Cover not available

Article published In: The Functions of Evidentiality
Edited by Eric Mélac and Pascale Leclercq
[Functions of Language 31:1] 2024
► pp. 90–108

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Eyes do not lie but words do

Evidence from eye-movement monitoring during reading that misuse of evidentiality marking in Turkish is interpreted as deceptive

 | Université Côte d’Azur & CNRS
 | Sabancı University
 | Ankara University
 | Ankara University | Neuroscience and Neurotechnology Center of Excellence
Published online: 9 July 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.22061.ars
Abstract
Evidentiality encodes how a speaker has access to the information contained in his/her proposition. It has been shown that some ‘evidential language’ speakers make a deliberate choice of evidentials while telling lies (Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2004. Evidentiality. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). In this study, we recruited 40 native speakers of Turkish, an ‘evidential language’, to judge statements with evidentials using an eye-movement-monitoring-during-reading study with an end-of-sentence deception detection task. The participants read sentences with four conditions, containing a direct or indirect evidential form either compatible or incompatible with the given information source. Our results show that the indirect evidential condition was detected as a lie more often than the direct evidential condition. Readers had the tendency to judge stimulus material with source-evidentiality mismatch to be untruthful. These findings were mirrored in the eye-movement data, as we found gaze duration to be longer at the critical verb region for indirect evidential and mismatch conditions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials and norming
    • 2.3Procedures
  • 3.Results
  • 4.Discussion
  • Note
  • Abbreviations in glosses
  • Appendices
    • Appendix 1.Stimulus characteristics: Mean, SDs, and 95%CIs for surface frequency (per mil), word length, and witnessability
    • Appendix 2.Mean outcomes from eye movement monitoring tasks for the spillover region. FPRT = First Pass Reading Time (Gaze Duration, ms), RPD = Regression Path Duration (ms); TFT = Total Fixation Time (ms). The standard error of each mean value is given in parentheses
    • Appendix 3.Statistical outputs from linear mixed effects regression models computed with the eye-movement measures for the spillover region (FPRT = First Pass Reading Time [Gaze Duration, ms], RPD = Regression Path Duration [ms]; TFT = Total Fixation Time [ms])
  • References
References (33)
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2004. Evidentiality. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aksu-Koç, Ayhan. 2000. Some aspects of the acquisition of evidentials in Turkish. In Lars Johanson & Bo Utas (eds.), 15–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. The interface of evidentials and epistemics in Turkish: Perspectives from acquisition. In Mine Güven, Didar Akar, Balkız Öztürk & Meltem Kelepir (eds.), Exploring the Turkish linguistic landscape: Essays in honor of Eser Erguvanlı-Taylan, 143–156. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aksu-Koç, Ayhan & Dan I. Slobin. 1986. A psychological account of the development and use of evidentials in Turkish. In Wallace L. Chafe & Johanna Nichols (eds.), 159–167.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arslan, Seçkin. 2020. When the owner of information is unsure: Epistemic uncertainty influences evidentiality processing in Turkish. Lingua 2471. e102989. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arslan, Seçkin, Dörte de Kok & Roelien Bastiaanse. 2017. Processing grammatical evidentiality and time reference in Turkish heritage and monolingual speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 201. 457–472. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arslan, Seçkin, Semra Selvi-Balo, İlknur Maviş & Fanny Meunier. 2021. Event witnessability and evidentiality: A preliminary study on healthy aging Turkish adults. Paper presented at L’Evidentialité et la Modalité: Au Croisement de la Grammaire et du Lexique, Montpellier, 10–11 June 2021.
Aydin, Çağla & Stephen J. Ceci. 2009. Evidentiality and suggestibility: A new research venue. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 1251. 79–93. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald, Douglas J. Davidson & Douglas Bates. 2008. Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language 591. 390–412. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Martin Mächler, Benjamin M. Bolker & Steven C. Walker. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 671. 1–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace L. & Johanna Nichols (eds.). 1986. Evidentiality: The linguistic coding of epistemology. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, Herbert P. 1975. Logic and conversation. In Peter Cole & Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Speech Acts, 41–58. New York: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hauch, Valerie, Iris Blandón-Gitlin, Jaume Masip & Siegfried L. Sporer. 2015. Are computers effective lie detectors? A meta-analysis of linguistic cues to deception. Personality and Social Psychology Review 191. 307–342. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johanson, Lars. 2000. Turkic indirectives. In Lars Johanson & Bo Utas (eds.), 61–88. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. Evidentiality in Turkic. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & Robert M. W. Dixon (eds.), Studies in evidentiality, 273–290. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johanson, Lars & Bo Utas (eds.). 2000. Evidentials: Turkic, Iranian and neighbouring languages. Berlin: de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karaca, Figen. 2018. Comprehension of evidentiality in spoken Turkish: Comparing monolingual and bilingual speakers. Edmonton: University of Alberta Master of Science thesis.
Karaslaan, Hatice, Annette Hohenberger, Hilmi Demir, Simon Hall & Mike Oaksford. 2018. Cross-cultural differences in informal argumentation: norms, inductive biases and evidentiality. Journal of Cognition and Culture 181. 358–389. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kornfilt, Jaklin. 1997. Turkish. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levine, Timothy R., Hee S. Park, & Steven A. McCornack. 1999. Accuracy in detecting truths and lies: Documenting the ‘veracity effect’. Communication Monographs 661. 125–144. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lewis, Geoffrey L. 1967. Turkish grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Logačev, Pavel & Sharavan Vasishth. 2013. em2: A package for computing reading time measures for psycholinguistics [Computer software manual] (R package version 0.9). Available online at [URL]
Meibauer, Jörg. 2018. The linguistics of lying. Annual Review of Linguistics 41. 357–375. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nuyts, Jan. 2001. Subjectivity as an evidential dimension in epistemic modal expressions. Journal of Pragmatics 331. 383–400. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ozturk, Ozge & Anna Papafragou. 2016. The acquisition of evidentiality and source monitoring. Language Learning and Development 121. 199–230. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Plungian, Vladimir A. 2001. The place of evidentiality within the universal grammatical space. Journal of Pragmatics 331. 349–357. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Porter, Stephen & Leanne ten Brinke. 2010. The truth about lies: What works in detecting high-stakes deception? Legal and Criminological Psychology 151. 57–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
R Core Team. 2018. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. See [URL]. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
Sezer, Taner & Bengü Sever Sezer. 2013. TS corpus: Herkes için Türkçe Derlem ([URL]) Proceedings of the 27th National Linguistics Conference, 217–225. Antalya: Hacettepe University.
Slobin, Dan I. & Ayhan A. Aksu. 1982. Tense, aspect and modality in the use of the Turkish evidential. In Paul J. Hopper (ed.), Tense-aspect: Between semantics and pragmatics, 185–200. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tosun, Sümeyra & Jyotsna Vaid. 2018. Source vs. stance: on the relationship between evidential and modal expressions. Dialogue & Discourse 91. 128–162. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue