Quechua 1st person singular reported past

Natural languages and linguistics
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Kuchigakatai
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Quechua 1st person singular reported past

Post by Kuchigakatai »

So, apparently, Quechua verbs have a 1st person singular reported past (as opposed to experienced past). What does that mean exactly? Is it used for actions others tell you you did but you don't remember, perhaps because you were too young or too drunk?

Does anyone here know if this is usually found in languages with evidentiality?
chris_notts
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Re: Quechua 1st person reported past

Post by chris_notts »

I don't know about Quechua, but according to Aikhenvald's book on Evidentiality, non-firsthand evidentials are used with first person referents in some languages to signal exactly what you suggest: that somehow the speaker doesn't remember or wasn't in control of their actions at the time.
zompist
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Re: Quechua 1st person singular reported past

Post by zompist »

Clodoaldo Soto Ruiz says the narrative past is used when the event is "surprising or unexpected; when it was not under [the narrator's] control; or when its real importance was not known." It's commonly used in telling stories.

It's distinct from the evidential suffixes.

This is certainly not necessary for languages with obligate evidentiality. (However, I think it's pretty common to have past tenses that are organized differently, or make more distinctions, from the present tense.)
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Imralu
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Re: Quechua 1st person singular reported past

Post by Imralu »

Turkish has this kind of difference too, with yapmışım "I apparently did" as opposed to yaptım "I did (as I know from my own experience)" and from the examples I can find, it seems to be quite commonly used for evidentials (even when the English translation doesn't have an evidential). These are mostly from Open subtitles:

Ona güvenmekle aptallık etmişim. = I was a fool to trust him.
Gwen'i mi tercih etmişim? = I favoured Gwen?
Ne kadar güzel olmuşum, değil mi anne? = Aren't I just gorgeously gorgeous, Mother?
Seni hafife almışım. = I underestimated you.
İşi almışım. = I got the job.

I don't know how much of this is applicable to Quechua, but that last one, "I got the job", especially when you've just received a phone call about it, is a perfect example of hearsay evidence of your own past action ... where of course your action of "getting" the job is actually an entirely passive action of being chosen by other people elsewhere.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = (non-)specific, A/ₐ = agent, E/ₑ = entity (person or thing)
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Vijay
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Re: Quechua 1st person singular reported past

Post by Vijay »

Yes, it's definitely commonly used in Turkish.
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