On the Interaction between Lexical Aspects of Predicates and Evidentiality - A situation-semantics account -

Abstract

The aim of this paper is twofold: to propose a novel analysis of Koreandirect perceptive evidential -te- based on the situation semantics (Barwise andPerry 1983), and to illustrate how this proposal actually works, focusing onthe cases where the lexical aspect of predicates and the semantics of -teinteract. To achieve these goals, first, I adopt and revise Kalsang et al.'s(2013) analysis of Tibetan direct perceptive evidentials, and propose that, for-te- to be felicitously used, the situation where the speaker acquires perceptiveevidence should be the same as, or be included by, the situation where theproposition is true. Next, I show that, with this proposal, we can account forsome instances of the interaction between the lexical aspect of predicates andthe semantics of -te-, including the case of the verb ip-, and the case whereaspectually different predicates under the same situation show differentbehaviors regarding -te- and other aspectual morphemes.