Browsing by Author "Hyvönen, Anu"

This thesis examines the typology and stability of evidentiality in contact settings. The goal is to estimate the stability of evidentiality in different contact scenarios, and to find whether evidential structures are more likely to change in language contact situations than to remain stable. Furthermore, this study aims to develop methodology to approach the typology of evidentiality to examine its contact effects in the first place. Earlier research has described evidentiality as an unstable feature that diffuses easily in contact situations, but systematic research examining evidentiality in multiple contact settings and its stability in contact is yet lacking. Moreover, evidentiality has been studied widely, but there is no previous typological approach on evidentiality or on its contact effects that would be suitable for the purposes of this thesis. This study takes a typological approach to the study of evidentiality and language contact. The examination of contact effects is based on six sampling units of three-language sets across the globe, wherein contact effects are estimated on an external benchmark. The collected linguistic data from the sampling units was analyzed into logical outcomes of contact and turned into probability distributions. This finally resulted in the aggregated probability of convergence. The probability of convergence is contrasted to the stability of evidentiality and in that continuum this study estimates how likely it is that evidentiality has been affected due to contact. Furthermore, this thesis focuses on finding a suitable way to approach the first research goal and therefore presents a typological approach on evidentiality and defines grammatical evidentiality. The primary results of this study suggest high probability of convergence and evidentiality seems to be an unstable linguistic domain that diffuses easily. These findings were further contrasted to some other linguistic domains indicating that evidentiality is among the most unstable domains. This study also suggests that the semantic properties of evidentiality are more unstable than the morphological ones. The findings also highlight the sensitivity of the methodology, and these limitations are demonstrated and reflected upon.