Hi!
Estel Telcontar <estel_telcontar@...> writes:
>
> I'm trying to think how a future English could develop evidentials.
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.
>...
> ∙ 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?
Oh, I like that! 'Perli' is nice.
> ∙ 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...
Hmm, I would make it a mandatory word at the beginning of an
utterance. But that's just my favorite position for evidentials.
> ∙ Anyone have any creative ideas for other evidentials and their
> sources?
Let's see... Q'eng|ai currently has the following evidentials:
- fact: It is a general fact that ...
- experience: I say myself and was involved ...
- perception: I saw myself, but was uninvolved ...
- hearsay: It is said that ...
- conclusion: I conclude that ...
- intuition: My guts tell me that ...
- internal: My current internal state is such that ...
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'.
For 'conclusion' you could simply use 'so'.
As for the others, the English phrases I come up with are too long.
**Henrik