#epistemic modality

[seeingscreens]

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME WITH PHILOSOPHY PLEASE I AM STRUGGLING HARD

[lhaasiri]

łaá siri Semantics: The Focus-Sensitive Particle, ri

The main grammatical categories in łaá siri are: nouns, verbs, descriptives, pre-verbal modifiers, and particles, a broad term used for various pieces of the language which defy easy classification. Particles can occur to form interrogatives (ri, sałaa'), to form a more polite phrase (łi), and to signal focus, which will be the top of this section. The particle discussed will be ri (also interrogative, affirmative). Syntactically, these kinds of particles tend to be quite free in where they are grammatical, but pragmatically and semantically, their positions and pitch are important.

            ri (also possibly rí) is homophonous with (and probably grammaticalized from) the epistemic interrogative ri. In this passage, all references to it will regard the former unless explicitly stated. In its most pragmatically unmarked usage, ri comes at the beginning of a DP. So:

ri    li'aár                 sisí        yaá                    liyalala.

RI ABSTR-walk.DIR COMP male-SENT ABSTR-sing.DIR

"The man who is walking is singing."

In this position, ri is focusing the head of the phrase ("the man who is walking"). It draws attention to him. In fact, a parallel can be seen in English, "The man WHO IS WALKING is singing." This may be an oversimplification of the stress contour in English, but it will suffice to draw a parallel.

ri can occur in more positions than here. Observe the parenthesized positions of ri in the same example below:

(ri)1            li'aár                 sisí        (ri)2             yaá        (ri)­­3      liyalala.

      ABSTR-walk.DIR COMP male-SENT ABSTR-sing.DIR

            Position 1 is covered above, and the logic can be applied to positions 2 and 3 as well. For position 2, "The MAN who is walking is singing," and for position 3, "The man who is walking is SINGING."

            There is probably a very practical origin of a form like ri – because stress and pitch-accent are both integral to retaining lexical contrasts and to grammatical inflection, a separate form is used where accenting could have been. In English, stress and pitch are very important, as they are in łaá siri, but in different capacities.

            ri is important to answering questions, as well.

a.    ri          larirasatła

INTERR   NEAR-NEAR-INFR.WHAT.THING-hit 

"What hit you?"

b.    ri          'ii'ła                  ła'la       raa'tłá!

    RI comet-ANIM 1SG,OBJ ABS-IMMED-hit.DIR

      "A COMET hit me!"

            The important difference here is evidentiality. ri focuses the answer on the comet, and it is unambiguously a statement because of the direct evidential marked on the verb root. Question words, like English's what, who, where, etc. are not independent morphemes – in łaá siri they are evidentials. Moreover, their actual meaning is typically less precise that just what or who, for example. So, ri can focus the answer so that it is relevant to the context and to the intended meaning of the question.