Re-examining evidentiality as a pragmatic notion

Abstract

The principal aim of this paper is to offer a new perspective on evidentiality by applying some key notions from a theoretical position known as Contextualism (cf. Récanati 2004). The central claim of Contextualism is that a clear distinction between semantics and pragmatics is not possible, because the processes involved in what a speaker says and what he/she implies both belong to what a speaker means and are both pragmatic: what a speaker says is not therefore part of semantics. Using this framework we will argue that there is a close link between semantics and pragmatics in the interpretation of evidential expressions: speaker-involvement in modal expressions and the ‘source’ of evidence are not realised syntactically, nor is evidentiality a semantic, inherent feature of epistemic modals.