Mirativity As Realization Marking: A Cross-Linguistic Study

Mirativity as realization marking: A cross-
linguistic study
Haris Mexas
ResMA Linguistics
Universiteit Leiden
February 2016
i
Abstract
This thesis is a study of mirativity from a cross-linguistic perspective. It argues that

mirativity should be defined as realization marking. This claim is based on an analysis of
the mirative semantic space found in Aikhenvald’s typological study of mirative markers
(Aikhenvald 2012). Based on this realization-based definition, it presents data from
three language groups: the New Guinea Highlands (linguistic area), Turkic (language
family) and South America (geographical area). These data are enriched with relevant
parallels from various other languages from around the globe. The semantic feature of
surprise, that is often attached to miratives in the literature, is tentatively analyzed as a
context-conditioned implicature of realization by means of Gricean principles. Finally, a
categorization is made of the different kinds of markers/constructions that are used
across languages to convey mirative meanings, as well as of the submeanings that are
grammaticalized through the use of specific markers within the sphere of mirativity.
ii
Acknowledgements
This thesis would not have been possible without the support of a number of people, to
whom I would like to devote this acknowledgements section.
First of all I would like to thank Mily Crevels for the invaluable help she provided
me with at both a scientific and a personal level. She spent considerable amounts of time
to support me with her extensive knowledge in a difficult period of my life and motivate
me to keep working on this project.
Secondly, I wish to thank my supervisor Johan Rooryck for his patience during
the time I was working on the thesis on and off. He never stopped believing in me and
was always very approachable despite the busy time of the transition from Lingua to
Glossa, which he carried out successfully to the benefit of the global linguistics
community. His comments were always to the point and his expertise in linguistic
editing added a lot of value to the final version of the thesis.
I am particularly grateful to Willem Adelaar, the second reader of the thesis, for
reading my text in extreme detail and providing me with very insightful comments,
especially for the section on Latin America and the Quechua mirative. This improved my
personal understanding of the phenomenon and the overall quality of the thesis.
I owe a special word of thanks to Lila San Roque both for her qualitative personal
work, which was of enormous help since the time I started being interested in mirativity,
and for her knowledgeable comments on an earlier draft of the section on Papua New
Guinea. She has shown a particular interest in my work and has been very open to my
divergent interpretation of some of the data she presents in her grammar of Duna.
I am indebted to Anne Dondorp for her contribution to chapter 2, since she was
happy to provide me with unpublished data from Onobasulu.
For chapter 5 I had two valuable consultants, Ayça Alaylı and Eduardo Portilla
Hernández, who provided me with valid Turkish and Ecuadorian Highland Spanish data
respectively. I would also like to thank Martine Bruil for bringing me in touch with
Eduardo.
On a completely personal level, I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart
all the friends who supported me throughout the long journey which led to the
completion of the thesis. Furthermore, I would like to convey my gratitude and
appreciation to Margreet Bot-Corbeau for standing by me in this effort and showing how
much she cared.
Lastly, in terms of financing, I had the privilege and honour of being a Huygens
scholar, so I owe a word of thanks to Nuffic and the Dutch Ministry of Education for
giving me the opportunity to pursue my master’s in Leiden with an excellent financial
package.
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Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... iii
Table of contents ........................................................................................................... iv
List of tables and map ................................................................................................... vi
Abbreviations ............................................................................................................... vii
1. Defining mirativity .............................................................................................. 1

1.1. Introduction: Aim and Structure ...................................................................1
1.2. Presenting the concept of mirativity ..............................................................1
1.3. Background information: How mirativity was born as a grammatical
category. DeLancey (1997) and its context. ............................................................ 3
1.4. Mirativity defined as realization marking .................................................... 4
1.5. Concluding remarks ..................................................................................... 11
2. Mirativity in the New Guinea Highlands Area .................................. 12

2.1. The Linguistic Area of the New Guinea Highlands .....................................12
2.2. Current vs. past realization ..........................................................................13
2.2.1. Duna “notional current” marker: current realization .................................13
2.2.2. Duna “notional previous” marker: past realization .................................... 15
2.3. Deferred realization: Kyaka Enga –pya and typological parallels ............. 18
2.4. Addressee-oriented realization ....................................................................21
2.5. Drama marking realization ......................................................................... 22
2.6. Conclusion realization ................................................................................ 23
3. Mirativity expressed through a broader category: the case of

indirectivity in Turkic ...................................................................... 24
3.1. Grammatical expression of mirativity. Turkic in relation to other types of

grammatical marking ............................................................................................ 24
3.2. The category of indirectivity in Turkish ..................................................... 25
3.3. Dukhan (Northeastern Turkic, Mongolia) ................................................. 26
3.4. Noghay (North-Western Turkic, Caucasus) .............................................. 29
3.5. Uzbek (Southeastern Turkic, Central Asia) ................................................31
iv
3.6. Overview and concluding remarks ............................................................. 33
4. Mirativity in South America: the cases of Quechua, Andean Spanish

and Tsafiki ....................................................................................... 34
4.1. Mirativity in South America........................................................................ 34

4.2. Quechua....................................................................................................... 34
4.3. Andean Spanish .......................................................................................... 39
4.4. Tsafiki .......................................................................................................... 40
4.5. Overview ...................................................................................................... 42
5. Surprise as an implicature of realization: applying implicature

criteria ............................................................................................. 43
5.1. Theoretical Background .............................................................................. 43

5.2. Applying implicature criteria ...................................................................... 45
5.2.1. Duna ............................................................................................................ 45
5.2.2. Turkish......................................................................................................... 46
5.2.3. Hare ............................................................................................................. 47
5.2.4. Ecuadorian Highland Spanish .................................................................... 48
5.2.5. Balti.............................................................................................................. 49
5.3. Concluding remarks .................................................................................... 50
6. Comparing the data ......................................................................... 52
6.1. A comparative approach to the data presented .......................................... 52

6.2. How mirativity grammaticalizes ................................................................. 52
6.3. Subcategorizations of miratives .................................................................. 55
6.4. General overview and further challenges ................................................... 57
References ........................................................................................... 58
v
List of tables
1. Tense in Tarma Quechua ....................................................................................... 34

2. Mirativity expressed through a dedicated affix, particle or construction ............. 52
3. Mirativity expressed through an indirective affix, particle or construction ........... 53
4. Mirativity expressed through an aspect affix or construction .................................... 54
5. Mirativity expressed through an inferred evidential .................................................... 54
6. Mirativity expressed through a non-congruent/disjunct affix or particle .............. 54
7. Miratives with temporal reference ...................................................................................... 57
Map
1. The New Guinea Highlands Evidentiality Area ......................................................12
vi
Abbreviations
Throughout the thesis I have generally respected the original glosses of the sources of
the examples, which sometimes results in the use of several different abbreviations for
the same gloss.
1 first person COP copula

2 second person CS contrasted subject
3 third person CVB converb
A/S actor/subject DAT dative
ABL ablative DECL declarative
ACC accusative DEF definite
AD addressee-oriented DEM demonstrative
ADJ.DER adjectival derivation DEP dependent (verb)
ADV adverbializer DER derivational ending
AFF affirmative DET determiner
ALL allative DF deferred
ANT anterior DIM diminutive
ART article DIR direct evidential
ASP aspect EMPH emphatic
ASSOC associative EQU equative
AT agent trigger ERG ergative
AUX auxiliary EV evidential
BPG best possible grounds EVEN additive
CAUS causative F feminine
CB converb FAR cislocative/translocative
CEP counterexpectation FEM feminine
CERT certainty marker FPST far past
COM comitative FOC focus
COMPAR comparative FUT future
COND conditional GEN genitive
CONGR congruent ILLA illative
vii
IMP imperative PAST past
IMPF imperfect PERF perfect
imperfective (in examples PERV perfective
from Hengeveld & Olbertz
IMPF 2012) PF perfective
IMPF.ASP imperfective aspect inflection PFCT perfect
IMPV imperative PFV perfective
IND indirective PL plural

PL.V plural verbal
INF infinitive
INFR inferred evidential POL polite
INJ interjection POSS possessive
INT interrogative POST postterminal
INTENS intensifier POSTV postverb
INTER interrogative PP postposition
INTR intransitive PRES present
INTRA intraterminal PRET preterite
j gender marker PROG progressive
LOC locative PSN person
M masculine PST past

PST.N narrative past
MASC masculine
PST.R past perfective, recent past
MIR mirative
past perfective, recent past,
NCONGR non-congruent PST.R3 3rd subject and 3rd object
NEG negative PTC particle
NMLZ nominalizer PUNC punctual
NOM nominative RECP reciprocal
NOMZ nominalizer RECWITPST recent witnessed past
NONSPEC non-specific REP reportative evidential
NOW by now, already RES resultative
NTN.C notional current SEQ sequential
O transitive object function SG singular
P previous SHRD shared (knowledge)
PART participle SIM simultaneous
PASS passive SIM similitude case in Hintz
viii
SPEC specificity V.CLASS verb class
SS same subject V.DER verbal derivation
SURP surprisal VIS visual evidential
SW switch VBN verbal nominal
TOP topic VOC vocable
TR transitive WITN witnessed
V verb(al)
ix
1. Defining mirativity
1.1. Introduction: Aim and Structure
The present section introduces the concept of mirativity by providing an overview of this
linguistic category. Its purpose is to synthesize a working definition of mirativity which
will serve the purposes of this thesis, while also shedding more light on the basic
semantics of mirative marking. To this end it also revisits the mirativity-related
terminology used across the literature. Its structure is as follows: Firstly, it introduces
the notion of mirativity as it is generally understood across the literature. Secondly, it
succinctly summarizes the key points of the research which led to the emergence of
mirativity as a new category. Lastly, it offers a critical investigation of Aikhenvald’s 2012
description of the semantic space occupied by mirativity. This investigation, in
combination with theoretical considerations found in the older literature, leads to
defining the category as “realization marking”.
The following sections of the thesis use the notion of realization as a working
definition for mirativity and try to consolidate this definition through the presentation
of cross-linguistic data and the analysis of surprise, the most prominent mirative
meaning besides awareness gaining found across current literature, as an implicature of
realization.
1.2. Presenting the concept of mirativity
Mirativity has been established as a descriptive category which denotes “new or

unexpected information” (DeLancey 2001: 370), however the exact meaning and nature
of mirative marking have subsequently been the object of investigation in studies such
as Olbertz 2009, Aikhenvald 2012 and Peterson 2013. The general understanding of the
concept remains blurry, as it is not yet well defined. It seems to involve the notion of
“surprise”, which would reflect the literal understanding of the word “mirative” (cf.
Latin mirari, ‘to be astonished at’). According to the current knowledge about mirative
marking, the following would be representative instantiations:
1
(1) Magar (Tibeto-Burman, Nepal) (Aikhenvald 2012:441)
boi-e chitua-ke ŋap-o le

father-ERG leopard-DAT shoot-NMLZ MIR
‘[I realise to my surprise that:] Father shot the leopard!’
(2) Chechen (Northeast Caucasian) (Aikhenvald 2012:446)
hwazh-ahw, j-ied-iq iza

look.IMPF-IMPV.POL j-run.IMPF-RECWITPST-MIR 3SG.NOM(j)
‘Look! It has escaped.’ [Context: the children were playing with a chicken, putting
it into a cage, and it escaped. The speaker and the addressee saw the event.]
(3) Tarma Quechua (Adelaar 2013: 102)
yarga-ra-:ri-na-: masya:du karu-ta-m

go.upward-PERV-PL-MIR-1A/S too.much far-ACC-CERT
‘We realised that we had climbed too far.’
(4) Balti, Tibeto-Burman (Bashir 2010: 17)
di chulí-u skyurmo yod

this apricot-DEF sour is.MIR
‘This apricot is sour’ (learned after tasting an apricot fruit)
The authors who adduce these examples attach to them the following descriptions:
“surprised speaker” (Aikhenvald 2012: 441), “an event which the speaker has seen and
which was unexpected to him/her” (Aikhenvald 2012: 446, citing Molochieva 2010:
214), “a fact or occurrence that is objectively surprising [but lacks] exclamation of
surprise” (Adelaar 2013:99, description not specific to the present example). Bashir
(2010: 17) argues that yod has a mirative sense, which equals newly acquired knowledge
as it is opposed to "old, established knowledge".
Apart from the tentative label “new or unexpected information” or the somewhat
fuzzy idea of “surprise”, there is no other semantic dimension that has been presented as
2
the basic common feature of mirative marking. In what follows there is an overview of
the literature which has shaped mirativity, which is here provided as a necessary
background to any further discussion on what should be included in the definition of
mirativity.
1.3. Background information: How mirativity was born as a grammatical

category. DeLancey (1997) and its context.
The term “mirative” is already present in Jacobsen (1964), where it was used to describe
the surprise component of the Washo inferred evidential. It has started being widely
used in linguistic literature relatively recently. Previously, the term “admirative” was
already common in Albanian and Balkan linguistics. “Admirative” covers a larger
semantic area than the current usage of the term “mirative”, i.e.
surprising/new/unexpected information. The former term also includes evidential
values (information source: reportedness/inference) and modal ones (veracity
judgement) (see for instance Friedman 2003).
In 1997 Scott DeLancey published what is generally referred to as the ‘seminal
article on mirativity’ (e.g. Aikhenvald 2003: 2, Olbertz 2012: 83). In this article the
author proposed the addition of 'mirativity' to the list of cross-linguistic grammatical
categories used in descriptive linguistics and subsequently 'mirative' markers started
being spotted in many languages around the globe. Here mirativity is defined as “the
grammatical marking of unexpected information”. “Unexpected” is specified as “new or
surprising to the speaker”. Further expressions used to clarify the semantics of the
category are “new knowledge” and marking of statements for which “the speaker had no
psychological preparation” (DeLancey 1997: 33-35).
At a conceptual level DeLancey's notion of mirativity has been highly influenced
by the work of Slobin and Aksu (1982) and Akatsuka (1985). The authors of the former
article provide a psychological/cognitive analysis of the Turkish indirective marker -mIş
and offer the following insight: The evidential/inferential properties of morphemes such
as -mIş can be reduced to the basic meaning of psychological distancing towards the
communicated situation. This means that markers of the -mIş type are in fact not
evidential (do not specify information source) but relate in their essence to the presence
vs. absence of psychological preparation for the observed event. They argue that a re-
interpretation of inferential/evidential systems of other languages can be made on basis
of the principle of psychological preparation (Slobin and Aksu 1982: 197-8).
Akatsuka (1985) elaborates on the semantics of surprise as it is manifested in
conditionals which mark newly acquired information. She posits a continuum built of
the conceptual domains realis-irrealis and places new information on the part of the
realis division that is adjacent to the irrealis one. In these terms, she depicts new
3
information as a transition from the area of ‘not knowing’ about the existence of
something to the area of ‘getting to know’ about it. She further explains surprise as a
natural human reaction to this transition: humans need to ‘digest and internalize the
acquired information’ (Akatsuka 1985: 638). As such, the notion of the ‘network of
existing assumptions and expectations’ (Slobin and Aksu 1982: 197) comes to the
foreground. This network belongs to the “realis” part of Akatsuka’s knowledge
continuum and surprise is the result of the integration of a new piece of information in
such a network.
The conceptual background provided by Slobin and Aksu (1982) and Akatsuka
(1985) is of significant value to the present study because it sheds light on DeLancey’s
analysis. DeLancey writes that mirativity, as a new category, refers to “the status of the
proposition with respect to the speaker's overall knowledge structure”(1997: 33). He
further specifies that it marks a proposition as “new to the speaker, not yet integrated
into his overall picture of the world”(1997: 36). The data he adduces at this stage as
crucial for establishing the category come from Turkish, Hare and Sunwar, which all
constitute two-term systems. Lhasa Tibetan and Korean are also included as supportive
data in the sense that the component of mirativity can also be traced there.
DeLancey’s goal with this endeavour was explicitly limited to providing “a
preliminary outline of the semantic basis of mirative marking” (1997: 34), which is a
point often disregarded by the critics of the category [see below], who have treated the
1997 definition as the last word on mirativity instead of what it actually was, namely a
starting point for exploring its nature. Hill (2012) is the most prominent example of
criticism against the idea of mirativity: he reinterprets miratives as (direct) evidentials.
Other scholars point out that in some linguistic areas mirativity cannot be disentangled
from evidentiality and, to some extent, modality. This is due to the fact that a single
marker is used to render meanings belonging to these categories. Accordingly, they
adopt the terms “mediativity” (Lazard 1999), “indirectivity” (Johanson 1996) and “non-
confirmativity” (Friedman 1981, 2003, 2012). These three terms refer to the common
formal means of grammaticalization of mirative, evidential and sometimes modal
semantics, in the languages where this applies.
Given the preliminary nature of DeLancey’s definition of mirativity and the fact
that collecting and description/analysis of new data has followed, it is now possible to
proceed to an updated definition which would take into account this cross-linguistic
mirative data that have come to the surface in the meantime. Formulating such a
definition is the aim of the following subsection.
1.4. Mirativity defined as realization marking
Taking into account the analyses based on which mirativity was born as a category is
crucial for achieving a deeper understanding of what mirativity actually represents.
4
However, one could not fail to take into consideration the findings of the recent
typological research on the subject, given that only actual data from a wide range of
languages can refute or corroborate and further develop the proposals of the pioneers of
the category.
Aikhenvald (2012) is the broadest and most detailed typological study available,
and as such its claims will be here discussed in detail. The author’s comparison of
diverse data leads to the following semantic sketching of mirativity: The category
embraces the values of (i) sudden discovery, sudden revelation or realization, (ii)
surprise, (iii) unprepared mind, (iv) counterexpectation and (v) new information. All
these values can refer to (a) the speaker, (b) the addressee, or (c) the main character [of
the story] (2012: 437).
Such a description, however, cannot be used as a definition of the category, both
because of its length and complexity and because of the lack of clarity regarding the
differences among the five sketched values. In the same way that e.g. evidentiality is
about information source, tense about specifying time and person about the deictic
reference to a participant of an event, mirativity has to be about something more
tangible than the constellation of the five above-mentioned values1. Aikhenvald’s
description can nevertheless serve as a solid basis on which to build a definition for
mirativity.
In accordance with the above, the first question to ask is whether all five values
are needed to get to the semantic core of mirativity. When trying to define the category
in general terms, it is actually in many cases either impossible or not relevant to ascribe
a single sub-meaning from the above list to a mirative instantiation (several sub-
meanings present at the same time or no grammatical distinction/differential marking
between sub-meanings). Let us consider the examples below, which, put together,
provide a fairly representative view of mirative semantics given that they belong to
languages which bear no geographical or historical affinity:
(1) Magar (Tibeto-Burman, Nepal) (Aikhenvald 2012:441)
boi-e chitua-ke ŋap-o le

father-ERG leopard-DAT shoot-NMLZ MIR
‘[I realise to my surprise that:] Father shot the leopard!’
Meaning: (Sudden) realization, surprise
(5) Andean Spanish (Bustamante 2012: 347)
¡Juan fumaba!
1Peterson addresses exactly this issue in "Rethinking Mirativity"(2013), but posits "surprise" as the
semantic core of the category.
5
Juan smoke.MIR.3SG
‘Juan smokes! (I had expected him not to, and what I see now makes me realize
that he does)’
Meaning: realization, counterexpectation, surprise
(6) Chechen (Northeast Caucasian) (DeLancey 2012: 549)
Zaara j-ie-na xilla-q

Zara.NOM(j) j-come.PFV-CB.ANT be.PFV-MIR
‘Look! Zaara was here! (I expected her not to have been here and by what I see I
suddenly become aware of the surprising fact that she was here)’
Meaning: realization, surprise, counterexpectation
These typical examples point to a semantic definition of mirativity of the following

character: “realization which is due to counterexpectation and results in surprise”. In
what ensues I will argue that neither counterexpectation nor surprise are necessary
conditions for defining a given meaning as “mirative” and that the semantic core of
mirativity resides in the notion of “realization”.
In order to prove this claim I will recur to data from Quechua. Adelaar (2013:
105) explains that the mirative can be found in this language in interrogative
expressions and names this “experimental mirative” (cf. section 4). He provides among
others the example below:
(7) Tarma Quechua (Adelaar 2013:105)
wipi-ru-y ma: ayga-sh ga-naq

weigh-PERV-2A/S.IMP let_us_see how.much-REP be-3A/S.MIR
‘Weigh it, let us see how much it is!’
Here mirative marking (-naq) is used to denote the fact that, if the addressee weighs the
item, there will be a transition from an epistemic state of not-knowing to the state of
knowing. The only difference from the standard use of -naq (realization of a recent fact)
lies in the fact that the change of epistemic state has not happened already, but is
expected to happen. In this latter use the marker -naq is combined with an interrogative
element (here ayga) plus the reportative evidential (-sh).
In such a case the mirative -naq can hardly be related to counterexpectation as
there is no expectation, either expressed or implied, which could be falsified by a certain
discovery. This example shows that, while counterexpectation can be a good reason why
the speaker would want to mark “realization” (transition from ignorance to knowledge),
it is not a necessary condition and thus it doesn’t belong to the semantic core of
mirativity. It remains to be investigated how widespread experimental miratives are
6
cross-linguistically.
Another reason why counterexpectation should be excluded as a primary mirative
meaning is that there are instantiations of counterexpectation markers co-occurring
with miratives. Consider the example from Kham, whereby ci is a counterexpectation
marker and oleo a mirative2:
(8) Kham, Sino-Tibetan (Watters 2002: 296 through Hengeveld & Olbertz 2012:
496)
Aw-rə te zya:h-rə ci oleo

this-PL FOC witch-PL CEP MIR
‘These are witches!’ [I had assumed they were little old ladies.]
Regarding surprise, Adelaar (2013: 106, citing Olbertz 2009: 70,73) adduces data from
Ecuadorian Highland Quichua which constitute an important illustration of its absence
from the obligatory meaning of miratives:
(9) Ecuadorian Highland Quichua (Olbertz 2009: 70 through Adelaar 2013: 106)
kipi llashak-mi ka-shka

bundle heavy-CERT be-3A/S.MIR
‘The bundle is heavy indeed.’
(10) Ecuadorian Highland Quichua (Olbertz 2009: 73 through Adelaar 2013: 106)
ima-shina kay wañu-shka kusa manchanai-ta

what-COMPAR this die-NOMZ husband terror-ACC
miku-n-arí
eat-3A/S.PRES-EMPH
‘How terribly this dead husband is eating!’
The first example involves mirative marking which equals realization devoid of surprise.
It is an “objective and non-emotional” statement as shown by the certainty marker -mi3.
The second example uses the non-mirative present tense in an exclamative utterance of
surprise. This juxtaposition shows that surprise is not the semantic element carried by
mirative marking, at least not primarily. Mirativity is independent of the emotion of
2 oleo is in fact analyzable as o-le-o [3SG-AUX-NMLZ], and as such can be regarded as a mirative
construction.
3 -mi is used in the construction -mi-shi (certainty marker+reported evidential) to denote sudden
discovery, but this latter meaning is specific to the construction and does not occur when -mi is used
independently. cf. Hintz 2012
7
surprise, which is essentially expressed by means of an exclamative utterance, as shown
in example (10).
Data from Duna (Papuan, Papua New Guinea) also support the idea that surprise
is not involved in the core semantics of mirative markers. There the mirative marker -
noi (called “notional current” by San Roque 2008: 326) has to be reinforced by the
specificity marker -na in order to convey surprise (cf. the added emphatic marker -arí in
ex.10 above). The author contrasts the following two examples:
(11) Duna (Papuan, Papua New Guinea) (San Roque 2008: 326)
ke neya-noi
see not-PRES.MIR4
‘[You] didn’t see [me] {I realise}.’ (no surprise)
na-nga-ya-noi-na
NEG-go-NEG-PRES.MIR-SPEC
‘[He] didn’t go {I realise}!’ (surprise)
Provided that these markers are treated as mirative, which is necessary given the fact
that they represent the transition from non-awareness to awareness (see section 2),
languages like Quechua and Duna show that the emotion of surprise is not part of the
core semantics of mirative marking.
So far I have argued that, if the semantic space of mirativity can entail the values
of realization, surprise, unprepared mind, counterexpectation and new information,
counterexpectation and surprise do not belong to its essence. Unprepared mind and new
information will now be examined.
“Unprepared mind” is a term which comes very close to “counterexpectation” (or
“unexpectedness”). One could indeed wonder what the difference is between the two
notions. As an answer to this I would like to suggest that “unprepared mind” is a concept
that does not pertain to linguistic meaning (semantics), but rather to the cognitive
dimension of a given mirative structure (cognition/psychology). “Counterexpectation”
and “unexpectedness”, on the other hand, are more linguistic, less cognitive-oriented
terms and as such more appropriate for purely semantic descriptions. It is hardly a
coincidence that the term “unprepared mind” originates in Slobin & Aksu’s analysis of
the Turkish marker -mış (Slobin & Aksu 1982), which they make from the perspective of
linguistic psychology.
The meaning of “counterexpectation” as opposed to “unexpectedness” is that the
4 I gloss San Roque’s “notional current evidential” as “present mirative"
8
former refers to a certain expectation being refuted whereas the latter focuses on the
absence of any existing expectation (see also section 4.2). Counterexpectation and
unexpectedness are nuances which, as far as mirative instantiations are concerned, are
expressed only after the realization occurs:
(13) Mishar Tatar (Turkic, Russia) (Tatevosov 2007: 424)
tämäkɤ bar i-kän!

cigarette be AUX-PFCT
‘[It turns out that] I have cigarettes!’
This example uses the Mishar Tatar present mirative construction (verb(-IMPF.CB)
auxiliary-PFCT), about which Tatevosov affirms that “it marks unexpectedness rather
than novelty of the information” (2007: 420). The speaker of this example didn’t expect
to have any cigarettes and then he discovered that he actually did have a packet. But the
utterance is pronounced only after the realization of the fact that he has cigarettes has
taken place, which shows that in such cases grammaticalized “unexpectedness” equals
(unexpected) realization.
In order to further investigate the “unexpectedness” part of this semantic
dimension, we can put forward the hypothesis that unexpectedness can be the cause of
realization marking (cf. suggested semantic components of miratives in examples 5 and
6 above). If an event is unexpected, it would not be strange to assume languages would
readily use the realization marker to essentially mark gaining of awareness about its
occurrence. This means that the function of the mirative marker would be to denote
realization, whereas unexpectedness would be an optional but quite natural overtone of
this meaning. Besides, if realization is defined as ‘the transition from the epistemic state
of not-knowing to the epistemic state of knowing’, unexpectedness is such a kindred
notion that it is of little interest to distinguish between them when trying to provide a
general definition of mirativity. In other words, it would be counterintuitive to mark a
verb or utterance for realization if it the event that it describes was already expected.
This hypothesis is in accordance with the use of unexpectedness as dependent on
realization by DeLancey, who proceeds to the following description of the mirative
semantics of the Hare particle lõ: “sudden (direct) perception of an unexpected fact”
(2001: 376). He illustrates this with the following example:
(14) Hare (Athabaskan, Canada) (DeLancey: 2001: 376)
Mary ewé’ ghálayeda lõ

