Interpersonal alignments and epistemic marking in Kalapalo (Southern Cariban, Brazil)

Kalapalo epistemic features are central to the pragmatic functions of interpersonal alignments. There is a set of seven hearsay evidentials mainly used in narrative and in quoted discourse, eight initial position epistemic expressives (EXP), five evidential suffixes (EV) and hearsay quotative evidential strategies (qUOT), together with a large set of (28) second position epistemic clitics/particles (EM). The latter confirm that epistemic judgment is essentially a triadic stance procedure involving the social actors engaged in conversational interaction (an initial speaker, an interlocutor or listener-responder) and the epistemic object/proposition. I sort EM into six sets, two of which (A, B) mark the speaker’s “internal” and “external” degrees of epistemic judgement. (C) mark the speaker’s contraspective wishing or hoping, (D )mark the speaker’s re-evaluation, correctives or denial of a proposition with a focus on new or reconsidered information. The final two sets (E, F) concern the speaker’s attempts at (or conflicts with) epistemic alignment with a listener or 3rd person, based on understanding of the epistemic object. While epistemic modality in the sense of a “scale” or “grade” occurs, in Kalapalo there are other non-modal meanings including participation (or not) of the speaker and listener and a third person in an epistemic context, mirativity, incredulity (an extreme skepticism or unwillingness to believe), and conflict or denial, affinal civility and affection