Evidentials: Turkic, Iranian and Neighbouring Languages (review)

The 21 contributions to this volume pay as much attention to describing morphosyntax and discourse function as to issues of historical language contact and processes of grammaticalization. Bernard Comrie’s introduction, ‘Evidentials: Semantics and history’ (1–12), highlights the varying semantic content of grammatical oppositions based on whether the speaker has actually witnessed the narrated event. Comrie perceptively observes that the role of borrowing in the development of Eurasian evidential systems is far from clear. For example, in Turkic the evidential (hearsay narration) is the marked form, whereas Balkan Slavic and Persian mark the confirmative (forms expressing events specifically experienced by the narrator). He further observes that in Eurasia evidentials often arise from resultative constructions, do not necessarily involve casting doubt on the veracity of the narrated event, and lack explication of the specific perceptual source of the information, an elaboration found in certain Native American languages. These remarks are borne out by the individual case studies.

The remaining 20 articles are arranged into three genetically-defined sections: ‘Turkic languages’, ‘Iranian languages’, and ‘Other language areas’. Not surprisingly, considering that the category of ‘evidential’ first became known from Turkish and the neighboring Bulgarian, which presumably acquired it through areal contact, Turkic is the best represented, with seven articles. ‘Some aspects of the acquisition of evidentials in Turkish’ (15–28) by Ayhan Aksu-Koç deals with results from a study of child language acquisition. Éva Ágnes Csató’s ‘Turkish miş- and imiş- items: Dimensions of a functional analysis’ (29–43) deals with the contextual functions of evidentials. ‘Direct and indirect experience in Salar’ (45–59) by Arienne Dwyer discusses the category in a Turkic language of China, showing that evidential usage is greater in women’s speech. ‘Turkic indirectives’ (61–87) by Lars Johanson introduces a new grammatical term for evidentials. Johanson assumes a diachronic vantage point to demonstrate how firmly rooted the evidential (i.e. indirective) opposition has become across the Turkic family as a whole. ‘Reflections on -miš in Khalaj (89–101) by Filiz Kiral examines evidentiality in a language of Central Iran. Astrid Menz, in ‘Indirectivity in Gagauz’ (103–14), employs Johanson’s descriptive terminology to examine the language of a Turkic minority in Moldova. Christoph Schroeder’s ‘Between resultative, historical and inferential: Non-finite -mIş forms in Turkish’ (115–43) continues the functional study of verb forms used to convey hearsay information.

The section on Iranian languages contains five articles, all of which somehow touch on the issue of Turkic areal influence on this branch of Indo-Iranian. Christiane Bulut’s ‘Indirectivity in Kurmanji’ (147–84) explores the grammaticalization of evidentiality in a language spoken by Turkey’s Kurdish minority. ‘Expressions of indirectivity in spoken Modern Persian’ (185–207) by Carina Jahani investigates perfect verb forms and their relation to evidentiality. ‘Le médiatif: Considerations théoriques et applicationà l’iranien’ (209–28) by Gilbert Lazard continues the discussion of terminology for expressing the oppositions under discussion. ‘Epistemic verb forms in Persian of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan’ (229–57) by John R. Perry extends the discussion eastward to Iranian languages influenced by Central Asian Turkic; Perry also explores the notion of mirativity, the encoding of unexpected information. In ‘Traces of evidentiality in classical New Persian’ (259–71), Bo Utas attempts a deeper historical perspective of the process of grammaticalization of the evidential distinction, tentatively concluding that the category is a relatively new innovation in Persian. Though well-conceived, all of the articles in this section leave open the question of the degree to which borrowing vs. language-internal development influenced the rise of Iranian evidentials.

The final section contains eight articles, most dealing with languages geographically contiguous with Turkic. These articles, too, are valuable from both a typological and a historical language-contact perspective. Winfried Boeder...