Cover not available

In:Evidence for Evidentiality
Edited by Ad Foolen, Helen de Hoop and Gijs Mulder
[Human Cognitive Processing 61] 2018
► pp. 145–172

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

Chapter 6
Uralic perspectives on experimental evidence for evidentials

Early interpretation of the Estonian evidential morpheme

 | Károliá Gáspár University
 | Tallinn University
 | Tallinn University
Published online: 19 July 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.61.07tam
The chapter gives an overview on evidentiality in the Uralic languages. It then focuses on a behavioral experiment testing the processing of Estonian evidentials by four- and six-year-old children. The predominantly agglutinative Estonian, a Uralic language spoken in Europe, has an evidential morpheme on verbs (typical of various non-European languages), combining evidentiality and epistemic modality (typical in various European languages). We examine the effect of the Estonian evidential on preschoolers’ exploratory play, contrasting it with the effect of unmarked indicative sentences. Initially, the novel morpheme causes increased play, but the effect disappears as the acquisition of the indirect evidential meaning progresses. Novel grammar raises expectations of communicative intent in young children and makes them try out (or generalize over) statements.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Evidentiality in Uralic languages
    • 2.1Direct and indirect evidentials (Samoyedic languages)
    • 2.2Evidential strategies (Permic languages, Ob-Ugric languages)
    • 2.3Morphological indirect evidentials (Southern Baltic Finnic)
    • 2.4No evidentials but adverbs, verbs, and modal morphemes (Hungarian, Erzya, Finnish, Saamic)
  • 3.The evidential ‑vat and other ways of expressing evidentiality in Estonian
  • 4.The acquisition of evidentiality
  • 5.The acquisition of Estonian evidentials
  • 6.Method
    • 6.1Procedure
    • 6.2Participants
    • 6.3Coding
  • 7.Results
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgment
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
References (61)
Sources
www1= [URL], (22.12.2015)
www2= [URL], (22.12.2015).
www3= [URL], (22.12.2015)
References
Aikhenvald, A. Y. 2004. Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aksu-Koç, A. 1988. The acquisition of aspect and modality. The case of past reference in Turkish [Cambridge Studies in Linguistics. Supplementary Volume]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aksu-Koç, A., & Slobin, D. 1986. A psychological account of the development and use of evidentials in Turkish. In W. Chafe & J. Nichols (Eds.), Evidentiality: The linguistic coding of epistemology (159–167). Norwood/New Jersey: Ablex. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aksu-Koç, A., Ögel-Balaban, H., & Alp Ercan, I. 2009. Evidentials and source knowledge in Turkish. New Directions in Child and Adolescent Development, 125, 13–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aksu-Koç, A., Cağlar, L. R., Csibra, G. & Tamm, A. 2014. Do Turkish indirect evidential sentences provide information but thwart generalization?. Paper presented at the Workshop Empirical Evidence for Evidentiality, Nijmegen, January 9-10.
Argus, R., Kapanen, A., Kütt, A., Parm, S., Suurmäe, K., & Tamm, A. 2013. Evidentsiaalidel on täiskasvanute ja laste seas erinev funktsioon. Conference paper presented at Teoreetiline Keeleteadus Eestis, Tartu, December 16–17.
Argus, R., Suurmäe, K., Kütt, A., & Tamm, A. 2014. Eesti kaudse evidentsiaalsuse morfoloogilise markeri omandamisest: mõistmiskatse tulemused [Acquiring evidentiality in Estonian: the results of a comprehension experiment]. Series of the Institute of the Estonian Language and Culture of the University of Tallinn, 83–102. Tallinn: University of Tallinn.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Butler, L. P., & Markman, E. M. 2012. Preschoolers use intentional and pedagogical cues to guide inductive inferences and exploration. Child Development, 83, 1416–1428. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burkova, S. 2004. Evidentsial‘nost’ i epistemicheskaja modalxnost’ v nentskom jazike [Evidentiality and epistemic modality in Nenets]. In Y. A. Lander, V. A. Plungyan & A. Y. Urmanchieva (Eds.), Issledovanija po teorii grammatiki 3: Irrealis i irreal’nost’ (353–374). Moskva: GnozisGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Choi, S. 1995. The development of epistemic sentence-ending modal forms and functions in Korean children. In J. Bybee, & S. Fleischman (Eds.), Modality in grammar and discourse [Typological Studies in Language 32], (165–204). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, E. 2004. How language acquisition builds on cognitive development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(10), 472–478. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coppen, P. -A., & Foolen, A. 2012. Dutch quotative van: Past and present. In I. Buchstaller, & I. van Alphen (Eds.), Quotatives: Cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary perspectives [Converging evidence in language and communication research 15] (259–280). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Csepregi, M. 2014. Evidentiality in dialects of Khanty. Linguistica Uralica, 3, 199–211. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Csibra, G., & Gergely, G. 2011. Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366 (1567), 1149–1157. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Culbertson, J., Legendre, G., & Smolensky, P. 2010. Learning biases predict a word order universal. Cognition, 122(3), 306–329. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Erelt, M. 2002. Evidentiality in Estonian and some other languages. Introductory remarks. Linguistica Uralica, 2, 93–97.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2013. Eesti keele lauseõpetus. Sissejuhatus. Öeldis [Tartu Ülikooli eesti keele osakonna preprindid 4]. Tartu: University of Tartu.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Erelt, M., Metslang, H., & Pajusalu, K. 2006. Tense and evidentiality in Estonian. In B. Cornillie, & N. Delbecque (Eds.), Topics in Subjectification and Modalization [Belgian journal of Linguistics 20] (125–136). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fitneva, S. 2001. Epistemic marking and reliability judgments: evidence from Bulgarian. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(3), 401–420. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gelman, S. A. 2010. Generics as a window onto young children’s concepts. In F. J. Pelletier (Ed.), Kinds, things, and stuff: The cognitive side of generics and mass terms [New Directions in Cognitive Science 12] (100–122). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gopnik, A., & Graf, P. 1988. Knowing how you know: Young children’s ability to identify and remember the source of their beliefs. Child Development, 59, 1366–1371. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gusev, V. 2015. Negation in Nganasan. In M. Miestamo, A. Tamm, & B. Wagner-Nagy (Eds.), Negation in Uralic languages [Typological Studies in Language 108] (103–132). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Haan, F. 2000. Evidentiality in Dutch. Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 74–85. Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley.
2005. Encoding speaker perspective: Evidentials. In Z. Frajzyngier, A. Hodges & D. S. Rood (Eds.), Linguistic diversity and language theories. Amsterdam// = Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
House, B. R., Silk, J. B., Henrich, J., Barrett, H. C., Scelza, B. A., Boyette, A. H., Hewlett, B. S., McElreath, R., & Laurence, S. 2013. Ontogeny of prosocial behaviour across diverse societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 10, 14586–14591.
Keevallik, L. 2000. Keelendid et ja nii et vestluses [The linguistic items et and nii et in conversation]. Keel ja Kirjandus, 43(5), 344–358.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kehayov, P. 2004. Eesti keele evidentsiaalsussüsteem mõne teise keele taustal. Morfosüntaks ja distributsioon. Keel ja Kirjandus, 11, 812–829.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2008. An areal-typological perspective to evidentiality: the cases of the Balkan and Baltic linguistic areas. PhD dissertation, University of Tartu.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kehayov, P., Metslang, H., & Pajusalu, K. 2012. Evidentials in Livonian. Linguistica Uralica, 48(1), 41–54. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kiefer, F. 2000. Jelentéselmélet [Semantic theory]. Budapest: Corvina.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kittilä, S. 2013. Use of evidential markers in declaratives and interrogatives. Paper presented at Association for Linguistic Typology 10th Biennial Conference, Bienne, August 15–18.
Kugler, N. 2014. The dynamic construal of epistential meaning. Argumentum, 10, 403–420.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuznecova, A., Helimskij, E., & Gruškina, E. V. 1980. Očerki po seľkupskomu jazyku [Sketch Grammar of Selkup]. Moskva: Izdateľstvo Moskovskogo universiteta.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kütt, A., Tamm, A., & Argus, R. 2014. Evidentsiaalsus ja kognitiivne dissonants: ühe esmase katse tulemused. Oma Keel, 28, 51–58.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leinonen, M. 2000. Evidentiality in Komi Zyryan. In L. Johanson, & B. Utas (Eds.), Evidentials: Turkic, Iranian and neighbouring languages (419–490). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Metslang, H., & Pajusalu, K. 2002. Evidentiality in South Estonian. Linguistica Uralica, 2, 98–108.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miestamo, M., Tamm, A., & Wagner-Nagy, B. (Eds.). 2015. Negation in Uralic languages [Typological Studies in Language 108]. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Neill, D., & Gopnik, A. 1991. Young children’s ability to identify the source of their beliefs. Developmental Psychology, 27, 390–397. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Öztürk, Ö., & Papafragou, A. 2007. Children’s acquisition of evidentiality. 31st Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Proceedings Supplement, <[URL]> (last accessed: 30/09/2015).
