Pragmatic Factors in the Use of Evidential Markers in Galician

What is it about?

This article investigates the factors influencing the use of evidential markers in Galician interactions. Through a qualitative analysis of examples from two corpora—one contemporary, one historical—we contend that pragmatic factors, specifically the speaker's information territory (Kamio, 1994, 1997) and negative politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1987), drive the decision to use evidential expressions. Regarding the first category, three aspects influence the perception of what information belongs to the speaker: their degree of participation in acquiring the information, the content's distance from their field of specialization, and whether access to the stated content is intersubjective. Notably, a lack of certainty in the propositional content isn't a necessary component for employing an evidential marker in any of these cases. For the second category, negative politeness, this study confirms existing literature on its significance in the emergence of evidentials during situations of epistemic asymmetry.

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Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash