Thetic speaker-instantiating quotative indexes as a cross-linguistic type

Quotative indexes often do not simply encode a speech event but turn out to be grammatical constructions with the dual function of referring to a state of affairs and of orienting the audience to the presence of reported discourse. A still poorly-analyzed quotative strategy without overt reference to a speech event is the use of thetic non-verbal identificational and presentational clauses that focus on the identity of the speaker as the source of the reported discourse. With data that are diverse in terms of geography, genealogical affiliation and diachronic dimension, the article will on the one hand demonstrate that this pattern is cross-linguistically recurrent, and thus robust as a type, and on the other hand aims to explore the special morphosyntactic and functional nature of this subtype of quotative index.