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Re: Evidentials for a future English

From:Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 20, 2004, 20:45
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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Muke Tever <hotblack@...>