This book provides argues for a compositional, truth-conditional,
crosslinguistic semantics for evidentiality, the linguistic encoding
of the source of information on which a statement is based. Central to
the proposed theory is the distinction between what propositional
content is at-issue and what content is not-at-issue. Evidentials
contribute not-at-issue content, and can affect the level of
commitment a sentence makes to the main proposition, which is
contributed by sentential mood. In this volume, Sarah Murray builds on
recent work in the formal semantics of evidentials and related
phenomena, and proposes a semantics that does not appeal to separate
dimensions of illocutionary meaning. Instead, she argues that all
sentences make three semantic contributions: at-issue content,
not-at-issue content, and an illocutionary relation. At-issue content
is presented and made available for subsequent anaphora, but is not
directly added to the common ground; not-at-issue content directly
updates the common ground; and the illocutionary relation uses a
proposition to impose structure on the common ground, which, depending
on the clause type, can trigger further updates. The analysis is
supported by extensive empirical data from Cheyenne, drawn from the
authors own fieldwork, as well as from English and a variety of other
languages.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780191503795
Publisert
2020
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Oxford University Press Academic UK
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter