Evidentiality and update semantics of Komi-Zyrian past tenses

на рассмотрении. 2025. P. 1–14.

Popova D.

We have examined the evidential contrast between the first and the second past tense morphemes
in Komi-Zyrian. We found that in resultative contexts, the first past tense morphology
and the second past tense morphology compete with each other. While the use of the
second past tense morpheme signals that the speaker has indirect (inferential or hearsay)
evidence for the described event, the use of the first past tense morpheme usually (but not
necessarily) signals that the speaker witnessed the event directly. The indirect evidence inference
can be tied to the fact that the speaker learns about the event described by the scope
proposition after the event took place.
We have then described the discourse behavior facts for the scope proposition and for
the evidential proposition in the evidential sentences. We found that the evidential proposition
associated with the second past tense morpheme is an imposition, a non-negotiable
informative update. We found that the evidential proposition associated with the first past
tense morpheme is a conversational implicature. We proposed an analysis where the indirect
evidence inference can be tied to the fact that the speaker learns about the event described
by the scope proposition after the event took place.
The main contribution of the paper is therefore an update semantics analysis of the
evidential inferences of the first and the second past tense morphology that ties together the
evidential meaning, the temporal meaning and the discourse behavior of the two morphemes.

Keywords: past tense, evidentiality, Komi-Zyrian, formal semantics