Cross-linguistic Data Base on Evidential Marking and Strategies in European Languages
Network and Project
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The database of evidential markers is designed (or should be finally
designed, once it gets sufficiently improved) to give a unified set of
information (in a template) for all different kinds of linguistic units
in different languages that mark at least one evidential function in a
sufficiently conventionalized way. The units may be grammaticalized or
stored otherwise in the inventory of a language's form: function units
(morphemes or lexical units), e.g. lexicalized. Each unit may have other
functions, e.g. epistemic ones. These may (and often do) accompany the
evidential function; the latter may be highligthed or rather
backgrounded, but it should not only be inferred from some contexts
(discourse or situational). Once unified information on the semantics,
morphosyntactic behaviour, restrictions of all sorts, the etymology and
diachronic development are given, we can really pretend to be comparing
like with like (for any unit you may call either grammaticalized or
lexicalized, or part of a productive or closed pattern). The data base
should then also be fit to give a quick output for requests that may be
conducted in order to clarify different hypotheses, concerning any level
of description. In order to reach this rather ambitious aim many quite
fundamental issues belonging to semantic theory, lexicography,
morphology and syntax have to be tackled with, or at least be set in
operative terms. In this light, the data base can also become a
convenient tool for heuristic procedures by which we can, on the one
hand, step by step refine "parameters" of description necessary in a,
say, theory of evidentiality marking (and related matters); on the other
hand, refinements can be checked against the empirical picture analyzed
if we stick to the criteria and values to be "filled in" for any item. Björn Wiemer, Project Initiator and Coordinator
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