Relativism and Universalism in Linguistics - Fachbereich 10 ...

Workshop 3 – Cor 159
The distribution of lexical and grammatical evidentiality
in spoken and written Spanish.
Cornillie, Bert
Universities of Antwerp and Leuven
bert.cornillie@arts.kuleuven.be
This paper deals with the distribution of grammatical and lexical evidential expressions in
Spanish. It combines functional analysis with extensive corpus research. By emphasizing the
variety of expression types, my approach differs from Aikhenvald’s (2004) strong claim that
evidentiality should refer to an exclusively (obligatory) grammatical category. The latter view
implies that most European languages do not have an evidential category and, hence, also
entails that evidentiality should not be considered from a functional perspective, that is, as a
meaning category similar to other categories, such as epistemic or deontic modality. The
alternative, functional approach to the linguistic expression of the evidential category should
take into account the degree of grammaticalization of the expressions.
In this paper, I will examine how, in Spanish, evidential types, i.e. sources of information
(e.g. inference from reasoning, inference from direct evidence, hearsay), are expressed by
means of different expression types, which include (semi-)auxiliaries (e.g. deber ‘must’,
parecer ‘seem’ and resultar ‘turn out to’), mental state predicates (e.g. suponer ‘to suppose’),
adverbs (e.g. evidentemente ‘evidently’) and adjectives (e.g. claro ‘clear’). The paper is
mainly concerned with three questions: (i) why do some lexical items give rise to various
evidential expression types, while other ones are restricted to only one type? (ii) does the
number of evidential expression types of a lexical item also reflect the number of evidential
types (sources of information)? (iii) is there a different distribution of the evidential
expressions in terms of spoken or written discourse?
With regard to the first question on the expression types (i), it is a case in point that the
evidential meaning of the verb parecer ‘to seem’ is expressed through many different
constructions: these can be verbal, e.g. parece que ‘it seems that’, parecer + infinitive ‘seem
to’, por lo que parece ‘seemingly’, según parece ‘seemingly’, al parecer ‘seemingly’, but can
also be adverbial, e.g. aparentemente ‘seemingly’. By contrast, the evidential auxiliary deber
‘must’ has no other equivalents (debidamente expresses a moral appreciation, no evidential
qualification) and resultar ‘to turn out to’ is usually followed by a que-clause. I will check the
hypothesis that the conceptual link with the origin (of the force or the result) blocks the
proliferation of the forms.
The second question about the evidential types can be answered affirmatively. It is common
knowledge that the reading of perception verbs such as oír ‘hear’ and ver ‘to see’ differs in a
que-clause construction – when they have a direct evidence or hearsay reading – and in an
infinitive construction – with a direct evidence reading. In the same line, parecer expresses
both inferential and hearsay readings: both of them are found in parece que, while parecer + inf
limits itself to inferential readings. The adverb aparentemente has an extra dimension of
contrast with the speaker’s knowledge. Deber, by contrast,only has an inferential reading,
while resulta que favors a hearsay reading. A mental state verb in the first person such as
supongo ‘I suppose’ conveys an inferential reading, but its adverbial counterpart
supuestamente ‘supposedly/allegedly’ refers to a hearsay reading. These examples suggest
that the broader the network of constructions, the more evidential types a lexical item has.
As for the last question concerning the spoken and written discourse, the distribution varies
from one lexeme to another. Evidential verbs + infinitive are far more frequent in written texts
than in oral speech, whereas que-complementation shows the reverse distribution. The
adverbs aparentemente and supuestamente show up more often in spoken resp. written