From visual perception to inferential evidentiality1 | Amsterdam University Press Journals Online
2004
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Volume 27, Issue 2
  • ISSN: 1384-5845
  • E-ISSN: 2352-1171

Abstract

Abstract

Many languages use verbs of perception to express evidentiality. This paper studies the evidential use of the object-oriented perception verb ‘look’ in Dutch. The results of a Twitter corpus study show that, whereas ‘looks as if’ occasionally comes with an evidential interpretation, the construction ‘looks like’ predominantly expresses inferential evidentiality. A diachronic investigation shows how the evidential reading of this construction developed from the object-oriented use of the verb, through a stage in which the construction is used to mark a prediction. This predictive reading, which is still available in present-day Dutch, is not evidential. It does not indicate a speaker has supporting evidence for a factual claim, but rather they have evidence for something they expect to become a fact in the near future. Our diachronic study also reveals how another construction, with a subject-oriented verb ‘see (from it)’, once used to be an expression of inferential evidentiality as well. This particular construction appears to have lost the competition to its object-oriented counterpart ‘looks like’, as it is no longer attested. We argue that the construction ‘looks like’ has fully developed into an evidential construction, since its current primary function is to express evidentiality.

© Iris Faber, Margit Rem & Helen de Hoop
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2022-10-01
2024-04-26
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From visual perception to inferential evidentiality1
NedTaal 27, 229 (2022); https://doi.org/10.5117/NEDTAA2022.2.007.HOOP
/content/journals/10.5117/NEDTAA2022.2.007.HOOP
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Keyword(s): evidential construction; grammaticalization; object-oriented; predictive reading; verbs of perception

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