We are happy to announce a talk by Vesela Simeonova (University of Tübingen) at the Semantics Colloquium.

Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday at 4 pm.

Title: The logophoric side of reportative evidentials

Date: November 26

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm

Abstract:

Evidentiality and logophoricity have been known to be in a typological complementary distribution (Aikhenvald, A. 2004. Evidentiality. OUP). The explanation defended by this talk is that they contain the same element – a pronoun referring to an attitude holder – realized differently: overt in logophoric languages, covert in evidential ones. I present novel data on evidentiality, which demonstrate striking parallels between reportative evidentials and logophors as well as drastic differences between reportative and direct evidentials. The formal account is couched within decompositional semantics, with a new syntax to host the proposed evidential argument structure.