Mary hides work.3SG MIR
‘Mary is working on hides.’
9
I would now like to elaborate on DeLancey’s description and observe that it is
compatible with the view that it is in fact realization which lies in the core of mirative
semantics. In this specific description, the author talks about lõ marking “perception” of
an unexpected fact and not “unexpectedness”. There is evidential terminology which
intervenes in order to define mirativity in relation to evidentiality: Thinking from an
evidential perspective, the mirative relates here according to DeLancey’s words to a
“direct perception”. But the author is in search of a semantic dimension that would
differentiate it from an evidential (direct as opposed to indirect perception is not all
there is to it). To this purpose he uses the term “unexpected”: The latter permits one to
focus on an element which does not relate to evidentiality and which, as such, matches
his argument that mirativity is independent of evidentiality.
Nevertheless, now that mirativity has been established as a category, it is possible
to start from a point of view free of the assumption that miratives have to be described
in relation to evidentials (by focusing on the element which makes them distinct from
the latter). This means that, contrary to DeLancey’s early work, I prefer to start defining
mirativity by a feature which it happens to share with evidentiality and which describes
its essence in a more felicitous way. This feature is present in DeLancey’s 2001
definition of the semantics of the Hare particle lõ: perception. If one ignores the
distinction direct vs indirect and concentrates fully on the “perception” part of the
definition, it can be argued that mirativity is about the perception itself of the
information, that it simple marks “becoming aware” of something. By doing this there is
no longer the need of finding another semantic feature, such as unexpectedness, to
account for the fact that mirativity can be separated from evidentiality. Positing that lõ
denotes realization, the meaning of the Hare example is basically the following: ‘I
(suddenly) came to see that Mary is working on hides’.
The following suggestion emerges from the above: Evidentiality and mirativity
both refer to perception of information. Their difference lies in the fact that, whereas
evidentiality’s role is to specify how the information is perceived (kind of source),
mirativity focuses on the mere fact that the information is perceived, thus signalling the
transition from the epistemic state of ignorance to the one of awareness.
All in all, expressed with a more cognitive terminology, realization is the
transition from a state of lacking awareness to a state of awareness. This “awareness
lacking” which precedes the “gaining of awareness” is what DeLancey brings to the
surface by the term “unexpected”. As such, I treat “unexpectedness” as an overtone of
realization. It can be the logical antecedent of the latter, although not necessarily a
condition for its occurrence. Hence I am here arguing that it finds its right place as a
secondary semantic dimension of mirativity that is complementary to its core function
of realization marking.
Returning to the set of values proposed for mirative semantics by Aikhenvald, the
above observations result in the exclusion of “unprepared mind” and “unexpectedness”
from any semantic description of the core of mirativity.
10
As regards “new information”, I explained in the previous subsection (1.3) that it
is actually the term Akatsuka (1985) uses to mark the transition from a state of absence
of knowledge about something to a state of knowledge about it. This coincides with my
understanding of “realization” or “coming into awareness”, which renders any reference
to “new information” as a separate mirative value redundant.
Such an argumentation leads to a final definition of mirativity as “realization
marking”. Realization is the transition from an epistemic state of not-knowing to an
epistemic state of knowing. The same phenomenon can alternatively be described as
“coming into awareness”. As will be shown in the following sections, realization may be
divided into further grammaticalized distinctions. Finally, it may be due to
unexpectedness and result in surprise, but has to be perceived as the only necessary and
sufficient condition to name a certain marker or structure “mirative”.
1.5. Concluding remarks
Considering the points made above, “realization” is the semantic feature which has to be
placed in the semantic core of mirativity. Aikhenvald’s 2012 sketching of the different
values that have been attributed to mirative markers catered for an improved
understanding of the category, but a close look into the semantics attributed to mirative
markers in that paper, while at the same time pointing out the terminological issues
created by different linguistic approaches, leads to a realization-based definition of
mirativity which I will both use as a working definition and try to corroborate with more
data in the following sections of this thesis.
In section 2 I will focus on mirative marking throughout the linguistic area of the
New Guinea Highlands in order to explore what the data from languages of that area
reveals regarding mirative semantics. In sections 3 and 4 I will present data from Turkic
and South American languages respectively. Finally, in section 5, I will attempt an
implicature-based analysis of the surprise component of mirative semantics.
11
2. Mirativity in the New Guinea Highlands Area
2.1. The Linguistic Area of the New Guinea Highlands
On the highlands of New Guinea there is a number of Papuan languages which have
been described as a linguistic area by San Roque & Loughnane (2012) on the basis of
shared evidential features. These features relate to both the evidential distinctions made
in the languages of the area and further features related to evidentiality. The latter
include participatory evidentiality, morphological form of direct vs indirect evidentials,
relationships between person, information source and time, as well as complex
treatments of the “perceiver” role by evidentials. The languages which are part of the
evidentiality area are painted grey on the map below:
Map 1: The New Guinea Highlands Evidentiality Area

(San Roque & Loughnane 2012: 119)
Besides the shared evidential features, this region is also interesting for its mirative
phenomena. In what follows I will be presenting some characteristics of mirative
marking in the area which both favour a realization-based account of mirativity and
12
provide specific information on how realization marking accommodates particular
submeanings.
The latter semantic distinctions that this section deals with are current vs. past
realization, addressee-oriented realization and drama marking. The data is dealt with
from a cross-linguistic perspective and thus references to other languages are included.
2.2. Current vs. past realization
The standard mirative instantiations do not encode any difference between the time of
realization and the time of the utterance or the time of the event. However, in languages
such as Duna there is a grammatical distinction between realization synchronic to the
utterance (that includes the communication of the event) and realization which affects
the experiencer at an earlier stage than the time when they produce the utterance. Given
that such phenomena have not yet been described in mirative terms, the purpose of the
following argumentation is to provide a reasoning as to why markers that have
traditionally been described as notional evidentials should now be regarded as
miratives.
2.2.1. Duna “notional current” marker: current realization
The Duna evidential system, according to San Roque (2008: 309), consists of the
following four-way distinction: “‘Visual’, ‘Non-visual sensory’ (or just ‘Sensory’),
‘Resultative’ (or ‘Results’), and ‘Notional’”. However, if one looks closely into the
semantic definitions of these four labels, the following observations emerge: The visual
evidential is defined in terms of direct, prototypically visual, observation by the
perceiver. The sensory evidential corresponds to direct non-visual perception and
encompasses information sources basically extending from the senses of hearing, smell,
taste, and touch to physical or emotional sensations like temperature and fear. Its
primary use regards auditory evidence. The resultative/results evidentials “mark events
that are primarily experienced through their observable results” (San Roque 2008: 322).
In contrast to all these evidential categories, the notional ones are of a different
nature, as information source plays a debatable role in their semantic description.
Focusing on the notional current marker, it is defined as “mark[ing] a proposition that
the perceiver ‘figures out’, synthesising information drawn from different times and
sources as a novel proposition” (San Roque 2008: 326). Drawing the information “from
different times and sources” poses a serious obstacle to the evidential component in the
interpretation of the marker, as it counterpoints the essential function of evidentiality,
i.e. to specify the information source. The examples show that information source, even
if perceived as information drawn from different times and sources, might not be
necessary for their interpretation:
13
khao-na kha sa-ta ngoae-noi

redskin-SPEC 3SG.CS take-SEQ go.CAUS-PRES.MIR
‘They [the current government] sent the white people away {I realise}.’
Context: The speaker comments on the changes for Duna people since
independence
ke neya-noi
see not-PRES.MIR
‘[You] didn’t see [me] {I realise}.’
San Roque goes on to note that the current notional evidential bears a striking similarity
to the category of mirativity. As such, she notes that “the notional current evidential is
strongly associated with the expression of information that is new or unexpected (cf. De
Lancey’s (2001:366-7) definition of mirativity), particularly when used in combination
with the specificity marker -na (§10.2.4). Examples in which the import of ‘surprise!’ is
very prominent are shown in (796) - (798).”(2008: 326) However, as I argued in the
previous section, the component of surprise or even unexpectedness in the strict sense
doesn’t have to be prominent for a marker to be labelled as mirative. Information that
the speaker/addressee/main character hadn’t been conscious about, no matter what
degree of surprise is expressed, belongs to the core semantics of mirativity.
Regarding the evidential part of the interpretation, San Roque states that “it is
redolent of the ‘Assumed’ and ‘Reasoning’ cross-linguistic evidential categories
proposed by Aikhenvald (2004) and Willett (1988), respectively.”(2008: 326) However,
from my point of view there is a considerable semantic gap between the notional current
and the assumed/reasoning markers. A typical example of an assumed evidential would
be the following, whereby the sequence nominalizer plus verb class marker constitutes
the assumed evidential:
(17) Tsafiki (Barbacoan, Ecuador) (Dickinson 2000: 408)
Manuel ano fi-n-ki-e

Manuel food eat-NMLZ-VCLASS:do-DECL
‘Manuel ate’ (he always eats at eight o’clock and it’s now nine o’clock)
This example shows that the use of the assumed evidential relates to previous
knowledge, which functions as information source for making an assumption about
14
what must have happened according to our expectations. The notional current marker,
by contrast, refers to sudden realization about something and not to an assumption
based on previous expectations. This is captured in San Roque’s definition in the part
when she argues that it marks a “novel proposition”. The notional current’s function is
to denote the realization of the fact that something the speaker/addressee/main
character wasn’t aware of is actually the case. In this sense it can be characterized as the
polar opposite of an assumed evidential: assumed semantics refers to something
expected, whereas “notional”/mirative semantics to something unexpected.
The consequence of the above is that, under the light of an improved
understanding of the category, the Duna examples fit perfectly under the notion of
mirativity as sketched in the previous section, and even belong to its primary semantic
component, which is none other than realization. This account of the notional current
marking in Duna also provides a more clear and straightforward explanation of its
semantic domain, as there is no more need to assume abstract interactions between
epistemic modality (judgement) and highly idiosyncratic evidential nuances to analyze
its usage.
2.2.2. Duna “notional previous” marker: past realization
Concerning the notional previous marker (-norua/-narua), San Roque (2008: 325)
explains that it is only by convention that she classifies it alongside the notional current
one, and that in fact they could also be treated as two distinct elements. However,
according to my view, the usage of this marker also relates to mirativity, and thus I will
here provide an overview of the reasoning behind this claim.
San Roque delineates the first meaning of the notional previous morpheme in the
following terms: It describes “things that were realised after the verb-denoted event and
prior to the time of utterance (that is, as a somewhat specialised ‘previous’ counterpart
of the notional current evidential)” (2008: 328). In this description there are two
important keywords: realization and ‘previous’ counterpart of the notional current
“evidential”. The example provided to illustrate this usage is the following:
sekanwolwo-na po-narua.
second.world.war.lw5-SPEC do-PST.MIR
They were doing the second world war {I (later) realised}.
Context: The speaker had seen some airplanes back in that time but hadn’t
understood what their role was. This was realized at some later point, which
5
lw=loanword
15
precedes the time of the utterance.
Building on the mirative interpretation of the notional current marker, this usage has to
be identified as yet another mirative, which is reserved for encoding the notion of a
situation about which awareness was reached at a point anterior to the point at which it
is communicated.
A typological parallel of realization marking with past reference is the past
mirative construction in Mishar Tatar (Turkic). The construction is as follows: [verb
stem-gan i-kän], whereby gan is a perfective participle, i an auxiliary and kän a perfect
form.
(19) Mishar Tatar (Tatevosov 2007: 409)
daut kɤr-nɤ sukala-gan i-kän

Daut field-ACC plow-PFCT AUX-PFCT
(I realize that) Daut plowed the field.
In its second usage, the notional previous morpheme is “a marker in narratives that are
not purported to come from a direct source (that is, cannot be directly traced to a
specific known person who personally experienced or observed the events described)”
(San Roque 2008: 328). The author establishes in this way a similarity to Willett’s
‘reported: folklore’ and Aikhenvald’s ‘hearsay’ evidential. Just like in (18), in (20) and
(21) the event is perceived in the past and the marker represents realization with past
reference. However in these contexts the information about which awareness is reached
is always reported so -narua/-norua has an evidential-like function.
khunu rowa pele-ya ngo-narua

3PL tree chop-DEP go-PST.MIR
‘They went to go and cut firewood {I was told}.’ (The narrator tells a story that has
reached him through several layers of retelling)
ho-na na-ka-ya-norua ri-tia-o

here-SPEC NEG-stand-NEG-PST.MIR say-PFV.VIS.P-VOC
‘He didn’t stay there {I was told} it was said.’
In what follows I will make an attempt to connect the two functions of the notional
previous evidential and provide a unified analysis of its semantics. Example (21)
16
illustrates that the notional previous, even in its ‘hearsay’ function, is not a typical
evidential, as the ‘hearsay’ or ‘reported: folklore’ meaning comes primarily through the
element ri-tia-o ‘it was said’. San Roque explains indeed that “it is only rarely used for
first-hand reports” and that “the use of the notional previous category reflects the fact
that the speaker regards the proposition as having a notional existence, for which hard
evidence is not readily available from a particular known person or otherwise easily
observable” (2008: 331). The implication of this is that, if considered an evidential, it
would mark the absence of evidence rather than specifying the information source. This
absence of evidence/knowledge about a given situation, the latter being later revealed by
a non-specified source, brings us again to the core semantics of mirativity. It is
conceivable that in (20) and (21) the notional previous essentially marks new
information, i.e. information that the narrator didn’t have access to when the
corresponding event happened and only learns afterwards through a secondary source,
which makes him/her (as well as the audience) enter a state of awareness.
This argument is supported by the recurrent “realization” glossing of a plethora
of ‘notional previous’ examples provided by San Roque. Thanks to the improved
understanding of mirativity as ‘realization’, and the liberation this definition entails
from the struggle of searching for a meaning of “surprise” as a necessary factor to treat a
marker as mirative, it can safely be argued that an example like the one below is a clear
instantiation of mirative marking:
Napoli na-ta ngo-narua.

