Saturday Talk, November 12th: Linguist Signe Berthelin

This Saturday, November 12th at the Barrow Arctic Research Center at 1:30 pm.

Host: Nokinba Acker, BASC

All Ages Welcome!

Need a ride?  A van will be in front of the Hospital door C at 1:00 and then at Tuzzy Library at 1:15 pm to take people to and from the presentation.

Modality and Evidentiality in Language

Signe Rix Berthelin

Masters Student of Linguistics, focusing on Iñupiaq

Signe will give an overview of the different kinds of modal meaning, and discuss the puzzling issues related to talking about these meanings. She will also introduce the exciting category of Evidentiality. Evidentials are expressions by which the speaker indicates how he got the information he is passing on to the hearer.

Modal expressions, e.g. English must and Iñupiaq –palliq-, indicate obligations, permissions, probability and certainty. In Linguistics, describing the exact meaning of modal expressions is challenging, and the task is not made easier when the expressions have more than one meaning.

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