言据性研究述评

A review of studies on evidentiality

言据性是指说话人对知识的来源以及可靠性的说明。本文从介绍言据性研究的发展历程入手,探讨了言据性的定义以及分类问题,并具体分析、概括了言据性研究的特色与研究角度。最后,本文针对目前言据性研究的优势以及存在的一些问题,进行了简单的评析。

This paper aims to provide an overview of current evidential studies as well as a brief comment on their advantages and inadequacies. Evidentiality can be defined either narrowly or broadly. The former is concerned with sources of knowledge and the latter with both sources of knowledge and the attitude towards knowledge, thus leading to different classifications of linguistic markers of evidentiality (or evidentials for short). Evidential studies, which are characterized by the great variety of languages analyzed and cross,linguistic comparisons of evidentials, focus mainly on three kinds of language phenomena: 1) languages that have grammaticalized evidential systems, 2) languages in which evidentials are lexicalized, and 3) phenomena of zero evidentials. Although evidential studies have arguably provided a new perspective for linguistic research, they remain inadequate in some respects such as lack of a unified framework and the inappropriate description of evidential systems.