evidentials grammemes in diachrony of Northern Asian languages
The theoretical grammar theory has mainly described the evidential grammemes indicating
nonvisual perception data sources (audio, tactile, and smelling sensation, etc.) basing on the Amerindian
languages data. The Eurasian languages having the grammaticalized evidential category
express these grammemes extremely rarely. These are found only in the materials of four Samoyedic
languages: Nenets, Enets, Ngasan, and Selkup.
In the Samoyedic Studies, these grammemes are denoted as «auditive», since primarily they
refer to an auditive information source in the majority of documented uses.
The subject and objectives of the paper presented are determined by the following: a) founding
out a closely related grammatical and semantic analogue of Samoyedic auditive in Kolyma
Yukaghir folklore texts; b) giving evidence to an identical nature of synchronically basic and
diachronically fundamental auditive grammemes – indicating auditive perception of a non-observable
event; c) substantiating that this auditive grammeme meaning is most regularly realized
in their diachronically earlier communicative functions reproduced in Samoyedic and Yukaghir
texts since early times; d) supposing that some of the diachronically earlier communicative functions
of auditive grammemes are directly related in historical retrospective to probable sociocultural
determinants of their diachronically fundamental meaning – indicating audible perception
of a non-observable event.
The main goal of the article is to substantiate a diachronically identical character of the fundamental
meaning of Samoyedic and Yukaghir auditive grammemes by the fact of their being
diachronically influenced by identical or similar socio-cultural determinants – either materialcultural
or spiritual-cultural ones.
To solve the problem in question an inter-disciplinary approach synthesizing both diachronic
linguistic typology and historical ethnology has been realized.
The Samoyedic and Yukaghir auditive grammemes in their diachronically original meanings
necessarily represent non-observable referential events and oppose them to observable events
in speech utterances. That is why the earlier mental opposition of observability and non-observability
is considered in the paper to be the most fundamental socio-cultural (spiritual-cultural)
determinant of this meaning. In ethnology, this opposition is supposed to be a central opposition
in the system of the binary oppositions of the ancient mythological mentality type, and it is traced
in the archaic mythology of American and North Asian aboriginal ethnic groups.
This socio-cultural determinant gives a good evidence of grammaticalization of the semantics
of nonvisual sensory perception of non-observable events but does not explain the fact why in
Samoyedic and Yukaghir languages the semantics under discussion was initially grammaticalized
as auditive but not as any other one, e.g. tactile. To explain this fact the author identifies and both
linguistically and factually verifies some other ancient but more specific material-cultural and
spiritual-cultural determinants.
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evidentials grammemes in diachrony of Northern Asian languages // Сибирский филологический журнал. 2017. № 2. Pp. 159–174. DOI: 10.17223/18137083/59/11 .