How to translate evidentiality? The expression of the source of information in some varieties of American Spanish

Abstract

The present study focuses on the expression of the evidentiality, the linguistic reference to the source of information, through the particle dizque, particularly
frequent in some varieties of American Spanish. The study is based on the hypothesis that dizque can encode inferences, probability and presupposition, but nevertheless, its basic semantic value is to mark how the speaker has obtained the information. In the first section of the text the author investigates the close relationship between evidentiality and epistemic modality, then focuses on the heterogeneidad morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic heterogeneity of dizque, which mainly seems to express the epistemic modality. Nevertheless, through the comparison of dizque with some of the Slovene evidential and modal particles certain morphosyntactic and semantic matches are proven. Finally, the hypothesis that dizque can signalize reportative evidentiality, seems to be proven with the analysis of some literary examples in which the Slovene particles function as the translation equivalents of dizque. It is true that the epistemic and the evidential values often overlap, however, they may also appear in complementary distribution.