PSN eat-SEQ go-PST.MIR
‘Napoli had eaten [it] and gone {I realised}!’
San Roque comments that in such examples we have to do with “playful and sarcastic
use of the notional previous marker” (2008: 331), which is a noteworthy parallel of the
documented ironic use of the Tsafiki mirative (glossed here as non-congruent, see
section 4):
unila jo-i-e
man be-NCONGR-DECL
‘I am a man!’ (as I just realized)
Based on this reasoning it can be argued that the use of the notional previous marker in
narratives, which is interpreted by San Roque as something similar to Willett’s
‘reported: folklore’ and Aikhenvald’s ‘hearsay’ evidential, is of a different nature than
17
information source markers. Its semantics seem to rather be based on the concept of
new information/coming into awareness. An event that is transmitted through several
layers of retelling of a story is all the less likely to have met the narrator’s awareness at
the time of its occurrence and that’s what the notional previous marks. As such, the
mirative marking refers here primarily to the speaker, but not exclusively, as it is
conceivable that in the examples above the speaker also expects the addressee to
previously have been unaware of the situation they describe.
The implication of this analysis is that we have one common basis to explain the
two seemingly disparate uses of the notional previous marker: the so-called ‘notional
evidential’ one and the ‘hearsay’ one. Reducing both of them to the notion of mirativity
as ‘realization’ provides a more economical account of their function, explains the
available examples in a straightforward way, and makes postulating such a highly
idiosyncratic category as notional evidentiality redundant.
That said, it is also true that, when referring to past events for which awareness
has been achieved at a later stage, mirativity comes conceptually closer to evidentiality.
The explanation of this consists in the observation that, if there is a time gap between
the occurrence of an event and reaching awareness about it, it is highly likely that this
realization was brought about by another source (as opposed to the typical sudden
realization due to direct perception). As such it is hardly surprising if mirative markers
show evidential-like semantics in these contexts. Nevertheless, given the analysis above,
I would like to suggest that we can only treat such a marker as evidential if it specifies a
certain information source and not if it just encodes the fact that there is no concrete
source for the information transmitted. As is the case here, instantiations of this kind
might be analyzed in a more felicitous way as primarily marking realization, and thus
have to be added to the inventory of miratives.
Finally, regarding the divergence of the two markers (current vs. previous), I have
shown that the past realization marker -narua/-norua as shown in examples (18) and
(20) - (22) differs from the current realization marker -noi (15, 16) in that in the former
case gaining of awareness happened at a time anterior to that of the utterance, whereas
in the latter case awareness is gained at the same time as the one in which the utterance
takes place.
2.3. Deferred realization: Kyaka Enga -pya and typological parallels
Draper and Draper (2002: 46) include in what they call “deduction mood” a marker that
seems to be better explained as a mirative, namely -pya. It is described as being used
"with far past tense to indicate something that obviously occurred long ago, without the
fact having been noticed at the time." The word “obviously” doesn’t determine a specific
information source, but rather the sudden character of the (delayed) coming into
awareness. In consequence, we can claim that evidentiality is irrelevant to the depiction
18
of the core semantics of the suffix in question. Further, what is crucial in the definition
provided is that there is initially no awareness about the occurrence of the event, and
this lack of cognizance is remedied for by a realization that takes place later in time:
(24) Kyaka Enga (Papuan, Papua New Guinea) (Draper and Draper 2002: 46)
Mena doko yuu wamba p-i-y-ami-pya

pig DET time before kill-V-FPST-3SG-DF.MIR
‘They apparently killed that pig long ago’
Draper and Draper’s definition reveal that this marker is about realization regarding an
event which happens at a time posterior to the time of the event. Such deferred
realization markers have been documented for other languages like Yukaghir. However,
so far they have been treated as evidentials, an analysis I would like to challenge by
looking at the available examples in the light of the definition of mirativity as presented
in the previous section:
(25) Yukaghir (Siberia) (Maslova 2003b: 224)
ataq-un kun’il-get ningo: i:die-l’el-d’i:l’i

two-AT ten-ABL lots.of catch-DF.MIR-INTR:1PL
‘It turned out that we had caught more than twenty’ [The speaker participated in
fishing, yet the fish was counted only afterwards.]
(26) Yukaghir (Siberia) (Maslova 2003b: 224)
ta: ejre-t met me:me: abut aŋil'-ge ta: cha:j-e

there walk-SS:IPFV I bear lair inlet-LOC there tea-ACC
o:ža:-l'el-d'e
drink-DF.MIR-INTR6:1SG
‘While walking there, I drank tea near the lair of a bear’ [The speaker noticed the
lair later.]
Maslova (2003: 223) calls this usage of the inferential marker l’el ‘deferred evidence’,
but as seen in the examples l’el marks realization rather than evidence, which is why
Aikhenvald (2004: 156-7) corrects the labelling of this usage of the marker as ‘deferred
realization’. The context provided at (25) and particularly at (26) reveals that the crucial
meaning of l’el in these cases is the fact that the speaker only later became aware of an
6
In Yukaghir, transitive verbs can take intransitive conjugation markers after the suffix -l’el. For more
information, see Maslova 2003a.
19
event that had happened at a previous point in time. Examples (25) and (26) contrast to
(27), where perception is simultaneous to the event itself:
(27) Yukaghir (Siberia) (Maslova 2003: 223)
aji:-l’el-u-m šar qoha-s’

shoot-INFR-0-TR:3 something burst-INTR:3SG
‘(then) he shot, something burst’ [During a hunting trip, the speaker hears the
sound of a shot and infers that his fellow hunter made a shot.]
There are data from Western Apache which provide yet another instantiation of this
phenomenon. Below there are examples where the marker lęḱ’eh denotes realization
posterior to the occurrence of the event:
(28) Western Apache (Athabaskan) (De Reuse 2003: 84)
Áí n’í nanezna’ łeshijēēdyú nohwiheskąą lęḱ’eh!

(no glossing)
‘We had slept in a graveyard!’
Context: The speakers had not noticed where they had slept because it was dark.
They woke up and left the place while it was still dark, but while walking at dawn
they looked back and noticed that they had slept in a graveyard.
(29) Western Apache (Athabaskan) (De Reuse 2003: 86)
Yáhwąhyú nashāā lęḱ’eh

store=at 1SG.IMPERF.ASP.be.around DF.MIR
‘I was at the store.’
Context: The speaker cannot remember being at the store. He/She is reminded
later through another person who mentions that the speaker had been there.
I here gloss lęḱ’eh as a ‘deferred mirative’ because its function is no other than to encode
deferred realization. Commenting on example (28), De Reuse notes that the marker
“neutralizes the distinction between inferred evidence and reported evidence”, i.e. there
is absence of information source marking. The reason why the author does not analyze it
as a mirative lies in the fact that he has a different perception of mirativity than the one
adopted here: “I will define lęḱ’eh as a past deferred realization (PDR) particle, because
it marks the fact that the speaker had no awareness of the event or state at the time that
it occurred, but realized what had occurred at a later time in the past. [...] It can also be
mirative since if one becomes aware of something at a later time, one is usually
surprised about it.” (De Reuse 2003: 86) It is here evident that for the author mirativity
20
means surprise, while lęḱ’eh is a realization marker.
2.4. Addressee-oriented realization
Aikhenvald (2012: 437) states that mirative values can refer to (a) the speaker, (b) the
addressee, or (c) the main character [of the story]. Hengeveld & Olbertz (2012: 488), in
their turn, advocate in favour of the addressee-perspective within the category of
mirativity. This is in stark contrast to DeLancey’s 1997 definition, where mirativity is
defined only in connection to the speaker, as a category referring to “the status of the
proposition with respect to the speaker's overall knowledge structure”(1997: 33). The
fact that mirative markers can refer to realization by the addressee is supported by
Papuan data from the New Guinea Highlands, where we encounter exclusive addressee-
oriented miratives.
(30) Onobasulu (Papuan, Papua New Guinea) (Anne Dondorp, p.c.)
Na asu-me
1SG go.1SG-AD.MIR
‘I am leaving’
(31) Onobasulu (Papuan, Papua New Guinea) (Anne Dondorp, p.c.)
Nini sunia nafulu lolu-me

1PL all good be.1-AD.MIR
‘We are all doing well’ (in a letter)
Onobasulu -me is a marker for new information, about which Anne Dondorp (personal
communication) observes that it is a clitic “attached to the verb in sentence final
position, encoding that the information is assumed to be new to the audience”. In (30)
“the speaker discloses his thoughts” and in (31) he gives “other information of which he
can assume that his audience does not know about since they were not present when the
reported event(s) happened” (Dondorp, p.c.). As such these are markers that denote
gaining of awareness from the part of the addressee. In the language Edolo, which is
spoken in an area adjacent to the Onobasulu area, there are two markers, -dio and -
melë, with semantics very similar to that of Onobasulu -me. (Edolo -melë and
Onobasulu -me seem to be cognates.)
(32) Edolo (Papuan, Papua New Guinea) (Gossner 1994: 55)
ne aha-dio
21
1SG go.ASP-AD.MIR
'I am leaving'
(33) Edolo (Papuan, Papua New Guinea) (Gossner 1994: 55)
ne-da Aeme-melë
1SG-FOC Aeme-AD.MIR
‘I am Aeme’
In (32) and (33) there is a piece of newsworthy information that the speaker shares with
the expectation that the addressee does not yet know it. In order to reinforce the
information as an announcement, he uses addressee-oriented miratives, which mark the
addressee’s expected change of awareness state.
2.5. Drama marking
In the New Guinea Highlands area there is another feature which can be included in the
mirative inventory: drama marking. Drama marking is similar to the announcement
function that addressee-oriented miratives have in that the speaker uses it in order to
express the fact that he/she wants the addressee to realize the transmitted information.
The difference lies in the fact that drama marking is used in storytelling rather than
announcements. The Duna drama markers provide an instantiation of this feature.
According to San Roque (2008: 353), “the morphemes -raka and -rakunu/-
rakuru (‘DRAMA’) are added to final verb predicates that describe past events and
indicate that this event was (or is) surprising, impressive, or contrary to expectations”. If
one compares this semantic description with the range of mirative meanings in
Aikhenvald’s definition, these markers have to be considered as another subcategory of
mirativity in Duna. This subcategory would then be defined as marking realization in
storytelling, with unexpectedness and surprise being the effects produced on a
pragmatic level.
The fact that it is described as aiming at producing a dramatic effect is translated
in the terms of the current analysis as being primarily addressee-oriented. Thus the
main goal of the speaker is not to mark their personal surprise by the content of the
proposition that they are communicating to the audience (which might of course also be
the case), but rather to stress the fact that they expect/want the audience to be
impressed or surprised. Consequently, it has a largely stylistic function, which is
corroborated by San Roque’s remark that “in the case of -rakur(/n)u, some Duna
speakers have explicitly said that it is used to make a story sound better and more
exciting” (San Roque 2008: 354). The example below illustrates the context in which
mirative: drama marking is encountered.
22
ho-na ruka-ta a-ya ka-roko, anene

here-SPEC dig.out-SEQ eat-DEP be/stand-SW.SIM pair
roma-ra-ka kundu-ta singa-raka
above-SHRD-LOC noise-SEQ arrive-MIR.DRAMA
‘[The two women] dug out the pig and were eating it, when the pair [of men]
arrived up there with a crash!’
A typological parallel of mirativity being used to make the information transmitted

sound more impressive is illustrated in example (34). In Kalasha, however, there is no
specific marking for addressee-oriented mirativity, as the same marking is used in
speaker-oriented contexts or contexts with no focus on a specific speech participant.
(35) Kalasha (Indo-Aryan, Pakistan) (DeLancey 1997: 47)
amerika’ bo hu'tala dur kai śi-an hu'la

America very high house make PST.PERF-3PL become.MIR.3
'In America there are very tall buildings.'
Context: The speaker has come back from America and tells his impressions.
2.6. Conclusion
This section has been an overview of a number of mirative markers found in languages
of the area of the New Guinea highlands. Its main purpose was to show that a
realization-based account of mirativity has direct consequences in the classification of
many markers that have so far been categorized mainly as evidentials because of the fact
that they lack the meaning of surprise. Under the umbrella of realization, there are
markers which form semantic subgroups and as such mirativity evolves into a category
which is not limited in marking only the two-way distinction [+mirative] vs. [-mirative].
Rather, there are mirative systems of greater complexity that combine mirativity with
tense and person marking in order to convey specialized meanings. Whereas in most
cases there are typological parallels to the Papuan data presented here, these languages
are of particular value for further studies because of the rich mirative systems they seem
to possess.
A challenge intrinsic to the nature of the study has been no other than proving
that the markers in question are mirative instead of something else. I do recognize this
limitation but I believe that the comparison of the available semantic descriptions with
23
the definition I provided in section 1, especially when the former are very thorough as in
the case of Duna, has functioned as a good guide which enabled me to show what kind of
markers fall under the category of mirativity when defined as realization marking.
24
3. Mirativity expressed through a broader category: the case of
indirectivity in Turkic
3.1. Grammatical expression of mirativity. Turkic in relation to other types

of grammatical marking
Mirativity can be expressed through dedicated markers as a category in its own right.
The following example from the Xamatauteri dialect of Yanomami shows the use of the
mirative marker -nohi, which always has a mirative meaning.
(36) Xamatauteri Yanomami (Yanomaman, Brazil) (Hengeveld & Olbertz 2012: 494)
Hei ëhë-rë të-horā-nohi-ku-i

PROX 2SG.POSS-TOP NONSPEC-REP-MIR-COP-WITN
‘This is the thing that, reportedly, is yours.’
Context: Said while showing to the owner a lost object that everybody was
looking for and that has just been discovered.
However, mirativity often shares its formal means of expression with other categories,
most notably evidentiality. Below is an example of the Tsafiki inferred evidential -nu-
(37) and its mirative usage (38):
Manuel ano fi-nu-e

