Mirativity

In linguistics, mirativity, initially proposed by Scott DeLancey, is a grammatical category in a language, independent of evidentiality, that encodes the speaker's surprise or the unpreparedness of their mind. Grammatical elements that encode the semantic category of mirativity are called miratives (abbreviated MIR).^[1]^[2]

DeLancey (1997) first promoted the mirative as a cross-linguistic category, identifying Turkish, Hare, Sunwar, Lhasa Tibetan, and Korean as languages exhibiting this category.^[1] Citing DeLancey as a predecessor, many researchers have reported miratives in other languages, especially Tibeto-Burman languages. However, Lazard (1999) and Hill (2012) question the validity of this category, Lazard finding that the category cannot be distinguished from a mediative, and Hill finds the evidence given by DeLancey and by Aikhenvald (2004) either incorrect or insufficient. DeLancey (2012) promotes the languages Hare, Kham, and Magar as clear cases of miratives, conceding that his analysis of Tibetan had been incorrect. He makes no mention of Turkish, Sunwar, or Korean. Hill (2015) provides an alternative analysis of Hare, re-analyzing DeLancey's evidence for 'mirativity' as direct evidentiality.

Albanian has a series of verb forms called miratives or admiratives. These may express surprise on the part of the speaker, but may also have other functions, such as expressing irony, doubt, or reportedness.^[3] The Albanian use of admirative forms is unique in the Balkan context. It is not translatable in other languages. In English, the expression of surprise can be rendered by 'oh, look!' or 'lookee there!'; the expression of doubt can be rendered by 'indeed!'; the expression of neutral reportedness can be rendered by 'apparently'.^[4]

References

^ ^a ^b DeLancey, Scott (1997). "Mirativity: The grammatical marking of unexpected information". Linguistic Typology. 1: 33–52. doi:10.1515/lity.1997.1.1.33. S2CID 122264213.
^ Peterson, T. (2016). "Mirativity as Surprise: Evidentiality, Information, and Deixis". Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. 45 (6): 1327–1357. doi:10.1007/s10936-015-9408-9. PMID 26645464. S2CID 26783093.
^ Friedman, Victor A. (1986). "Evidentiality in the Balkans: Bulgarian, Macedonian and Albanian" (PDF). In Chafe, Wallace L.; Nichols, Johanna (eds.). Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology. Ablex. pp. 168–187. ISBN 978-0-89391-203-1. p. 180.
^ Friedman, Victor (2021). "The Epic Admirative in Albanian". In Scaldaferri, Nicola (ed.). Wild Songs, Sweet Songs: The Albanian Epic in the Collections of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord. Publications of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature Series. Vol. 5. In collaboration with Victor Friedman, John Kolsti, Zymer U. Neziri. Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies. ISBN 9780674271333.

Relevant literature

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (2004). Evidentiality. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-926388-2.
DeLancey, Scott (1997). "Mirativity: The grammatical marking of unexpected information". Linguistic Typology. 1: 33–52. doi:10.1515/lity.1997.1.1.33. S2CID 122264213.
DeLancey, Scott (2001). "The mirative and evidentiality". Journal of Pragmatics. 33 (3): 369–382. doi:10.1016/S0378-2166(01)80001-1.
DeLancey, Scott (2012). "Still mirative after all these years". Journal of Pragmatics. 33 (3): 529–564. doi:10.1515/lity-2012-0020. S2CID 53078131.
Dickinson, Connie (2000). "Mirativity in Tsafiki". Studies in Language. 24 (2): 379–422. doi:10.1075/sl.24.2.06dic.
Hill, Nathan W. (2012). "'Mirativity' does not exist: ḥdug in 'Lhasa' Tibetan and other suspects". Linguistic Typology. 16 (3): 389–433. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.694.8358. doi:10.1515/lity-2012-0016. S2CID 55007142.
Hill, Nathan W. (2015). "Hare lõ: the touchstone of mirativity". SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics. 13 (2): 24–31.
Lazard, Gilbert. (2009). "Mirativity, evidentiality, mediativity, or other?". Linguistic Typology. 3 (1): 91–109. doi:10.1515/lity.1999.3.1.91. S2CID 119980238.
Slobin, Dan I.; Aksu, Ayhan A. (1982). "Tense, aspect and modality in the use of the Turkish evidential". In Hopper, Paul J. (ed.). Tense-aspect: Between semantics & pragmatics (PDF). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 185–200. ISBN 978-90-272-2865-9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-05-30. Retrieved 2015-06-12.
Yliniemi, Juha. (2021). Similarity of mirative and contrastive focus: three parameters for describing attention markers. Linguistic Typology.

External links

Summary of mirative postings at LinguistList (includes bibliography)

[:0-1] DeLancey, Scott (1997). "Mirativity: The grammatical marking of unexpected information". Linguistic Typology. 1: 33–52. doi:10.1515/lity.1997.1.1.33. S2CID 122264213.

[urlMirativity_as_Surprise:_Evidentiality,_Information,_and_Deixis._-_PubMed_-_NCBI-2] Peterson, T. (2016). "Mirativity as Surprise: Evidentiality, Information, and Deixis". Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. 45 (6): 1327–1357. doi:10.1007/s10936-015-9408-9. PMID 26645464. S2CID 26783093.

[3] Friedman, Victor A. (1986). "Evidentiality in the Balkans: Bulgarian, Macedonian and Albanian" (PDF). In Chafe, Wallace L.; Nichols, Johanna (eds.). Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology. Ablex. pp. 168–187. ISBN 978-0-89391-203-1. p. 180.

[4] Friedman, Victor (2021). "The Epic Admirative in Albanian". In Scaldaferri, Nicola (ed.). Wild Songs, Sweet Songs: The Albanian Epic in the Collections of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord. Publications of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature Series. Vol. 5. In collaboration with Victor Friedman, John Kolsti, Zymer U. Neziri. Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies. ISBN 9780674271333.

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