INVITED SPEAKER  Regine Eckardt (University of Konstanz)

ORGANIZERS   Ilaria Frana (University of Enna “Kore”) and Paula Menendez Benito (University of Tuebingen)

DATE         September 16, 2024

VENUE      Palazzo Pupillo, Ortigia Syracuse, 96100 (SR) 

CONTACT  ilaria.frana@unikore.it

Over the last few decades, cross-linguistic research has yielded significant insights into the semantics of evidential markers, as illustrated by work on native American languages (see e.g., AnderBois 2019 for Mayan languages; Faller 2002 for Cuzco Quechua; Matthewson et al 2007 for St’á’imcets; Murray 2017 for Cheyenne), Asian languages (see e.g., Bhadra 2020 on Bangla; Garrett 2001 for Tibetan; Lim & Lee 2012 for Korean, McCready & Ogata 2007 for Japanese) and European languages (see e.g., Izvorski 1997 and Koev 2016 for Bulgarian; Faller 2007 and Schenner 2010 for German; Frana & Menéndez Benito 2023 for Italian). 

A substantial part of this research highlights the role of evidentials in resetting default parameters associated with canonical assertions and questions, affecting the way they resulting speech act impacts the Common Ground (CG). In assertions, evidentials have been argued to perform non-negotiable updates to the CG (Murray 2017), to reset the default quality threshold normally required to put forward a proposition (Davis et al 2007) or to trigger a perspective shift along the lines of free indirect discourse (Faller 2019). In interrogatives, evidentials may give rise to conjectural questions which, unlike canonical questions, do not request an answer, but rather invite the addressee to engage in joint deliberation (Eckardt 2020). More recently, a new body of research has emerged that explores the interaction of evidentials and markers of non-canonical questions (see e.g., Korotkova 2016, Frana & Menéndez Benito 2019, Bhadra 2020). While still fragmentary, these studies already indicate that evidentials provide a good testing ground for investigating interactions between linguistic markers that trigger non-default CG updates.

The goal of this workshop is to contribute to our understanding of how evidentials help shape the CG by providing a forum for novel work investigating the use of evidential markers in non-canonical speech acts. We aim to bring together researchers employing a variety of theoretical and empirical methodologies (e.g., fieldwork, experimental or computational methods), and seek to discuss open issues and recent developments in this area of research. We particularly encourage submissions that provide insights arising from languages that are underrepresented in the previous literature.

The workshop will be hosted by the University of Enna “Kore”, as a satellite event of SuB 29.