Evidentials: non-direct interpretation and projection of the implied attitude holder

1. Evidentials: non-direct interpretation and projection of the implied attitude holder Elena PADUCHEVA(Moscow) http://lexicograph.ruslang.ru/ 45th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea29 August - 1 September 2012

2. According to generally accepted definitions (see, e.g., Plungian 2011), an evidentiality marker indicates the source of information that constitutes the basis of the speaker’s statement concerning some situation. • This definition is vulnerable in two respects. • The first objection. Why only a statement? Is it the case that evidentiality markers cannot be used in other types of speech acts, e.g., in a question? The paper Cohen and Krifka 2011 opens the possibility of studying evidentials in various types of speech acts.

3. The second objection concerns the speaker. Evidentiality marker is an egocentric. Many egocentrical (or indexical) words and categories, which in their primary use are speaker-oriented, can also be used in contexts where the implied attitude holder of the proposition expressed does not coincide with the speaker, see Paducheva 2011a.

4. There are non-canonical communicative situations, such as: – narrative, where the speaker is entirely absent, and only his representatives, i.e. the narrator and the characters, are present. To understand the text one has to determine, who of them replaces the speaker in each case; – the speaker can give up his authority also in a hypotactic context, i.e. in embedded position; – in the context of indirect speech acts, etc.

5. The use of evidentiality markers in contexts where the implied attitude holder of the evidential is not identical with the speaker deserves attention. • The paper deals with the Russian word okazyvaetsja ‘it turns out’, which was paid attention to in Khrakovskij 2007 and called admirativity marker. This word demonstrates a bundle of interesting properties – exactly in the sphere of embeddability and implied attitude holders.

6. 1. “Balkan type” evidentiality • According to, e.g., Aikhenvald 2004 or Plungian 2011, in languages with grammatical evidentiality the following types of evidentiality markers are distinguished: – direct evidentiality: the speaker refers to an event that she saw herself or took part in; – indirect evidentiality: – reportative: the speaker conveys information provided by somebody else; – inferentive: the speaker presents the result of her conclusions and guesses; – imperceptive: the speaker presents what she saw or heard indistinctly.

7. In Khrakovskij 2007 it was demonstrated that admirativity marker cannot be put in one row with the commonly accepted grammemes of evidentiality, for it is semantically compatible with each of them, and not opposed to them.

8. But in Friedman 2005 a different scheme of evidentiality oppositions is suggested for Balkan languages – Albanian, Macedonian, Bulgarian e.a. Evidentials can be: – confirmative (= ‘witnessed’); – non-confirmative: – felicitous (= neutral) or – infelicitous, mirative: – expressing acceptance (of the information received), and then surprise (i.e. admirativity sensu stricto); – non-acceptance, and then the same grammatical form expresses rejection (i.e. doubt, sarcasm).

9. Thus, “Balkan type” evidentiality markers include admirativity. In Friedman 2005 and Friedman (in print) data are presented concerning possible differences in use and meaning of evidentiality markers in statements and questions; in dialogues and narratives. This paves the way to the study of evidentials as plethoric egocentrics.

10. In Khrakovskij 2007 the Russian parenthetical okazyvaetsja was considered to be a marker of admirativity as a separate grammatical category. I treat okazyvaetsja just as a parenthetical word, but semantically very similar to a “Balkan type” evidentiality marker.

11. 2. Literal and indirect interpretation of okazyvaetsja The meaning of okazyvaetsja, in its primary (literal) use, includes the following two components: okazyvaetsja(X, P) = 1) ‘X has just learned <from Y>, that P’ 2) ‘X is surprised that P’ (or somewhat weaker: ‘X didn’t expect that P’)

12. The knowledge that P is the presupposition of surprise. In the prototypical case, participant X, the implied attitude holder of both knowledge and surprise, is the speaker (some examples are taken from the Russian National Corpus, RNC, http://www.ruscorpora.ru/ ): (1) Ja tak rada! Našlis’, našlis’! Oni, okazyvaetsja, boleli i ne podavali vestoček! [L.Petrushevskaja, RNC] ‘I’m so happy! They are found! It turns out that they were ill and didn’t let anybody know about themselves’.

13. In the context of example (1) the source Y of the new knowledge is off-stage. In fact, this participant may not exist at all – the speaker can get his knowledge from direct perception: (2) Vernulsja domoj, na krylečko vzošel, xotel bylo dver’ otkryt’, a ona, okazyvaetsja, iznutri na zasov zaperta. [RNC] ‘I returned home, went up the porch, wanted to open the door but it is, it turns out, closed on the bolt from the inside’.

14. Along with these common uses, okazyvaetsja has a more specific use – in the context of narrative. In fact, it may be the case that the participant Y, the source of information, exists, but the information received by X from Y had not become the knowledge of X: (3) Mama vse vremja pytaetsja vospityvat’ ego <brata> na moem položitel’nom primere. Okazyvaetsja, ja stal čelovekom blagodarja trudoljubiju i nastojčivosti, kotorye projavljalis’ u menja v rannem detstve [RNC: V.Aksenov]. ‘My mother is always trying to bring him up on my positive example. It turns out, I have become a worthy person through diligence and persistency that were characteristic of me from my early childhood’.

