The database of evidential markers in European languages. A bird’s eye view of the conception of the database (the template and problems hidden benea…

2010

Abstract This introduction not only browses through the contributions of the whole issue, but also attempts to set the stage for a cross-linguistically unified study of evidentiality markers to be registered in a database. This endeavor has so far been restricted to European languages. We assume evidentiality to be a conceptual domain and, on this basis, want to account for diverse units irrespective of their morphological format and status in the particular language’s grammar. Evidential markers are claimed to be locatable on a lexicon – grammar cline, ranging from distinct lexical units (accessed holistically) to grammatical morphology (having been the subject of traditional descriptions …