This Is, Like, Mirative!

Home , Affect (linguistics), Mirativity, Subjunctive mood

This is, like, mirative!

Like between commitment and surprise

Andrea Beltrama and Emily Hanink LSA 90 University of Chicago

Like has two distinct functions

The couch is like purple. (Siegel 2002)

There's a foreign boy in my group and he's like European or something.

Have you been watching? Their defense is like actually playing!

My friend I used to hang out with is like . . . rich now.

Like has two distinct functions

The couch is like purple. (Siegel 2002)

There's a foreign boy in my group and he's like European or something.

Have you been watching? Their defense is like actually playing!

My friend I used to hang out with is like . . . rich now.

Roadmap

1. Mirativity and evidentiality

2. Like and mirativity

3. Proposal

4. The broader picture Evidentials

Across languages, indirect evidentials are often used to mark surprise.

Turkish (Aksu-Koç & Slobin 1986; Peterson 2010)

• Suffix –mIş:

Kemal gel-miş Kemal come-evidential/mirative

– Context 1: speaker sees Kemal’s coat hanging in closet and infers he has arrived. – Context 2: Kemal has arrived, though the speaker was not expecting to see him.

- Cheyenne (Rett and Murray 2013):

- Albanian (Friedman 2012) (see also Peterson 2010, DeLancey 1997)

The puzzle

- Is the polysemy between mirativity and other expressions found beyond evidentiality?

- What is the linguistic connection between surprise and apparently unrelated functions? In a nutshell

• Like: mirativity is parasitic on hedging

• The two uses are empirically distinct. Yet, they both signal a discrepancy between p and the speaker’s beliefs

• The upshot: mirativity is parasitic not just on evidentiality, but more generally on constructions that signal epistemic weakness Roadmap

1. Mirativity and evidentiality

2. Like and mirativity

3. Proposal

4. The broader picture Two uses of like

• Hedge: non-commitment/approximation.

• Mirative: surprise. Hedging uses

• There's a foreign boy in my group and he's like European or something.

• I’ve been ready for Fall since like February.

• Mary’s shoes only cost like ten dollars.

Hedging uses

• There's a foreign boy in my group and he's like European or something.

• I’ve been ready for Fall since like February.

• Mary’s shoes only cost like ten dollars.

Hedging uses

• There's a foreign boy in my group and he's like European or something.

• I’ve been ready for Fall since like February.

• Mary’s shoes only cost like ten dollars.

Mirative uses

• Have you been watching? Their defense is like, actually playing!

• this is like, actually pretty accurate wow!

• Wait okay this wind is like, actually somewhat scary!

Mirative uses

• Have you been watching? Their defense is like, actually playing!

• this is like, actually pretty accurate wow!

• Wait okay this wind is like, actually somewhat scary!

Mirative uses

• Have you been watching? Their defense is like, actually playing!

• this is like, actually pretty accurate wow!

• Wait okay this wind is like, actually somewhat scary!

In both cases

Not part of the at-issue content

• Cannot be challenged in isolation – A: Mary’s shoes cost like ten dollars. B: #No, you’re not unsure about the exact amount. – A: Their defense is like, playing. B: #No, you’re not surprised about that.

• Does not embed under negation – #Mary’s shoes didn’t cost like ten dollars. – #Their defense isn’t like, playing.

Diagnostics Prosodic pause before predicate

• Hedge: – Mary’s shoes only cost like ten dollars.

• Mirative: – Are you watching? Their defense is like, actually playing!

Compatibility with or something

• Hedge: – Mary’s shoes only cost like ten dollars or something.

• Mirative: – #Are you watching? Their defense is like, actually playing or something.

Replacement with approximately

• Hedge: – Mary’s shoes only cost approximately ten dollars.

• Mirative: – #Are you watching? Their defense is approximately playing!

Compatibility with actually

• Hedge: – #Mary’s shoes only cost like actually ten dollars.

• Mirative: – Are you watching? Their defense is like, actually playing!

Truth conditional effects

• Hedge (Siegel 2002): A: Mary’s shoes only cost like ten dollars. B: No, they cost five. A: Well, I said like.

• Mirative: A: Their defense is like, actually playing! B: No, they’re not even trying. A: #Well, I said like.

Ability to shift to the matrix subject

• Mary said her shoes only cost like ten dollars Hedge: Speaker or Mary

• John said the defense is like, actually playing! Mirative: Speaker, # John Hedge Mirative Prosodic pause ✖ ✔

Shift to matrix subject ✔ ✖

Used with or ✔ ✖ something

Replaceable with ✔ ✖ approximately

Used with actually ✖ ✔

Truth conditional ✔ ✖ effects In sum

As a hedge, like interacts with other components of the utterance: - Penetrates the truth conditions - Can shift in the scope of reportive predicates - Prosodically integrated

As a mirative, like features more separation: - Doesn’t affect the truth conditions - Is always speaker-oriented - Prosodically separate Roadmap

1. The generalization

2. Like and mirativity

3. Proposal

4. The broader picture Like: previous accounts

D’Arcy 2007: Like has 9 distinct uses

- Verb - Noun - Adverb - Conjunction - Suffix - Quotative - Approximative - Discourse marker - Discourse particle

Like: previous accounts

D’Arcy 2007: Like has 9 distinct uses

- Verb - Noun - Adverb - Conjunction - Suffix - Quotative - Approximative - Discourse marker - Discourse particle

Schourup 1985 (p. 42): Like is used to express a possible unspecified minor nonequivalence of what is said and what is meant.

Siegel 2002 Like expands the pragmatic halo (Lasersohn 1999) of the anchor expression to include denotations that bear some degree of similarity to it

Schourup 1985 (p. 42): Like is used to express a possible unspecified minor nonequivalence of what is said and what is meant.

Siegel 2002 Like signals that the anchor expression is to be interpreted with greater imprecision (expands its pragmatic halo, Lasersohn 1999) Expanding halos, weakening commitment - As a side effect, like weakens the speaker’s commitment to the truth of p

- If a segment is to be interpreted imprecisely, we infer a discrepancy between the unmodified version of p and the speaker’s epistemic state

John: “Mary’s shoes only cost like ten dollars.” p = M’ shoes cost ten dollars. Epistemic state: John doesn’t (fully) believe that p

Expanding halos, weakening commitment - As a side effect, like weakens the speaker’s commitment to the truth of p

- If a segment is to be interpreted imprecisely, we infer a discrepancy between the unmodified version of p and the speaker’s epistemic state

John: “Mary’s shoes only cost like ten dollars.” p = M’ shoes cost ten dollars. Epistemic state: John doesn’t (fully) believe that p

The puzzle

Mirative interpretations arise in the presence of full commitment

- Retraction A: Their defense is like, actually playing B: No, they’re not even trying. A: #Well, I said like.

- Co-presence of veridical operators (e.g., actually, exclamatives)

The questions

1) What is the connection between hedging and mirativity?

2) Why are mirativity and hedging in complementary distribution?

The questions

1) What is the connection between hedging and mirativity?

2) Why are mirativity and hedging in complementary distribution?

The intuition

[Mirativity] marks both statements based on inference and statements based on direct experience for which the speaker had no psychological preparation…What these apparently disparate data sources have in common ... is that the proposition is one which is new to the speaker, not yet integrated into his overall picture of the world. (DeLancey 1997)

Mirativity as disbelief

 Speaker’s beliefs include not just what the speaker knows, but also expectations/tacit assumptions about the world  Like is used to signal the discrepancy between p and such expectations  Such expectations are do not interfere with actual commitment. If the speaker learns that p, ¬p expectations are overridden