Palmer, F. R. 1986. Mood and modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Papafragou, A., Li, P., Choi, Y., & Han, C. -H. 2007. Evidentiality in language and cognition. Cognition, 103, 253–299. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pillow, B. H. 1989. Early understanding of perception as a source of knowledge. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 47, 116–129. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rett, J., Hyams, N., & Winans, L. 2013. The effects of syntax on the acquisition of evidentiality. In S. Baiz, N. Goldman, & R. Hawkes (Eds.), Proceedings of the Boston University Conference on Language Development 37 (345–357). Somerville: Cascadilla Press.
Sepper, M. -M. 2005. Vahendatuse morfosüntaktiline väljendamine eesti kirjakeeles 19. sajandi lõpust 20. sajandi lõpuni. Master’s thesis, Tallinn University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Siegl, F. 2004. The 2nd past in the Permic languages. Form, function, and a comparative analysis from a typological perspective. Master’s thesis, University of Tartu.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sipőcz, K. 2014. A manysi evidenciálisról. [On the Mansi evidentials.] Folia Uralica Debreceniensia, 21, 121–141.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Slobin, D., & Aksu, A. A. 1982. Tense, aspect, and modality in the use of the Turkish evidential. In P. J. Hopper (Ed.), Tense-aspect: Between semantics and pragmatics [Typological Studies in Language 1] (185–200). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. < Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tamm, A. 2009. The Estonian partitive evidential. Some notes on the semantic parallels between the aspect and evidential categories. In L. Hogeweg, H. de Hoop, & A. Malchukov (Eds.), Cross-linguistic semantics of tense, aspect, and modality [Linguistics Today 148] (365–401). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2011. Cross-categorial spatial case in the Finnic non-finite system: focus on the absentive TAM semantics and pragmatics of the Estonian inessive m-formative non-finites. Linguistics, 49 (4), 835–944. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2012. Partitive objects and the partitive evidential marker ‑vat in Estonian express incomplete evidence. Finnisch-ugrische Mitteilungen, 35, 97–140.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tamm, A., Argus, R., & Suurmäe, K. 2013. Evidentsiaalid: kas uskuda või mitte? Teabe vormi mõju eesti koolieelikute käitumisele. Estonian Mother Tongue Society Year Book, 59, 244–261. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tamm, A., Argus, R., Kapanen, A., Kütt, A., & Suurmäe, K. 2015. Evidentsiaalsuse ja episteemilise modaalsuse suhetest eesti lastekeeles käitumiskatsete põhjal. Estonian Papers in Applied Linguistics, 11, 263–280.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Usenkova, E. 2015. Evidentiality in the Samoyedic languages: A study of the auditive forms. Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 62(2), 171–217. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Verkuyl, H. J. 1972. Van als complementizer? Taalkundige Bijlage van Blad, 1, 217–220.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Villiers, J., Garfield, J., Gernet-Girard, H., Roeper, T., & Speas, M. 2009. Evidentials in Tibetan: Acquisition, semantics, and cognitive development. In S. A. Fitneva, & T. Matsui (Eds.), Evidentiality: A Window into Language and Cognitive Development [New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 125] (29–47). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wagner-Nagy, B. 2015. Negation in Selkup. In M. Miestamo, A. Tamm & B. Wagner-Nagy (Eds.), Negation in Uralic Languages [Typological Studies in Language 108] (13–158). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Xanthos, A., Laaha, S., Gillis, S., Stephany, U., Aksu-Koç, A., Christofidou, A., Gagarina, N., Hrzica, G., Ketrez, F. N., Kilani-Schoch, M., Korecky-Kröll, K., Kovačević, M., Laalo, K., Palmovic, M., Pfeiler, B., Voeikova, M. D., & Dressler, W. U. 2011. On the role of morphological richness in the early development of noun and verb inflection. First Language, 31(4), 461–479. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zufferey, S. 2010. Lexical pragmatics and theory of mind. The acquisition of connectives [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 201]. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Vihman, Virve-Anneli & Reili Argus
2025. The acquisition of Estonian morphology and syntax. In First Language Acquisition in Finno-Ugric Languages [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 33], ► pp. 81 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue