A multidimensional analysis of the Spanish reportative epistemic evidential dizque

This paper investigates the syntactic and semantic properties of American Spanish dizque (lit. ‘it is said’). We claim that the not-at-issue meaning of this evidential is reportativity, while it also contributes epistemic modal semantics ranging from doubt/negative attitude, weak possibility to almost complete lack of commitment. This semantics can be derived from ways of updating the common ground and origo ground, and from the fact that evidentials may target evidence strength. We examine the types of speech report dizque introduces, and describe its syntactic behavior in terms of co-occurrence restrictions, scope, and Main Clause Phenomena. Evidential dizque follows patterns ascribable to both Speech Act operators and propositional modifiers. We analyze the semantic contribution of dizque along three tiers of meaning: a) speaker commitment to p, b) contribution to either Speech Act or Propositional level, and c) trustworthiness of the evidence, emerging from the ways dizque expresses presentational force, serving to update either only the origo ground or both the common ground and the origo groundThis work was supported by the Research Project from the Spanish MINECO, FF12017-87140.C4-4-