Speakers, hearers and Cora 'ku'

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Statement of Responsibility: 
Casad, Eugene H
Issue Date: 
2004
Extent: 
pages 299-324
Abstract: 
This paper presents an analysis of one of the evidential particles common to Amerindian languages, such as those discussed in Casad (1992) and Floyd (1996). These particles, used much in Cora discourse, reflect a variety of Speaker and Hearer relationships to the content of what is being said and to the degree of subjectivity vs. objectivity with which situations and states are being construed. I adopt here Langacker's model of the viewing arrangement as well as his approach to the notions of grounding and subjectivity (Lang­acker 1999, Ch 7). Cora ku basically means that the Speaker and Hearer have some prior shared knowledge of what the Speaker is saying, both in ordinary conversation and in narrative discourse. The shared knowledge is not fully mutual, however, as the speaker will ordinarily have many details in mind that the hearer does not. For example, a Cora describing an elephant that he saw in a zoo, stated that it looked like a hill. He stated it this way because he knew his hearer knew what hills looked like and he used that knowledge as a stepping stone to convey his entire description to his hearer. This means that the ku construction is a reference point construction (cf. Langacker 1993; 1999, Ch 6). In this paper, I illustrate the numerous usages of ku. These include long and short forms of the particle, as well as three kinds of constructional schemas that pair ku with other grammatical elements. I provide examples taken from active conversation, as well as those culled from a corpus of recorded texts. I attempt to provide a descriptively and explanatorily adequate account of these Cora data, relating the basic idea of shared Speaker-Hearer knowledge to various of the constructs that Langacker groups under his viewing arrangement model.
Publication Status: 
Published
Country: 
Mexico
Subject Languages: 
Field: 
Work Type: 
Nature of Work: 
Is Part Of: 
Augusto Soares da Silva, Amadeu Torres, and Miguel Gonçalves, eds., Linguagem, cultura e cognição: Estudos de linguística cognitiva, volume II. Coimbra, Portugal: Almedina.
Entry Number: 
3316