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Evidentiality and Metapragmatic Knowledge "BECAUSE MOTHER ISN'T evidentials appropriately, but they see111 have little understanding of what AT HOME": these forms convey. The work fits into EVIDENTIALITY AND growing body of research on METAPRAGMATIC production and/or comprehension KNOWLEDGE evidentials and modals. It points to direction that production comprehension need not correlate. Krisadawan Hongladarom 1 1. Introduction Abstract Evidentials are linguistic units that 2 This article reports a result of an the speaker's source of information. experiment in investigating Tibetan evidentials are grammaticalized from children 's comprehension and lexical items, which are mainly verbs. It metapragmatic knowledge of evidentials. thus not surprising to find that these The experiment was conducted in a are often expressed in predicate Tibetan school in Nepal with three groups They may be verbal suffixes (e.g., of children: 9-year-olds, I1-year-olds, Turkish), auxiliaries (e.g., Tibetan), and 14-year-olds. Four questions were sentence-final particles (e.g., asked based on a story. These questions solicit answers that reflect children's Hmong, and Japanese). Speakers understanding and awareness of languages that grammaticalize Pvll1Pnn• evidential contrasts, namely direct versus have to choose among the forms indirect experience. Most children seem to appropriately describe events they want understand that when one has eyewitness report. If they have eyewitness vnnnll..,,.. knowledge of an event, s/he needs to use of an event, the form that indexes the direct evidential. In contrast, if one experience is selected. If they do not does not see what happens, slhe needs to visual evidence, they may use other resort to the indirect evidential or modal. of sensory evidence or markers of· There is a relationship between age and experience such as hearsay or inference. metapragmatic knowledge of evidentials. A low level of metapragmatic ability occurs mainly in the youngest group (the Certain Amazonian languages have 9-year-olds). The oldest group (14-year­ elaborated evidentiality contrasts. olds) produce responses that reflect a (1984) reports that at least five basic higher degree of evidential awareness, such as the use of reasoning as a basis of justification. Most children who participated in the experiment produce 2 Willett (1988) suggests that the definition of evidential meaning should be narrowed down to the information source. Like Aikhenvald (2004), he does not agree with Chafe's (1986) 1 Associate Professor, Department of definition of evidentials in the broad sense as Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn encoding the speaker's attitude toward University, Bangkok, Thailand. knowledge of a situation. Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 07:19:46AM via free access "Because Mother isn't at Home": Evidentiality and Metapragmatic Knowledge evidence are employed in Tuyuca: tense, aspect, and mood markers- in non-visual (using other senses), Turkish by tracing the longitudinal or reported, apparent (based on development of these forms in the speech evidence), and assumed (based of four children. It is found that the speaker's logical. reasoning or acquisition of the whole range of meaning knowledge). Some Tibeto­ of evidentiality does not appear until the languages such as Tibetan and children reach the ages of 4;6-5;0, Sunwar also have a subsystem of marking whereas that of temporal markings old versus new knowledge, so-called associated with the same forms appears in mirativity (DeLancey 1997; 2001). a much earlier age.4 However, in a good number of languages In a longitudinal study of sentence-ending around the world evidential is not part of modals in the speech of three Korean grammatical system. The speaker needs children aged between I ;8 and 4;0, Choi not verify his or her utterance unless being (1995) proposes to investigate the challenged. English is a clear example of acquisition of these modals by paying such a language which uses what attention to caregiver-child interactions. Aikhenvald (2004) calls "evidential Contrary to the result of Aksu-Kos:'s study, Choi found that children develop an strategies," rather than evidentials per se. understanding of epistemic modality from Evidential strategies in English are an early age (as early as 1;9). The study expressed by means of modal verbs and also reveals the developmental order: the adverbs like reportedly, allegedly and forms marking new or unassimilated vs. apparently. These forms are free lexical old or assimilated knowledge are acquired items whose extended pragmatic function before those indicating direct vs. indirect is the marking of certainty. evidence. That is, miratives are acquired before evidentials. Although there have been many works dealing with evidentiality from a variety Emphasizing on interactions between of perspectives, especially since the children and caretakers, Hongladarom pioneering collection of papers on this (1993) demonstrates how Tibetan children (between 3 and 6 years old) are socialized topic (Chafe and Nichols 1986), little study investigates in