passage in (30) represents the original teller’s assessment of a friend of hers (that she would not be able to do a particular favour if she was asked to by the original teller). In both cases, the information described is not only outside of the speaker’s territory of information by virtue of being something the original teller said she experienced, but is also the original teller’s assessment of that experience. The choice of reported speech as an evidential strategy in this context helps to reinforce the fact that the evaluation was the original speaker’s and not that of the reteller because it presents the information in the original teller’s ‘voice’ and by effacing the reteller’s own presence in the representation of the narrative information. A similar analysis can be applied to the Macedonian data to account for the choice of narrative and extranarrative strategies. As for the Japanese data, evidential reported speech was the most direct and explicit way that retellers could represent a reportive epistemological stance throughout their retelling. By retelling the story as an iconic representation of the previous teller’s act of narration, they were able to maintain the representation of the previous teller’s epistemological stance towards the narrative, embedded under a speech act predicate. Use of L-form pasts in retelling also represents narrative information as the product of a previous telling by another person. However, use of L-form pasts does not explicitly evoke the voice of the previous teller. The L-form only implies in the context of renarration that the narrative information was acquired from a previous teller. It does not code a shift in epistemological deixis from current speaker to some other specific individual. Rather, L-form pasts maintain the actual teller as centre of deixis by coding them as the ‘nonexperiencer’. Although this doesn’t specifically make reference to reportiveness, in the context of narrative retelling, where both teller and audience know that the story is a retelling, use of the L-form can only be interpreted as expressing a reportive epistemological stance. Evidence for this claim comes from the complementary use of the L-form past with evidential reported speech. Retellers who use evidential reported speech as a strategy also used L-forms in their versions. The shifts between these strategies is illustrated in (32).
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling 167
(32) a.
Kazhvashe “Ova e” veli “Ova prava vistina. tell:3sg.sp dem be:3sg say:3sg dem real truth Ne e nishto laga” neg be:3sg nothing lies b. Kako mu se sluchilo how 3dat refl happen:l Koga se mazhila Koga bila mlada nevestata when refl marry:l when be:l young bride:def Svekra mu oshla na pazar M-in-law 3dat go:l loc market I ja ostajla da mesi leb and 3acc remain:l to knead:3sg bread c. I veli “Jas ostanav doma and say:3sg 1nom remain:1sg.sp home Go mesiv lebot I izkisna…” 3acc knead:1sg.sp bread:def and rise:3sg.sp (a) She was saying, “This is,” she says, “This is the living truth. There are no lies.” (b) What happened to her when she had gotten married. When she was a young bride. Her mother-in-law had gone to the market. And had left her to bake bread. (c) And she says, “I was left at home. I kneaded the bread and it rose…” (MBSc1)
The reteller in (32) begins with a speech act framing clause (a) which introduces a passage of evidential reported speech. At (b) she shifts to L-form past tense as part of a total deictic shift from the previous teller as centre of deixis to current reteller as deictic centre. The shift to L-form signals a move from an expressive ‘direct speech’ mode to a more distant ‘narrative’ mode. The L-form however maintains the current teller’s epistemological relationship to the narrative as a non-experiencer/reteller. At (c), the reteller shifts back to evidential reported speech mode as she begins the sequence of narrative events. Evidential reported speech is signalled in (c) by both a framing clause veli ‘(she) says’ and by a shift in personal deixis from third person to first person, and a shift in epistemological deixis from L-form past to simple past. It is interesting to observe that despite the existence of a grammatical system in Macedonian for coding information as reportive, retellers used additional reportive strategies to achieve a reportive effect. This is indicative of the fact that there are clearly many discourse pressures involved in the production of an appropriate version of a text. For example, the use of evidential reported speech is a more ‘expressive’, more vivid and interesting way of telling
168 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
a story. It brings the audience ‘closer’ to the action of the story by representing information from the perspective of the person who experienced the events. (Mayes (1990) gives a similar account for the use of direct speech in English discourse.) Note that the reteller of (32) reserved the more ‘distant’ L-form style of narration for description of background information about the story, rather than for the events of the story themselves. She reserved the more ‘expressive’ direct speech for the more dynamic parts of the narrative. The reteller’s desire to be viewed as an interesting and coherent storyteller, one who can represent the motivations of characters in the story as well as accurately describe the events as they were told to her, results in competition between the more ‘distant’ L-form past and the less distancing extranarrative reportive strategies. The pragmatic differences between the reportive strategies used in the Macedonian narrative retellings are summarised in Table 6.8 below. The table mirrors the classification of evidential strategies suggested for the Japanese data. Both evidential reported speech and the use of L-form past tense signal that the narrative information under their scope is outside of the retellers ‘territory of information’. Evidential reported speech also signals a deictic shift from the reteller to the original teller as primary deictic centre. In contrast, the L-form does not signal a deictic shift in any other category other than epistemological deixis. Evidential reported speech by definition codes information as reportive. The default evidential meaning in the context of retelling is reportive, although it may also retain some of its more general ‘non-experiential’ meaning even in this highly constrained discourse context. Finally, it can be argued that both evidential direct speech and L-forms signal a high degree of ‘psychological distance’ between the retellers and the original teller. Evidential direct speech maintains a high degree of ‘psychological distance’ by virtue of the total deictic shift between reported speaker (= original teller) and actual speaker (= reteller). The L-form past maintains a high degree of ‘psychological distance’ by coding the actual teller as a ‘non-experiencer’ of the narrative events in question. 6.3 Summary This chapter has focussed on how and why reportive strategies were used in the narrative retelling study as a way of exploring some of the pragmatic issues which lie behind the adoption of epistemological stance in actual discourse. The discussion involved an examination two aspects of language use in the retelling corpuses: the available evidence that a reportive epistemological stance had
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling 169
Table 6.8Pragmatic profile of narrative and extranarrative evidential strategies in Macedonian Evidential reported speech
L-form
Territory of Information
− reteller (actual speaker)
− reteller
Primary Deictic Centre
Original Teller
Reteller
Default Evidential Category
Hearsay/Report
Hearsay (/Inference)
Relative ‘Psychological High Distance’ between reteller and original teller
High
been adopted at all, reflected in the reportive density of the narrative; and then the selection of linguistic strategies chosen to express the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance. The patterns of reportive marking in the narrative retellings provide us with ways of addressing the questions about choice of epistemological stance raised at the beginning of the chapter: how universal or language/culture specific are these choices? How do they relate to the grammatical status of reportiveness in each of the languages? What do these results tell us about the relationship between pragmatics and grammar? What do these results tell us about the adoption of epistemological stance? With respect to the universality of epistemological stance adoption, the retelling data showed that while all speakers globally oriented their discourse to a ‘default’ epistemological stance, there are clearly different approaches to retelling that resulted in variation between reportive and imaginative epistemological stances as the preferred epistemological stance adopted towards the retelling. Macedonian and Japanese retellers consistently preferred to adopt a reportive epistemological stance, indicated by the high density of reportive forms in retellings, while English retellers preferred to adopt an imaginative epistemological stance towards the story they retold. This result was taken as evidence that, to a large degree, selection of epistemological stance is motivated by some norms of the speech community with respect to the assessment of epistemological status. For Macedonian and Japanese retellers, the norm seems to be to represent the story as derived from someone else’s experience — in someone else’s ‘territory of information’. For English retellers, the norm seems to be to reconstruct a coherent and vivid account of the events in the story, with less emphasis placed on its origins.
170 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
Given the patterns of epistemological stance adoption observed in the data, it does not seem a coincidence that speakers of languages like Macedonian and Japanese, which have developed, or are developing, grammatical reportive markers, were the ones who most consistently adopted a reportive epistemological stance. This is the epistemological stance which most accurately represented their actual knowledge status with respect to the story they retold. It suggests a much higher degree of conventional mapping between actual source of information and adoption of epistemological stance in languages with grammatical evidentiality, than in languages which lack such systems. The patterns of epistemological stance adoption found in the data also provide some evidence for the pragmatic background that motivates the grammaticalisation of epistemological stance expression into evidential systems. The conventionalisation of mapping between type of information and epistemological stance adoption can be viewed as providing a context whereby certain forms attain a grammatical status — becoming more morphologised, more restricted in distribution, less semantically complex and more hyperextended in their use. In the case of Macedonian, we know something of the process by which certain past tense forms acquired the evidential meanings seen in the simple past/L-form contrast. One proposed path of semantic change is presented in Bybee et al. (1995). Under their analysis, the L-form past was originally a resultative form, which focussed on the end result of some event. Over time, it has come to focus on the state of knowledge of the person reporting the results, someone who had not witnessed the event but only knew about it by inference from results. The acquisition of a reportive flavour of the L-form (also reported in Friedman 1986) seems to have arisen from its frequent use in reportive contexts. Assuming a pragmatic basis for semantico-grammatical change, this path of semantic change would not have taken place if there had not been some pragmatic imperative to do so. In this case, the pragmatic basis is the way that Macedonian speakers talk about the status of their knowledge. It is only because speakers of the language have conventionalised the relationship between type of information and epistemological stance that a grammatical form used to express this relationship has developed. However, from the distribution of reportive strategies in the retelling corpus, it seems clear that even though Macedonian speakers have this grammatical means to express a reportive epistemological stance, their goal is to choose the linguistic strategy that best fits the combination of all of their discourse and pragmatic goals. The epistemological
Reportive strategies in narrative retelling
stance remains the same, but the strategy is chosen to accommodate other needs — like the desire to tell a coherent and interesting story. The patterns of epistemological stance adoption, and the linguistic means of expressing them, in the Japanese corpus also provide evidence for the pragmatic motivations that underpin the grammaticalisation of evidential meanings. The density of reportiveness in Japanese is much like the density in Macedonian but the most highly grammaticalised of its reportive strategies, sentence final tte, cannot yet be analysed as a pure grammatical reportive evidential, since it still retains other non-evidential functions (e.g. as a complement to reported speech representation). Nevertheless, the distribution of sentence final tte in the retelling corpus does strongly suggest that in reportive contexts, such as narrative retelling, it is a highly conventional means for speakers to express the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance. I suggest that this conventionalisation would not have developed so clearly if there was not already in place the cultural norms of epistemological stance adoption, described here in terms of ‘territory of information’.
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AUTHOR ""
TITLE "Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance"
SUBJECT "Pragmatics & Beyond, New Series, Volume 87"
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Chapter 7
Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance
The values for reportive density for Macedonian, Japanese and English discussed in the last chapter indicate that even in languages like Macedonian that have grammaticalised the expression of reportiveness, retellers did not automatically select a reportive epistemological stance to coincide with their actual method of knowledge acquisition. Nevertheless, it was possible to identify a ‘default’ global epistemological stance for each of the languages — reportive epistemological stance for Macedonian and Japanese retellings, and imaginative epistemological stance for English retellings — which reflected aspects of the culture of epistemological assessment for each language group. However, it is clear from the patterns of epistemological stance adoption found in the corpus that retellers of all three languages rarely maintained this ‘default’ epistemological stance throughout their entire retelling. Just as English retellers resorted to sporadic reportive marking in at particular climactic points in the renarration, so too did Macedonian and Japanese retellers deviate from a basic reportive epistemological stance to represent parts of the narrative from other epistemological stances. In order to gain a well-rounded picture of the pragmatic factors that motivate speakers to select particular linguistic strategies to express their epistemological assessment, we need therefore to understand not only the pragmatics of epistemological stance adoption at the ‘global’ level (corresponding with socio-cultural appropriateness), but also the pragmatics of epistemological stance variation at the ‘local’ level (corresponding with the process of narrative production). There are of course many things that may have been consciously or unconsciously taken into consideration by retellers when they set about the task of retelling the story they heard: retellers’ relationship to their interlocutor(s); their relationship with the original teller of the story; the extent to which they could relate the events of the story to their own experiences of the world, etc. It is highly probable that each of these affects the way in which retellers approach the task of retelling the story they have heard. The resolution of these factors
174 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
results in the variations in epistemological stance adoption of the kind observed in the retelling corpus here. In this chapter I focus on one aspect of the pragmatics of epistemological stance adoption in narration, the assignment, maintenance and shift of narrative perspective, as a significant factor lying behind the variation of epistemological stance adoption at the ‘local’ level. Narrative perspective, or ‘point-of-view’, is an inherent part of narrative and has recently become a major part of narrative analysis in linguistics (e.g. Sanders 1994; Duchan et al. 1995; Labov 1997). The analysis of narrative perspective in Section 7.1 below provides a motivating foundation for the kinds of deviations from a ‘default’ epistemological stance found in the retelling corpus. The observed patterns of localised epistemological stance variation also provide an excellent illustration of the ways that different pragmatic pressures play off against each other in the linguistic strategies selected for the process of constructing of a discourse. They provide further insight into the competition that speakers of all languages face when retelling someone else’s story between desiring to produce a faithful rendition of the story, indexed to its source, and desiring to tell a listenable and coherent story that reflects their storytelling prowess.
