Inventorying and Analysis of Lexical Evidentiality Markers in Bulgarian: Adverbs, Particles and Predicates (I)

Abstract

The task of the present article consists in a first systematic attempt at inventorizing lexical markers of evidentiality in Bulgarian. Contrary to previous research, which has concentrated on grammatical marking (by so-called ‘preizkazni formi’), we want to give a comprehensive picture of propositional adverbs and function words (particles, complementizers, conjunctions) in Bulgarian serving to indicate particular evidential subfunctions derived from a general, onomasiological grid. We explain the procedures by which candidates of an inventory of lexical evidential markers have been established, and how we distinguish between different (i) syntactic functions and (ii) evidential subfunctions. We also investigate the interaction of evidential and epistemic functions and grant the possibility that a unit may show multiple functions; in such cases we have been eager to establish whether syntactic variation co-varies with semantic variation.