depth the development of these forms in children's 4 Aksu-Koc;; (1986, p. 258) remarks: " ... , it can speech.3 Among import~nt works, Aksu­ be said that by the age of 4;6-5;0 the Kay (1986) focuses on the acquisition of tense/aspect/mood (TAM) inflections, in the linguistic means for past reference- addition to being fully mastered, are effectively used for imposing different perspectives on events: the past perfect and the past progressive are used for backgrounding, and 3 Aikhenvald and Dixon (1998) examine the foregrounded information is differently structure and distribution of evidentiality expressed depending on whether it was systems in Amazonian languages and point out obtained through direct vs. indirect that the widespread distribution of evidentiality experience." in a guven area may indicate area diffusion. 49 Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 07:19:46AM via free access MANUSYA : Journal ofHumanities (Special Issue No. I 3. 2007) .. to use evidentials and how they use them acquire the full range of meanings creatively. This study reveals how forms convey. Moreover, children evidentials become manipulative tools for different age groups perceive ,.,· J"'u"""''' children when they tell their imaginative forms with evidentiary stories, or argue with peers. It contends differently. This implies that that the presence of evidentials in a child's children should be able to explain speech does not necessarily mean that the evidentiality better than young ones. child possesses evidential awareness, and that evidential may be used with a wide Taking this hypothesis into accoun~ range of functions in addition to reporting conducted an experiment to test the source of information. What follows children exhibit metapragmatic ~w~1 rP.III'IIIII from this argument is that we should of evidentials. Specifically speaking, assess evidential awareness not only from attempted to determine at what children's production but also from their among 9, 11, and 14 years old, metapragmatic knowledge or an ability to were able to justify their comment on the linguistic forms, the choices. I chose Tibetan, because subject of which is treated in this present situation in this language is n~rtil'n l lolll study. striking. Evidentials in Tibetan convey other semantic categories such Works that concern children's tense-aspect and participant d' comprehension of forms that indicate so-called "conjunct and disjunct certainty are, for example, Moore, Pure, (DeLancey 1996). The latter category is and Furrow (1990). They investigate turn related to the notions volitionality English speaking children's understanding control. As there are two of belief by conducting two experiments related to the marking of knowledge dealing with modals such as must and Tibetan: mirativity in the copula might, and mental terms-verbs like know imperfective aspect, and evidentiality and think. These linguistic forms implicate the perfective aspect, an ability to different degrees of speaker certainty (for evidentials indicates that the example, must in "It must be in the red comprehends the distinction box" conveys a higher degree of certainty these two subsystems. than might). It is found that children from 4 years of age are able to locate a hidden A question may be posed why object when presented with contrasting belongs to the pragmatic realm, pairs of statements containing forms that justifying its relevance to "m~~tapragnJ8~ index speaker certainty. not simply "metalinguistic" This is because evidentials are not A conclusion that can be drawn from grammatical markers, although in previous research dealing with childr~n's languages their absence may render comprehension and use of evidentials sentence ungrammatical. Evidentials discussed above is that because evidentials closely tied up with situations. are associated with the necessity to verify presents a clear example of the truth of one's own knowledge and contextually dependent these I belief, they are complex linguistic forms forms are. Unlike case markers or that are generally acquired later in life. grammatical morphemes, evidentials Even though children may be able to use not taught in school. There is no them fluently, it does not mean that they term for the concept evidentiality 50 Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 07:19:46AM via free access "Because Mother isn't at Home": Evidentiality and Metapragmatic Knowledge . And unlike honorifics, they are While three adults are talking in the early taught at home. These are the forms afternoon, a 4-year-old boy who is playing must acquire through discourse. with his car toy nearby suddenly interrupts interacting with adults and peers, and them by uttering (1 ) .. Using the direct observing how other people use these evidential SO'fJ (realized as lengthened [s ] children gradually learn to use in spoken discourse), the boy may have to fulfill their specific needs at hand. wanted to draw an attention from his mother and her friends who at the time are 2. Evidentiality in Tibetan deeply engaging in their conversation. It is not likely that he has actually seen a ghost.
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