7.1 Narrative perspective According to Labov’s (1972) classic model of narration (and subsequent versions of it — Labov 1997), the telling of a coherent and interesting narrative requires a clear indication of the ‘point’ of the story — why the story is ‘tellable’ in the first place. In the Labovian framework, this is signalled primarily though the use of evaluation. In personal stories, evaluation expresses the motivations of the speaker to tell the story in the first place. In non-personal stories, it helps to clarify the motivations of story characters to do the things that they do within the story world. As a construal of information in terms of epistemological assessment, expression of epistemological stance, is clearly a component of evaluation. Indeed the pressures on storytellers to incorporate high levels of evaluation in order to produce a coherent and involving story was cited as one of the factors which motivated the choice of reportive strategies (narrative or extranarrative) to express a reportive epistemological stance (discussed in Section 6.2.2). In addition to its evaluative properties, narrative perspective is also deictic because it indexes narrative information to a particular point of origin, typically
Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance
either the here and now of the storytelling context, or within the storyworld with one of the story characters. With each shift in narrative perspective comes a shift in epistemological stance, commensurate with whose epistemological assessment is being represented. Here I focus on two aspects of narrative perspective which provide evidence for the perspective structure of narrative information at any point in the retelling, allowing the storyteller to shift epistemological stances within the narrative as part of the retelling process: a. the degree to which the consciousness of characters was represented in their speech and thoughts, using evidence predominantly from the Macedonian and Japanese corpuses; b. the types of referring expressions used to pick out characters in the story, using evidence predominantly from the English corpus; Of these two aspects, the representation of characters’ consciousness has received the most attention in the literature on narrative perspective (e.g. Cohn 1978; Banfield 1982; Sanders 1994). The importance of choice of referring expressions for indicating narrative perspective has also been recognised however (Wiebe 1995). Neither of these phenomena are ‘evidential’ as such, but because of their narrative deictic properties they provide important cues for understanding whose epistemological stance is being represented (the reteller’s or the character’s). 7.1.1
Speech and thought representation
Stories are more easily understood if the audience also understands why characters behave the way they do in the universe of the story world. One of the strategies that retellers can use to project information about character motivations is to represent the perspectives of characters in the story: the representation of their thoughts, perceptions and feelings; and by representation of their interactions with other characters in the story — the speech exchanges between characters. The following discussion of the distribution of reportive coding in the Macedonian corpus is an illustration of how the perspective structure of narrative, expressed in the use of speech and thought representation, has a systematic effect on the distribution of reportive strategies in retelling. The reportive density of the Macedonian corpus was calculated at 0.49, indicating that half of all narrative units were under the scope of some reportive marker. The reportive density of L-form past tenses was 0.35, indicating a
175
176 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
strong preference for the use of L-forms over other reportive strategies. However, given the fact that all retellers knew that they were reporting someone else’s experiences, this density figure could be seen as low on the surface — at least lower than what might be expected for a language which has grammaticalised the coding of reportiveness to such an extent. In addition to the relatively low frequency of L-forms in the Macedonian corpus, there were also a considerable number of tokens of simple past forms — forms which reflect the adoption of a personal experience epistemological stance and therefore predicted not to occur in narrative retelling. Table 7.1 presents the percentage frequencies of L-forms, simple pasts and non-past forms for each individual retelling text. Narrative information that was under the scope of evidential direct speech was discounted since that information represents the original teller’s epistemological stance. Although no text completely lacked simple past or non-past forms, there was a certain amount of individual variation in the ratio of different tense forms to each other. The proportion of L-form marked clauses ranged from 19% to 68% of clauses (most texts in the 30–67% range). Simple pasts ranged from 4% to 33% of clauses (most texts in a 10–27% range). Non-pasts ranged from 10% to 63% of clauses (most texts in a 32–55% range). Only one text made no use of simple past forms, but this was a retelling which made extensive use of evidential direct speech as a reportive strategy, leaving only 4 narrative clauses outside of the scope of evidential direct speech.
Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance 177
Table 7.1Percentage proportion of tenses in narrative retelling Text MBSa1 MBSa2 MBSb1 MBSb2 MBSc1 MBSc2 MBSd1 MBSd2 MZS1 MZS2 MNC1 Total
Clauses
L-form
Simple past
Non-past
37 35 31 48 9 28 4 46 37 19 33
19 (7) 37 (13) 48 (15) 42 (20) 78 (7) 57 (16) 75 (3) 33 (15) 54 (20) 68 (13) 30 (10)
27 (10) 31 (11) 10 (3) 21 (10) 11 (1) 11 (3) 0 (0) 4 (2) 14 (5) 21 (4) 15 (5)
54 (20) 31 (11) 41 (13) 37 (18) 11 (1) 32 (9) 25 (1) 63 (29) 32 (12) 10 (2) 55 (18)
327
42 (139)
17 (54)
41 (134)
Overall, only about 2/5 of clauses in the retelling corpus were coded with an L-form. Of the non-L forms, 18% of clauses were simple pasts (30% of non-L form clauses) — forms which were predicted not to occur. The high frequency use of non-past forms, comparable with L-form frequency, is unproblematic because the evidential contrast that exists between simple pasts and L-forms is lost in non-past contexts. Only in past tense contexts is the reteller required to make a choice between representing information as ‘direct experience’ (with a simple past), or as ‘report’ (with an L-form past). It is therefore useful to filter non-past forms from the calculation to achieve a clearer picture of the ratio of simple pasts to L-forms in the retelling corpus. Table 7.2 presents the results of this calculation for the individual texts. The percentages represent the percentage of simple past or L-form past as a proportion of total past tense clauses. The results show that while there was an overall tendency to select L-forms as the past tense in narrative retelling, a little over a quarter of narrative units were coded with a simple past form, a form which signals a shift from the expected reportive epistemological stance to some type of direct experience epistemological stance. These shifts are particularly significant because they have been isolated in narrative units — i.e. units which were predicted to represent the epistemological stance of the reteller. One possible solution is that Macedonian retellers were simply inconsistent in their adoption of a reportive epistemological stance. However, a close examination of the contexts in which
178 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
Table 7.2Percentage proportions of simple pasts and L-forms Text
L-form
Simple past
Total past
MBSa1 MBSa2 MBSb1 MBSb2 MBSc1 MBSc2 MBSd1 MBSd2 MZS1 MZS2 MNC1
41 (7) 54 (13) 83 (15) 67 (20) 88 (7) 84 (16) 100 (3) 88 (15) 80 (20) 76 (13) 67 (10)
59 (10) 46 (11) 17 (3) 33 (10) 12 (1) 16 (3) 0 (0) 12 (2) 20 (5) 24 (4) 33 (5)
100 (17) 100 (24) 100 (18) 100 (30) 100 (8) 100 (19) 100 (3) 100 (17) 100 (25) 100 (17) 100 (15)
Total
72 (139)
28 (54)
100 (193)
simple past forms occurred indicates that the variation in choice of past tense form was not random, but rather constituted an important part of the deictic profile of narrative information, allowing its perspective structure to be accurately interpreted. Recall that narrative units necessarily code both an origin and an object of perspective. The degree to which the origin and the object of perspective are located in the same domain (e.g. internal to the storyworld or some ‘location’ external to the storyworld represents the degree to which information is perspectivised. Degree of perspectivisation is a particularly relevant notion in narrative study because it allows a succinct way of distinguishing information that anyone in the storyworld (and perhaps also those external to it) might have access to from information which is accessible to only one character (e.g. their thoughts and perceptions). The model of narrative structure adopted in this study (described in Sections 1.4 and 4.4) assumes a storytelling event in the real world, where the teller and audience exist, and a story world, where the characters of the story exist and interact with each other. Recall that in storytelling, the story world is always the object of perspective but both worlds may function as the origin of perspective (i.e. the deictic centre) in the narration. Figure 7.1 is a simple representation of this model of narration, irrespective of deictic profile. Tellers can represent narrative information as it relates to the where, when and who of the real world speech situation, maintaining the ‘real world’ as the origin of perspective. The result is a report of the characters and events in the
Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance 179
C
T A
Story World
Real World Speech Situation
Figure 7.1Model of narration(T = teller, A = audience, C = character)
story world that maintains the presence of the speech act participants in the real world speech situation. Alternatively, a teller can represent narrative information as it relates to the where, when and who of the story world itself. Under these circumstances, narrative information is deictically centred somewhere within the story world, independent of the actual teller and audience. The result is a representation of characters and events in the story world that diminishes the presence of the speech act participants in the real world speech situation. The backgrounding or ‘effacing’ of the speech act participants in the real world results in a more expressive mode of representation. When narrators present information as a report that reflects the communicative intent of the current speaker and interaction with the audience, and minimises the experience itself, the result is a more reportive mode of representation. Use of language in narration thus can be characterised as more or less ‘expressive’ according to the degree to which the experience itself is foregrounded as an iconic representation that diminishes the presence of the actual speaker and audience. Figures 7.2 and 7.3 model the expressive and reportive framing of narrative information respectively. Expressivity is coded with a variety of linguistic phenomena including use of temporal, spatial and personal deictic terms; use of definiteness to represent the knowledge state of story characters rather than actual speech act participants; choice of referring expressions and epithets, long distance reflexives (Cohn 1978; Banfield 1982; Wiebe 1992; Zubin & Hewitt 1995). These devices, and others, contribute to the interpretation of information as more or less expressive. Reportive and expressive language are not in binary opposition. Utterances can be rated as more or less expressive based on the accumulation of different
180 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
Source of Linguistic Coding
Story World
C
T A
Speech Situation Real World
Figure 7.2Expressive framing in narrative(T = teller, A = audience, C = character)
C
Story World
T A
Real World Speech Situation Source of Linguistic Coding
Figure 7.3Reportive framing in narrative
types of linguistic cues. The shift from reportive to expressive modes of representation is illustrated in (1). (1) a.
She glanced towards the door when she heard the noise. Her father stood in the doorway. She was quite surprised. b. She glanced towards the door when she heard the noise. Daddy was standing in the doorway. She was quite surprised. c. She glanced towards the door when she heard the noise. My goodness! What was Daddy doing standing in the doorway? d. She glanced towards the door when she heard the noise. “My goodness! What is Daddy doing standing in the doorway?”, she wondered.
Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance
In all four example passages (a)–(d), the first sentence is quite reportive. The object of perspective is the character who observes her father in the doorway. The origin of perspective however is somewhere external to that character, signalled by third person reference and past tense forms of the verbs. These linguistic signs index the narrative information with respect to the time of narration and to the identity of the narrator. Without further information (e.g. more specific deictic expressions), the origin of deixis is typically interpreted as centred outside of the storyworld with the external narrator. The second and third sentences in (a)–(d) illustrate the shift from more reportive to more expressive modes of representation coinciding with a shift in deictic centre from external to internal to the story world. The most expressive type of language use in narration is the direct representation of a character’s speech or thought, where the words of the character are presented as the character’s voice as they speak in the story world, or train of thought as they think (= internal monologue). In direct representation, all deixis is centred with the speaking character and the actual teller is ostensibly ‘invisible’. Other modes of representation may maintain some presence of an actual teller by partial deictic shifts (e.g. represented thought, psychonarration, indirect speech). These modes are less expressive than direct representation, but they are more expressive than wholly reportive information which maintains the actual story teller and her audience as the centre of deixis. It is within this framework of the expressive/reportive continuum that the alternation between L-forms and simple past in the Macedonian retelling corpus can be explained. The semantics of these forms has already been characterised in terms of their deictic properties (Section 5.1.1.): simple past deictically links information to the experiencer; L-form past delinks information from the experiencer. However the earlier characterisation assumed that the current teller was consistently the origin of deixis and the choice of past tense form was therefore a function of that teller’s epistemological relationship to the information. The discussion in this section has outlined the relativity of the deictic centre. In narration, the origin of deixis may shift from the actual narrator, external to the story world, to any number of spatio-temporal points within the story world. Within this framework, the use of simple past, which links information to an experiencer, becomes a positive cue for the representation of narrative information from the perspective of someone who is in a position to be an experiencer. In the context of renarration this experiencer can only be a character in the story world. It cannot be the current teller since she knew of the
181
182 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
story events only by virtue of it being told to her. Direct representation of characters’ speech and thought involves a total deictic shift and a total submersion of the self of the actual teller. Direct speech is identified in the narrative because of its pervasive use of ‘expressive’ language, in conjunction with some kind of framing clause (e.g. veli ‘s/he says’). The passage in (2) illustrates the total representation of character perspective in narrative direct speech. The character is talking about some bread which she baked that turned out badly. The use of simple pasts in the content of speech is commensurate with the character’s expression of her own experience of the bread baking episode. (2) I ama nevestata mu veli pak and but bride:def 3sg.dat say:3sg again “Zoshto ne mi se pogodi. why neg 1sg.dat refl make.well:sp Koga bev kaj nas, lebot sekoj pat jas when be:1sg.sp loc 1pl.acc bread:def always time 1sg.nom leb mesev. Lebot mi se godeshe. bread knead:1sg.sp bread:def 1sg.dat refl make.well:sp Beshe ubav.” be:sp nice But the bride says to her again, “Why didn’t it turn out for me? When I was back home, I would always knead the bread. The bread would turn out for me. It was nice.” (MBSa2)
Direct representation of characters’ speech and thought so predictably represents the epistemological stance of the speaking/thinking character that it is afforded an independent narrative status, coded as ‘content units’, and excluded from the analysis of epistemological stance adoption for the purposes of this study. However, as Table 7.2 indicates, simple past use within the narrative was not confined to content units. The use of simple past forms in narrative units is less problematic if the overall degree of expressivity of the relevant units is considered. In many cases, simple past tense forms occurred in conjunction with other expressive devices, as in (3) (3) Zoshto lebot da i se napraj taka why bread:def to 3sg.dat refl make:3sg.sp like.that Why did her bread turn out like that?