15. (3) Mama vse vremja pytaetsja vospityvat’ ego <brata> na moem položitel’nom primere. Okazyvaetsja, ja stal čelovekom blagodarja trudoljubiju i nastojčivosti, kotorye projavljalis’ u menja v rannem detstve [RNC: V.Aksenov]. ‘My mother is always trying to bring him up on my positive example. It turns out, I have become a worthy person through diligence and persistency that were characteristic of me from my early childhood’ • The person Y (mother) has an opinion (for Y, it is her knowledge), which is obviously not shared by the speaker – thus, the speaker, having received the information, hasn’t become the holder of knowledge.

16. The speaker could have said “According to my mother’s opinion, I became a worthy person …”. But then he should omit okazyvaetsja and leave his disagreement unexpressed. Instead, he rather pretends to share the knowledge of the third person, while implicitly making us understand that he rejects the opinion of the counteragent.

17. Barbara Partee (personal communication) suggests the following explication of what is going on. A part of the literal meaning of okazyvaetsja is that P was not known to the speaker before, and now P is known. But the context makes the literal interpretation impossible, and then the ironic interpretation of P becomes a good way out. • In this way, the meaning shift is accounted for in the framework of the speech act theory: if okazyvaetsja is used in the speech act of irony it means that the utterance is to be interpreted in the opposite sense – namely, as the negation of the proposition involved.

18. Note that negation should be understood here as external negation: not only surprise over the fact is negated but the presupposition of the fact inherent in the literal semantics of okazyvaetsja is cancelled; the situation that could have been the subject of surprise is rejected as non-existent, and then surprise dissipates by itself.

19. In root-clause contexts external negation, which makes no difference between presupposition and assertion (Kempson 1975), doesn’t agree with the intuition of language speakers: sentence (a) can be used in context (b) only as a language game. (a) John doesn’t regret that he failed the exam; (b) John doesn’t regret that he failed the exam – he passed it. • But if the propositional attitude is expressed by a parenthetical the sentence cannot be subjected to ordinary negation (Paducheva 2011b), so external negation is a natural possibility.

20. The rejective interpretation of a mirative is possible in a narrative context only, where an attitude holder is present, non-identical with the speaker. This confirms what is said in Friedman 2005, that miratives have different interpretations in different registers (see Paducheva 1996 /2010: 265 on registers of interpretation).

21. Example (4) is taken from Nabokov’s novel “Mary” (4) – Ja, okazyvaetsja, ljublju druguju ženščinu ‘It turns out that I love a different woman’. • In Nabokov’s text the speaker (Ganin) makes this utterance at the beginning of his negligent explanation with a boring lover. It sounds strange. In fact, okazyvaetsja here describes obtaining new and unexpected information by the speaker about himself – which in the context of example (3) we could have regarded as an evidence of ironic interpretation. But in (4) the context necessitates direct interpretation – there is no other person whose opinion could have been received and rejected by the speaker. The utterance is interpreted in the dialogical register.

22. It is not the case that the rejective interpretation always concerns propositions about the speaker. Suffice it for the falsity of the proposition to be obvious to the speaker. (5) Èx, kaby kitajcam v svoe vremja poznakomit’sja s učeniem Fomenko! Ne nado bylo by stroit’ Velikuju Kitajskuju stenu ― sotni millionov čeloveko-let truda by sèkonomili: ved’ nikakix strašnyx mongolov vblizi ot nix, okazyvaetsja, ne bylo! [A. A. Zaliznjak. Lingvistika po A. T. Fomenko // «Voprosy jazykoznanija», 2000] ‘Ah, if only the Chinese in due time had got acquainted with the teachings of Fomenko. They should not have had to build the Great Wall of China – hundreds of millions of years of labor could have been saved. Indeed, no dreadful Mongols, it appears, had been there then!’.

23. 3. Hypotactic projection • The implied attitude holder of okazyvaetsja matters not only in the case of the rejective interpretation. The direct interpretation is also of interest, for okazyvaetsja, as well as other egocentrics, can undergo a hypotactic projection. (6) Ešče do vojny pročel on porazivšuju ego vešč’: okazyvaetsja, našestvie Čingis-xana predvarjal celyj rjad blagoprijatnyx let (G.Baklanov) ‘Before the war he read something that impressed him: it turns out, the invasion of Genghis Khan was preceded by a number of favorable years’.

24. In Khrakovskij 2007 the speaker is claimed to be the implied surprise holder in example (6) – which to my mind is wrong. The surprise belongs to the subject of the matrix sentence. A hypotactic projection takes place here, which is natural for secondary egocentrics (Paducheva 1996 /2010: 268). The speaker doesn’t take part in the interpretation of this sentence at all.