Manuel food eat-INF.EV-DECL
‘Manuel has eaten.’
Context: The speaker sees the dirty dishes and infers that Manuel has eaten.
moto jo-nu-e
motorcycle be-MIR-DECL
‘It’s a motorcycle!’
Context: The speaker sees a motorcycle and realizes what it was that was
producing the noise he was hearing.
In Tsafiki, -nu- is a marker which makes part of the evidential system of the language
(the Tsafiki evidential system consists of three more evidential distinctions). However
there are also cases of languages where there is only one marker, which doesn’t make
25
part of a larger system, that can have both evidential and mirative functions. In Turkic
linguistics such a marker is called an indirective. In this section I will present indirective
data from a number of Turkic languages in an effort to shed light on this means of
mirativity marking.
The language sample chosen for this overview of Turkic indirectives includes one
language of each of the four major subfamilies of Turkic. The Southwestern (Oghuz)
branch is represented by Turkish (which I will use as a showcase for indirectivity), the
Northwestern (Kipchak) by Noghay, the Southeastern (Karluk/Uyghur) by Uzbek, and
the Northeastern (Siberian) by Dukhan. The other two branches of Turkic, Oghur (with
Chuvash as its only modern representative) and Khalaj (a language and separate branch
at the same time), are excluded from the present survey due to the scarcity of available
material.
3.2. The category of indirectivity in Turkish
Indirectivity is a category used by Johanson (e.g. 2000) for the description of a set of
Turkic markers, to which belongs Turkish -mIş. According to the author, “indirectivity is
the linguistic expression of ‘En appears to P’. This means that a narrated event En is not
stated directly, but in an indirect way: by reference to its reception by a conscious
subject P.” (Johanson 2000: 61). In languages lacking grammatical indirectivity, the
corresponding meanings are rendered by using lexical items such as the following in
English: obviously, as it seems, reportedly, apparently, it turns out that. Slobin & Aksu
(1982: 187) provide the following well-known trichotomy as a semantic analysis of the
marker –mIş, which is a typical indirective:
(39) Turkish (Slobin & Aksu 1982: 187)
Kemal gel-miş
Kemal come-IND
‘Kemal came.’
a) Inference: The speaker sees Kemal’s coat hanging in the front hall,
but has not yet seen Kemal.
b) Hearsay: The speaker has been told that Kemal has arrived,
but has not yet seen Kemal.
c) Surprise: The speaker hears someone approach,
opens the door and sees Kemal - a totally unexpected visitor.
-miş is here functionally opposed to the non-indirective past marker -DI:
26
(40) Turkish (Slobin & Aksu 1982: 187)
Kemal gel-di
Kemal come-PST
‘Kemal came’
In this classical example it can be observed that indirectivity can manifest as

evidentiality (39a,b) or mirativity (39c)7. This means that in indirective languages there
is a category which encompasses both evidentiality and mirativity and which has been
described on the basis of its function to mark that the event is perceived by the
concerned subject. Because of this mediation of the “conscious subject”, Lazard (e.g.
1999) calls the same category “mediativity”. Thus the difference between (39) and (40)
lies in the marking for gaining of awareness which is present in (39), i.e. the fact that the
speaker presents the communicated information through the prism of the “awareness of
a conscious mind” (Johanson 2000: 71).
Indirectivity is connected to aspect throughout Turkic. The aspectual distinction
found in this language group is essentially that of intraterminal vs. postterminal. These
terms refer to how an event is viewed as far as its limits are concerned. If an event is
viewed from within its limits, during the course of its duration, it receives intraterminal
marking. If it is viewed from a point situated after the attainment of its relevant limit it
receives postterminal marking. Johanson speaks of indirectivity as derived from
postterminality: “the indirect aspectual value of postterminality is reinterpreted and
grammaticalized as indirectivity” (Johanson 2000: 64)
3.3. Dukhan (Northeastern Turkic, Mongolia)
Unlike Turkish, where there is just one marker for indirectivity/mirativity/evidentiality,

in Dukhan there are several markers which work within this semantic space.
a. Indirective marker -(Ĭ)ptĬr
Ragagnin (2011: 157) notes that the marker, which is not very widely used in the
language, has a typical indirective function, as shown in the examples:
(41) Dukhan (Ragagnin 2011: 157)
Erdene gel-əptərə.
7Johanson (2000) speaks of "perceptive usage" instead of "surprise" for cases like (39 c) above. This
"perceptive usage" coincides with what I label as "realization".
27
Erdene come-IND
‘Erdene has arrived’ (as I became aware of by seeing his horse)
Uy uttəptər men!
INJ forget:IND I
‘Oof, I had forgotten (it) (as I suddenly became aware of)’
In (41), the realization that Erdene has arrived is due to the presence of the horse, which
makes this example an instantiation of the inferred evidentiality function of
indirectivity. In (42), there is no information source involved so the indirective
functions as a mirative.
b. Resultative marker -GAndĬr(Ĭ)
Although -GAndĬr(Ĭ) is a resultative marker, in narrative contexts it acquires realization

readings, and as such is a way of expressing mirativity:
Ïn-ǰa-ar-da la ol iβə te-p ol

that-V.DER-INTRA.VBN-LOC PTC that reindeer say-CB that
iβə-ler-nəŋ ol tayga gatay-ə ol guγər-ta-p

reindeer-PL-GEN that taiga woman-POSS3 that guγur-V.DER-CB
gïškər-əp suγər-əp tur-ar-ən šuptə-sən

scream-CB wail-CB stand-INTRA.VBN-POSS3.ACC all-POSS3.ACC
öören-əp pil-əp al-γandərə.

learn-CB know-CB take-RES
‘And by doing this, the woman of that taiga was able to learn all the gu-gur
sounds (onomatopoeic word for the cry of the reindeer), cries and whines of those
reindeer called reindeer, all of them.’
The marker -GAndĬr(Ĭ) present here in the phrase öören-əp pil-əp al-γandərə ‘was able
to learn’ carries the meaning “this is something noteworthy, you as the audience should
become aware of this”. The relation between resultative and mirative or indirective
marking is beyond the scope of this study, but it is important to note that they here
28
display a semantic connection.
c. Mirative marker iyen
iyen is a copula particle which is used to show “a clear cognitive or emotional

dissociation from the narrated event” (Ragagnin 2011: 181). Although the author lists it
under the category of epistemic particles, she clarifies that iyen “does not include any
epistemic nuances of doubt and presumption”(Ragagnin 2011: 181). As becomes evident
by the four ensuing examples, its semantics lie within the sphere of realization:
Dukhan (Ragagnin 2011: 181)
(44) Ö-ön-de ǰok iyen.

dwelling-POSS3-LOC non-existent MIR
‘It turns out that she is not in her tent.”
(45) Ata-sə iyen.

father-POSS3 MIR
‘Evidently, he is his father.’
(46) Ol ïn-ǰa-ar-da men töre-en turγan

that that-V.DER-INTRA.VBN-LOC I be.born-POST.VBN COP.PST
iyen.
MIR
‘Apparently, I was born in that situation.’
(47) On šak pol-də iyen.

ten hour become-PST MIR
‘Oh, it is ten o’clock! (as I suddenly became aware of)’
d. Indirective particle erγen
This particle is defined as a “specific indirective reportative marker of the epic/folklore

genre”(Ragagnin 2011: 185). As such I will treat it as an indirective marker used as a
hearsay evidential.
29
Ol aŋ-na-p tiiŋ-ne-p ǰïl-ləŋ tört

that game-V.DER-CB squirrel-V.DER-CB year-GEN four
erγəlde-sən-de aŋ-na-p tiiŋ-ne-p

season-POSS3-LOC hunt-V.DER-CB squirrel-V.DER-CB
amədəra-p ǰoro-or ǰime erγen.

live-CB move-INTRA.VBN thing IND
‘He hunted for big animals and small animals, he lived from hunting big animals
and small animals in the four seasons of the year.’
However, in the closely related linguistic variety of Tofan, ergen is described as a marker
of astonishment and surprise:
(49) Tofan (North-East Turkic) (Rassadin 1978: 269-270 through Ragagnin 2011: 186)
sen ïndïg ergen sen

2.SG such IND 2.SG
‘You turn out to be like that! (I did not expect you to be like that, now I know
what you really are like.)’
Given the hearsay and mirative functions of erγen, it is an indirective marker which
functions more as an evidential in Dukhan and more as a mirative in Tofan.
3.4. Noghay (North-Western Turkic, Caucasus)
Similarly to Dukhan, in Noghay there are also several means of expressing indirectivity:
a suffix and two particles. However, like in Turkish, there is no marker dedicated to
mirativity, since all three are general indirectives.
a. Indirective suffix -(I)ptI
This suffix is attested for the three indirective values: mirativity, inferred evidentiality
and hearsay. Examples are correspondingly as follows:
30
(50) Noghay (Karakoç 2005: 98)
men keš qal-ïppan

I late stay-IND.1SG
‘I’m late!’ (exclaimed while realizing what the time was)
Keš-te yamγïr yaw-ïptï

night-LOC rain fall-IND.3SG
‘During the night it rained’ (as I realize by seeing everything wet now)
Tünegün men-im Murat-ïm-nan sen-iŋ sis ayaq

yesterday I-GEN Murat-POSS.1SG-ABL you-GEN thin leg
qïz-ïŋ xat al-ïptï

daughter-POSS2 letter receive-IND.3SG
‘Your thin-legged daughter received yesterday (as I heard) a letter from my
Murat.’
b. Indirective particles eken and bolïptï
The particle eken has the same indirective functions. Examples (53), (54) and (55)
instantiate the mirative, the inferred and the hearsay one respectively:
O-o-o! Men-im master-ler-im, eŋ sïylï

Ooo I-GEN master-PL-POSS.1SG most honoured
qonaq-lar-ïm kel-gen eken-ler.

guest-PL-POSS.1SG come-PART IND-PL
‘Ooo! My masters, my most honoured guests have come!’ (As the speaker
suddenly realizes by seeing them in front of him)
Vasya bil-e-di eken telegramma-dïŋ kel-gen-i-n.
31
Vasya know-A-3SG IND telegram-GEN come-PART-POSS3-ACC
‘It turns out that Vasya knew that the telegram had come.’ (The speaker realizes
this after having read the content of a letter, infers the information from the
content of the letter)
Älim-ler-diŋ ayt-uw-larï-na köre, biz-im Dagïstan

scientist-PL-GEN say-INF-POSS3PL-DAT PP we-GEN Dagestan
noγay-lar burïn-γïsï köp sanlï Tümen orda-dan

Noghay-PL earlier-ADJ.DER very numerous Tümen horde-ABL
šïq-qan eken-ler.
originate-PART IND-PL
‘As the scientists say, our Dagestan Noghays originate from the more numerous
horde of the Tümens.’
Karakoç explains that the particle bolïptï as identical in function to eken (Karakoç 2005:
41-42). Corresponding examples are the following, whereby we have hearsay in (56),
inference in (57) and mirativity in (58):
yaša-ytaγan bolïptï
live-PART IND.3SG
‘She used to live’ (as it is said)
Sen-de-gi bu kitap ärüw bolïptï

2SG-LOC-ADJ.DER this book good IND.3SG
‘The book that you have is good.’ (inferred by the fact that the reader can’t take
their eyes of the book)
Mayïnc qala-sï yaxšï bolïptï

Mainz city-POSS3 beautiful IND.3SG
‘The city of Mainz is beautiful!’ (realized through direct perception)
32
3.5. Uzbek (Southeastern Turkic, Central Asia)
Uzbek is similar to Noghay in that indirective values are expressed by means of one
suffix, -(i)bdi, and two particles, ekæn and emiš. Here, too, there is no dedicated
mirative marker.
a. Indirective suffix -(i)bdi
This marker functions as its Noghay counterpart -(I)ptI, but there are no attestations for
inferred evidential uses. Mirativity and hearsay are represented in the examples below.
In (59) there is realization which leads to surprise and (60) is an instantiation of
hearsay.
(59) Uzbek (von Gabain 1945: 104, adapted spelling)
Öt-ib kör-di ki büri šu yer-de qan-i-γa

go-CB see-3SG that wolf that place-LOC blood-3POSS-DAT
buya-b yat-ibdi.
paint-CB lie-IND.3SG
‘He went and saw that the wolf lied at that place painted in its blood’ (to his
surprise)
(60) Uzbek (Coşkun 2000: 137)
lekin oq teg-ma-bdi
but arrow hit-NEG-IND.3SG
‘But the arrow didn’t hit [the object it was supposed to hit]’ (as the speaker was
told)
b. Indirective particles ekæn and emiš
These two particles display the same functions as -(i)bdi. Here, too, there are no
available data for inferred evidentiality functions. Examples (61) and (62) show the
mirative use, (63) and (64) the hearsay one.
33
(61) Uzbek (Bodrogligeti 2003: 777, adapted spelling)
Sæn xursand ekæn-sæn

2SG pleased IND-2SG
‘Apparently you are pleased!’
(62) Uzbek (Sjoberg 1963: 121, adapted spelling)
Sæn xursand emas-miš.

2SG happy NEG-IND
‘You apparently aren’t happy’
“Ukam” lab gapir-ar ekæn

younger.brother as speak-INTRA.PART IND
‘He would address him as ‘my younger brother’ (as they say)’
U-ni Satijoy Beg-iga xotinlik-ka ber-ar

3-ACC Satijoy bek-DAT marriage-DAT give-INTRA.PART
emiš-lær
IND-PL
‘They married her off to the Bek of Satijoy, so people say.’
3.6. Overview and concluding remarks
This section has provided an outline of the means that Turkic languages use in order to
express mirativity. The presented data shows that mirativity in Turkic is mostly
expressed through the category of indirectivity (Turkish, Dukhan, Noghay, Uzbek), but
in a more elaborate system like the one of Dukhan it can also be expressed through the
resultative marker or a dedicated mirative one.
Such an outline shows that there mirativity interacts with the notions of
evidentiality and resultativity. It further reveals that mirativity can be expressed through
a number of different means even within the same language or language family. Lastly,
it makes clear that mirativity is a salient feature of indirective systems, which as such
constitute an integral part of the expression of mirativity.
34
4. Mirativity in South America: the cases of Quechua, Andean
Spanish and Tsafiki
4.1. Mirativity in South America
South American languages sometimes display mirative marking, which is present in

different language families on the continent (e.g. Arawak, Quechuan, Barbacoan,
Cariban). In this section I will be presenting the best documented mirative systems of
South America, i.e. the ones of certain Quechua varieties, Andean Spanish and the
Barbacoan language Tsafiki. As we already saw in some Turkic languages, in this area
there are also dedicated mirative markers as well as markers which can be used to
convey both evidential and mirative meanings. The aim of this section is to give a clear
picture of the phenomenon of mirativity in the three languages/language families under
examination, which leads to a better understanding of how mirativity is
grammaticalized cross-linguistically.
4.2. Quechua
In what follows I will be presenting three ways of expressing mirativity in Quechua.

