Evidentiality in Dena'ina Athabaskan

• Main Authors: Holton, Gary, Lovick, Olga
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Holton, Gary and Olga Lovick. 2009. Evidentiality in Dena'ina Athabascan. Anthropological Linguistics 50(3-4).1-32. 2009
• Subjects: evidentiality; Dena'ina
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11122/1060

Dena'ina evidentials are enclitics with a complex paradigmatic morphology. Their first component varies with person, while the second com- ponent varies with animacy and number, thus marking source and nature of knowledge. Although evidentiality in Dena'ina is not coded as an obligatory inflectional category on the verb, it is also not scattered throughout the gram- mar. The existence of an incipient inflectional evidential system demonstrates the ability of Athabaskan languages to innovate morphological structures outside the verb. The uniqueness of the Dena'ina system demonstrates the heterogeneity of Athabaskan grammar beyond the verb word.