(MBSb1)
Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance 183
The passage in (3) is syntactically a direct question, a structure which signals a high degree of expressivity. The question represents what the character was thinking at that time in the story (she is looking at the bread which had turned out badly). Unlike direct representation the actual teller is still a deictic centre for personal deixis. Thus despite the interpretation of “Why did her bread turn out like that?” as the thoughts of a particular character in the storyworld, the actual teller’s presence is (tenuously) maintained by the use of third person reference. Direct representation would require first person reference under these circumstances. The passage in (4) is a similar example. Here the shift from a more reportive to a more expressive stance is signalled at (b) by the temporal deictic adverb sega ‘now’ and by the NP ovoj pat ‘this time’. The now is the now of the story, when the bread turned out badly, and not the now of the actual storytelling situation. Mnogu se godel lebot kaj majka mu very refl turn.out:l bread:def loc mother 3sg.dat b. Sega ama ovoj pat mu se zgreshi lebot now but dem time 3sg.dat refl be.wrong:sp bread:def
(4) a.
The bread often turned out well at her mother’s house. Now, but this time the bread had turned out wrong. (MBSb2)
Like direct representation, the use of simple past in (3) and (4) can be explained in terms of the expressiveness of the passage. Although personal deixis is centred with the actual narrator (signalled by the consistent use of third person forms), all other deixis, including epistemological deixis is shifted to somewhere or someone within the story world and the evidential coding reflects the knowledge status of the story characters and not the actual narrator. All examples so far have associated the use of simple past with a more expressive mode of representation, either direct speech or represented thought. But the expressive frame was established on the basis of clear independent cues (such as other deictic shifts, use of expressive syntax, etc.) unrelated to the forms of the past tense themselves. This accounted for the vast majority of simple past uses in the retelling corpus. There was however a small residue of simple past tenses that did not seem to cooccur with other expressive devices. The passage in (5) is an interesting example of this ‘independent’ use of simple past (boldface and italics).
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(5) Si doshla svekrvata od pazar I prashala refl come:l M-in-law:def gen market and ask:l “Kako e lebot” how be:3sg bread:def The mother-in-law returned from the market and asked, “How is the bread?” Taa mu rekla nevestata “Aren e” reche 3sg.nom 3sg.dat say:l bride:def good be:3sg say:3sg.sp “Ama vnatre kako zhila postana Ne dopechen” but inside how vein become:sp neg finish.cook:part She said, the bride, “It is good.” She said, “But it became vein-like inside. Not fully cooked.” Svekorot mu rekol “Aren e Aren e F-in-law:def 3sg.dat say:l good be:3sg good be:3sg Kje go izedime” Reche will 3sg.acc eat:1pl say:3sg.sp “Ne e losho Ubavo pechen.” neg be:3sg bad nice bake:part The father-in-law said to her, “It’s good. It’s good. We will eat it.” He said. “It’s not bad. Nicely cooked.” (MBSc2)
The passage in (5) is a sequence of direct speech passages spoken by three different characters: mother-in-law, bride and father-in-law. Up until this point in the text, all past tense verbs in narrative clauses were L-form pasts, consistent with the narrator’s experience as a reteller. The use of the simple past form postana ‘became’ in the second direct speech passage is consistent with the bride-character’s perspective as an experiencer of the event; it was she who baked the bread. The problematic forms are the alternations between simple past and L-form pasts of the speech act verb reche ‘say’ in the framing clauses of the second and third direct speech passages. The simple past forms are problematic because they do not cooccur with other expressive devices within the framing clause (they are the only word in their respective clauses), and because they are preceded by L-form versions of the same verb in the immediately preceding framing clause. Note however that the L-form of reche (rekol/rekla) introduces the new speaking character and a new speaking event in the narrative. In contrast, the simple past form reche occurs medially in the direct speech passage — it does not introduce a new character nor a new speaking event (the speaking character
Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance
does not stop talking at this point). Perfective verbs (like reche) typically signal a movement forward in narrative time and the designation of a completed narrative event. The use of simple past reche in (5) has neither of these functions — it anaphorically refers to the previous use of reche (in expected L-form) that introduces a new reported speaker. Use of the expected L-form after a passage of direct speech representation marks a dramatic shift in deictic orientation from the perspective of a speaking character as they spoke in the story world to the perspective of a current reteller who is reporting the events of a story she heard from someone else. In contrast, the use of simple past reche in the middle of direct speech passages is less disruptive of the flow of represented speech than use of the L-form would be. It only partially shifts the deictic orientation from character to narrator — the epistemological deixis is still linked with the character. So although the use of reche in medial framing clauses in (5) cannot be analysed as fully representing the character’s perspective, its anaphoric medial position within a direct speech passage does not positively assert that the current narrator has direct experience of the events. The next two examples, (6) and (7), illustrate the use of simple past in narrative clauses which do not contain any other evidence of expressive framing, and which also seem to signal new narrative events. Though rare in occurrence, these are the most problematic of the simple past forms in the corpus. (6) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h.
Mazhot mu rekol deka man:def 3sg.dat say:l that “Kje go viknime deverot na ruchek will 3sg.acc invite:1pl B-in-law loc lunch Kje go viknime vikni~ will 3sg.acc invite:1pl Neka dojdi let come:3sg kje naprajime zelnik.” will make:1pl zelnik I ovaa go napraj zelnikot and dem 3sg.acc make:sp zelnik:def Ali toj zelnikot ne se pogodi but dem zelnik:def neg refl make.well:sp A inako si pogodila and different refl make.well:l
185
186 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
(a) Her husband said to her that (b) “We will invite the Brother-in-law to lunch. (c) We will invite him. (d) Let him come. (e) We’ll make zelnik”. (f) And she made the zelnik. (g) But that zelnik did not turn out well. (h) Otherwise she did everything well. (MZS1) Imala edna zhena shto have:l one woman what b. bila mlada nevesta. be:l young bride c. I sega svekra mu mu objasnuva kako se mesi leb. and now M-in-law 3dat 3dat explain:3sg how refl knead bread d. Ili mu reche da mesi leb. or 3dat say:sp to knead bread e. I ovaa snaata zedi da mesi leb. and dem D-in-law take:sp to knead bread f. Go probala. 3sg.acc try:l
(7) a.
(a) There was a woman who (b) was a young bride. (c) And now her mother-in-law is explaining to her (d) how bread is kneaded. (e) Or (rather) she told her to knead bread. (e) And this daughter-in-law took to kneading bread. (f) She tried it. (MBSa1)
This problem is resolved if the contexts in which the simple pasts are used are considered carefully. My native speaker consultant interpreted all three passages as expressing a higher degree of ‘empathy’ between the current teller and the story character than in L-form passages in the same texts. That is, although they do not directly represent the speech or thoughts of story characters, the use of simple past does signal a partial deictic shift from the perspective of the current teller to the perspective of the main story character (i.e. the original teller). This has the effect of making the narrative more ‘vivid’, more involving than if an L-form, which automatically distances the teller from the events in question, was used to describe the same event. To this extent, the use of simple past in retelling can stand alone as an expressive device. In (6), the teller shifts from consistent use of L-forms in the prior text to simple past at the climax of the story (when she reports at (f)–(g) that the zelnik was made but not made well). The teller shifts back to the L-form when she starts summarising what else happened at (h). Use of expressive language at text climaxes have been well attested (e.g. Labov 1972; Polanyi 1982; Mayes 1990), and provides the motivation for the use of simple past in this example.
Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance 187
In (7) the teller begins to tell her version of the story with L-forms to mark her reportive epistemological stance towards the narrative. At (c) she shifts to imperfective present tense objasnuva ‘is explaining’ in conjunction with the temporal adverb sega ‘now’. Both tense and adverbial forms are expressive devices that shift temporal deixis to the time of the story world. In (d) and (e) the teller uses simple past forms. In (f) she resumes the L-form to signal the next narrative events in the retelling (and L-forms are consistently continued in the text after this passage). The use of simple past forms in (d) and (e) is problematic because neither represents the speech nor thought of story characters. In addition, both clauses represent new events in the narrative — the mother-in-law’s instructions and the daughter-in-law’s compliance with these instructions. Note also that (d) and (e) occur at the beginning of the story and cannot be analysed as representing some kind of ‘climax’. Despite these shortcomings, the use of simple pasts in clauses (d) and (e) in (7) continue the more expressive mode of narration established in (c) with the temporal deictic shift. Here however the shift is one of epistemological deixis rather than temporal deixis. The use of the proximate demonstrative ovaa ‘this’ in (e) reinforces the interpretation of a deictic origin that lies somewhere within the story world, thus diminishing the presence of the current teller. The use of simple past to code narrative events in retelling, illustrated in (6) and (7) is thus analogous to the use of present tense forms to talk about past time events. The well-documented ‘historical present’ (e.g. Schiffrin 1981; Dry 1983) marks a shift in temporal deictic origin from time of narration to time of the narrative. Similarly, the use of simple past marks a shift in epistemological deixis from external to the narrative to somewhere internal to the story world. The narrative information is thus presented as if the teller and her audience had direct experience of the events for the rhetorical purpose of telling a more vivid and interesting story. Figure 7.4 represents the relationship between the modes of representation discussed in this section and their degree of expressivity. In retelling narrative, the more expressive the mode of representation, the less likely an L-form will be used. The overall low frequency of L-forms, compared with both simple past and non-past forms, in a narrative retelling context reflects the tendency for storytellers to use more expressive modes of representation, even when the experience of others is being recounted. The absence of reportive marking in the Japanese corpus, indicating local deviations from the default reportive epistemological stance, could also be
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Direct Speech
Represented > Thought
>
Framing Clause
>
Simple Past Narrative Clause
Most Expressive
>
L-form Narrative Clause
Most Reportive
Figure 7.4Continuum of expressivity
analysed in terms of local shifts to character perspective. Some of the nonreportively marked narrative sequences in the Japanese corpus on closer examination expressed the cognitive processes, including the epistemological stance, of a story character rather than that of the reteller, even if such units did not signal total deictic shift to the perspective of that character. (8) a.
sore wa kanojo no sono omotte-ta that top 3sg gen that think-prog-p basho to zenzen chigau no ne place and not.at.all different nom ip b. dakara kanojo mo okashii to omotte therefore 3sg also wrong rsp think-con
and that was very different from the place which she was thinking of. So she thought something was wrong. (JLBb1)
The first narrative clause (a) in (8) describes something that was in the character’s mind (her comparison of her location at this time in the narrative with where she wants to be). The use of the interactional sentence final particle ne at the end of this unit signals that the information is not reportively marked (i.e. it is in complementary distribution with sentence final tte). The second narrative clause (b) presents the character’s conclusion following the comparison (that something was wrong). The narrative information in (b) is clearly an example of thought representation, embedded under a thought predicate omou ‘think/reason’. Although (a) does in fact represent something that the character is thinking, it is not overtly marked as represented thought, and third person pronouns (kanojo) are used to refer to the character, suggestive of a narrative mode rather than an expressive mode. The lack of the expected reportive marking in (a) helps to cohere the background information about the character’s
Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance 189
thoughts with her conclusion by presenting both as content of thought - a representation of the character’s epistemological stance. (9) de X san wa are demo ano hoteru tte South Campus no and X top that but hotel rsp South Campus gen chikaku janakatta ka na tte omotteta no zutto near cop-neg-p ip ip rsp think-prog-p nom very.much Wasn’t the hotel the one near the South Campus?, X had been thinking. (JLBb1)
Recall that information which was syntactically embedded under a verb of speaking or thinking was automatically coded as a content unit in my corpus. This accounted for the clear passages of represented thought, like (9), where the content of thought was syntactically embedded under a verb of thinking and an expressive hedging particle ka na ‘I wonder’ was used to represent the character’s state of mind. Once the reportively marked units were identified and separated, it was possible to assess units like (a) in (8), which on the surface looks like a narrative clause, as represented thought expressing the epistemological stance of the character. (10) a.
