An Evidentiality Library for the LinGO Grammar Matrix

Abstract

This thesis describes a library extending the LinGO Grammar Matrix to support evidentiality. Evidentiality refers to the linguistic phenomenon where elements of a language’s grammar express the source of information for a speaker’s statement. This thesis reviews linguistic literature dealing with evidentiality, proposes an analysis within the Minimal Recursion Semantics (MRS) framework for modeling the semantics of evidentials, and describes the implementation and evaluation of a software library meant to extend the LinGO Grammar Matrix, a software system for the rapid prototyping of grammars, to cover evidentials.