Search results for "evidentia"
showing 10 items of 48 documents
The translatability into Italian of the German stance marking modal particles wohl, eben and ja. Between epistemicity and evidentiality
2015
Contrary to Italian and many other languages, German has a linguistic means to mark the speaker’s stance: the so-called modal particles, such as wohl, eben and ja. This paper examines their occurrence in a German novel and their possible translations in its Italian version. It analyses their complex meaning arising from the intertwined relations between speaker – hearer – state of affairs as the three key entities of stance they mark and the textual or situational context, concluding that they have only covert epistemic and evidential features. This cross-linguistic analysis proves that it is impossible not only to translate them, but also to draw a clear borderline between epistemicity and…
Sense Activation Triggering in English Epistentials: Attention Distribution, Contextual Modulation of Meaning, and Categorization Issues
2015
Drawing on Talmy’s forthcoming The Attention System of Language and elaborating on a series of previous studies, this paper addresses the interrelation of attention distribution, contextual modulation of meaning, and categorization issues in the area of evidentiality and epistemic modality Adopting a corpus-based approach, it will investigate how the default salience levels of evidential and epistemic semantic components in so-called epistentials (linguistic items that syncretistically represent evidential and epistemic components) can be raised, lowered, or even inhibited under the impact of immediately adjacent items that themselves associate evidential or epistemic semantic components (i…
From visual perception to evidentiality: A functional empirical approach to se ve que in Spanish
2019
Abstract The Spanish sequence se ve (que) presents intricate functional polysemy, including constructionalization as an evidential. The present paper investigates its different formal-functional combinations and degrees of specialization as an evidential construction. The following questions were addressed: (1) How many different senses can be distinguished in the sequence se ve (que) and what are their respective frequencies? (2) How do these senses correlate with the morphosyntactic behavior of the sequence se ve (que)? (3) Which senses of se ve (que) are more closely related to each other, and how does the evidential construction relate to this polysemous network? The semantic and formal…
Expressing evidentiality through prosody? Prosodic voicing in reported speech in Spanish colloquial conversations
2015
Abstract The present paper attempts to establish the evidential character of the special prosodic configuration associated with direct reported discourse (DRD). A variety of expressive meanings have been commonly attributed to this marked prosodic configuration of DRD (such as expression of stance, emotion, mimicking, alignment). However, the concurrence of pragmatic/expressive meanings together with evidentiality is very frequent in ‘non-evidential’ languages like Spanish. Therefore, we argue that the prosody in DRD also signals ‘reported’ or ‘quoted’ discourse and, therefore, the presence of evidentiality. To provide evidence for this latter claim, 449 instances of DRD have been extracted…
Decision-aid for discrete multiple criteria decision making problems with imprecise data
1999
Abstract We describe ways of aiding decision making with a discrete set of alternatives. In many decision situations, it is not possible to obtain explicit preference information from the decision makers. Instead, useful decision-aid can be provided to the decision makers by describing what kind of weighting of the criteria result in certain choices of the alternatives. The suggested treatment is based on the basic ideas of the ELECTRE III method. The modelling of the preferences by pseudo-criteria is especially helpful in case the data, that is, the criterion values are imprecise. Unlike ELECTRE III, no ranking of the alternatives is produced. Based on a minimum-procedure in the exploitati…
Multiple-attribute decision support system based on fuzzy logic for performance assessment
2005
Abstract This paper deals with the problem of assessing the performance of a set of production units, simultaneously considering different kinds of information, yielded by a Data Envelopment Analysis, a qualitative data analysis and an expert assessment. The tool for integrating heterogeneous data is a model that applies fuzzy logic to decision support systems. The results obtained are a holistic performance assessment of each unit of the set and a ranking order of the units.
Epistemic uses of the verb decir in La Paz Spanish Digamos and dice
2017
This paper explores semantic extensions and pragmatic functions of two evidential forms found in La Paz Spanish, digamos ‘let’s say’ and dice ‘s/he says’. Both forms are inflected forms of the verb decir ‘to say’. The form dice ‘s/he says’ has the function of a reported evidential form, conforming to results from previous studies (Babel 2009; Olbertz 2007; Travis 2006; Laprade 1981), while the form digamos is used according to a previously unnoticed function of an inferential evidential.
Some effects of emphatic particles on Akan evidentials
2017
Abstract: Akan is one of the many languages which uses lexical verbs and verbal constructions to express evidentiality. In this paper, we discuss four verbs used as both evidential and non-evidential forms. Further, we discuss focusing strategies and the use of emphatic particles (EMPH) to support focused constituents. Our aim is to determine whether emphatic particles have any influence on evidential constructions containing them. It is observed that when the source of information – the entity from whom knowledge is emanating is focused, different degrees of attenuation/accentuation is demonstrated depending on the pragmatically derived information associated with the EMPH. Although in nor…
Ethics of Beliefs
2017
This paper deals with the concept of positive learning (PL). The main goal is to provide a working definition of PL on which further refinements and extensions can be based. First, I formulate a list of desiderata for a definition of PL: I argue that a working definition of PL should (i) make the involved epistemic norms explicit, (ii) be flexible, and (iii) be empirically tractable. After that, I argue that a working definition of PL should focus on three basic epistemic norms (which I call Evidentialism, Degrees of Plausibility, and Non-Arbitrary Updates). Drawing on work on the ethics of belief and Bayesian inference, I highlight theoretical and empirical challenges that already follow f…
Performance in Knowledge Assessment Tests from the Perspective of Linguistic Typology
2019
An important part of cross-linguistic variation manifests itself in the grammatical categories which are available in the grammar of a language, their semantic fine-grainedness and the obligatoriness of their use. The present paper will focus on three domains of grammar: (1) information structure and topicality, (2) converbs and clause combining and (3) modality and evidentiality. These domains are known to be prominent in Japanese and Korean grammar while they are clearly less relevant in English. The paper will first give a detailed account of these structures with examples from the US Test of Understanding in College Economics (TUCE). As will become quite clear, the versions of the test …