karera no eigo ga yoku wakara-nakute 3pl gen English subj well understand-neg-con b. ano shikuhakku shite-ta no suffer do-con-p nom c. de sore de doo.shiyoo ka na tte omotte-ita toki ni and that and helpless ip ip rsp think-prog-p cond loc d. X-san no tomodachi ‘Mark’ ga asobi ni kita node… X gen friend Mark subj visit loc come-p conj She couldn’t understand their English very well and she was suffering a lot. And when she was wondering what she should do, X’s friend Mark came to see her… (JCRb1)
The units (a) and (b) in (10) are examples of narrative clauses since they represent states of affairs in the story world. They are not directly embedded under a clause of speaking or thinking, nor are there other clear deictic or expressive forms in these clauses that would suggest a representation of character’s thought. However although the story is a retelling, and the reteller did use reportive coding in other places in the text (the density of this text was a relatively high 0.70), neither (a) nor (b) have any overt reportive coding. In
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contrast, (c) is clearly direct represented thought. The information that the character was wondering what to do is modified with the expressive hedging particle combination ka na ‘I wonder’ and the content of thought is followed by a framing clause tte omotte ita ‘she was thinking’. Although (b) does not present represented thought, it does express something about the character’s internal state. The lack of reportive coding in (a) and (b), where information about the character’s internal state is described, helps to centre the narrative perspective closer to the character in anticipation of the direct representation of her thoughts in (c).22 The analysis of Macedonian and Japanese narrative units in terms of their place in the reportive/expressive continuum accounts for the unexpected absence of reportive forms (and the presence of forms which are consistent with a personal experience epistemological stance) in narrative retelling by reference to the perspective structure of the text — whose viewpoint is being represented (teller or character) and to what extent is the teller’s presence manifested in the linguistic signal (the overlap of object and origin of perspective. It is a concrete illustration of the deictic nature of reportive coding and its role in the establishment and maintenance of different discourse perspectives. The analysis hinges on speakers’ cognitive ability to distance themselves from their own experience and to adopt the perspective of others while they talk. Analyses of linguistic form and variation in discourse (and narrative in particular) that ignore the tendency for speakers to shift in and out of expressive and reportive modes as they talk, ignore an intrinsic component of discourse production and comprehension without which the use of certain forms makes no sense. 7.1.2 Consistency of referring expressions The discussion of the representation of speech and thought and epistemological stance assignment focussed on the effects that degree of perspectivisation of narrative information (as more or less ‘expressive’) had on the interpretation of epistemological stance. Reportive coding was clearly manipulated to allow the reteller to represent the perspective of characters’ within the story. This pattern was evident in the Macedonian and Japanese corpuses where the reportive epistemological stance is the ‘default’ epistemological stance in retelling. It was less clear in the English corpus, where a reportive epistemological stance was adopted judiciously for more targeted pragmatic purposes (such as drawing attention to the climax of the story, or indicating a memory lapse). Did this mean
Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance
that English retellers were at other times oblivious to the fact that they were retelling someone else’s’ story? The evidence from the use of referring expressions, the ways that characters were referred to in the story, indicates otherwise. When a reportive epistemological stance is adopted, narrative information is conceptually indexed to the original teller, who in this case was the experiencer of the narrative events. As long as the reportive epistemological stance is maintained, it is assumed that the reteller will tell the story from the original teller’s perspective and her perspective alone. In terms of the deictic centre, a reportive epistemological stance requires that the original teller be the origin of deixis. In contrast, an imaginative epistemological stance, the ‘default’ epistemological stance found in the English retelling corpus, represents the narrative information as a creative product of the reteller. The story is not grounded with any particular source other than the reteller as a storyteller. This means that the reteller can represent narrative information from any perspective she chooses, and she may even shift between perspectives as the story unfolds. In terms of narrative deixis, the imaginative epistemological stance does not presuppose any particular origin of perspective. Referring expressions have already been identified as a clear indicator of narrative perspective (Wiebe 1989, 1995). The form of referring expressions gives clues about whose knowledge is being represented, and therefore which character (or no character) functions as origin of perspective. Wiebe (1995) discusses the role of referring expressions (e.g. specific references, proper names, deployment of anaphora) in helping to assign information to different belief spaces (cf. Fauconnier’s (1994) discussion of names and roles). (9)
Perhaps the man understood. Perhaps he did not. (Cherryh, 1988, p. 24)
These sentences are the represented thoughts of the character Vanye about Chei [another character] Although the reference “the man” does not reflect a false belief of Vanye’s about Chei (Chei really is a man), it does reflect Vanye’s limited knowledge about Chei: At this point in the novel, the reader, but not Vanye, knows Chei’s name. (from Wiebe 1995: 270)
The use of a definite noun phrase “the man” helps the reader to understand that the passage is a representation of Vanye’s personal experience of the character, distinct from the experience of the reader. In the context of the English corpus of retellings, the ways that the main characters were referred to by the retellers provided strong clues as to whose epistemological stance is being represented: the current reteller, the original teller or some other character in the story. The
191
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following discussion focuses on the only retellings of the ‘Mouse Soup’ story in the English corpus, to illustrate this phenomenon. The human characters in ‘Mouse Soup’ are the teller/experiencer, her mother, her father, and marginal references to the teller/experiencer’s siblings. The fact that the characters were all relatives of the original teller is useful since different kinship terms may be adopted for the same character depending on which perspective is taken. For example, if the story is told from the original teller’s perspective, then the mother character will be ‘mother’ and the father character will be ‘father’. If the mother character’s perspective is taken, then the father character will be ‘husband’ and the original teller character will be ‘daughter’, and so on. Table 7.3 summarises the predicted forms of referring expressions for a personal experience epistemological stance (i.e. the original tellings) vs. a reportive epistemological stance. Table 7.3Predicted forms of referring expressions in personal experience version of Mouse Soup and retellings of Mouse Soup Original
Retelling
me my mother my father
the girl/the woman her mother/the mother her father/the father
A reteller who globally adopts a reportive epistemological stance will consistently refer to the story characters as ‘the mother’ and ‘the father’ and ‘the woman/girl’ (the voice on the tape), indexing the kin relationships exclusively to the original teller. If the reteller does not consistently maintain a reportive epistemological stance, or fails to adopt one altogether, it is predicted that there will be shifts in reference depending on which character is origin of perspective. It is also predicted that perspective shifts are most likely to occur when a character other than the original teller is most ‘active’. An active character is one who instigates or is directly affected by events in the story; one who motivates the movement of the plot. Although Mouse Soup was the story of an episode in one woman’s life, much of the plot revolves around what her mother did (the implication being that the original teller of the story witnessed her mother’s actions). The results from the Mouse Soup corpus are consistent with this prediction. Retellers seemed particularly motivated to shift perspective at points in the story where the character of the original teller was not present and where
Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance 193
another character was active. However there were interesting differences in the retellers’ attitude towards this shift in perspective consistent with whether they were committed or uncommitted to the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance. Recall that only one reteller of ‘Mouse Soup’ (EMSd1) consistently used reportive coding in her version of the story, signalling her overall commitment to adopting a reportive epistemological stance towards the story. This epistemological stance was expressed by the relatively concentrated use of evidential reported speech that indexed the narrative information as something the previous teller had said. As predicted, this version represented the characters of the story consistently as ‘mother’, ‘father’ and ‘woman’ up until the passage in (11). (11) and her mom was like “forget it” and so she got her husband which is her father to come check it out and and when the father went into the kitchen he saw the cat on top of the stove and she said that the cat never used to do that right
(EMSd1)
The passage in (11) is the only example of a shift in kinship reference in EMSd1. The reteller refers to the father character as her husband, which signals a shift to the mother character’s perspective (i.e. the ‘father’ character is the mother’s husband). The last reference to the original teller as source was over 40 units prior to this passage, and this was a part of the story where the most of the events involved the mother character alone (when she went into the kitchen and was wondering what was causing the noise). The fact that the reteller represents the speech/thought of the mother character (“forget it”) is also evidence that the mother is represented as centre of deixis at this point in the story. It is quite natural for the perspective of the mother to continue when the father character is mentioned for the first time. This accounts for the teller’s use of husband to refer to the original teller’s father. Immediately following her reference to the character as husband however, the reteller self-corrects and identifies him as father, the expected form of the referring expression under a reportive epistemological stance. This repair is evidence of her attempt to maintain the original teller as origin of perspective, which in turn is evidence of her attempt to maintain a reportive epistemological stance throughout the whole telling. The analysis is further supported by the
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fact that there is explicit reference to the original teller as source (of the information that the cat never behaved in that way) only 3 units later. From the perspective of the reteller in (11), the shift from original teller to the mother-character’s point of view was an error that was caught and repaired immediately. There were examples of perspective shifts from other retellings which were not explicitly treated as error. These occurred when the reteller was making a committed effort to retell the story from an imaginative epistemological stance rather than a reportive epistemological stance. However, even when it was clear from the absence of reportive coding that retellers were adopting an imaginative stance, they did seem to sense the inherent conflict that arises when they took the perspective of someone other than the original teller in a story originally represented as that teller’s experience. (12) and (13) illustrate this conflict. (12) and went in the living room with her father and the~ and the woman the woman and the woman’s father (woman’s POV) and then the mother came into the ki~ (woman’s POV) into the living room the mother went into the kitchen (woman’s POV) put the soup into the refrigerator (a) then went back into the living room ¨ with the husband and her daughter (Mother’s POV) (b) the daughter’s telling the story ¨ and they’d hear like a ‘plop’ sound (EMSc1)
In (12), which is from a retelling that lacked reportive coding altogether, the reteller begins this passage with a reference to the father-character consistent with original teller’s perspective (her father). Note that the identification of the main character as ‘the woman’ implies only that the other kin terms are based on relationships to her. It does not imply that she was the source of the story, a necessary factor if this were to be a reflection of a reportive epistemological stance. This perspective is maintained until (a) where there is a clear shift to the perspective of the mother (coming back into the living room), by the referring expressions the husband and her daughter, both of which take the mother character as point of reference. The unit at (b) in (12) is an extranarrative comment that clarifies who was originally telling the story. The fact that the reteller continues to refer to this person as the daughter is evidence that she continues to take the mother character’s perspective even when she is explicitly expressing that the story she tells is a retelling. This is an indication that this reteller was more committed to retelling the story as a story, rather than as a retelling.
Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance 195
(13) so she [the mother] sends you know her husband in so um her father her husband same person okay the girl’s~ the girl’s father alright the lady’s husband her mo~ you know
(mother’s POV) (original teller’s POV) (mother’s POV)
(original teller’s POV) (mother’s POV) (EMSb1)
In (13), like (12), the reteller alternates between the original teller’s perspective and the mother’s perspective with reference to the character of the father. On the surface this passage seems incoherent, as if the reteller was not sure of who she was talking about — she cannot settle of a particular perspective to identify the character. Rather than analyse this passage as an example of narrative incoherence, or a breakdown in retelling, it is more useful to view this as a further illustration of the conflict between the fact that the reteller knows she is retelling someone else’s story and her commitment to adopting an imaginative epistemological stance towards the story. This particular passage is about things that the mother did (e.g. sending her husband in). This motivates the reteller to represent the information from the mother’s perspective. The fact that she was not completely comfortable with this representation illustrates her underlying representation of the story as the report of what the ‘daughter/girl’ character said and what she experienced. Despite the conflict apparent in (13), this reteller was clearly overall committed to retelling the story from an imaginative epistemological stance. This is clear both from the lack of reportive coding and from her desire to tell the story from whatever character is most ‘active’ at any time in the narrative. For example in (14), she represents the perspective of the father character (who would refer to the mother character as ‘wife’) when he is the most active character. (14) So he calls you know His wife into the kitchen And she shrieks and says “Give it to the dog
(Father’s POV)
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Give it to the dog” So um So he gets rid of the mouse And um Gets rid of the mouse And ever since then He’d like jokingly say to like You know Their friend that um His wife would try to feed him mouse soup
(EMSb1)
In summary, the tracking of referring expressions in narrative is a useful tool not only for the identification of origin of perspective (and hence whether the information represents the private state of a story character), but it can also be used to confirm whether a reteller is consistent in her goal to retell a story as a retelling or as a story. This test was particularly useful for identifying epistemological stance in English retelling because of the lack of other linguistic cues of the kinds found in Macedonian and Japanese for indicating epistemological stance.
7.2 Other factors contributing to the absence of reportive coding The discussion of the pragmatics of epistemological stance adoption has so far focused on two general, perhaps universal, factors that motivate choice of epistemological stance adoption: socio-cultural attitudes towards authority over knowledge (Chapter 6) and the manipulation of narrative perspectives for the purposes of telling an interesting and coherent story (this chapter). The effects of individual speaker behaviour in a particular retelling context on both the choice to explicitly code narrative information as a retelling (cf. as a personal experience or fictional story), and the consistency with which it is coded, should not be ignored however. The fluctuations in evidential density reflect differences in the reportive ‘flavour’ of the text. This corresponds to differences in the ways that each reteller approached the task of retelling the story she heard. A high reportive density index for an individual retelling suggests that the reteller was primarily concerned with retelling the story as a retelling. For her, maintaining the original teller as an origin of perspective was a highly salient part of the task of
Deviations from a reportive epistemological stance 197
retelling. In contrast a low reportive density index suggests that the reteller was less concerned with being explicit about the fact that the story was about someone else’s experience told to her by someone else. This behaviour does not mean that such a reteller was unaware or completely unconcerned with her source of information however. There are several reasons why retellers may not have felt compelled to consistently code their version of the story as a retelling. Some of these derive from the fact that a speaker retelling a story must take into account many contextual factors, some of which may conflict with the use of reportive marking. For example, retellers may want to adopt an epistemological stance that ignores source of information and focuses on their own perspective and evaluation of the narrative events. This is the kind of factor that has been discussed in most detail here. Another important factor influencing the density of reportiveness is the context created by my methodology — the task of retelling a story recently heard to a second person. While the retellings always occurred between people who knew each other, not everyone who participated in this project knew the original teller well. Furthermore, some retellers had heard the story directly from the experiencer of the events. Other retellers heard the story played to them on a tape. These variables clearly affected the way that the retellers viewed the story. For those whose source of information was a disembodied voice on a tape, asking them to retell this kind of story was similar to asking them to retell an anonymously authored written passage. In contrast, the source of information for other tellers was a friend. When they retold their version of the story, they were informing their interlocutor about something a mutual acquaintance told them. One of the main differences between these scenarios is the extent to which the reteller can assume shared knowledge with the audience about the original source of the story, and hence adapt their retelling to suit their assumptions of what the audience knows. This may have reduced the number of reportive forms because they did not have to ‘report’ the story to the audience as new information, leaving them with more scope to focus on the ‘here and now’ aspects of the storytelling process (i.e. the interaction itself).
