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Chapter One Introduction

This dissertation is an attempt to approach the evidential markers in English APs from  a  cognitive-pragmatic  perspective,  focusing  on  the  indexcial  function  of  these evidential markers at the discourse level. This chapter is a general introduction of the present  study,  which  includes  an  illustration  of  the  concept  of  evidentiality,  the research background, the objectives and the research questions of the study, followed by a brief introduction of the methodology and data collection. Finally it provides the overall outline of the dissertation.

  

1.1 The Concept of Evidentiality 
As a linguistic phenomenon shared in common by almost all the languages in the world,  evidentiality  has  attracted  many  language  researchers  and  has  become  a  hot topic  in  the  field  of  linguistic  study.  However,  no  consensus  has  ever  been  reached regarding  what  evidentiality  is.  The  disagreements  are  mainly  centered  on  the following issues. The basic concern is whether evidentiality is a grammatical category or a semantic category. The second is about the semantic scope of evidentiality, and the third is its relationship with other linguistic categories, especially modality. Regarding  whether  evidentiality  is  a  semantic  category  or  a  grammatical  one, studies  have  demonstrated  that  it  is  a  language-specific  phenomenon.  According  to Aikhenvald (2004), in about one fourth of the languages in the world, each statement must identify the kind of source upon which it is based. For instance, does the speaker see  it,  hear  it,  or  infer  it  from  some  indirect  evidence,  or  learn  it  from  others.  This linguistic  category  whose  primary  meaning  is  information  source  is  termed 'evidentiality'. As Boas (1938:133) remarks, 'while for us definiteness, number, and time are obligatory aspects, we find in another language location near the speaker or someone  else,  [and]  source  of  information  -  whether  seen,  heard,  or  inferred  -  as obligatory aspects'. 
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1.2 Research Background
The  previous  section  has  clarified  the  stand  of  this  dissertation  regarding  the concept of evidentiality. As a universal semantic category, evidentiality has attracted linguists' attention and the studies of it have involved a wide range of languages in the world. Studies of evidentiality started in the early years of the 1990s, and the pioneering figures are Boas (1911), Sapir (1922) and Jakobson (1957), to mention just a few. The beginning  stage  of  evidentiality  studies  centered  on  some  highly  inflectional languages,  and  more  endeavors  were  exerted  to  describe  the  本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。