Evidentials and dubitatives in Finnish: perspective shift in questions and embedded contexts

Abstract

This paper investigates the reportative evidential kuulemma and the dubitative muka in Finnish (Finno-Ugric). Kuulemma typically indicates that the speaker reports information provided by someone else (hearsay) and is not committed to the truth of the proposition, while muka (roughly: ‘supposedly, allegedly, as if’) typically signals that the speaker doubts the truth of the proposition, leaving open the information source. This paper explores perspective-shifting and whether these forms can be anchored to someone other than the speaker. I use corpus data and native speaker judgments to test what happens in questions, under the speech verb ‘say,’ and in free indirect discourse. In questions, both forms appear to stay anchored to the speaker (no interrogative flip). However, when embedded under ‘say,’ dubitative muka remains speaker-oriented, whereas reportative kuulemma can shift to the subject. In free indirect discourse, both can shift to the character whose point-of-view is expressed. I propose that these differences are partially related to subjectivity: Whereas kuulemma can be described in objective terms, it has been suggested that muka can express more nuanced affect such as surprise and irony. I suggest this subjective nature of muka is related to its speaker-oriented nature, echoing the speaker-orientation default of affective expressions (e.g. predicates of personal taste, epithets, interjections).