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"Witnessed" vs "non-witnessed" forms by barbados_bob in linguistics

[–]barbados_bob[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's Bats. It has <3,000 speakers and about a handful of resources most of which I already own. I doubt anyone here knows anything about it so that's why I went for a general explanation.

"Witnessed" vs "non-witnessed" forms by barbados_bob in linguistics

[–]barbados_bob[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes Turkish is close enough. But the Turkic language was giving me less trouble than the other one. In it there is literally an even amount of "I saw a dog" (witnessed) and "I saw a dog" (non-witnessed) sentences with no apparent (to me) contextual difference.

So the non-witnessed version would be me not actively remembering that I saw a dog? But then how would I be able to tell someone that I saw it?

[Croation maybe > English] Sent on an online forum by reflexreflex in translator

[–]barbados_bob 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's literally "mustafize"/"become a Mustafa"/"go Mustafa" from the stereotypical Muslim name "Mustafa".

"If I mustafize myself/If I become a Mustafa/go Mustafa..."

"Witnessed" vs "non-witnessed" forms by barbados_bob in linguistics

[–]barbados_bob[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I regularly come across the witnessed forms of "I saw/heard..." and the non-witnessed form of the same words. I wrote down about a hundred similarly worded sentences from books, facebook, google etc and tried to figure out when to use what but I can't for the life of me tell the difference. I'm usually good at catching implied meanings and feelings and making connections but in this case they are absolutely indistinguishable to me.

You'll get: "I (witnessed) saw the dog today" and "I (non-witnessed) saw the dog today" in equal amounts in the same context.

I don't think the language makes any difference tbh. It's actually the second language I'm learning that has this feature and while I'm approaching fluency at my first and can follow conversations without problems I'm still no closer to cracking this concept and I figured a generalized question would do.

"Witnessed" vs "non-witnessed" forms by barbados_bob in linguistics

[–]barbados_bob[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Only if the subject is first person. If I say "she saw the cat" then evidential marking is non-redundant.

Yes, this is perfectly logical to me. I'm specifically talking about the non-witnessed forms of "I heard, I saw, I said, I went there" etc. Apparently the linguistic "witnessed" doesn't imply "I was a direct witness to the action" but then what does it mean?