Mirative

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A mirative (or admirative) is a particular grammatical element in some languages that indicates unexpected and new information. The grammatical category involving miratives is known as mirativity.

The seminal article on mirativity is DeLancey (1997).

Contents 1 Examples 1.1 Tibetan 1.2 Turkish 1.3 Hare 1.4 Western Apache 2 Miratives and evidentials 3 Translation into English 4 See also 5 Links 6 Bibliography

[edit] Examples

Languages that have miratives include Tibetan, Turkish, Western Apache, Barbacoan languages (Tsafiki, Cha'palaa, Awa Pit), Hare (Slavey).

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

[edit] Tibetan

[edit] Turkish

Kiz-iniz çok iyi piyano çal-iyor-muş.

daughter-your very good piano play-PRES-MIR

Your daughter plays the piano very well!

– DeLancey (1997)

[edit] Hare

[edit] Western Apache

[edit] Miratives and evidentials

Miratives often have a dual function indicating inferential evidentiality. Although there is an overlap between the marking of mirativity and evidentiality in some languages (e.g. Tibetan), other languages have two independent systems that mark both of these separately (e.g. Western Apache).

[edit] Translation into English

Miratives are often translated into English with an exclamatory intonation pattern.

[edit] See also

• Admirative Mood
• Evidentiality

[edit] Links

• Summary of mirative postings at LinguistList (includes biblio)

[edit] Bibliography

• Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (2004). Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-926388-4.
• Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.; & Dixon, R. M. W. (Eds.). (2003). Studies in evidentiality. Typological studies in language (Vol. 54). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 90-272-2962-7; ISBN 1-58811-344-2.
• DeLancey, Scott. (1997). Mirativity: The grammatical marking of unexpected information. Linguistic Typology, 1, 33-52.
• DeLancey, Scott. (2001). The mirative and evidentiality. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 369-382.
• Dickinson, Connie. (2002) Mirativity in Tsafiki, Studies in Language.
• Slobin, D. I.; & Aksu, A. A. (1982). Tense, aspect and modality in the use of the Turkish evidential. In P. J. Hopper (Ed.), Tense-aspect: Between semantics & pragmatics. Amsterdam: Benjamins.