Evidential fictive interaction: find the missing persons (based on examples from Russian and Ungarinyin)

Cross-linguistically, direct speech constructions show a remarkable range of functions. In some languages these constructions conventionalise to express meanings that lie far beyond that of attributing speech to some discourse entity, marking, e.g. the beginning of some event, causation or future tense. In this paper I argue, however, that the range of meanings conventionalised direct speech constructions may exhibit in the languages of the world is not boundless and that they share one fundamental property: they necessarily index some type of discourse entity. Extending Roman Jakobson’s schematic representation of verbal categories, I present a framework within which these discourse entities can be made explicit. Based on examples of sentential fictive interaction in Russian and the Australian Aboriginal language Ungarinyin, both of a subtype that I label ‘evidential fictive interaction’, I illustrate the similarities and differences between direct speech constructions in the two languages within the proposed framework. I also suggest that the representation of direct speech constructions put forward in this paper provides a grammatical framework that may be used to further analyse and classify examples of sentential fictive interaction cross-linguistically. (Paper presented by Sergeiy Sandler)status: publishe