DOCTORAL DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Evidentiality and Meaning in Cusco Quechua

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On the basis of fieldwork with native Quechua speakers in Cuzco, Peru,we will construct a corpus of data concerning evidentiality and itsinteractions with other phenomena, and then frame the results within aformal semantic theory. We will investigate (i) how evidentials inQuechua are interpreted, (ii) how evidential markers interact withother semantic categories such as tense markers, and (iii) how thevarious functions of evidential markers relate to each other.The study is among the first in Quechua semantics. It contributes toresearch on the cross-linguistic manifestation of epistemic and othersemantic concepts, and thus to the discovery of universal propertiesof language. It is also a contribution to the development of semantictheory, evidentiality having been largely neglected by formalsemanticists.The results will be of interest to semanticists, Quechuaanthropologists, philosophers of language, and to linguists andcognitive scientists more generally.