Firstly, a dedicated suffix integrated in the tense system of Quechua varieties of the
Central Peruvian Andes. This was described as the “sudden discovery tense” in Adelaar
(1977). Secondly, the aspect markers -ski and -ri in South Conchucos Quechua
(Northern Peruvian Andes). Thirdly, the suffix -sqa (which is also encountered as -shka
in varieties like Equadorean Highland Quichua, cf. Olbertz 2009). The uses of the latter
suffix across Quechua varieties encompass mirativity, (reported) evidentiality,
nominalization and aspect (Cole 1982, Lefebvre & Muysken 1988, Cusihuamán 1976,
Cerrón-Palomino 1994).
The dedicated mirative suffix found in the Quechua varieties spoken in the Peruvian
province of Tarma, department of Junín (Adelaar 2013: 95), has the form -na-/-naq. In
terms of grammatical organization of the language, it is part of the tense system. This is
shown in the following table:
Table 1. Tense in Tarma Quechua (Adelaar 2013: 101)
Present/unmarked wata-n “He/she ties (it)”
Future wata-nqa “He/she will tie (it)”
35
Past wata-ra “He/she tied (it)”
Mirative wata-naq “It turns out that he/she

had tied (it)”
Habitual/narrative past wata-q “He/she used to tie (it)”.

“He/she would tie (it)”
A typical example of the use of the Tarma Quechua mirative would be the following, in
which the suffix -na- denotes realization. In narrative contexts, as is the case in (3), it is
generally addressee-oriented (Adelaar 2013: 96):
yarga-ra-:ri-na-: masya:du karu-ta-m

go.upward-PERV-PL-MIR-1A/S too.much far-ACC-CERT
'We realised that we had climbed too far.'
What is interesting, however, is that this marker is also used in interrogative

expressions. The most prominent use is what Adelaar (2013: 104) calls “the
experimental mirative” because it appears in contexts where the speaker encourages the
addressee to perform an experiment. The experimental mirative is a construction which
obligatorily includes the following three elements: a) interrogative element
(interrogative pronoun or polar question marker -chu), b) reported evidential, c)
mirative marker. Consider the example from Tarma Quechua and its parallel from the
neighbouring Huanca dialect:
wipi-ru-y ma: ayga-sh ga-naq

weigh-PERV-2A/S.IMP let_us_see how.much-REP be-3A/S.MIR
‘Weigh it, let us see how much it is!’
(65) Huanca Quechua (Floyd 1999:50 through Adelaar 2013: 105)
ma: mayan-man-shi chay illay-kuna-:-ta u-ña

let_us_see who-ALL-REP that money-PL-DEF-ACC give-3A/S.MIR
‘Let us find out who he gave the money to.’
36
Mirative marking with future reference also occurs elsewhere. In Mishar Tatar (Turkic)
there is a prospective mirative construction consisting of the verb stem with the future
converb ɤr and the auxiliary -i together with the perfect marker kän. The prospective
mirative marks realization of the fact that something is going to happen.
(66) Mishar Tatar (Tatevosov 2007: 410)
zinnur jakl-ar i-kän

Zinnur sleep-FUT AUX-PFCT
Zinnur is going to sleep (as I realize).
The other case when the mirative is used in an interrogative sentence lacks the reported
evidential of the above construction and does not display the meaning of challenge or
unexpected outcome. This use is illustrated in the example below:
(67) Pacaraos Quechua (Adelaar 2013: 105)
wikuña aská-s ka-rqu-ñaq o icha-lá-s

vicuña many-INTER be-PERV-3A/S.MIR or few-DIM-INTER
‘Did you find that there were many vicuñas or just a few?’
In the Northern Peruvian Andes, the marker -na: is also used with a mirative function,
but unlike in the Central Peruvian varieties I discussed above, the mirative value
coexists with aspect and tense marking. Further, it only appears in the narrative genre
(as opposed to everyday speech). This is illustrated in the following examples from
South Conchucos Quechua. In (68) -na: is an aspect and tense marker: it denotes
imperfective aspect in the past. In (69) it conveys the mirative value of unexpectedness
(referring to the listener of the story).
(68) South Conchucos Quechua (Hintz 2011: 82)
punta-ta-qa “Ni:ku-m apa-sh” ni-ya:-na:

first-ADV-TOP Niko-DIR take-PST.R3 say-PL.V-PST.N
‘At first they were saying (to our neighbors), “Niko took it”.’
ke:-no: baha:da-qa kurba kurba kurba kurba tse:-no:-pa

this-SIM descent-TOP curve curve curve curve that-SIM-GEN
dere:chu-n-pa pa:sa-ski-ya:-na:=ka-: mana kurba-ta
37
straight-3-GEN PASS-PFV-PL.V-PST.N=be-1 no curve-OBJ
tuma-ypa
turn-ADV
‘Though the path descended with many curves, we were going straight down
without following the switchbacks.’
Hintz (2011: 84) notes that in texts belonging to the narrative genre (elicited folktales
and legends), the aspectual meaning is not discernible in the marker. As such, -na: in
(69) only has the values of mirativity and tense.
Interestingly, South Conchucos Quechua also exhibits two other aspect markers
that have mirative uses: perfective -ski and punctual -ri. They encode two different
meanings, counterexpectation vs. unexpectedness, notions I briefly touched upon in
section 1.4. The suffix -ski carries the counterexpectation meaning: it “indicates that a
prior expectation held by discourse participants does not turn out accordingly” (Hintz
2011: 137). The suffix -ri carries the unexpectedness meaning, i.e. “reports that a
completely unanticipated situation arises” (Hintz 2011: 137). As such, in the case of -ski
there is an expectation that is dismissed by an event, whereas in the case of -ri there is
no prior expectation with regard to the event which is taking place. Consider the
examples (70) and (71). In these examples -ski and -ri appear in the form of their
lowered allomorphs -ska and -ra.
mikru-wan-na-m shamu-ra-: Ca:tac-pita-qa. tse:-pita

small.bus-COM-NOW-DIR come-PST-1 Catac-ABL-TOP that-ABL
cha-ska-mu-ru-:
arrive-PFV-FAR-PST.R-1
‘Next I came from Catac on a small bus. From there I arrived here faster than I
anticipated.’
pay-mer cha:-ra-ya:-mu-ra-n ñi:ñu-wan

he-DIR arrive-PUNC-PL.V-FAR-PST-3 cute.kid-COM
hana-man-pis ari
above-ALL-EVEN yes
‘He arrived totally unannounced to the high place with his adorable child.’
38
In (70) the speaker’s prior expectation that he would arrive at a certain time was
dismissed by the fact that he arrived earlier. In (71) the speaker saw someone arriving
with his child, which is an event that happened without the speaker having mentally
prepared for it. Unlike example (70), here there is no specific prior expectation that is
being refuted.
Hintz (2011: 139) notes that the two markers differ from each other in that -ski
systematically expresses mirativity, whereas -ri only in certain contexts, which makes
the latter a mirative strategy. The following proposed grammaticalization paths
(adapted from Hintz 2011: 140, 142) provide a tentative explanation8 for the way in
which the markers -ski and -ri came to encode aspect and mirativity meanings.
-ski: SPACE ‘toward’ > PERFECTIVE ASPECT ‘attainment of limit’ > MANNER ‘rapid
action’ > EPISTEMIC MODALITY ‘low surprise value’ > MIRATIVITY ‘unprepared
mind, realization’
-ri: SPACE ‘go’ > PUNCTUAL ASPECT ‘limited duration’ > MANNER ‘sudden action’ >
EPISTEMIC MODALITY ‘high surprise value’ > MIRATIVITY ‘unprepared mind,
realization’ > GENERAL MODALITY ‘consequence, responsibility’
In Quechua II, which comprises the varieties spoken in areas other than central Peru
(Quechua I), the marker which renders the mirative meanings covered by -na- in
Quechua I is -sqa (and its variants). Consider the examples from Ecuadorian and Cuzco
Quechua:
(72) Ecuadorian Quechua9 (Muysken 1977: 418)
Intonsi lindu radiyu-da trayi-shka

then nice radio-ACC bring-MIR
‘Then it turned out they’d brought a nice radio.’
(73) Cuzco Quechua (Faller 2004: 53)
Yuraq-man-mi tuku-chi-sqa.
white-ILLA-BPG become-CAUS-MIR
‘She painted [the house] white.’
8
The explanation is “tentative” because there is no solid evidence that can prove the validity of Hintz’s
reconstructions.
9
This example could be considered as Media Lengua because all the lexical items are borrowed from
Spanish.
39
(74) Cuzco Quechua (Faller 2004: 53)
Kay-pi-(má) ka-sha-sqa Marya-qa

this-LOC-SURP10 be-PROG-MIR Marya-TOP
‘Marya is here!’
This marker, often referred to as “non-experienced past” in the literature, is in terms of

semantics comparable to the Turkic indirectives (Faller 2004: 46-7). In examples (72-
74) -sqa/-shka has a realization meaning: The speech participants mark the fact that
they gain awareness about the event. In (74) the speaker opens the door and suddenly
sees Marya. In this case there is a sudden discovery leading to surprise, which here
appears to be a submeaning of the emphatic evidential má.
4.3. Andean Spanish
Andean Spanish has presumably adopted mirative semantics in its tense system as a
result of contact with Quechua (and Aymara). What we saw as -na-/-ña in Quechua I
(examples 3, 7, 65, 67) and as -sqa/-shka in Quechua II (examples 72-74) has been
calqued in Andean Spanish as follows: In Spanish varieties of Peru, Bolivia and the
North-East of Argentina these mirative values are grammaticalized through the
pretérito pluscuamperfecto (pluperfect), whereas in Ecuador the pretérito perfecto
compuesto (present perfect) is used (de Granda 2002: 108). Consider examples (75) and
(76a,b). In (76b) one can observe the Quechua construction on basis of which the
Spanish one in (76a) has arisen.
(75) Peruvian Spanish (Escalante & Valderrama 1992: 118 through Adelaar 2013: 107)
así había_sido la voluntad del Taytacha

like_that be.3SG.PLUPERFECT ART.F will of.ART.M God
‘That is how God’s will turned out to be.’
(76a) rural Ecuadorian Highland Spanish (Muysken 1985: 391)
Rico ha_sido
good be.PRF.3SG
‘It is good!’
10
Faller glosses –má as a surprisal but it is actually an emphatic evidential consisting of the BPG
evidentail –m(i) and the emphasis marker –á. Surprise is only one of its varied uses, which can be found
in Cusihuamán 1976.
40
(76b) Ecuadorian Quechua (Muysken 1985: 391)
Alli-mi ga-shka-ø
good-ASS be-PRF-3.SG
‘It is good (indeed)!’
Alongside the present perfect, in Ecuadorian Highland Spanish the pluperfect is also
used as a mirative marker but then with past reference:
(77) Ecuadorian Highland Spanish (Kany 1970: 208 through Olbertz 2012: 85)
pero no había_habido hueco-s en la roca

but NEG exist.PLUPERFECT.3SG hole-PL in the rock
‘But it turned out there were no holes in the rock.’
4.4. Tsafiki
Besides Quechua and Spanish, mirativity in South America is also found extensively in
Barbacoan, a language family situated in Colombia and Ecuador. I will here briefly
present mirative marking in Tsafiki, a language of the western lowlands of Ecuador.
Barbacoan languages have a congruent/non-congruent marking system (also called
conjunct/disjunct), which, according to Dickinson (2000), is the means of expression of
mirativity. As such, mirative marking in Tsafiki is of an idiosyncratic nature compared
to the rest of the data presented in this thesis. Apart from congruent/non-congruent
marking, mirativity in Tsafiki can also be expressed through a semantic extension of the
inferential evidential.
The conjunct/disjunct system is common in Tibeto-Burman languages, of which
Barbacoan languages are a striking typological parallel. Detailed information for Tibeto-
Burman can be found in DeLancey (1990, 1992, 1997). Here I will only include Tsafiki
data, which are very similar in nature. “Congruent” marking in Tsafiki indicates that
“the information contained in the proposition is congruent with the speaker’s general
knowledge” (Dickinson 2000: 383). “Non-congruent” indicates the opposite, i.e. that the
speaker (or any speech participant which functions as primary in the given proposition)
is becoming aware of something they were previously not aware of. In Tsafiki there are
three possibilities for congruent/non-congruent marking: a) congruent marker -yo, b)
non-congruent marker -i and c) absence of marker.
The congruent marker is used in non-mirative contexts, mainly in first-person
declarative and second-person interrogative sentences:
41
(78) Tsafiki (Dickinson 2000: 383)
tse Tsachi jo-yo-e

1.FEM Tsachi be-CONGR-DECL
‘I am a Tsachi.’
nu seke tera ki-yo-n?

