Re: Evidentials for a future English

Estel Telcontar wrote:

> I'm trying to think how a future English could develop evidentials.
>
> So far, all I've thought of is that "apparently" could be grammaticised
> into a sort of hearsay particle, marking information the speaker has
> only heard or read.
>
> A few questions:
>
> . What do you think would be a plausible reduced form of "apparently"?
> The best I've thought of so far is /'perli/, derived by a sequence
> something like /@'per@ntli/ > /'per@ntli/ > /perntli/ > /pertli/ >
> /perli/.  Does this seem at all plausible?  Any other suggestions?
What a neat idea!
Just based on what I often hear, [pe~r?li]  Not sure how it would be
spelled...  :-)

supposedly or (ugh) supposably:  ['spozdli, 'spozbli]

We already have ['prAbli]...  /-li/ could be the marker for this class.

"It is said" : ['tsEdli] ? "maybe" changes to ['mebli] :-)
>
> . Where would it be likely to appear in the sentence?
> A few possibilities:
> Sentence-initial: perly hy sed that...
> Second position:  hy perly sed that...
> After the verb: hy sed perly that...
Either initial or second, IMO.  Actually, the few languages I've heard of
that use evidentials put them, I think, at the end.
>

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