Evidentiality in Italian discourse structure

In approximately a quarter of the languages studied, it is obligatory to grammatically or lexically indicate one’s source of information while speaking. Especially when reproducing a proposition that has been obtained from an outside source i.e. one that is not based on one’s own knowledge or experience. This information indicating is then referred to as ‘evidential marking’.

Italian, like the other Romance languages, cannot mark evidentiality through specific and purely grammatical means either (cf. Greco 2018, Squartini 2001), but through other forms whose original central meaning is different. Speakers express the source of information using different tense or aspect forms of the verb, modal verbs, adverbs, or through lexical means, similar to the English examples below (cf. Dendale & Tasmowski, 2001): In English, the statement Kim is home can be modified by direct evidence markers (e.g. I saw that Kim is home), indirect inferential markers (e.g. It seems Kim is home (because the light is on)), or indirect reportive markers (e.g. According to Jo, Kim is home).

To provide an overview of the evidentiality strategies used in order to redefine the Italian evidential landscape, we are conducting comprehensive corpus analyses. A special focus will be given to the imperfetto evidenziale, a relatively new and understudied modal use of the Italian imperfect tense.

Subsequently, to gain further insights into world reference and world shifts, we plan to examine the Deceptive Opinion Corpus for differences in the frequency and type of evidential markers between truthful and deceitful statements.

We will finally conduct at least one acceptability study using modified minimal pairs with manipulated evidential marking to test the credibility of different evidential structures.

Statement on a.r.t.e.s.:

“a.r.t.e.s. offers great opportunities that enable interdisciplinary, intercultural and interlinguistic exchange. I especially value gaining insights into new research methods and approaches.” 

Biography

Viktoria Henn holds a B.A. in Language Science from Saarland University and a master’s degree in Linguistics from the University of Cologne. During her studies, she spent one semester at the Ca‘ Foscari University of Venice. In 2022, she joined the research project C02 “Tense and aspect in discourse” of the CRC 1252 “Prominence in Language” as a student assistant and is now working there as a Doctoral Student. Her doctoral research focusses on evidentiality in Italian discourse structure and is supervised by Prof. Dr. Martin Becker.