16.2547, Review: Typology/Syntax/Semantics: Aikhenvald (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2547. Fri Sep 02 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2547, Review: Typology/Syntax/Semantics: Aikhenvald (2004)

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1)
Date: 01-Sep-2005
From: Kamil Deen < kamil at hawaii.edu >
Subject: Evidentiality 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 02 Sep 2005 20:19:07
From: Kamil Deen < kamil at hawaii.edu >
Subject: Evidentiality 
 

AUTHOR: Aikhenvald, Alexandra
TITLE: Evidentiality
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2975.html 

Kamil Deen, Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii at Manoa

INTRODUCTION

Many languages of the world have morphological systems that explicitly 
mark the source of information on which a statement is based.  For 
example, statements that are based on knowledge that was gained first hand 
through actual sight may be marked in one way, but statements based upon 
information gained through second-hand knowledge, say from someone else's 
description, may be marked another way.  Grammatical reference to 
information source is known as 'evidentiality'.  This book investigates 
the cross-linguistic patterns of such systems of evidentiality, providing 
a systematic, methodical presentation of the facts, along with a vast 
wealth of examples from over 500 languages.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

Chapter 1 begins with a description and illustration of what exactly 
evidentiality is.  The definition adopted is a general one: 'evidentiality 
is a linguistic category whose primary meaning is source of information 
(p.3)'.  Great efforts are taken in this chapter to clarify what this 
definition includes and what it does not include.  Specifically, the 
precise source of information is irrelevant to this definition, as it 
includes all sources of information, including visual, auditory, 
olfactory, first hand, second hand, etc.  So long as a morpheme has as its 
core meaning some sort of informational source, this is sufficient for it 
to be categorized as evidential.  Furthermore, the linguistic sense of 
evidential is unrelated to the common usage of the word evidence in that 
the linguistic term has no connotation of proof or reliability. 

Here we find the first of many extremely useful discussions of the 
relation between evidentiality and other linguistic categories, 
particularly modality.  The author quite rightly points out that some 
evidentials may carry a certain sense of possibility (or lack thereof), 
thus conflating epistemic modality with evidentiality.  However, this does 
not mean that evidentiality is modality, or vice versa (as pointed out by, 
for example, de Haan 1999 and Lazard, 1999, amongst others).  This is 
followed by a cogent discussion of the manner in which languages exhibit 
evidentiality: affixes, clitics, portmanteau morphemes (e.g., 
evidentiality expressed with tense), etc, as well as the range of 
languages in which evidentials occur.  Much more detail is given of these 
properties of evidentials in chapter 3.  A crucial distinction made is the 
difference between a parenthetical reference to source of information 
versus a grammatical marking of evidentiality, the latter of which is the 
focus of this book.  Many languages have multiple ways of indicating the 
source of information, but the focus of this book includes only 
grammatical (i.e., morphological) marking of source of information.  
Finally, a history of the development of the term 'evidential' is given 
(pp11-17), followed by a very useful synopsis of the book (p.19).

The second chapter begins with a review of the terminology used throughout 
the book, followed by an in-depth typological survey of the kinds of 
evidential systems that exist in the languages of the world.  The author 
describes essentially four kinds of evidential systems: those that mark 
two, three four or five evidential choices.  Within each of these larger 
categories, finer distinctions are made, most notably amongst the most 
common category of languages that have a binary distinction.  Within this 
category, the author provides detailed descriptions and examples from 
languages that mark first-hand versus non-first hand sources (she labels 
these A1 type languages), non-firsthand versus all other sources (labeled 
A2), 'hearsay' versus all else (A3), sensory evidence versus 'hearsay' 
(A4) and auditory versus all else (A5).  Within each of the other 
categories, the author provides similar typological subcategorization.

