Aspetti pragmatici delle strategie evidenziali in italiano e in croato
Pragmatic Aspects of Evidentials in Italian and Croatian

Summary/Abstract: Evidentials articulate the source of information on which a statement is based, which means that they also involve the speaker’s position towards the sentence content. In this paper, after defining the subject of the research and describing various typologies of evidential strategies, we analyse the pragmatic values of linguistic expressions that articulate the various degrees of a speaker’s involvement with regard to stated claims, which for their part represent speech acts used to endorse the veracity of a statement. Evidential strategies are frequently used to diminish responsibility for the veracity of claims, that is, they may serve as a means of distancing oneself from the sentence content, a discourse mechanism that the speaker may employ in order to avoid potential negative impacts that overly assertive claims might contain. In defining evidential strategies, we consult linguistic research as well as research on justification logic. The goal of this paper is to show that these terms can be adequately defined only by also taking into account the analysis of pragmatic impacts in a specific communicative and social situation.

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