Indirect evidentiality deriving from temporal uncertainty

The case of Japanese goro

Abstract

This paper examines the Japanese temporal approximative goro ‘around’. When it combines with ima ‘now’, which denotes the utterance time, the phrase ima-goro signals that the speaker does not directly witness the event described by the co-occurring predicate (so-called indirect evidentiality). When goro combines with other time expressions, this effect is not observed. I propose a semantic account that capture this phenomenon. Specifically, X-goro requires that the speaker is uncertain whether the described event occurs at X. It is also demonstrated that the proposed analysis has implication for two additional phenomena: i) ima-goro can mean that the occurrence of the described event is too late, and ii) there is an aspectual restriction on ima-goro. Finally, a remaining issue concerning the English temporal phrase by now is discussed.