Evidentials in the nominal domain: a Speasian analysis of ?ay?a?u??m determiners

Abstract

Based on novel fieldwork data, we propose a re-analysis of the determiner system of ?ay?aj?u??m (a.k.a. Comox-Sliammon; Central Salish; ISO 639-3: coo). Contrary to previous descriptions by Davis (1973), Harris (1981), Watanabe (2003), and Huijsmans et al. (2018), we argue that determiners in ?ay?aj?u??m encode evidentiality (‘current direct evidence’ vs. ‘previous direct evidence’ vs. ‘evidence-neutral’). To account for this pattern, we argue that the determiners encode relations between situations, following work by Speas (2010) and Kalsang et al. (2013). This paper adds to the small but growing body of evidence that evidential notions can be expressed in the nominal domain (Hanks 2009; Gutiérrez & Matthewson 2012; Gutiérrez 2015; Rose 2017; Gambarage & Matthewson 2019). This in turn provides support for the existence of semantic atoms or ‘building blocks’ which recur in different parts of the syntactic structure (Hale 1986; von Fintel & Matthewson 2008).