SpecGram--Dup Evidentials--Tim Pulju

Right Hemisphere Damage as a Result of Exposure to Slovene Humor--D. Reindl

Dup Evidentials

For the past seven years, I have been doing field work on Dup, a Papuan language spoken by about 2000 people in several highland villages. I have achieved a pretty good grasp of the workings of the language, with one exception: I can make no sense of the system of evidentials. Oh, I know what range of meanings each set of evidentials can express, and I know which syntactic positions evidentials can occur in; namely, all syntactic positions. Yet there seems to be no coherent system underlying the grouping of meanings assigned to one morpheme. To see what I mean, consider the example sentence below:

(1) na-debe tukop sine-baba

Evid.-walk woman path-along

'The woman walked along the path (I heard about it when it was raining or from my maternal uncle).'

(2) debe-ro tukop sinebaba

'The woman walked along the path (I saw it personally, or deduced it based on evidence presented in court, or I don't know about it yet but expect to hear about it from my third daughter).'

(3) debe tukop sinebaba tadat

'The woman walked along the path (I heard it happen, or I am lying, or I heard about it from one of my paternal relatives but can't remember which one but I believe that it is true).'

(4) debe tukop-lep sinebaba

'The woman walked along the path (maybe).'

(5) debe p-tukop sinebaba

'The woman walked along the path (I read it in a letter written over five days ago by my second cousin but received yesterday by my neighbor due to a postal accident and opened and read by my neighbor before he passed it along to me, or it is a famous saying among my people).'

(6) he-debe tukop sinebaba

'The woman walked along the path (I heard it on FM radio or from my wife [but only if the wife's name is Yobo]).'

The examples above are by no means exhaustive. So far, I have encountered 783 different evidential particles, the vast majority of which are as confusing to me as the above. If anyone else cares to look at my data and try to figure out what's going on here, please get in touch with me. I would greatly appreciate the assistance.

Tim Pulju

Rice University

	As to Phronology--Skippy Id
	Right Hemisphere Damage as a Result of Exposure to Slovene Humor--D. Reindl
	SpecGram Vol CXLVII, No 1 Contents

(1)	na-debe	tukop	sine-baba
	Evid.-walk	woman	path-along
	'The woman walked along the path (I heard about it when it was raining or from my maternal uncle).'

(2)	debe-ro tukop sinebaba
	'The woman walked along the path (I saw it personally, or deduced it based on evidence presented in court, or I don't know about it yet but expect to hear about it from my third daughter).'

(3)	debe tukop sinebaba tadat
	'The woman walked along the path (I heard it happen, or I am lying, or I heard about it from one of my paternal relatives but can't remember which one but I believe that it is true).'

(4)	debe tukop-lep sinebaba
	'The woman walked along the path (maybe).'

(5)	debe p-tukop sinebaba
	'The woman walked along the path (I read it in a letter written over five days ago by my second cousin but received yesterday by my neighbor due to a postal accident and opened and read by my neighbor before he passed it along to me, or it is a famous saying among my people).'

(6)	he-debe tukop sinebaba
	'The woman walked along the path (I heard it on FM radio or from my wife [but only if the wife's name is Yobo]).'