EVIDENTIALITY IN AMERICAN SPANISH: VARIATION, LANGUAGE CONTACT AND GRAMMATICAL CHANGE
Evidentiality constitutes one of the most productive areas of research for understanding the mechanisms of linguistic change and the interaction among grammar, discourse and cognition. Since the seminal typological works on the evidential category (Aikhenvald, 2004) and its relationship with epistemic modality (Cornillie, 2007; Diewald & Smirnova, 2010), it has been shown that the expression of the source of information occupies a central place in the grammatical and discursive organization of languages.
In American Spanish, numerous studies have described the development of innovative evidential strategies associated both with internal processes of change and with prolonged contact with indigenous languages that have grammaticalized evidential systems. This is the case, among others, of Andean Spanish in contact with Quechua and Aymara, where innovative evidential uses of verb tenses, of markers such as dice, dizque, and other information-validation strategies have been documented (Bermúdez, 2005; Escobar, 1992, 1997; Jara, 2013; Olbertz, 2007; Pfänder & Palacios, 2013; Speranza, 2014, 2024). More recently, these phenomena have begun to be analyzed from variationist and language-contact perspectives, incorporating the study of grammaticalization, frequency of use, and the sociocognitive dynamics involved in their diffusion (Babel, 2009; García Tesoro, 2015, 2022; García Tesoro & Jang, 2018; Jara & Valenzuela, 2013; Soto & Dankel, 2023).
In recent decades, the study of evidentiality has moved beyond the description of particular markers to focus on the analysis of processes of variation, grammaticalization, subjectivization and social indexicality. In parallel, growing interest in contact varieties has made it possible to demonstrate that many evidential innovations cannot be interpreted solely as structural transfers, but rather as the result of complex dynamics of bilingualism and discursive practices in bi|multilingual settings.
This panel proposes to bring together research analyzing the various manifestations of evidentiality in American Spanish from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives. Papers will be accepted focusing on both monolingual varieties and varieties in contact with indigenous languages, as well as synchronic, diachronic, sociolinguistic, pragmatic, dialectological or variationist studies.
The aim is to promote an interdisciplinary dialogue that makes it possible to understand how evidential strategies contribute to the construction of speaker perspective, information management, the negotiation of epistemic authority, and processes of linguistic change in Latin America.
Possible thematic axes
* Evidentiality and language contact.
* Evidentiality in Spanish in contact with indigenous languages.
* Dialectal variation of evidential resources.
* Grammatical change and grammaticalization.
* Evidentiality and epistemic modality.
* Evidentiality, politeness and interaction.
* Evidentiality and identity construction.
* Quantitative and variationist studies.
* Evidentiality in oral corpora.
* Comparative perspectives across different American dialectal areas.
Objectives
* To bring together recent research on evidentiality in American Spanish.
* To foster dialogue among specialists in language contact, sociolinguistics, pragmatics and grammar.
* To compare evidential processes developed in different dialectal areas of the Americas.
* To reflect on the role of evidentiality in processes of contact-induced change.
