Donnerstag, 09.00-09.30 Uhr
In Tojolabal Maya, the language of approximately 40,000 persons in Southern Chiapas, Mexico, reported speech may be labeled by evidentials as to the confidence the speaker has in its veracity. These formal possibilities permit speakers to position themselves in their narratives with respect to the information and to establish their authority for speaking about it. These discourse markers provide a rich deictic system. They can be regarded as being arrayed along a continuum from the greatest confidence (the quotative verb chi' 'say' which indicates first-hand information) to least. The chi' is most commonly used in third person; the first person version of chi' is rare but offers the strongest of evidentials. The particle b'i' and the clause yalawe' 'they tell it' both report second-hand information; the syntactic possibilities of the two vary. They lie in an intermediate place on the continuum. In addition, there are a number of general discourse strategies for positioning oneself as an authority, which range from strong confidence (naming one's source as the experiencer) to weak (hedging by admitting to little knowledge). This paper examines this system in examples of the common narrative genre lo'il with a view to understanding the function of these markers and strategies in establishing the authority of the speaker. Lo'il are particularly appropriate for study because they almost always carry quoted speech within them. The narrative structure of lo'il is as follows: I. Opening formula; II. Orientation; III. Episodes; IV. Climax - denouement - evaluation; V. Recap, and VI. Closing formula. It is interesting that although formal markers of evidence can appear throughout the lo'il, they are by far most common in the Orientation section. Clearly, it is in that section, and secondarily in the Opening Formula section, that the authority of the speaker is established. This same continuum of evidence plays out in a different but parallel fashion in quoted speech with the lo'il.
e-mail: anthnlf@showme.missouri.edu
e-mail: gajill@unix1.sncc.lsu.edu
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