2 good dance do-CONGR-INT
‘Did you dance well?’
The non-congruent marker carries the mirative meaning. It is used for the same persons
and sentence types as the congruent one, but expresses the generic mirative value of
realization. In many contexts this is used to indicate that the primary speech participant
did not realize what was happening at the time when it happened, or did something
unintentionally.
(80a) Tsafiki (Dickinson 2000: 394)
la ke-ere-i-i-e
1.MASC throw-send-become-NONCONGR-DECL
‘I fell’ (unexpectedly)
In this example the speaker fell suddenly and had no psychological preparation for the
fall. It contrasts with (80b), where the speaker was walking on slippery ground
conscious of the danger of falling, as well as conscious of the fall while it was happening:
(80b) Tsafiki (Dickinson 2000: 394)
la ke-ere-i-yo-e
1.MASC throw-send-become-CONGR-DECL
‘I fell’
In (81) we observe the standard meaning of (sudden) realization.
Carlos=be tse in=te fa-i-e

Carlos=ASSOC 1.FEM DEM=LOC arrive.here-NONCONGR-DECL
‘I’ve come here (before) with Carlos’ (as I just realized)
42
An absence of a congruent/non-congruent marker typically occurs with unmarked
second and third person declarative sentences, as well as third person questions.
Example (82) is an illustration of this last possibility within the Tsafiki congruent/non-
congruent system:
ya/nu Tsachi jo-e

3/2 Tsachi be-DECL
‘He is a Tsachi./You are a Tsachi.’
As seen briefly in the previous section (3.1), in Tsafiki mirativity can also be expressed
through the inferential evidential -nu-. Tsafiki has an evidential system which consists
of direct evidence (unmarked), inference from present evidence (-nu-), inference from
general knowledge (nominalizer + verb class marker) and hearsay (-ti-). Compare the
two examples with the marker -nu-:
Manuel ano fi-nu-e

Manuel food eat-EV-DECL
Manuel has eaten.
Context: The speaker sees the dirty dishes and infers that Manuel has eaten.
moto jo-nu-e
motorcycle be-MIR-DECL
‘It’s a motorcycle!’
Context: The speaker sees a motorcycle and realizes what it was that was
producing the noise he was hearing.
4.5. Overview
In this section I examined the most prominent mirative phenomena of the South
American continent. I showed that mirativity, conceived as realization marking, is in
this area expressed through (synchronically) dedicated markers, aspect markers,
evidentiality markers as well as through non-congruent marking. These morphological
means of expression of mirativity, all of which have parallels in other areas of the world,
43
shed light on the notion of realization as a grammatical meaning from a global
perspective.
44
5. Surprise as an implicature of realization: applying implicature
criteria
5.1. Theoretical Background
The present analysis will be based on basic Gricean principles, without adopting any
more specific theoretical framework. This serves the purpose of describing mirative
semantics in a neutral manner, which can be of use for any linguist regardless their
theoretical affiliations. Such an analysis aims above all to shed more light on mirativity
as a descriptive category (or subcategory in those languages where the mirative
marker(s) is/are also used for the expression of another grammatical notion). I will start
by providing a brief overview of the notions relevant to the present analysis.
The notion of ‘implicature’ is introduced by philosopher Grice and his account of
speaker meaning. Grice (1989) argues that meaning comprises essentially a semantic
and a pragmatic component. The part which belongs to semantics is defined as “what is
said”, whereas the pragmatic component is referred to as “what is implicated”. The latter
is the implicature and is divided into “conventional” and “conversational”.
Horn (2004) provides the following illustrative example of a conventional
implicature:
(83) “Even KEN knows it’s unethical.” (Horn 2004: 3)
Here the word “even” induces the inference that
(83’) “Ken is the least likely [of a contextually invoked set] to know it’s unethical.”
This kind of inference (implicature) is not dependent on the truth conditions of the
proposition, because the latter is always true when Ken knows it’s unethical and vice
versa. Further, it displays the following properties, which apply to all conventional
implicatures:
a. non-cancelability, because it is triggered automatically by the use of the word

“even”
b. detachability, because it does not always arise from the same truth conditions.
The proposition “Ken knows it’s unethical” has the same truth conditions as
“Even KEN knows it’s unethical”, yet it does not trigger the inference that Ken is
not likely to know it’s unethical.
The category of conventional implicatures has been the target of criticism by researchers
like Bach (1999) and Potts (2005). However, as conventional implicatures are not
45
directly relevant to the present study, I will not elaborate on the issue; instead I will
focus on conversational implicatures.
An implicature is characterized as conversational when it is triggered by the
context in which the utterance is uttered. The mechanism through which an implicature
arises from the situation surrounding the utterance resides in the cooperative nature of
conversation. This is what Grice calls the Cooperative Principle: “Make your
conversational contribution such as required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the
accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange” (Grice 1989: 26). This principle is
governed by the the following maxims, conceived as tools which enable discourse
analysis (Grice 1989: 26-7):
QUALITY: Try to make your contribution one that is true.

1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
2. Do not say that for which you lack evidence.
QUANTITY:
1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the
exchange).
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
RELATION: Be relevant.
MANNER: Be perspicuous.
1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief. (Avoid unnecessary prolixity.)
4. Be orderly.
Let us now consider the following example:
(84) Jones dresses well and writes grammatical English. (Horn 2004: 4)
If this is a recommendation for someone applying for a secretary position, then the
hearer would infer it is a positive recommendation. If, however, it is uttered in a context
where Jones is applying for a philosophy position without any reference to his
philosophy skills, then (84) cannot be understood as a positive referral, as in that case it
would blatantly violate the cooperative principle by contradicting the maxims of
quantity and relation. The utterance would be less informative than required and
irrelevant to the situation. By taking into account these maxims, though, the inference
that arises from the context is (84’):
46
(84’) Jones is not good at philosophy.
This explanation reveals the first property of conversational implicatures, calculability,

meaning that they are calculable (i.e. they arise) from the context by taking the
cooperative principle into consideration.
In contrast with conventional implicatures, conversational ones such as (84’)
display the property of cancelability, i.e. they can be refuted by the addition of a relevant
clarification, as shown in the following adapted version of (84):
(84’’) Jones dresses well and writes grammatical English, but his impressive philosophy
skills cannot be called into question.
Another property of conversational implicatures is non-detachability, i.e. unlike in the

case of (83) any other way of expressing the content of (84) with the same truth
conditions would result, in the presence of the same context, to the same inference (84’).
The fourth and last property that conversational implicatures display is variability,
which means that there are contexts in which the speaker can utter the same utterance
without the implicature arising. This is indeed the case here, as, according to what I
argued above, (84) would not lead to (84’) if Jones was a candidate for a secretary
position.
5.2. Applying implicature criteria
In this section I will be using the tools provided by the implicature theory to set up an
experiment for testing the hypothesis that the meaning of ‘surprise’ functions as a
conversational implicature in mirative instantiations. The idea is to apply the
implicature criteria to mirative instantiations from five languages that are not related
either historically or by contact. This experiment has been carried out only partially,
since I only had access to native speakers of Turkish and Ecuadorian Highland Spanish.
For the rest of the languages that appear below (Duna, Hare and Balti), my claims have
not been developed with the help of a native consultant and as such are of a speculative
character.
5.2.1. Duna
(11) Duna (San Roque 2008: 326, my emphasis)
Ke neya-noi.
See NOT-PRES.MIR
47
‘[You] didn’t see [me] {I realise}.’ [Context: The speaker (A) had been to the
market in the company of a certain person (B). The addressee (C) has just said that she
saw B at the market, with the implication that C thought A was not there.]
(11’) Conversational implicature: ‘I am surprised by the fact that you did not see me.’
Cancelability: The implicature can be cancelled by the addition of a phrase meaning “but
this is not surprising”: ‘I now realize that you did not see me, but I am not surprised by
the fact that you did not see me.’ This is not the case when the mirative marker -noi is
accompanied by the specificity marker -na, which functions as an exclamative and thus
always conveys surprise:
(85) Duna (San Roque 2008: 327)
haka kone waki-noi-na

talk INTENS hear-PRES.MIR-SPEC
‘She understood Duna!’ [Context: A woman has just observed Lila San Roque
correctly interpret and act on a command given in Duna.]
Calculability: The implicature is calculable from the context and the cooperative
principle in the following way: A and B had been to the market together. C saw B in the
market. C did not see A in the market. A is told by C that C did not see A. A says after
that that C did not see A. According to the maxim of quantity, the latter statement does
not have any place in the discussion, as it offers no contribution to the subject. In order
for the utterance of A to be informative, we have to assume that the contribution made
by A when he/she repeats that A did not see C and A only realizes this now is no other
than to indicate the surprise of A at this discovery they just made.
Non-detachability and variability: Any way of expressing (11) with the same truth
conditions in the same contexts leads to (11’), given that in (11) there are no modifiers
(like “even” in example 83) which bring about a specific meaning not included in the
truth conditions. The fact that the variability criterion also applies here is shown
through the cancelability criterion, i.e. with the proper context change the implicature
does not arise.
5.2.2. Turkish
(consultant: Ayça Alaylı)
(86) Saç-lar-ın çok güzel ol-muş.

hair-PL-2SG very beautiful become-IND
48
‘Your hair looks great!’
Context: A and B had been arguing about B wanting to paint her hair red. A had been
saying that B should not do so because red hair did not fit B’s serious profile. B paints
her hair nevertheless and when A sees her, A makes the observation (86).
(86’) Conversational implicature: ‘It is surprising that your hair looks this good.’
Cancelability: The implicature can be cancelled with the addition of a phrase, as the one
in (87), which shows that the semantics of this mirative use of the indirective -mIş do
not extend beyond the value of realization.
(87) Saç-lar-ın çok güzel ol-muş. Ama sen her.zaman

hair-PL-2SG very beautiful become-IND but 2SG always
güzel-sin.
beautiful-2SG
‘Your hair looks great. But [this is hardly surprising as] you always look great.’
Calculability: The implicature is calculable from the context and the cooperative
principle in the following way: A had said B would not look good with red hair. After B
has disregarded A’s advice and painted her hair, B communicates to A that she does look
good after all. The quality maxim, which suggests that the speaker’s contribution must
be true and supported by evidence, leads to the interpretation that A has changed her
mind. She claims all of a sudden something which contradicts her expectations and is,
as such, surprising to herself.
Non-detachability: If the truth conditions of (86) are rendered in any other way, the
same implicature arises. One could for instance say ‘Saç-lar-ın süper-mış’ [hair-PL-2.SG
great-IND] ‘Your hair looks great’ in the same context and (86’) would also apply.
Variability: This criterion applies to (86’) if there are contexts in which (86) can be
uttered without (86’) arising. Example (87) above can be linked to such a context. Let us
consider the following situation: A and B meet each other. B has just had a haircut, but
A was not present at the hairdresser’s. However she knew that B would go to the
hairdresser’s. A compliments B with the utterance in (87). A uses the mirative form in
order to indicate that she can only realize that the haircut is nice now that she sees B,
but A is not surprised because, given the fact that B always looks great, A had not
expected otherwise.
49
5.2.3. Hare
(88) Hare (DeLancey 1997: 39)
heee, gúhde daweda! ch'ifi dach'ída lõ!

hey up.there sit guy sit MIR
‘Hey, he’s sitting up there! The guy is sitting up there!’
Context: An ogre is being harassed with branches thrown on him. When he looks up and
discovers the origin of the branches, the ogre says (88).
(88’) Conversational implicature: ‘I am surprised that the guy is sitting up there.’
Cancelability and variability: The implicature can be cancelled through the addition of a
phrase meaning “but that’s hardly surprising, as someone has been throwing branches
at me from above”. The mirative marker lõ would still apply in this case, as the ogre was
previously not aware of the exact position of the guy, so when he discovers him he has to
mark his discovery with the realization marker. Similarly, such an addition of a phrase
creates automatically a different context, i.e. one which excludes surprise as a meaning
which is part of the utterance. The property of variability is thus hereby also shown to
apply to this example.
Calculability: The implicature can be calculated from the context as follows: The ogre
does not know where the branches come from. He first looks around him and, when he
finds nobody around, he turns his head up and sees a guy seated above him on a tree. As
he was not expecting someone to be seated on a tree above him, the sudden awareness
that a guy is there throwing branches at him is accompanied by a concomitant surprise
effect. This surprise effect is highlighted by the exclamative tone of the utterance as well
as the repetition of the phrase [the guy] is sitting [up there].
Non-detachability: This property is difficult to test here, but given that all the other
criteria apply one would expect it to apply as well just as in the Duna and Turkish
examples.
5.2.4. Ecuadorian Highland Spanish

(consultant: Eduardo Portilla Hernández)
(89) Ecuadorian Highland Spanish (Hengeveld & Olbertz 2012: 493)
Me dieron penicilina a ver si

me.DAT give.PST.PF.3PL penicillin to see if
50
era alérgico, y… he sido
be.PST.IMPF.1SG allergic and AUX.PRES.1SG COP.RES
alérgico.
allergic
‘They gave me penicillin to see if I was allergic and . . . (it turns out) I am allergic.’
Context: The speaker narrates how they discovered that he was allergic to penicillin.
There was no indication that he was allergic to penicillin, but the doctor wanted to test it
in order to see if he could be prescribed the medicine.
(89’) Conversational Implicature: The discovery that I was allergic to penicillin came as
a surprise to me.
Cancelability and variability: The context of such a mirative instantiation (AUX.PRES +

