The Speech Acts of Irish - Utterance, Situation, and Meaning - Brian Nolan

The Speech Acts of Irish - Utterance, Situation, and Meaning - Brian Nolan

The Evidential Utterance as a Type of Assertive Speech Act

The Speech Acts of Irish - Utterance, Situation, and Meaning - Brian Nolan

Brian Nolan [+-]
Technological University Dublin (retired)
Dr. Brian Nolan is a retired Head of School of Informatics and Engineering at the Technological University Dublin, in Ireland. His research interests include linguistic theory at the morpho-syntactic semantic interface, argument structure and valence, constructions in grammar, event structure in language, the architecture of the lexicon and computational approaches to language processing, computational linguistics, speech act theory, context and common ground. His linguistic work has been in the functional linguistic model of Role and Reference Grammar and he has published extensively internationally. In 2012 Dr. Nolan published his book with Equinox on the linguistic structure of Irish in a Role and Reference Grammar account entitled The structure of Modern Irish: A functional account. In 2013, Benjamins published his co-edited volume Linking constructions into functional linguistics – The role of constructions in grammar in their Studies in Language Companion series. His co-edited Benjamin volume on computational linguistics and linguistic theory, Language processing and grammars: The role of functionally oriented computational models was published in 2014, also in their Studies in Language Companion series. He also co-edited a Benjamins book on ‘Causation, transfer and permission’ in linguistic theory, which appeared in early 2015. In January 2017, Benjamins published his co-edited book on complex predication entitled Argument realisation in complex predicates and complex events: Verb verb constructions at the syntax semantic interface. In 2019, Dr. Nolan co-edited a volume with Cambridge Scholars Publishing on the ‘Linguistic perspectives on the construction of meaning and knowledge: The linguistic, pragmatic, ontological and computational dimensions’.

Description

Chapter 5, The evidential construction as a type of assertive speech act, examines the evidential as found in modern Irish as a type of assertive speech act. Irish uses a combination of lexical syntactic, and potentially adverbial, means within an evidentiality strategy to signal information about knowledge source. The language also has a rich repertoire of evidential adverbials that are frequently deployed. The conceptual domain of evidentiality, based on (Aikhenvald 2003:1), is understood as stating the existence of a source of evidence for some information; that includes stating that there is some evidence, and also specifying what type of evidence there is. In the evidential strategy of Irish, the evidential reporting of facts in the world based on a knowledge source is understood as stating the fact plus the existence of a source of evidence for some information, including that i) there is evidence, and ii) specifying the actual type of evidence. A mix of lexical, syntactic and adverbial means is used in this strategy within Irish to encode this asserted evidential information.

Notify A Colleague

Citation

Nolan, Brian . The Evidential Utterance as a Type of Assertive Speech Act. The Speech Acts of Irish - Utterance, Situation, and Meaning. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 73-94 Sep 2024. ISBN 9781800504288. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=44646. Date accessed: 11 Dec 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.44646. Sep 2024

Dublin Core Metadata