7.3 Summary In Chapter 6, it was suggested that the adoption of a consistent reportive epistemological stance, where retellers constantly reinforce the fact that the story
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originated in someone else’s telling, is taken to reflect the reteller’s desire to signal her faithfulness to the story’s origins. Reportive strategies are the means by which retellers communicate their faithfulness to the task of retelling by explicitly identifying narrative information as the product of someone else’s telling, and downplaying their own role as the creative producer of the story. In terms of deixis, the adoption of a reportive epistemological stance indexes the story to the original teller of the story and not to the reteller. It paints the current storyteller as merely a ‘passive’ conduit for conveying the narrative information rather than as an ‘active’ creator of a story. In this chapter it has been shown how retellers are also highly motivated to incorporate evaluative devices, especially shifts in narrative perspective, into their retelling as a way of making the story more coherent and listenable. Incorporation of evaluative devices — whether they represent attitudes of the reteller or attitudes of characters in the story — draw attention to the reteller as the active creator of a ‘three-dimensional’ storyworld, over which she has integrated her own personal storytelling style. This motivation is in direct competition with the motivation to retell a verbatim rendition of a story just heard, in which the reteller has no creative input. The fact that no retelling in this study represented all narrative information from a reportive epistemological stance is strong evidence that retellers were not satisfied with simply assessing and expressing the ‘tellability’ of the story as a ‘dry’ report of what someone else had told them, even if they were clearly committed to being faithful to the original (as indicated by the extreme similarities in plot structure and character between the original narrative and its retellings). The evidence indicates that retellers were at least equally concerned with reconstructing a story that reflected aspects of their own creative skills as a story teller — and their active participation in the reconstruction process. This chapter has also provided an illustration of the importance of incorporating narrative perspective into any analysis of linguistic structure in narrative discourse. The framework for viewing narrative perspective in deictic terms has provided the means to account for the local variations in epistemological stance signalling, even those that were not predicted, such as the use of simple past forms in Macedonian narrative clauses. Factoring perspective into the analysis of epistemological stance highlights its deictic properties, the construal of information that lies behind the deictic nature of evidential systems identified at the beginning of this work.
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1.My italics. 2.In context, the (b) utterance also reflects a particular speaker subjectivity, but one quite different from that in (a). For example, it can be inferred that the speaker is certain of the fact that Eric got a job, even if is not clear how she knows about it. The simple assertion of the fact that Eric got a job implies that the speaker is simply informing the hearer and deliberately not imposing her opinion, etc. 3.My italics. 4.There are some minor formal differences between the Bulgarian and Macedonian. In most Macedonian dialects, the auxiliary has been lost in third person singular contexts. In Bulgarian, the auxiliary is used for particular pragmatic effects (see Fielder 1995 for some discussion of auxiliary use in Bulgarian L-form past). 5.I earlier characterised Willett’s analysis as following a ‘source-based’ interpretation of evidentiality. Under this interpretation, the category of inferring would have to be analysed as specifying thought process as a type of source of information. This is different from Palmer’s analysis of inferential markers as coding speaker commitment, independent of type of information source. 6.Sanders (1994) presents experimental evidence which indicates that identification of source and degree of speaker ‘certainty’ are independent variables in the use of Dutch ‘epistemic modifiers’. 7.My italics 8.This claim does not assume that the types of grammaticalised systems exemplified by these three languages are all that exists in language. As mentioned earlier, the adequate presentation of evidential categories in language descriptions is still in its infancy. 9.The Quechua language consists of a wide range of different dialects. Evidential properties do vary from dialect to dialect, although all have a tripartite evidential clitic systems similar to what I describe here. My knowledge of the system is primarily based on Weber’s (1986, 1989) work on Huanuco Quechua and Floyd’s (1993) work on Wanka Quechua. 10.Recall that direct experience is typically considered the unmarked category in evidential systems, both formally and semantically (Willett 1988). It is particularly interesting that not only does Quechua have a form which marks direct experience or witness of events, but also the form is required even when other strategies for coding direct perceptual experience are present. 11.A relationship between mirativity and ‘indirect’ evidentiality which has been noted in many descriptions of evidential systems (e.g. Aksu-Koç and Slobin 1986; Friedman 1986; Delancey 1997).
200 Notes
12.This does not mean that reported speech representation only functions to express a reportive epistemological stance. For more information on the functions of reported speech representation see for example Tannen (1986, 1989), Mayes (1990), McGregor (1994), Maynard (1996). 13.Both the imaginative epistemological stance and inferential epistemological stances share the property of being a product of the speaker/conceptualiser’s own cognitive processes. In the case of inferential epistemological stance, information is represented as the product of the speaker/conceptualiser’s reasoning processes based on real world evidence. When an imaginative epistemological stance is adopted, the information is not itself represented as a product of the speaker’s creative cognitive processes but is represented as existing independently in its own world. 14. Because of these properties, the analysis of direct speech in the context of discourse theory has proven rather problematic. For example, Labov’s (1972) model of narrative structure (and its later incarnations) sidesteps the issue by grouping direct speech in personal experience stories with other kinds of ‘evaluation’, but without really accounting for nonevaluative instances of direct speech that are also found in narrative. Mushin’s (1994) solution was to identify the content of speech as a narrative event, along with any reported speech framing clause that introduces the speech event in the narrative. Under this interpretation, it is the entire direct speech passage (representing that character’s speech act) that is the narrative event, and not the individual units of the direct speech passage. 15.Parts of Chapters 5, 6, and 7 have been published as: Mushin, I. 2000. Evidentiality and Deixis in Narrative Retelling. Journal of Pragmatics 32: 927–957. Mushin, I. in press. Japanese reportive evidentiality and the pragmatics of retelling. Journal of Pragmatics (to appear 2001). 16. Avoidence of past tense, a common strategy amongst Macedonians for avoiding making a decision whether or not to vouch for something. Friedman (p.c.) observes that historical present is used very frequently in conversational narrative. 17.There is a considerable amount of literature debating whether there is a distinction between direct and indirect speech in Japanese as is found in most European languages, including Macedonian (e.g. Coulmas 1986; Maynard 1984, 1986) 18.There is still some ambiguity of function. A few sentence final uses of tte represented the speech of story characters. This is a non evidential function of sentence final tte in this context. The vast majority of instances of sentence final tte in the retelling corpus were clearly functioning to represent narrative information as acquired by hearsay however. 19.The pragmatics of these adverbials is more complex than I have presented here. In this work, I am only interested in their pragmatics to the degree that they are use to represent a story as a retelling. See Ifantidou-Trouki (1994), Biber & Finegan (1988, 1989) and Carston (1998) for overviews of the semantics and pragmatics of English ‘propositional attitude’ adverbials. 20.This continued interest in Japanese evidentiality, and related phenomena, derives from a long time acknowledgment that many Japanese forms require some notion of ‘speaker attitude’ or ‘subjectivity’ in order to explain their formal and semantic properties. The
Notes 201
Japanese linguistic tradition going back two centuries divides linguistic signs into two types, shi (‘objective’ content words) and ji (‘subjective’ words that express voice and emotion), thus recognising the importance of the speaker’s identity for the explanation of linguistic structure. See Maynard (1993) for an extensive summary of the Japanese traditional approach to linguistics and the philosophy of language. This tradition has been influential in the development of certain approaches to syntax in the generative school, notably the work of Kuno (1987 and elsewhere). 21.These ‘indirect forms’ are evidential because they encode ‘external evidence’ as part of their meaning. Not all indirect forms listed by Kamio are evidential however. For example, the sentence final particle ne, often translated as a tag ‘isn’t it?’, is described as coding information that is in the hearer’s but not the speaker’s territory. There are no epistemological implications in the use of ne however (e.g. whether the information is more or less reliable, how the speaker knows about information in the hearer’s territory, etc.) 22.An alternative analysis is that the lack of reportive coding at (b) signals that it is not information in the previous telling. In fact, a comparison of the text in (10) with the original telling shows that the information in (b) is an inference on the part of the current speaker. The original teller repeatedly said that her English was not very good and that she was having difficulty understanding the car-rental people. She did not say that she was personally suffering as a result. The lack of reportive marking at (b) thus avoids attributing information to the original speaker that she did not say.
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Appendix A
In this appendix, I present a brief synopsis of each personal experience story that was used as the basis for the retelling study. This is followed by a list of all the retellings that were recorded for each personal story. Macedonian (Bitola area dialect) 1. Bread Story (MBS) (prerecorded): A newly wed young woman is living with her husband’s family. Her mother-in-law asks her to bake some bread. She complies, but the bread turns out bad and the young woman is embarrassed and worried about what her mother-in-law will say when she returns from the market. Her father-in-law placates her and so does the mother-in-law when she returns. The young woman is not consoled since she had made bread well in the past. Although this story is about the particular personal experience of the storyteller (who was the young woman in the story), it relates an experience that is common among Macedonian women of her generation who were raised in a rural village environment. All the retellers could relate to the story. Mothers-in-law hold a posistion of power over their daughters-in-law in traditional Macedonian society. This explains the great fear of the young woman in the story. That the mother-in-law in the story was so nice about the badly made bread was considered exceptional by the retellers. Retellings of MBS: MBSa1, MBSa2 MBSb1, MBSb2 MBSc1, MBSc2 MBSd1, MBSd2 2. Zelnik Story (MZS) (live): A newly married young woman prepares her first meal in her new apartment for her husband and his best man. She tries to make a ‘zelnik’, a type of savory pastry, but forgets to put oil in it. The result is a cooking disaster. The husband teases his new wife when his guest arrives by requesting the zelnik, even though he knew that it was ruined. The young woman was very embarrassed. Retellings of MZS: MZS1, MZS2 3. New Car (MNC) (live): A young women desribes how she convinced her parents to get buy her a car, and how she and her father went to a car auction. Unlike MBS and MZS, MNC was told by a young woman (in her 20s) who was the daughter of one of the other participants. All retellers of her story were of her mother’s generation (not her mother). It seemed that most of the women knew that the teller had
214 Appendix A
recently acquired a new car, although they had not heard all the details of how she acquired it. (See Chapter 6 for further discussion of the consequences of this knowledge for the adoption of a consistent reportive epistemological stance.) Retellings of MNC: MNC1, MNC2 4. Additional Texts: There were a number of texts collected in pilot studies which were not considered to be part of the corpus because either the tellers were male or they did not come from the Bitola area. Some of these texts were used as individual examples in the book. In particular, “Car Accident” (MCA), told by a young male who came from Prespa (centralwestern Macedonia), which was collected during a pilot study. Japanese 1. Car Rental (JCR) (prerecorded): This story was part of a recorded conversation between two friends (young women). One of the friends is telling about her attempts to rent a car in America. She found this particularly difficult because of her poor English and ended up getting an American friend to help her. Retellings of JCR: JCRa1, JCRa2 JCRb1, JCRb2 JCRc1, JCRc2, JCRd2* The retellers in the second group (‘b’) knew the original teller and clearly recognised the voice on the tape. The other retellers either did not know the original teller personally or did not recognise her voice on the tape. *JCRd2 is actually a third generation retelling constructed from JCRc2. I coded it as a second generation retelling because it too was a retelling of a retelling. 2. Film Story (JFS) (live and recorded): This was an account of making a film for a class exercise, focussing on some casting problems. The retellers knew most of the people mentioned in the story and some had previously known about the film (although not about the details of its production). The ‘live’ recording of JFS was played to a second retelling group on a different occasion. This person did not know the original teller. Retellings of JFS: JFSa1, JFSa2 JFSb1 3. Lost in Buffalo (JLB) (live and recorded): This story was the adventure of a young woman student at SUNY Buffalo who was trying to make her way from the airport to meet a friend at a particular Burger King. It was late at night and she ended up getting a ride with some policeman who couldn’t find the right Burger King. After several misadventures, the teller found herself walking around by herself with her luggage. Some boys eventually picked her up and gave her a ride to the right place. Ironically, they scolded her for accepting a ride from strangers.