COP.RES, originally used as a present perfect, is the way to express mirativity in
Ecuadorian Highland Spanish) can be slightly modified in, for instance, the following
way: ‘After I reported that I didn’t think I could tolerate penicillin well, they gave me
some to test if I was indeed allergic and it turned out I was allergic.’ The meaning of
surprise is here irrelevant, as there were enough indications which made everybody
suspect that there was a penicillin allergy. The mirative can still be used to indicate that
this was so far no established fact, but the test served as the trigger of the final
realization that the person was allergic. Thus surprise is cancelable. This altered context
shows the fact that variability is here also applicable, as in this latter case the utterance
“he sido alérgico” does not give rise to the implicature (89’).
Calculability: The implicature is calculable by the context as follows: The speaker had no
previous knowledge of the fact that he was allergic to penicillin. By the test that the
doctor performed on him it was shown that he had indeed an allergy. As the speaker had
not expected such an outcome, he was surprised. The presence of the surprise effect is
corroborated by the ellipsis (...) which precedes the mirative verb and indicates that
mirativity is here important from a narrative point of view (peak of the narration, cf. Dry
1992: 440).
Non-detachability: The implicature in (89’) would also arise if the truth conditions of
(89) were expressed by means of another utterance, like ‘Hice la prueba y he sido
alérgico a la penicilina’ [do.PST.1SG ART test and AUX.PRES.1.SG COP.RES allergic to ART
penicillin] ‘I did the test and turned out to be allergic to penicillin’.
51
5.2.5. Balti (Tibeto-Burman)
(90) Balti (Jones 2009: 53 through Bashir 2010: 19)
rkunma badši khar čaq-khan-po khyaŋ

thief king.GEN palace break-doer-DEF 2.SG
in-maŋ
be-MIR
‘Thief! You are the person who broke into the king’s palace.’
Context: The police discover the identity of the thief when they smell his perfume.
(Before that they had not considered him a suspect.)
(90’) Conversational Implicature: ‘It is surprising that he is the thief!’
Calculability: The implicature is calculable as follows: The police did not know that the
person they have in front of them is the thief and do not expect him to. When they
perceive that he is the actual thief, the realization they utter entails surprise because it
clashes with their previous state of knowledge. One may argue that the maxims of
quantity and manner are relevant here for the rendering of the surprise meaning, given
that the realization marking is, given the context, enough to convey surprise and no
further specification is needed. (The exclamative nature of the sentence is in fact one
more indicator of surprise —see Olbertz 2009, but this is difficult to be used as a
criterion since the data I could collect are not accompanied by intonation information.)
Cancelability and variability: The implicature can cease to exist if the context changes.
In order to show that the variability criterion does apply, let us posit that the police
already had indications which led them to consider him as the main suspect but so far
they had failed to collect any tangible evidence. The fact that they found out a way to
prove his guilt cannot lead to any surprise connotation, since their awareness of the guy
being the thief did not change. As such the mirative -maŋ could be a surprise-free
realization marker. Through this illustration of variability I have shown that
cancelability also applies, since it is possible for the surprise meaning to be cancelled
through the change of context.
Non-detachability: As is also the case with the Hare example, it is here difficult to test
other possible ways of expressing the same truth conditions, but like in the rest of the
examples this criterion is expected to apply here as well.
52
5.3. Concluding remarks
In this section I have tried to show that there are cases of mirative instantiations in
which the ‘surprise’ part of the mirative range of meanings can be accounted for as an
implicature. This leads to shifting ‘surprise’ to the periphery of a semantic account of
mirativity in the sense that it is not a criterial meaning for labelling a marker as
‘mirative’. The common feature of the mirative markers in all these examples resides in
the ‘realization’ semantics, whereas the possible presence of the ‘surprise’ meaning is
calculable from the context and consequently the pragmatic mechanism presented
above is sufficient to account for its presence.
I do not disregard the fact that in many cases the distinction between semantics
and pragmatics can be blurry and that the notions of realization and surprise might not
be as easily separable from one another as in the examples I have provided in this
section. An additional weak point of the method used here is that for three of the
languages I did not have access to native speakers who can confirm the exact meaning of
the marker in different contexts, which left me with my own intuition and the limited
relevant information provided in the existing sources I took into account for all the tests
I performed.
Nevertheless, this section, conceived as an attempt to argue that surprise can be a
mere implicature in a number of unrelated mirative instantiations from across the
globe, does show that there are grounds to believe that surprise is not a core/criterial
meaning of mirativity. This stance is clearly corroborated by the abundance of examples
of mirative marking which exclude overtones of surprise that have been included in the
different sections of the thesis.
53
6. Comparing the data
6.1. A comparative approach to the data presented
This last section will provide a comparison of the data presented in this thesis. It will
explore the patterns and conclusions that arise from the juxtaposition of data from
different languages. The comparison will focus on the two following points: a) means of
expression of mirativity and b) any specific semantics that individual markers display
under the umbrella of the notion ‘realization’.
6.2. How mirativity grammaticalizes
Throughout the previous sections there have been many references to the different ways
in which a mirative meaning can grammaticalize. Putting together the various
morphological means through which mirativity appears results in the following five-way
categorization into dedicated mirative markers, indirective markers, aspect markers,
inferred evidentials and non-congruent (disjunct) markers. I have included the markers
found in all examples throughout the thesis, including those of section 1, which, unlike
sections 2, 3 and 4, does not focus on a specific area or language family.
Table 2: Mirativity expressed through a dedicated affix, particle or

construction
Duna current mirative -noi
past mirative -narua/-norua
drama -raka
drama -rakunu/-rakuru
Kyaka Enga deferred mirative -pya
Western Apache lęḱ’eh
Onobasulu addressee-oriented -me

mirative
Edolo addressee-oriented -dio

mirative
54
addressee-oriented -melë
mirative
Xamatauteri Yanomami -nohi
Tarma Quechua addressee-oriented -na-

mirative
Huanca & Pacaraos -ña-

Quechua
Hare lõ
Chechen -q
Balti -maŋ
Dukhan iyen
Tofan ergen
Kham o-le-o
Table 3: Mirativity expressed through an indirective affix, particle or construction
Turkish -mIş
Dukhan -(Ĭ)ptĬr
erγen
Noghay -(I)ptI
eken
bolïptï
Uzbek -(i)bdi
ekæn
emiš
Quechua II -sqa
Mishar Tatar synthetic perfect constructions
55
Table 4: Mirativity expressed through an aspect affix or construction
Dukhan resultative -GAndĬr(Ĭ)
South Conchucos imperfective in the past -na:

Quechua
perfective -ski
punctual -ri
Andean Spanish present perfect auxiliary in the present +

past participle
pluperfect auxiliary in the imperfect

+ past participle
Magar construction with verb stem + nominalizer +

imperfective marker imperfective copula
particle le
Table 5: Mirativity expressed through an inferred evidential
Yukaghir l’el
Tsafiki -nu-
Table 6: Mirativity expressed through a non-congruent/disjunct affix or particle
Tsafiki -i
Balti yod
For this categorization I have relied strictly on the description and examples provided in
the literature. As such, I consider Dukhan erγen an indirective but Tofan ergen a
mirative, despite the fact that the two markers are in fact the same particle in two very
closely related varieties. I have also chosen to rely to the greatest possible extent on
synchronic and variety-specific semantics, given that for instance a marker which
56
functions primarily as a mirative in a specific variety might have also been an aspect
marker at earlier stages or still be one in related linguistic varieties. Finally, I have
adapted the author’s characterization of the markers which are not called miratives in
the literature due to the fact that the author does not conceive of mirativity as
realization marking.
6.3. Subcategorizations of miratives
In the data presented in this thesis we can also observe some patterns regarding the
specific semantics that certain markers express in relation to time and person (speech
participant). When mirativity is grammaticalized together with time marking, the
following mirative markers can occur: current mirative, past mirative, prospective
mirative, experimental mirative and deferred mirative. Regarding combinations with
the category of person, the only mirative subcategory that can be observed in the data
included in this thesis is the one of addressee-oriented mirativity.
In languages such as Duna and Ecuadorian Spanish, the time specified by the
mirative marker is the time of the realization. As such, the current mirative denotes
realization taking place at a time simultaneous with that of the utterance, while the past
mirative denotes realization which took place at a time which preceded the one of the
utterance. In languages such as Tatar, the mirative constructions that include a time
reference target the time of occurrence of the event and not the time of realization. Thus
the Tatar past mirative construction refers to a realization about a past event. Similarly,
the prospective mirative construction denotes realization regarding an imminent event.
In Quechua the experimental mirative cannot be classified based on the
distinction marking of time of realization vs. marking of time of occurrence of the event,
since both of them take place in the (imminent) future. The experimental mirative is
also different than the prospective mirative in that it only appears in questions (direct or
embedded). Concerning deferred miratives, we saw that they mark the existence of a gap
between the time of occurrence of the event and the time of realization.
Table 7: Miratives with temporal reference
Duna current mirative (current -noi

realization)
past mirative (past -narua/-norua

realization)
Ecuadorian Spanish current mirative (current present perfect
57
realization)
past mirative (past past perfect

realization)
Mishar Tatar current mirative (current verb stem + imperfective

event) converb a + i-kän
past mirative (past event) verb stem + perfective

participle gan + i-kän
prospective mirative verb stem + future

(imminent event) converb ɤr + i-kän
Tarma and Huanca experimental mirative interrogative element +

Quechua (imminent event and reported evidential -shi +
realization) mirative marker -na-/-ña-
Kyaka Enga deferred mirative -pya
Yukaghir deferred mirative l’el
Western Apache deferred mirative lęḱ’eh
Addressee-oriented mirativity is the last semantic subcategorization of miratives that I

propose. It has two basic uses: announcements and storytelling, in the latter case being
used to produce a ‘drama’ effect. [The drama effect is not limited to storytelling though,
as it can also occur in everyday speech when the speaker wants or expects the addressee
to be impressed by something that the addressee was not aware of.] In the data included
in this thesis, exclusively addressee-oriented markers can mainly be found in languages
of the New Guinea Highlands, although addressee-oriented mirativity is found in several
geographically and historically unrelated languages (e.g. Kalasha) as a possible use of
general mirative markers. Tarma Quechua -na- is also an addressee-oriented mirative,
since it is used to make a certain impact on the audience. More examples of addressee-
oriented uses of general miratives can be found in Hengeveld & Olbertz (2012).
Table 8: Addressee-oriented miratives
Tarma Quechua announcements/drama -na-
Onobasulu announcements -me
58
Edolo announcements -dio
announcements -melë
Duna drama -raka
drama -rakunu/-rakuru
6.4. General overview and further challenges
In this thesis I have proposed a realization-based definition of mirativity. Adopting a

global perspective, I have shown how mirativity is marked in certain language
areas/families, and, as far as our current knowledge about mirative marking goes, I have
likely covered all the major morphological ways in which the notion of realization is
grammaticalized across the world’s languages. Although mirativity is often taken to refer
primarily to the expression of surprise, I have shown that this is not the case by
proposing a theoretical approach (implicature theory) that allows me to eliminate the
meaning of surprise from the core semantics of mirativity. Rather, realization
constitutes the ineliminable core semantics of mirativity, while surprise can be reduced
to a pragmatic implicature. Through the data I included here I hope to have proven that
if mirativity is conceived as realization marking more data from various languages can
be better understood and described more felicitously.
By comparing the data I have proposed a categorization as to the type of marker
through which mirativity grammaticalizes. This categorization shows once again that
mirativity is semantically close to the categories of indirectivity, inferred evidentiality
and aspect, but does not have to depend on those categories for its grammatical
expression. Concerning subcategories of mirative semantics, we have seen that there is a
cross-linguistically prominent connection with time marking, leading to miratives
nuanced with a specific time reference. Less prominent are miratives marked for person
(addressee), while the possibility that general miratives are used in specific contexts to
refer only to the addressee is commonly found.
Further work that would contribute to the shaping of a more accurate
understanding of mirativity would first of all gather more data for enriching this
section’s lists of ways of grammaticalization of realization marking and mirative
subcategories. It seems that a promising object of study is the interaction between tense
and mirativity, as it is clear from the data presented here that there is a cross-linguistic
pattern of markers that combine mirative and temporal marking. It would be of
particular interest to research the reference of the temporal marking in different
languages (time of realization vs. time of occurrence of the event) and discover any
possible full-fledged morphological systems of tense and mirativity that include past,
present and future mirative marking, like Mishar Tatar does with the corresponding
59
(periphrastic) constructions. An intriguing endeavour would also be to look for possible
parallels of the so far idiosyncratic experimental mirative found in Quechua.
60
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Mirativity As Realization Marking: A Cross-Linguistic Study

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Mirativity As Realization Marking: A Cross-Linguistic Study

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Mirativity as realization marking: A cross-

This thesis is a study of mirativity from a cross-linguistic perspective. It argues that

1. Defining mirativity .............................................................................................. 1

2. Mirativity in the New Guinea Highlands Area .................................. 12

3. Mirativity expressed through a broader category: the case of

3.1. Grammatical expression of mirativity. Turkic in relation to other types of

4. Mirativity in South America: the cases of Quechua, Andean Spanish

4.1. Mirativity in South America........................................................................ 34

5. Surprise as an implicature of realization: applying implicature

5.1. Theoretical Background .............................................................................. 43

5.3. Concluding remarks .................................................................................... 50

6. Comparing the data ......................................................................... 52

6.1. A comparative approach to the data presented .......................................... 52

1. Tense in Tarma Quechua ....................................................................................... 34

1. The New Guinea Highlands Evidentiality Area ......................................................12

1 first person COP copula

IMPF.ASP imperfective aspect inflection PFCT perfect

IMPV imperative PFV perfective

IND indirective PL plural

INJ interjection POSS possessive

INT interrogative POST postterminal

INTENS intensifier POSTV postverb

INTER interrogative PP postposition

INTR intransitive PRES present

INTRA intraterminal PRET preterite

j gender marker PROG progressive

LOC locative PSN person

M masculine PST past

1.1. Introduction: Aim and Structure

1.2. Presenting the concept of mirativity

Mirativity has been established as a descriptive category which denotes “new or

boi-e chitua-ke ŋap-o le

(2) Chechen (Northeast Caucasian) (Aikhenvald 2012:446)

hwazh-ahw, j-ied-iq iza

(3) Tarma Quechua (Adelaar 2013: 102)

yarga-ra-:ri-na-: masya:du karu-ta-m

(4) Balti, Tibeto-Burman (Bashir 2010: 17)

di chulí-u skyurmo yod

1.3. Background information: How mirativity was born as a grammatical

1.4. Mirativity defined as realization marking

(1) Magar (Tibeto-Burman, Nepal) (Aikhenvald 2012:441)

boi-e chitua-ke ŋap-o le

(5) Andean Spanish (Bustamante 2012: 347)

(6) Chechen (Northeast Caucasian) (DeLancey 2012: 549)

Zaara j-ie-na xilla-q

These typical examples point to a semantic definition of mirativity of the following

(7) Tarma Quechua (Adelaar 2013:105)

wipi-ru-y ma: ayga-sh ga-naq

Aw-rə te zya:h-rə ci oleo

kipi llashak-mi ka-shka

ima-shina kay wañu-shka kusa manchanai-ta

4 I gloss San Roque’s “notional current evidential” as “present mirative"

(13) Mishar Tatar (Turkic, Russia) (Tatevosov 2007: 424)

tämäkɤ bar i-kän!

(14) Hare (Athabaskan, Canada) (DeLancey: 2001: 376)

Mary ewé’ ghálayeda lõ

1.5. Concluding remarks

2.1. The Linguistic Area of the New Guinea Highlands

Map 1: The New Guinea Highlands Evidentiality Area

2.2. Current vs. past realization

2.2.1. Duna “notional current” marker: current realization

khao-na kha sa-ta ngoae-noi