Chapter 3 deals with the form in which evidentials may occur in languages, 
as well as some syntactic and semantic facts about evidentials.  There is 
a long discussion about which kinds of evidentials tend to be functionally 
or formally marked and which kinds are often unmarked.  For example, 
visual evidentials tend to be less formally marked than any other 
evidentials (p.73).  As with much of the book, this is not meant for light 
reading, but is excellent as a source for serious, detailed typological 
research.  The chapter finishes with an interesting discussion of the 
scope and time reference of evidentials.

Chapter 4 focuses on the semantic extension of evidentials to non-
evidential categories such as mood, tense, etc.  The author contends that 
this may be the source of the confusion that exists in the literature 
about what constitutes evidentiality: the fact that it often extends to 
include other semantically related categories leads some researchers to 
exclude evidentiality as a genuine linguistic category.  In this chapter 
the author examines the range of overlap between other categories and 
evidentiality and ways in which to distinguish between the various 
categories.  The author appropriately pays particular attention to the 
overlap between modality and evidentiality, given their semantic proximity.

Chapter 5 explores the meanings associated with different evidential 
systems.  For example, systems that mark two choices in information 
source, e.g., first-hand versus non-first-hand, first-hand evidentiality 
markers often indicate what the speaker has seen.  However, it can also 
include what the speaker has heard, smelt, or even felt (p. 154).  
Additionally, such first-hand evidentials often extend their meaning (as 
discussed in the previous chapter) to other semantic categories, e.g., 
systems which mark visual sources of information often extend their 
meaning to include epistemic certainty and commitment to the truth of a 
proposition (p. 161).  The discussion is a very intricate one that would 
be much harder to follow were it not for the level of examples and 
description provided by the author.

Chapters 6-8 deal further with how evidentiality co-occurs with various 
other linguistic categories.  Chapter 6 is entitled 'Evidentiality and 
Mirativity', where mirativity is defined as 'the speaker's unprepared 
mind, unexpected information and concomitant surprise' (195).  The chapter 
discusses mirativity as a separate grammatical category (as argued for by 
DeLancey, 1997) as well as possible mirative extensions of evidential 
morphology (as suggested by Lazard, 1999).  As with the rest of the book, 
the chapter is organized neatly into sections dealing with languages that 
mark two evidential choices and those that mark more than two choices.  
This is followed by a discussion of the strategies of mirative extension 
that appear in languages that mark evidentiality.  Chapter 7 treats the 
effect of person on evidentiality.  In some languages evidentials are 
restricted to first person (i.e., that the observed action must be 
observed by the speaker), while in other languages there are specific 
overtones associated with the use of certain evidentials with first 
person, such as the implication of a lack of control, or the action being 
inadvertent, etc.  Chapter 8 deals with evidentiality and other 
grammatical categories, including mood (section 8.1), negation (8.2), 
imperatives (8.3), and tense and aspect (8.4).

The last three chapters are rather different in tone, dealing with how 
evidentials develop over time and are used in discourse and culture.  
Chapter 9 addresses the origins of evidential morphemes.  A common source 
of evidentials is grammaticalized verbs, most often the verb 'say' and/or 
verbs of feeling, thinking or hearing.  Evidentials also come from other 
categories, such as tense, nominalization, and subordinate clauses.  The 
author shows that evidentials occur frequently in contact languages (e.g., 
Andean Spanish shows evidentiality, which presumably came from contact 
with Quechua, Aymara and other indigenous languages), and she discusses 
the obsolescence of languages and how evidentials play into this.  Chapter 
10 examines the choice of evidentials in discourse, various narrative 
conventions, and how such evidentials may be manipulated in discourse.  
Finally, chapter 11 addresses the interaction of evidentials and cognition 
and cultural practices.  The author describes how many cultures value the 
precise use of data sources, and thus the local view that languages 
without precise evidential systems are some how less expressive.  An 
attempt is made to reconcile these cultural facts with the Sapir-Whorf 
Hypothesis, although not very much of substance is presented in this 
regard.  The chapter ends with a very interesting appendix in which the 
author presents what little work there has been on the acquisition of 
evidentials by children (three studies by two authors: Courtney, 1999 on 
Quechua; Aksu-Koc, 1988, 2000 on Turkish).

