(Udmurt)
Evid
Evid: Grammaticalized forms exist to express both direct and indirect evidentials
| (1) | pinal-jos | tunne | övöl | koški-ľľam, | avtobus-e | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| child‑pl | today | neg | leave‑pst2.3pl | bus‑ill | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| vui-ľľamte. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| arrive‑pst2.3pl.neg | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ‘(I’ve heard that) the children haven’t left today, they did not catch the bus.’ (Nazarova 2014: 235) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (2) | miľam | nuny-my | viśi-z | puny | kyľ-en, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| we.gen | baby‑1pl | fall_ill‑pst.3sg | dog | disease‑inscom | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| veś | börd-e | val. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| constantly | cry‑3sg | aux.pst | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ‘Our baby fell ill with dog disease and cried all the time.’ (Csúcs 1990: 112, 189) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The grammatical category of evidentiality exists in Udmurt but an independent evidential system cannot be identified. Rather, we can speak of evidential strategies (Aikhenvald 2018), meaning that the linguistic tools used to express evidentiality (second past tense, analytical constructions with the second past tense form of the copula, the particle pe) are not used to solely refer to the source of the information, but can also express past perfect, mirativity or aspect, with the exact meaning of a sentence identifiable only based on the context.
Indirect evidentiality is expressed with the synthetic and analytical forms of the second past tense (1), while direct evidentiality is encoded using the first past forms (2). The evidential function of the first past is controversial: as opposed to what the grammars claim (Nazarova 2014: 236–237), in actual language use there is no genuine evidential contrast between the two past tenses, with the first past tense becoming evidentially neutral (Kubitsch 2019: 88; Leinonen – Vilkuna 2000: 497). More research is needed to support this.
Author: Ditta Szabó