Grammatically encoded evidentials that marks 'reported speech', 'hearsay' or 'quotation' are attested in languages from a variety of families, but often receive cursory description. In this paper I give a detailed account of the reported speech particle ló in Lamjung Yolmo, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal. This particle is used when the speaker is reporting previously communicated information. This information may be translated from another language, may be a non-verbal interaction turn or may have been an incomplete utterance. Speakers choose to use the reported speech particle in interaction, and the pragmatic effect is usually to add authority to the propositional content. Detailed description of the use of reported speech evidentials in interaction across different languages will provide a better understanding of the range of their function.
Funding
Thank you to speakers of Lamjung Yolmo for giving me their time and sharing their language. Fieldwork and initial analysis was completed while I was a PhD candidate at The University of Melbourne. This work was in part funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project (0878126) "Language and Social Cognition: The Design Resources of Grammatical Diversity" and the Alma Hanson Scholarship at The University of Melbourne. Thank you to NTU, where I wrote an initial draft of this paper. Thank you also to people who gave feedback on earlier versions of this work, including Barbara Kelly, Rachel Nordlinger, Edward Garrett and David Hargreaves. Thank you to the two anonymous reviewers who gave this paper their thoughtful attention.
History
Publication Date
2015-01-01Journal
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman AreaVolume
38Issue
2Pagination
27p. (p. 292-318)Publisher
John BenjaminsISSN
0731-3500Rights Statement
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