Appendix A
This story was much longer than the other personal experience stories (over 10 minutes). The ‘live’ tape recording was played to one other speaker group. The reteller who listened to the taped version knew the identity of the original teller. Retellings of JLB: JLBa1, JLBa2 JLBb1 English 1. Mouse Soup (EMS) (Prerecorded): A 40 year old (American) woman is recounting something that happened to her when she was still a child living at home. Her mother had made chicken soup and was leaving it out on the stove for the fat to congeal. The family was in the livingroom when they started to hear a ‘plopping’ sound in the kitchen. The mother went into the kitchen but could not find anything. She sent the father in and with the help of the cat, eventually looked into the pot of soup and found a mouse that had fallen in. The teller clearly considered this story to be ‘personal experience’, even though she was not physically present at the time the mouse was discovered (she was still in the livingroom). Retellings of EMS: EMSa1, EMSa2 EMSb1, EMSb2 EMSc1 EMSd1 2. Bed Story (EBS) (live): The teller woke up one morning at 6am to find her bed on fire (her electric blanket had shorted). She woke her roommate and the two of them dragged the smoldering mattress outside but could not put it out. Eventually they called the fire department. Ten firemen arrived in two trucks for the smouldering mattress. The teller was clearly amused by the experience although it had been scary at the time. Retellings of EBS: EBS1, EBS2 3. Grade One Story (EGS) (live): The teller recounted an embarrassing episode from first grade. She missed the designated bathroom break and had to go to the toilet during a class. She ended up wetting her pants and running to the bathroom, leaving a trail behind her. She was particularly embarrassed because everyone in the class still remembered the incident at the end of grade school (it made it to the year book). This particular group were all college roomates and clearly very comfortable with each other (two were sisters and three of them came from the same town). It was very difficult for one of them to think of a story that she had never told the others. Retellings of EGS: EGS1, EGS2
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Appendix B
In this appendix I present a sample of retellings from each corpus. Units are coded for narrative status : narrative, embedded narrative in evidential direct speech, extranarrative, content and reportive markers (boldface). Other glossing abbreviations are provided in the list of abbreviations at the beginning of the book. Macedonian The two texts presented here represent the two main strategies for story retelling I found in my corpus: consistent use of L-form past and use of evidential direct speech. (i) L-form Strategy (MBSc1) nar
Bila nekoja nevesta mlada be:l some bride young There was a young bride.
nar
Mesila leb knead:l bread She had baked some bread.
nar
Svekrvata poshla na pazar M-in-law:def go:l loc market The mother-in-law had gone to market.
nar
Mesila leb so svekorot doma knead:l bread with F-in-law:def home She had baked bread with the father-in-law at home.
nar
Go mesila sve 3acc knead:l everything She had baked it and everything.
nar
Stignal za da go opechat arrive:l ben to 3acc cook:3pl [The time] arrived for them to cook it.
nar
Svekorot dojsol furnata F-in-law:def bring:l oven:def The father-in-law brought the oven.
nar
ja napalile 3acc light:l They lit it.
218 Appendix B
nar/ ext
Shto treba da go pechat lebot what should:3sg to 3acc cook:3pl bread:def Which is needed to cook the bread.
nar
Go opekle sve 3acc cook:l everything They cooked it, and everything.
nar
Go izvajle 3acc take.out:l They took it out.
nar
Si doshla svekrvata od pazar refl come:l M-in-law:def gen market The mother-in-law returned from the market
nar
I prashala and ask:l and asked
con
Kako e lebot how be:3sg bread:def how the bread is.
nar
Taa mu rekla nevestata 3nom 3dat say:l bride:def She said, the bride,
con
Aren e good be:3sg “It is good.”
nar
reche say:3sg.sp She said,
con
Ama vnatre kako zhila postana but inside how vein become:3sg.sp “But it became vein-like inside.
con
Ne dopechen neg finish.cook:part Not fully cooked.”
nar
Svekorot mu rekol F-in-law:def 3dat say:l The father-in-law said to her,
con
Aren e good be:3sg “It’s good. Aren e good be:3sg It’s good.
con
Appendix B 219
con
Kje go izedime will 3acc eat:1pl We will eat it.”
nar
Reche say:3sg.sp He said.
con
Ne e losho neg be:3sg bad “It’s not bad.
con
Ubavo pechen nice bake:part Nicely cooked.
con
Od odzgora odzola sve ubavo gen top bottom everythng nice On the top, on the bottom, everything (is) nice.”
con
I Aj(de) drug pat kje se nauchish and come other time will refl learn:2sg And “Come on, another time you will learn.
con
Poubavo kje a prajsh better will then make:2sg You will make it better.”
nar
Mu rekla svekrvata 3dat say:l M-in-law:def The mother-in-law said to her,
con
Sega za prv pat arno shto now ben first time okay what “Now as it’s the first time, it’s okay. What.”
ext
Drugo neznam other know:1sg.neg I don’t know anything else.
nar
I taka svekorot mu rekol and like.that F-in-law:def 3dat say:l And so the father-in-law said to her,
con
Ako maltse nie doesn’t.matter a.little 1pl.nom It doesn’t matter. A little for us.
con
Maltse na gojdata a.little loc cattle:def A little to the cattle.
220 Appendix B
con
Kje go izedime will 3acc eat:1pl We will eat it.
con
Nema da go frlime lebot have:3sg.neg to 3acc throw.away:1pl bread:def We won’t throw the bread away.
con
Nema da ostani have:3sg.neg to remain:3sg It won’t be wasted.”
(ii)
Evidential Direct Speech Strategy (MBSd1)
ext
zhenava shto zborva woman:def what tell:3sg What the woman is telling
ext
ne e prikaska neg be:3sg story is not a story
ext
ami e zhiva vistina but be:3sg live truth but the living truth
nar
koga bila mlada nevesta when be:l young bride when she was a young bride
nar
svekrva mu rekla da mesat leb mother-in-law 3dat say:l to knead:3pl bread her mother-in-law told her to bake bread
nar
svekrvata oshla Bitola na pazar mother-in-law:def go:l Bitola loc market The mother-in-law went to Bitola to the market
nar
i nea i rekla da mesi leb and ? 3dat say:l to knead:3sg bread and told her to bake bread
emb
i jas veli and 1nom say:3sg “And I” she[previous teller] says
emb
si namestiv za lebot refl fix:1sg.sp ben bread:def “I fixed everything for the bread
emb
si prigotiv sve refl get.ready:1sg.sp everything I got everything ready
Appendix B 221
emb
i go mesiv and 3acc knead:1sg.sp and I kneaded it
emb
ubav me poraste good 3dat rise:3sg.sp and it rose nicely
emb
se kvasec mu kladov everything yeast 3dat put:1sg.sp everything, I put yeast in it
emb
i koga veli and when say:3sg “And when” she[previous teller] says
emb
od koga go opekovme gen when 3acc bake:1pl.sp “After we baked it
emb
lebot ne se pogodi so malko zhila bread:def neg refl make.well:3sg.sp with little sinew the bread turned out a little bit sinewy
emb
sega jas se stramam now 1nom refl be.ashamed:1sg Now I am ashamed”
ext
veli say:3sg she[previous teller] says
emb
kako kje go jadat how will 3acc eat:3pl “How are they going to eat it!?”
nar
sverkor mu mu rekol father-in-law 3dat 3dat say:l The father in-law said to her,
con
ne se plashi nevesto neg refl afraid:Imp bride “Don’t be afraid, bride
con
imame kuchinja have:1pl dogs We have dogs
con
kje mu dajme nekoj somun da kuchinjata will 3dat give:1pl some loaf to dogs:def We will give some loaves to the dogs
222 Appendix B
con
nekoj somun na volojte some loaf loc oxen:def Some loaves to the oxen
con
i kje go izedime and will 3acc eat:1pl and we’ll eat it”
emb
ne mi reche nishto losho neg 1dat say:3sg.sp nothing bad he didn’t say anything bad to me”
ext
veli say:3sg she[previous teller] says
emb
i vecherta and evening:def “And in the evening
emb
koga si dojde svekrva mi od pazar when refl come:3sg.sp mother-in-law 1dat gen market when my mother in law came from the market
emb
me prasha 1acc ask:3sg.sp She asked me
con
shto naprajvte so lebot go mesivte what do:2pl.sp with bread:def 3acc knead:2pl.sp “What did you do with the bread. Did you make it?”
con
ja majka go mesivme yes mother 3acc make:1pl.sp “Yes mother, we made it
con
go opekavme 3acc bake:1pl.sp we baked it
con
ama neshto but somehow but somehow,
nar / emb
reche say:3sg.sp she said,
con
ne e pogoden se zgreshi neg be:3sg make.well:part refl be.bad:3sg.sp it’s not good. it turned out badly
Appendix B 223
con
ima neshto zhila have:3sg somehow sinew It’s sinewy.”
nar
i taa mu veli and 3nom 3dat say:3sg and she says to her
con
more ubav e ne se sekiraj excl good be:3sg neg refl worry “It’s good. Don’t worry”,
emb
reche say:3sg.sp she said
con
ubav e kje go izedime good be:3sg will 3acc eat:1pl “It’s good. We’ll eat it.”
emb
ama jas reche kako mlada nevesta but 1nom say:3sg.sp how young bride “But I,” she said[previous teller], “as a young bride
emb
kako prv pat da mesi how first time to knead:3sg like making it for the first time
emb
jas mnogu se ustramiv 1nom very refl be.ashamed:1sg.sp I got very ashamed
emb
oti lebot mi beshe so zhila because bread:def 1dat be:3sg.sp with sinew because my bread was sinewy”
ext
i veli and say:3sg and she[previous teller] says
emb
ovaa svekrva mi ni eden zbor losh ne mi reche dem mother-in-law 1dat neg one word bad neg 1dat say:3sg.sp This mother-in-law didn’t say one bad word to me.”
ext
veli say:3sg she[previous teller] says
emb
jas se stramev 1nom refl be.ashamed:1sg.sp “I was ashamed
224 Appendix B
emb
da ne mi se razvika to neg 1dat refl yell:3sg.sp (because) she didn’t yell at me
emb
ama jas se ustramiv but 1nom refl be.ashamed:1sg.sp but I was ashamed
emb
golem stram toa bev big shame dem be:1sg.sp It was a big shame
emb
oti prv pat go mesiv lebot because first time 3acc knead:1sg.sp bread:def because it was the first time I baked the bread
ext
i toa and dem and that’s it.
Japanese JFSa1: This text illustrates the use of all three of the reportive strategies described in Chapter 5: sentence-final tte, rashii and reportive framing. nar
ano ne X-chan ga ‘media study’ no kurasu de ip X subj media studies gen class loc eiga o toru koto ni natta rashii no ne film obj make nom loc become-p seem nom ip It seems X was going to make a film for her Media Studies class
nar
sore de dene ichiban muzukashikatta no ga ne that and and most difficult-p nom subj ip ‘casting’ na-n da tte casting part-nom cop rsp Apparently the most difficult part was casting. de saishoo Vida to sorekara Ryoichi-kun ni tanonda-n da-kedo and beginning Vida and then Ryoichi loc ask-p-nom cop-but First, she asked Vida and Ryoichi Vida-chan wa ii tte itta-n da-kedo Vida top good rsp say-p-nom cop-but And Vida said okay Ryoichi-kun ga hora hazukashii-gariya ja.nai Ryoichi subj like.this shycop-neg dakara moo yadayada toka itte therefore also no like say-con But Ryoichi, as we all know, is very shy so he said no. demo goin ni tanonda kedo but force loc ask-p but But she asked him forcefully
nar
nar
nar
nar
Appendix B 225
kekyoku hora Ryoichi-kun kuruma ikochattari nanka shite finally like.this Ryoichi car accident something do-con Finally since Ryoichi had an accident with his car, nar sore de mm yappari muri ka.na tte yuu koto de that and after.all ? ip rsp say nom cop-con So she gave up nar sore de iroiro sagashita-n da tte that and various look.for-nom cop rsp And apparently she tried many people nar de mitsuketa no ga Ikuko-chan to Natsumoto-kun and find-p nom subj Ikuko and Natsumoto And finally she found Ikuko and Nastumoto nar de umaku ita rashii no ne and well -prog-p seem nom ip And it seem the film went well. nar soo no ne dene eeto soo soo Minato-san ni ip ip ip and ip ip Minato loc mo dete mora-tta-n da tte itte also ? recieve-p-nom cop rsp say-con And she also asked Minato [to play a character] unfinished de sono yaku tte yuu no ga honto wa ano kare and that role rsp say nom subj really top 3sg And the character was really~ nar honto wa motto hora shuyaku mitai ni yari-ta-kat-tara really top more ? main.role seem loc do-want-p-conj rashii-n da-kedo seem-nom cop-but It seems he really he wanted to play a main character emb tiineejaa muke no eiga datta kara teenager ? gen film cop-p since chotto sore ja otona da tte yuu koto de a.bit that ? adult cop rsp say nom cop-con But since it was a teenager film and she said he was too old ext de sono kuruma kara naze a… yuttake and that car from why ? Why from the car, didn’t I talk about this? nar te o te dake no ne dasu yaku datta no hand obj arm only nom ip show role cop-p nom The character was to show his arm from the car nar kekyoku wa de Minato-kun ga okotta no wa dooshite finally top and Minato subj be.mad-p nom top why kao toka dasanai no ka tte yuu koto na-n da-kedo face like show-neg nom ip rsp say nom cop-nom cop-but And the reason Minato was mad is he said that he didn’t show his face (on screen). nar
226 Appendix B
nar
nar
nar
nar
nar
ext
te sono yaku te yuu no wa otoosan no yaku datta and that role rsp say nom top father gen role cop-p rashii no ne seem nom ip And the character was the main character’s father, that’s what I heard. dakara shikata nakute dake ni natta-n da tte therefore way become-con only loc become-p-nom cop rsp So apparently she couldn’t do anything. demo Minato-san saisho okotte-ta-n da-kedo but Minato first be.angry-p-nom cop-but But Minato was mad at first eiga o mite kekko yokatta kara film obj see-con rather good-p conj But after he saw the movie, since it was good, manzoku shiteta rashii happy do-prog-p seem He was happy about that. to yuu hanashi rsp say story That’s the story.
English The two texts represent the two extremes of retelling strategies: consistent reportive stance and failure to adopt a reportive stance. (i)
Consistent Reportive Coding through Embedding under Evidential Reported Speech (EMSd1)
ext ext ext ext emb emb
It was a lady she was telling a story or something and~ what was she saying? First she started out talking about her house how like really old~ and it had like alot alot of mouse in it~ like mice in it (XX mouse) how it had a whole bunch of mice in it right and then she was talking about oh they didn’t have~ I don’t know why she was saying this part she was like giving a description of like the house it was um in a hard floor it was soft floor or something and they didn’t have a chimney or nothing like that
emb ext ext ext nar nar nar
Appendix B 227
nar
ext emb emb emb emb emb ext ext ext emb emb emb emb emb
emb emb emb emb emb emb emb ext ext nar/ emb nar/ emb
and the stove was um with wood you know heated up with wood or whatever oh she she said that the person that built the house I don’t know he built the house in 1800 something like that um the person that built the house they didn’t have an arm and they built the arm~~ the house @@ I don’t know how I don’t know right So then um she started talking about um her mother cooking soup one day and that um her mother would cook the whole chicken you know put the whole chicken to cook or whatever and then she would leave it out she would take the~ you know the chicken out when it was like cooked she would take it out and if it was summertime she would put it in the fridge if it was like winter she would put it outside so that way the fat can rise or something from the soup so the she would put the the broth she would separate the broth and she’d put that in the fridge or whatever It’s like~ you know what I’m saying? like you know with chicken soup and rice whatever she takes~ takes that out so then she put the thing the pot back on the~ on the stove
228 Appendix B
nar
nar nar con con nar nar nar/ con nar con
nar nar nar ext nar nar ext nar nar con nar nar con nar ext nar nar nar ext emb nar
and then um~ she started hearing like plop plop plop noises or whatever and um she thought something was dripping and she was like oh you know “something is happening~” you know “something is dripping” or whatever and then she thought it was sort of like she thought it was something like serious like from the roof it went through the attic to the house or something so she was like “oh whatever” so she was like oh there~ she had a~ and her mom was like trying to figure out what was happening and she was just there ch~ I don’t know what she was doing so then h~ it stopped the noise stopped I’m like XX remembering slowly the~ um the plopping noise had stopped and then she was like “Okay fine” but then she heard it again and her mom was like “forget it” and so she got her husband which is her father to come check it out and and when the father went into the kitchen he saw the cat on top of the stove and she said that the cat never used to do that right when the father saw that he~ you know
Appendix B 229
nar nar nar nar nar ext emb emb
emb ext emb emb emb nar nar ext ext (ii)
nar nar nar nar nar nar ext nar nar
nar
he shushed it away and figured that the cat was trying to get some meat right but when he looked to see what was happening it was a mouse @@ it was a mouse she said the mouse looked like Elvis coz it had all grease on it you know and um and it was like the mouse was inside the the the the pot and she said it was big so every time it tried to climb out it would plop back in and there still was some broth in there so that was the plopping noise that was a cute story right that was it. @@@@ No Reportive Coding (EM Sb1) okay anyways um in about~ in 1860 this um girl’s ancestors built this like seventeen room monstrosity of a house and it was out in the country so they always had a problem with vermin so um th~ the whole house was like softwood floors except~ well it was softwood floors but the rest of it was made out of oak and like softwood’s like pine and stuff like that so um this house is huge and um when she was y~ um when she was younger her mom used to make soup all the time like these huge like pots of chicken you know soup and it was like interminable allright
230 Appendix B
nar nar
nar
nar nar nar nar ext ext
nar
nar nar nar nar nar con nar nar nar nar nar nar con nar nar
there’s always tons of it and she used to start off with whole chickens and uh after you know she used to take all the broth out and stick it~ stick it in the fridge if it was during the um summertime or out on the porch if it was during the winter time so then it would cool and she could just scoop off all the fat you know so it’d conge~ um congeal on the top I think like gather I think that’s the word and um so anyways one time uh she made this huge you know pot of chicken soup and she put the broth in the fridge and um she goes into the kitchen and after a little while she starts to hear this *plop plop plop* sound and she thinks maybe a faucet’s dripping so she goes back and um into the kitchen she walks through the hallway gets there and she checks the faucet and it’s not dripping so she’s like okay so she goes back into the living room and she hears *plop plop* again a few minutes later and you know I mean like~
Appendix B
nar
ext ext ext
nar nar con con
con con nar nar nar nar nar
nar nar nar nar nar
ext
her father doesn’t hear it because you know he~ his hea~ his hearing was you know not all that great he blames it on like too many like shells going off near his ears during World War Two and stuff like that you know so she goes back down the hallway into the kitchen and she thinks “Oh God it’s raining maybe you know the roof is leaking through the attic through the bedroom above the kitchen and into maybe a pot in the kitchen sink” but that’s not happening so then you know she goes back into the living room and it happens again a few minutes later well actually she stands in the middle of the kitchen for a little while for about you know couple of minutes and she doesn’t hear it again so she goes back into the living room and after a few minutes she hears it again *plop plop* so she sends you know her husband in so um her father her husband same person okay the girl’s~ the girl’s father allright the lady’s husband her mo~ you know
231
232 Appendix B
nar nar ext nar nar nar nar
con nar nar
nar nar nar
nar nar con con nar nar nar
so he goes in there and the cat’s sitting in~ in the~ no the cat was sitting in the middle of the floor when the mother went in the second time and now the cat’s up on the stove. and he’s looking into the pot and you know um you know th~ the father slash husband is~ @@@ is you know like “why is the cat gonna try to steal some chicken” so he looks into the pot and amid the chicken the celery the onions is a mouse covered with chicken fat and its ears are slicked back its hair’s slicked back it looked like Elvis and uh @@ so he calls you know his wife into the kitchen and she shrieks and says “give it to the dog give it to the dog” so um so he gets rid of the mouse and um gets rid of the mouse and ever since then he’d like jokingly say to like you know their friend that um
Appendix B 233
con
ext
his wife would try to feed him mouse soup and @@ it was just like crazy that they had a mouse in there I don’t know
DOCINFO
AUTHOR ""
TITLE "Language index"
SUBJECT "Pragmatics & Beyond, New Series, Volume 87"
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SIZE HEIGHT "220"
WIDTH "150"
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Language index
A Akha 47 Amdo Tibetan 47 B Balkan Slavic 19–21, 27, 30, 31, 35, 71, 82, 104, 107 Bulgarian 19–21, 33, 36, 71, 104, 199 C Cayuga 70
M Macedonian 19–21, 38, 71,91, 94, 95, 97, 98, 103, 104–114, 138, 144, 146–149, 161–162, 166–171, 175–178, 182–187, 199,200 Makah 18, 37, 40, 44–46, 45, 46, 45–48, 54, 68, 86, Mandarin Chinese 39 N Newari 47, 56, 60–64, 72 Ngiyambaa 44, 70
E English 6, 10, 23, 24, 26, 28, 30–32,38–39, 41, 58, 63–69, 73–79, 85, 86, 96–97, 99, 121, 128–133, 143–144, 147, 154–161, 190- 196, 200, 201
Q Quechua 17–19, 23, 25, 30, 32–34, 37, 38, 40–48, 54, 55, 57, 58, 70, 76, 78, 79, 81, 86, 199
G German 24
R Russian 6, 33
J Japanese 36, 71, 94, 96, 99–128, 115–118, 137–142, 144, 146, 152–155, 162–166, 187- 190, 200, 201 Jaqi 76
S Sherpa 33
K Korean 61–64 Kwakiutl 17 L Lhasa Tibetan 40, 47–49, 48, 107
T Tibetan 18, 37, 40, 47–49, 48, 54, 56, 107 Tuyuca xiii, xiv, 18, 19, 25 W Wintu 33, 68, 70
AUTHOR ""
TITLE "Name index"
SUBJECT "Pragmatics & Beyond, New Series, Volume 87"
KEYWORDS ""
SIZE HEIGHT "220"
WIDTH "150"
VOFFSET "4">
Name index
A Akatsuka 152 Aksu-Koç 11, 105, 111, 199 Anderson 5, 6, 11, 35 Aoki xiv, 36, 57, 115, 119, 124, 152 Austin 2, 3 B Banfield 13, 15, 70, 98, 113, 118, 175, 179 Barnes xiii, 19 Bartlett 95 Bendix 47, 56, 60, 61 Berman 87 Biber xiv, 17, 128, 129, 200 Bienveniste 3 Boas 17 Bühler 2, 3, 5, 11, 12, 33 Bybee 18, 170 C Chafe xiv, 11, 18, 24, 28–31, 52, 87, 128 Clark 4, 73 Cohn 13, 175, 179 Coulmas 12, 70, 200 D DeBray 19, 105 DeLancey 35, 46, 47, 56, 111, 199 Dry 187, 198 Duchan 11, 13, 174 E Ehrlich 13 F Field 11, 12, 148 Fielder 19, 199
Fillmore 5, 6, 11, 15 Finegan xiv, 1, 12, 17, 128, 129, 200 Fleischman 11 Floyd xvii, 17, 18, 30, 33, 34, 41, 43, 54, 70, 76, 199 Friedman xvii, 11, 19–22, 27, 31, 35, 91, 105, 107, 108, 111, 170, 199, 200 G Gerrig 73 Givon 11, 21, 35 Gordon 35, 121 Grenoble 6, 33, 71 Grice 2–4 H Hale 56 Hamburger 13 Hardman 76, 121 Hargreaves 47 Hasegawa 139 Heine 38, 40 Hewitt 13, 14, 99, 179, 205 Hibiya 139 Hill xiv, 22, 29, 150 Hopper 37, 38, 40 I Irvine xiv, 22, 151 Itani 120, 140 Iwasaki 57, 139, 152 J Jacobsen 17, 44, 45, 121 Jakobson 3, 6, 11, 18, 19, 21, 33, 71 Janssen 12, 70 Jarvella 6
238 Name index
Jarvella 6 Johnson 68, 87 Johnson-Laird 68
P Palmer xiv, 11, 19, 24–28, 31, 35, 36, 199 Polanyi 13, 86, 186
K Kamio xiv, 57, 115, 152–154, 201 Keenan 5, 6, 11 Kemmer 11 Klein 6 Kuno 3, 139, 201
R Rappaport 13 Rauh 6
L Labov 13, 86, 88, 98, 129, 160, 174, 186, 200 Lampkin 119 Langacker xiv, 7–11, 13, 63, 75 Lehmann 38, 40 Li, Charles 86 Li, Naicong 208 Lucy 70 Lunt 19, 104, 105, 108 Lyons 3, 5, 10, 11 M Mandler 87 Mayes 73, 168, 186, 200 Maynard 115, 120, 123, 152, 200, 201 McCawley, Noriko 209 Minsky 68 Mithun 35, 70 Mushin ii, iii, iv, xvii, 71, 121, 200 Myhill 139 N Nichols xiv, 35 O Ohori 140 Ohta 115, 119, 140, 152 Okamoto 119, 123
S Sanders 174, 175, 199 Schank 68 Schiffrin ii, 187 Schlichter 33, 35, 68, 70 Searle 2, 3 Sells 3, 11 Slobin 11, 87, 105, 111, 199 Stirling xvii, 3, 11 Sun Jackson 47 Suzuki 119, 120, 163 Sweetser 10 T Tannen 13, 200 Thorndyke 87 Thurgood 35, 47 Traugott xvii, 9, 10, 35, 38, 40 van der Wurff 12, 70 W Watanabe 11, 139 Weber 23, 41–43, 54, 199 Wiebe 15, 175, 179, 191 Willett xiv, 19–21, 24, 27, 35, 36, 45, 71, 86, 121, 148, 199 Woodbury 33, 35, 57 Wright 11 Z Zubin xvii, 11, 13, 14, 61, 62, 99, 179
AUTHOR ""
TITLE "Subject index"
SUBJECT "Pragmatics & Beyond, New Series, Volume 87"
KEYWORDS ""
SIZE HEIGHT "220"
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Subject index
A authority 22, 150–152 B broken telephone 89 C challengeability 65, 151 clause chaining 139 Cognitive Grammar 7–9 coherence imperatives 150 complementiser 119–123, 148 compounds 38–39 conceptualisation 7–9, 52 conceptualiser 7–9, 13 construal 7–11, 29, 63–64, 74–76, 79–81 content units 98–101 cultural imperatives 150 D deduction 28–30 degree of speaker commitment 21–24, 32 Deictic Centre Theory 13–15, 99–100 deictic expressions 5, 9 deictic function 5 deixis 5–7, 11, 33 dialect variation (Macedonian) 91 direct experience 57–58, 63–65, 106 direct speech 12, 69–70 , 112–114, 116–118, 182–185 disjunct system 60 E epistemic 10, 23–27, 66–68 epistemic modality 24, 25 epistemic modals 23, 24, 27 epistemic must 31–32, 66
epistemological assessment 1, 15, 27, 53 epistemological status 58, 115 evaluation 21, 98, 160, 174 evidence 18, 25–31, 66–69, 75, 79, 106 evidential categories 6, 19–20 , 35 evidential clitic 34, 41–46 evidential reported speech 112, 116–119 , 143, 165–169, evidential direct speech 112–114 evidential indirect speech 130–131 evidential semantics 18, 28 expressivity see expressive function 2–3 expressive language 79, 98, 179, 186 expressive mode 179, 183, 187–188 extranarrative units 98, 100–101 G grammatical status 36–38, 40, 149, 161, grammatical type 37 I indexical function 34 indirect speech 12–13, 69, 117 induction 28–29 inference 29–30, 44, 66–69 , 124–128 inferential evidential 23 information source 19–21, 55 see source of information J judgments 24–25, 27, 28 K kedo 138–142
240 Subject index
L L-form past 20, 31, 35, 71, 104–108, 110–111, 147–148, 166–168 M mirativity 46 N narrative 13–15, 86, 87–89, 95, 97–100 see storytelling, story world, storyworld narrative evidential 119, 124, 132, 163, 165 narrative perspective 174–175, 191 narrative units 98, 100–101, 178 O object of perspective 14, 99, 100 objective utterances 8 origin of perspective 14, 99, 100, 178, 190–193 orthographies 94 P pragmatic scope 142 private state(s) 59–65 psychological distance 163, 165, 169 R rashii 123–128, 137, 153, 162–165 reported speech 12, 70–72, 110, 116–123 see direct speech, indirect speech reportive evidential 34, 120, 127, 162–165 reportive framing 109, 111, 115, 129, 144–145