25. For the reader it is important to identify the implied attitude holder. In (7) the implied subject of surprise is the speaker – okazyvaetsja is in a hypotactic context, still no hypotactic projection takes place: (7) I tut on <sputnik, tatarin> vyskazal mne svoju tajnuju pros’bu: kupit’ emu dom v Krymu, no na moe imja, potomu čto tataram, okazyvaetsja, domov ne prodajut. (L.Ulickaja) ‘And he <a companion, a Tatar> expressed to me his secret request: he wanted me to buy him a house in the Crimea, but in my name, for, <as it turns out>, it is forbidden to sell houses to Tatars’. • Thus, okazyvaetsja behaves as a secondary egocentric is expected to behave.

26. 4. Interrogative projection • On the other hand, interrogative projection is precluded for the parenthetical okazyvaetsja. This word cannot be used in the context of a genuine question. It can express rejection but not doubt. In example (8), where okazyvaetsja is used in a sentence with a question mark in the end, this sentence, actually, is not a question addressed to some counteragent, but a surprise expressed “to oneself”: (8) "Vot kak? ― udivilsja pro sebja Lanè. ― Okazyvaetsja, ja na tebja imeju pravo kričat’?" [Ju.Dombrovskij. RNC] ‘this is how the matter stands, – Lanè thought with surprise. It turns out that I have the right to shout on you?’

27. Note that Russian neuzheli, also a surprise marker, exhibits directly opposite properties – its associated proposition need not be accepted as a fact, it is the object of doubt and embedded in the speech act of question: (9) Neuželi on nedovolenn?  ‘I can’t believe that he is not content’.

28. Parentheticals with cognate meaning can differ in their ability to be used in the interrogative context, and we cannot as yet predict this ability from the lexical semantics of a word, cf. Russian očevidno that undergoes interrogative projection and javno that doesn’t: (10) a. On, očevidno, sožaleet o svoem postupke? ‘perhaps, he regrets his action?’ b. *On javno sožaleet o svoem postupke? ‘he evidently regrets his action?’

29. 5. Free indirect discourse • Example (11) demonstrates that okazyvaetsja can be used in the context of the free indirect discourse: (11) Vizit prepodobnogo vzvolnoval vsju bol’nicu. Okazyvaetsja, v našix krajax est’ svjaščenniki! I oni ispovedujut želajuščix! V samoj bol’šoj palate bol’ničnoj <…> govorili tol’ko ob ispovedi teti Poli [RNC: V. Šalamov]. ‘the priest’s visit excited all the hospital. It turns out that there are priests in our part of the world. And they confess those who need it! ’ • The narrator delegates his rights on the egocentric to the character – in this case, to the patients in the hospital of the prison. It is them who were excited by the arrival of the priest and who suddenly learned that “in our part of the world priests exist as well” (NB the pronoun of the first person plural naši ‘our’). The interpretation of okazyvaetsja is direct, but the implied attitude holder is not the speaker, and not the narrator, as it would have been natural, but the character.

30. 6. Summary • To sum up, the parenthetical okazyvaetsja behaves, in many respects, in the same way as Balkan type evidentiality markers do – the pattern of semantic derivation is the same for a word and a grammatical form. 1. It allows ironic interpretation, which cancels the factive presupposition characteristic of the direct use of the parenthetical okazyvaetsja, as well as for ordinary predicates expressing surprise, such as ‘I was surprised that’. 2. It behaves differently in the dialogical register and the narrative: rejective interpretation is possible only in the narrative and is excluded in the dialogue. 3. Like other egocentrics, it allows hypotactic projection. 4. In the context of the narrative the effect of free indirect discourse can be observed when the speaker’s right for the egocentric is delegated to the third person.

31. As is rightly stated in Khrakovskij 2007, synonymic parentheticals kak vyjasnjaetsja, kak okazalos’ and even okazalos’ [past tense] do not exhibit similar properties.

32. References • Aikhenvald 2004 – Aikhenvald A.Y. Evidentiality, Oxford etc.: Oxford UP. • Cohen, Krifka 2011 – Cohen, Ariel and Manfred Krifka. Superlative Quantifiers as Modifiers of Meta-Speech Acts. // The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication. Ed. by Barbara Partee, Michael Glanzberg, and Jurgis Skilters. Vol. 6. Manhattan, KS: New Prairie Press, pp. 1–56. • Friedman 2005 – Friedman V. Admirativity: Between modality and evidentiality. //Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, Vol. 58, No 1. 26-37. • Friedman (in print) – Friedman V. Perhaps Mirativity is Phlogiston, but Admirativity is Perfect: On Balkan Evidential Strategies //Linguistic Typology, vol. 16, no. 3. • Khrakovskij 2007 – Храковский В.С. Эвиденциальность, эпистемическая модальность, (ад)миративность. //Эвиденциальность в языках Европы и Азии. Сборник статей памяти Н.А.Козинцевой. СПб: Наука, 2007. • Paducheva 1996 /2010– Падучева Е.В.Семантические исследования. Семантика времени и вида в русском языке. Семантика нарратива. М.: Языки русской культуры. Изд-е 2-е, 2010.http://lexicograph.ruslang.ru/TextPdf1/PaduSemantIssl1996.pdf.

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34. Thank you for your attention