Evidentials for a future English (multiple replies)

Roger Mills ha tera a:

> What a neat idea!
Thanks!  I was thinking it would be neat to speak a language with
evidentials, and that got me trying to figure out how they could happen
in English.

[a reduced form for "apparently"]
> Just based on what I often hear, [pe~r?li]  Not sure how it would be
> spelled...  :-)
That would provide a great avenue for development into my proposed
form, /perli/.  I haven't decided yet to allow nasalized vowels, or I
would probably use your form.  (Oh, and by the way, I realised that I
should have spelt /perli/ as "peirly", not "perly", which would be
/p@rli/

> supposedly or (ugh) supposably:  ['spozdli, 'spozbli]
Good suggestion.  I'd go with Muke's suggestion on this one, to reduce
it further to /'spozli/, and avoid having to decide whether it comes
from "supposedly" or "supposably".

> We already have ['prAbli]...  /-li/ could be the marker for this
class.
And, as Muke noted, it can be further reduced to /'prAli/.  I don't
generally reduce it that far, but I know people who do, and that's the
form I'd use if I include it as an evidential.


> "It is said" : ['tsEdli] ? "maybe" changes to ['mebli] :-)
Hm, I don't care for these - they sound too contrived to me, not like
something that would actually arise naturally.

Henrik Theiling ha tera a:
> I like the idea of evidentials.  Don't let them have one for 'I know
> from trustworthy sources, that...' :-)
>
> I have evidentials as one of the very few mandatory categories in
> Q'eng|ai.
:-)  I like the idea of evidentials too.  I think the evidentials that
this future English has will be mandatory.

> Personally, 'apparently' feels too vague to be a good evidential for
> Q'eng|ai's system.  So I'd make 'perli' more clear and assign it
> either 'hearsay' or 'perception'.
Yes, I'd sharpen it up as a marker for either 'hearsay' or
'inferential' (as in "he's not here" [because his shoes are gone])

And thanks, John, for the Lojban link.

-Estel