‘Evidentiality’ and point of view in Bulgarian
‘Evidentiality’ and point of view in Bulgarian

Summary/Abstract: The present paper is concerned with ‘evidentiality’ in Bulgarian, focusing on the difference between the simple ‘l-forms’ with and without the 3rd person auxiliary. The usage or omission of the auxiliary is argued to be the decisive contribution to the evidential-like semantics of these forms, in that it serves the coding of a point of view from which the narrated events are presented. This point of view may be the ‘narrator’ or some ‘non-narrator’. The specification of ‘non-narrator’ is triggered by contextual factors and factors such as knowledge about genre and text type. Based on this interaction of semantics and discourse factors, the interpretational range of the l-forms can be accounted for, as well as their text structuring and narrative functions.

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