Poly-predicative evidential utterances involving double marking of sensory perception source of information in North Asian languages

The paper for the first time identifies, analyzes, and comparatively studies poly-predicative sensory-evidential utterances of a specific, probably, archaic character. The research data were the traditional Nenets and Selkup folklore texts and language materials never represented earlier in the linguistic study under the question. The typologically significant feature of these sensory-evidential utterances is that the identical audio (acoustic) information source is doubly marked, with both lexical and morphological means being used. These are a modus lexical auditive verb predicate component and a grammatical dictum predicate component, involving grammaticalized and specially marked auditive morphological formants. The paper proves that mutual duplication of the audio (acoustic) information source indication using both lexical modus predicate semantics and grammatical dictum predicate semantics may appear to be a major and, probably, the only syntactic link of modus and dictum components in the diachronic retrospective. Basing on the comparative study of the Nenets and Selkup language data in an evolutionarily typological aspect, the evolution of the sensory-evidential utterances is empirically identified, that is, their loss of the archaic syntactic linking means, denoted by the term “lexical and grammatical pleonasm,” and their transformation into poly-predicative syntactic complement subordination constructions.

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