Document Type
Dissertation
Publication Date
12-2011
Abstract
The purpose of this work is to describe and account for the broad range of phenomena referred to as “evidentiality” in two Turkic languages: Uzbek and Kazakh. Much previous work on the Turkic languages treats evidentiality as a distinct verbal category. However, morphemes that express evidential meaning also often express other meanings such as dubitativity and admirativity, or may even express rhetorical questions. This work follows Friedman (1978; 1981; 1988) and others in considering these meanings to be the result of an evidential-like strategy: the expression of non-confirmativity. In Uzbek and Kazakh, as well as in many other Eurasian languages, the past tense is the locus of evidential meaning. There are three items in the Uzbek and Kazakh past tense paradigm, and these differ in terms of markedness for confirmativity: one is marked as confirmative, one as non-confirmative, and one is unmarked for confirmativity. The unmarked item, often referred to as the perfect, exists in a copular form. As a copular form, it expresses marked non-confirmativity. When this copular form (in Uzbek: ekan, in Kazakh: eken) is employed to express non-confirmativity, this non-confirmativity is manifested either as non-firsthand information source or as admirativity. By employing the non-confirmative analysis, we are able to account for the broad range of phenomena considered “evidential” without resorting to postulating an evidential category. Rather, in Uzbek and Kazakh, evidential meaning is merely one effect of the expression of non-confirmativity, which is a subtype of the categories of status or modality. xv NOTES ON ORTHOGRAPHY AND PHONOLOGY For the purpose of readabili
Recommended Citation
Straughn, Christopher, "Evidentiality in Uzbek and Kazakh" (2011). Library Faculty Publications. 3.
https://neiudc.neiu.edu/lib-pub/3