reportive mode 179 representative function 3 S sentence final tte 119–123, 163–165 simple past 20–21, 104–108, 110, 111, 176–178, 181–187 source of information 17–23, 53–55, 72–77, 79–82 see information source spatio-temporal deixis 6 speaker attitude 19, 21–24, 28, 105 speaker imprint 3 speech act theory 2–3 status 21 story world 14, 78–80, 178–179 see storyworld, narrative storytelling 78, 174–175 see narrative storyworld 76–79, 100, 156, 178–181 see story world, narrative subjectification 9–11 subjective utterances 8 subjectivity 3ff, 80–81 T tense 20, 38–41, 57, 104, 108, 139, 149, 170, 176–178 territory of information 152–156, 163 U units 94–95, 98–101 W witness 41, 47, 105–106
In the PRAGMATICS AND BEYOND NEW SERIES the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 1. WALTER, Bettyruth: The Jury Summation as Speech Genre: An Ethnographic Study of What it Means to Those who Use it. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1988. 2. BARTON, Ellen: Nonsentential Constituents: A Theory of Grammatical Structure and Pragmatic Interpretation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 3. OLEKSY, Wieslaw (ed.): Contrastive Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1989. 4. RAFFLER-ENGEL, Walburga von (ed.): Doctor-Patient Interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1989. 5. THELIN, Nils B. (ed.): Verbal Aspect in Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 6. VERSCHUEREN, Jef (ed.): Selected Papers from the 1987 International Pragmatics Conference. Vol. I: Pragmatics at Issue. Vol. II: Levels of Linguistic Adaptation. Vol. III: The Pragmatics of Intercultural and International Communication (ed. with Jan Blommaert). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 7. LINDENFELD, Jacqueline: Speech and Sociability at French Urban Market Places. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 8. YOUNG, Lynne: Language as Behaviour, Language as Code: A Study of Academic English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 9. LUKE, Kang-Kwong: Utterance Particles in Cantonese Conversation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 10. MURRAY, Denise E.: Conversation for Action. The computer terminal as medium of communication. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 11. LUONG, Hy V.: Discursive Practices and Linguistic Meanings. The Vietnamese system of person reference. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 12. ABRAHAM, Werner (ed.): Discourse Particles. Descriptive and theoretical investigations on the logical, syntactic and pragmatic properties of discourse particles in German. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 13. NUYTS, Jan, A. Machtelt BOLKESTEIN and Co VET (eds): Layers and Levels of Representation in Language Theory: a functional view. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 14. SCHWARTZ, Ursula: Young Children’s Dyadic Pretend Play. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 15. KOMTER, Martha: Conflict and Cooperation in Job Interviews. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 16. MANN, William C. and Sandra A. THOMPSON (eds): Discourse Description: Diverse Linguistic Analyses of a Fund-Raising Text. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 17. PIÉRAUT-LE BONNIEC, Gilberte and Marlene DOLITSKY (eds): Language Bases ... Discourse Bases. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 18. JOHNSTONE, Barbara: Repetition in Arabic Discourse. Paradigms, syntagms and the ecology of language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 19. BAKER, Carolyn D. and Allan LUKE (eds): Towards a Critical Sociology of Reading Pedagogy. Papers of the XII World Congress on Reading. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 20. NUYTS, Jan: Aspects of a Cognitive-Pragmatic Theory of Language. On cognition, functionalism, and grammar. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 21. SEARLE, John R. et al.: (On) Searle on Conversation. Compiled and introduced by Herman Parret and Jef Verschueren. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992.
22. AUER, Peter and Aldo Di LUZIO (eds): The Contextualization of Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 23. FORTESCUE, Michael, Peter HARDER and Lars KRISTOFFERSEN (eds): Layered Structure and Reference in a Functional Perspective. Papers from the Functional Grammar Conference, Copenhagen, 1990. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 24. MAYNARD, Senko K.: Discourse Modality: Subjectivity, Emotion and Voice in the Japanese Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 25. COUPER-KUHLEN, Elizabeth: English Speech Rhythm. Form and function in everyday verbal interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 26. STYGALL, Gail: Trial Language. A study in differential discourse processing. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, 1994. 27. SUTER, Hans Jürg: The Wedding Report: A Prototypical Approach to the Study of Traditional Text Types. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 28. VAN DE WALLE, Lieve: Pragmatics and Classical Sanskrit. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 29. BARSKY, Robert F.: Constructing a Productive Other: Discourse theory and the convention refugee hearing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1994. 30. WORTHAM, Stanton E.F.: Acting Out Participant Examples in the Classroom. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1994. 31. WILDGEN, Wolfgang: Process, Image and Meaning. A realistic model of the meanings of sentences and narrative texts. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1994. 32. SHIBATANI, Masayoshi and Sandra A. THOMPSON (eds): Essays in Semantics and Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 33. GOOSSENS, Louis, Paul PAUWELS, Brygida RUDZKA-OSTYN, Anne-Marie SIMONVANDENBERGEN and Johan VANPARYS: By Word of Mouth. Metaphor, metonymy and linguistic action in a cognitive perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 34. BARBE, Katharina: Irony in Context. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 35. JUCKER, Andreas H. (ed.): Historical Pragmatics. Pragmatic developments in the history of English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 36. CHILTON, Paul, Mikhail V. ILYIN and Jacob MEY: Political Discourse in Transition in Eastern and Western Europe (1989-1991). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 37. CARSTON, Robyn and Seiji UCHIDA (eds): Relevance Theory. Applications and implications. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 38. FRETHEIM, Thorstein and Jeanette K. GUNDEL (eds): Reference and Referent Accessibility. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 39. HERRING, Susan (ed.): Computer-Mediated Communication. Linguistic, social, and cross-cultural perspectives. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 40. DIAMOND, Julie: Status and Power in Verbal Interaction. A study of discourse in a closeknit social network. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 41. VENTOLA, Eija and Anna MAURANEN, (eds): Academic Writing. Intercultural and textual issues. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 42. WODAK, Ruth and Helga KOTTHOFF (eds): Communicating Gender in Context. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 43. JANSSEN, Theo A.J.M. and Wim van der WURFF (eds): Reported Speech. Forms and functions of the verb. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 44. BARGIELA-CHIAPPINI, Francesca and Sandra J. HARRIS: Managing Language. The
discourse of corporate meetings. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 45. PALTRIDGE, Brian: Genre, Frames and Writing in Research Settings. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 46. GEORGAKOPOULOU, Alexandra: Narrative Performances. A study of Modern Greek storytelling. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 47. CHESTERMAN, Andrew: Contrastive Functional Analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 48. KAMIO, Akio: Territory of Information. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 49. KURZON, Dennis: Discourse of Silence. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 50. GRENOBLE, Lenore: Deixis and Information Packaging in Russian Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 51. BOULIMA, Jamila: Negotiated Interaction in Target Language Classroom Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1999. 52. GILLIS, Steven and Annick DE HOUWER (eds): The Acquisition of Dutch. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, 1998. 53. MOSEGAARD HANSEN, Maj-Britt: The Function of Discourse Particles. A study with special reference to spoken standard French. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 54. HYLAND, Ken: Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 55. ALLWOOD, Jens and Peter Gärdenfors (eds): Cognitive Semantics. Meaning and cognition. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1999. 56. TANAKA, Hiroko: Language, Culture and Social Interaction. Turn-taking in Japanese and Anglo-American English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1999. 57 JUCKER, Andreas H. and Yael ZIV (eds): Discourse Markers. Descriptions and theory. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 58. ROUCHOTA, Villy and Andreas H. JUCKER (eds): Current Issues in Relevance Theory. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 59. KAMIO, Akio and Ken-ichi TAKAMI (eds): Function and Structure. In honor of Susumu Kuno. 1999. 60. JACOBS, Geert: Preformulating the News. An analysis of the metapragmatics of press releases. 1999. 61. MILLS, Margaret H. (ed.): Slavic Gender Linguistics. 1999. 62. TZANNE, Angeliki: Talking at Cross-Purposes. The dynamics of miscommunication. 2000. 63. BUBLITZ, Wolfram, Uta LENK and Eija VENTOLA (eds.): Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. How to create it and how to describe it.Selected papers from the International Workshop on Coherence, Augsburg, 24-27 April 1997. 1999. 64. SVENNEVIG, Jan: Getting Acquainted in Conversation. A study of initial interactions. 1999. 65. COOREN, François: The Organizing Dimension of Communication. 2000. 66. JUCKER, Andreas H., Gerd FRITZ and Franz LEBSANFT (eds.): Historical Dialogue Analysis. 1999. 67. TAAVITSAINEN, Irma, Gunnel MELCHERS and Päivi PAHTA (eds.): Dimensions of Writing in Nonstandard English. 1999. 68. ARNOVICK, Leslie: Diachronic Pragmatics. Seven case studies in English illocutionary development. 1999.
69. NOH, Eun-Ju: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Metarepresentation in English. A relevance-theoretic account. 2000. 70. SORJONEN, Marja-Leena: Recipient Activities Particles nii(n) and joo as Responses in Finnish Conversation. n.y.p. 71. GÓMEZ-GONZÁLEZ, María Ángeles: The Theme-Topic Interface. Evidence from English. 2001. 72. MARMARIDOU, Sophia S.A.: Pragmatic Meaning and Cognition. 2000. 73. HESTER, Stephen and David FRANCIS (eds.): Local Educational Order. Ethnomethodological studies of knowledge in action. 2000. 74. TROSBORG, Anna (ed.): Analysing Professional Genres. 2000. 75. PILKINGTON, Adrian: Poetic Effects. A relevance theory perspective. 2000. 76. MATSUI, Tomoko: Bridging and Relevance. 2000. 77. VANDERVEKEN, Daniel and Susumu KUBO (eds.): Essays in Speech Act Theory. n.y.p. 78. SELL, Roger D. : Literature as Communication. The foundations of mediating criticism. 2000. 79. ANDERSEN, Gisle and Thorstein FRETHEIM (eds.): Pragmatic Markers and Propositional Attitude. 2000. 80. UNGERER, Friedrich (ed.): English Media Texts – Past and Present. Language and textual structure. 2000. 81. DI LUZIO, Aldo, Susanne GÜNTHNER and Franca ORLETTI (eds.): Culture in Communication. Analyses of intercultural situations. n.y.p. 82. KHALIL, Esam N.: Grounding in English and Arabic News Discourse. 2000. 83. MÁRQUEZ REITER, Rosina: Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay. A contrastive study of requests and apologies. 2000. 84. ANDERSEN, Gisle: Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation. A relevance-theoretic approach to the language of adolescents. 2001. 85. COLLINS, Daniel E.: Reanimated Voices. Speech reporting in a historical-pragmatic perspective. 2001. 86. IFANTIDOU, Elly: Evidentials and Relevance. n.y.p. 87. MUSHIN, Ilana: Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance. Narrative Retelling. 2001. 88. BAYRAKTAROGLU, Arin and Maria SIFIANOU (eds.): Linguistic Politeness Across Boundaries. Linguistic Politeness Across Boundaries. 2001. 89. ITAKURA, Hiroko: Conversational Dominance and Gender. A study of Japanese speakers in first and second language contexts. 2001. 90. KENESEI, István and Robert M. HARNISH (eds.): Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse. A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer. 2001. 91. GROSS, Joan: Speaking in Other Voices. An ethnography of Walloon puppet theaters. n.y.p. 92. GARDNER, Rod: When Listeners Talk. n.y.p. 93. BARON, Bettina and Helga KOTTHOFF (eds.): Gender in Interaction. Perspectives on feminity and masculinity in ethnography and discourse. n.y.p.