Chapter 12 is a summary chapter of the entire book.  Finally, the book 
ends with a useful Fieldworker's Guide in which the author presents some 
preliminary questions that the fieldworker might begin with, followed by 
more detailed questions that address the content of each chapter in the 
book.  This is not a comprehensive guide, but it certainly is a useful 
place to start for any beginning field worker.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

Perhaps the most positive quality of this book is the methodical, 
detailed, careful manner in which data is presented.  Throughout the text, 
the author presents examples of each phenomenon from a variety of 
languages, often presenting several examples from different languages to 
fully illustrate a single point.  While the majority of examples come from 
languages that are clearly within the author's area of expertise (mostly 
South American, and specifically Amazonian languages), there is a healthy 
amount of examples taken from other language families.  While the author 
makes some broad claims about the typology of evidential systems of the 
world's languages based upon a limited number of languages, that number is 
really very substantial (over 500) and I have no reason to doubt that her 
generalizations are in fact reliable.

Another very welcome contribution of this book is the clarification it 
offers with respect to evidentiality and various other grammatical 
categories, including mood, tense, aspect, etc.  Not only does the author 
provide a clear, detailed definition of what exactly evidentiality is (a 
point that is less obvious from the literature than one might assume), but 
she delineates the category both in a semantic sense as well as a 
grammatical sense.  Thus by the end of the first few chapters of this 
book, the reader is left with a clear sense of what evidentiality is, and 
that it is very clearly different from modality and other related 
categories.  A possible criticism of this is that few things in language 
are that simple.  However, the author consistently qualifies this point 
with extensive discussion of how evidentiality extends and overlaps with 
various other categories, and how to distinguish these categories even in 
such cases.

The content is certainly not easy reading, as it is presented in a very 
dense, factual manner.  This is certainly not criticism, as it is entirely 
appropriate for a book of this sort.  Furthermore, each chapter is clearly 
laid out and well-written, with excellent end-of-chapter summaries and 
tables through the book.  This makes the book extremely easy to navigate, 
mitigating the density of the text.

Each chapter deals with a significantly different aspect of evidentiality, 
and thus most chapters are well-worth the time it takes to read.  The only 
possible exception is the final substantive chapter (chapter 11), which 
could very well have been combined with chapter 10.  Additionally, the 
discussion of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis seems out of place given that no 
conclusions could be reached and no concrete proposals are made.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to those interested in a 
typological description of the evidential systems employed by the 
languages of the world.  While this is certainly not a book intended for a 
general audience, the wealth of examples, the detail of discussion and the 
thoroughness of the survey of languages makes this book an extremely 
useful reference for those interested in grammatical evidentiality.

REFERENCES

Aksu-Koc, Ayhan. 1988. The Acquisition of Aspect and Modality: The Case of 
Past Reference in Turkish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Aksu-Koc, Ayhan. 2000. 'Some aspects of the acquisition of evidentials in 
Turkish', in Johanson and Utas (eds), 15-28.

Courtney, Ellen. 1999. 'Child language acquisition of the Quechua 
affirmative suffix', Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics. Proceedings from 
the Second Workshop on American Indigenous Languages. Department of 
Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 30-41.

De Haan, F. 1999. 'Evidentialty and epistemic modality: Setting 
boundaries.' Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 18, 83-102.

DeLancey, S. 1997. 'Mirativity: the grammatical marking of unexpected 
information', Linguistic Typology, 1, 33-52.

Lazard, G. 199. 'Mirativity, evidentiality, mediativity, or other?' 
Linguistic Typology, 3, 91-110. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER 
Kamil Deen is an assistant professor in Linguistics at the University of 
Hawaii at Manoa.  His interests are in the acquisition of child language, 
with a particular focus on the acquisition of understudied languages and 
typologically unusual languages.  His interests also include the syntax 
and semantics of tense, aspect, mood, modality and evidentiality.





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