EVIDENTIALITY IN SHIPIBO-KONIBO REVISITED

Oisel G. · Bulletin de la Societe de Linguistique de Paris (2025) · DOI: 10.2143/bsl.120.0.3295450

Resumen

— This article presents some new insights into the notion of Evidentiality in Shipibo-Konibo in using the distinction between verbal source of information and access to information, which has been advocated by Tournadre and LaPolla (2014). In doing so, the concept of “direct (visual)” evidential has been dropped in Shipibo-Konibo. The present study postulates two types of verbal source of information, the authoritative versus the reportative, which contrasts with the inferential access. This study also raises the following hypothesis. The information source in Shipibo-Konibo works as the Theme which makes it possible to subsequently evaluate the status of the information uttered by the speaker (certain, probable, etc.). The latter has the choice between two informative strategies: the speaker is the source of information or s/he quotes someone else. The notion of Theme is being supported by the fact that information source appears in general as a first syntactic constituent in a Shipibo-Konibo sentence as Valenzuela (2003a/b) described it, i.e. the communicative pivot. In typology, in the case of Tagalog and English, LaPolla (2019) indicates that “the clause-initial position”, corresponds to the Theme or the “interpersonal meaning” (Hallyday, 2014). This function thus allows the listener to anticipate the speaker’s communicative intention. © (2025), (Peeters Publishers). All rights reserved.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos