semantics and pragmatics of evidentials in cuzco quechua

6.2. PERFORMATIVITY 207
6.2 Evidential enclitics and performativity
In the previous chapters, I analyzed the evidential enclitics as illocutionary modifiers
which apply to an illocutionary force and add to or modify its sincerity conditions.
An alternative analysis which still takes the evidential enclitics to be illocutionary
operators is to say that they determine the illocutionary act performed by an utterance
of the sentence they occur in, and not just modify it. Nuckolls’ (1993) analysis
of Quechua -mi as an assertive might be interpreted in this way, and Garrett (2000)
analyzes the Tibetan indirect evidentials as performatives, that is, along the same
lines as English performative verbs such as I infer. Garrett’s (2000) main reason
for this approach is to account for the distributional restriction of evidentials to illocutionary
force bearing environments. In the following two sections, I argue that
an analysis of Quechua evidentials as performatives in this sense is too strong, and
that a different, in a way weaker, kind of performativity is responsible for the same
occurrence restriction of Quechua evidentials.
6.2.1 Speech act performativity
As mentioned in section 5.2, Garrett (2000) adopts Izvorski’s (1997) account for Tibetan
indirect evidentials, analyzing them essentially as epistemic modals. This allows
him to capture the observation that Tibetan indirect evidentials are used to convey
information “based on reasoning from a network of facts” (Garrett 2000:48). In addition
to this epistemic component, Tibetan indirect evidentials have a “performative
component”; according to Garrett (2000:29), who adopts a truth-functional view of
performativity, 1 they are “performative epistemic modals”. An utterance containing
1 Garrett (2000) adopts this view because, according to him, it has empirical advantages. The
utterance of a performative sentence does on this view not in and of itself constitute an act. A
performative sentence conveys its propositional content, just as any non-performative sentence. It’s
illocutionary force is inferred indirectly (Garrett (2000:148) cites Bach and Harnish (1992)). One
empirical advantage therefore is that “there is less urgency to come up with a strict algorithm that
determines the performative force, if any, for any given sentence. A second advantage “is that the
truth-functional view deals better with hedged and embedded performatives, for example Iregretto
inform you ... (Bach & Harnish 1992).” One might disagree with this view, but whether or not
the truth-functional view of performatives is correct is not relevant for the point I make below for
Quechua evidentials. I will therefore simply go along with Garrett’s view.