Documentation

Linglib.Studies.MartinezVera2026

Martínez Vera (2026): Verum, contrast, and evidentiality in Saraguro Kichwa #

[MV26] [MV24] [MVC25] [Fal02] [Fal19] [Mur14] [Mur17] [Tel14] [Grz20] [Ben23] [San10] [HH17] [Col82] [RvG10] [RF15] [STBR10] [Kri14] [Roo85] [Roo92] [Hir17] [Hoh92] [RH04] [EK98] [Mat21] [Mat04] [BM15] [GHM20] [Goo22a] [Roc18]

Saraguro Kichwa (qvj) marker =mi is analysed as a focus marker whose felicity presupposes a highlighted, strengthened alternative that entails the negation of the scope proposition (paper's def. 37).

Three empirical signatures:

  1. =mi is licensed when ¬p is salient (biased question, assertion of ¬p, or a reportative-evidential antecedent).
  2. =mi is licensed in matrix declaratives following a reportative evidential -shka, but NOT following a direct evidential -rka.
  3. =mi surfaces in contrastive (corrective) uses, sister to focus strategies like English only ([Roc18], [Hir17]).

What this study formalises #

Substrate consumed #

SubstrateProvides
Semantics/Composition/LayeredBiLayered W ⟨A, N⟩ pair, three composition rules
Semantics/HighlightingHighlightingContext, Highlighted, AddressesQUD
Discourse/EvidentialIllocutionassert, present, EvidentialAct, raisedPropositions
Features/EvidentialityCoarseSource (direct, hearsay, inference)
Semantics/Questions/HamblinQuestion.polar for the polar QUD

Methodological note #

The paper's data is original fieldwork with six Saraguro speakers, following [Mat04], [BM15]. Per CLAUDE.md (per-language paper-specific data lives in Studies, not Fragments), the felicity-judgment apparatus stays in this file; the neutral consensus typology — that Saraguro Kichwa has a 3-way evidential paradigm with the discourse-sensitive enclitic =mi — lives in Fragments/Quechua/SaraguroKichwa/Evidentiality.lean.

§ 0. Evidential illocutionary operators (Faller / Murray) #

Substrate previously hosted at Discourse/EvidentialIllocution.lean, inlined here per anchoring rule (sole consumer is this study file). The assert/present distinction is [Fal02] / [Mur14]; the raisedPropositions projection drives [MV26]'s salience updates downstream.

structure MartinezVera2026.EvidentialAct (W : Type u_2) :
Type u_2

Result of applying an illocutionary operator: speaker, addressee, scope proposition, evidential (not-at-issue) proposition, and commits-to-scope flag (true for assert, false for present).

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    [Fal02]/[Fal19]: assert(⟨A, N⟩) commits the speaker to both A and N. Used with direct evidentials.

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      [Mur14]/[Fal19]: present(⟨A, N⟩) brings A to attention but does NOT commit to A; commits only to N. Used with reportative/inferential evidentials.

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        Propositions an act puts forward to the addressee. assert raises the scope; present raises both scope and its complement (the open polar issue).

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          Typological mapping from evidential source to illocutionary operator flavour.

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                § 1. The =mi denotation (paper eq. 37, polar reduction) #

                Felicity condition for =mi attached to a scope expression S in context c, given a focus alternative set alts. This is paper eq. (37) for the case where alts is the polar partition {p, pᶜ}: polar partitions admit no innocently excludable alternatives (negating both gives {¬p, ¬pᶜ} = {¬p, p}, contradictory), so exhaustification collapses to identity, and the paper's "exh(q) entails ¬S.A" reduces to "q ⊆ S.atIssueᶜ".

                Note: the polar reduction does NOT extend to constituent-focus contrast cases (paper §3 examples 22–28), where alts may include multiple elements with overlap. Those would consume the full Semantics/Exhaustification.Excluder machinery.

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                  § 2. The polar QUD setup #

                  The polar QUD over a contingent proposition p: alternatives are {p, pᶜ}. Built from Question.polar p. Used as the QUD slot in the discourse contexts that license a =mi follow-up.

                  With this (non-trivial) QUD, AddressesQUD does real filtering work: a proposition addresses polarQUD p iff it is comparable to p or to pᶜ. Both p and pᶜ themselves trivially address it (each is a subset of itself), so the highlighted alternatives in the headline contrast satisfy the QUD-addressing requirement of Highlighted.

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                    theorem MartinezVera2026.mem_alt_polar {W : Type u_1} (p : Set W) (hne : p ) (hnu : p Set.univ) :

                    Either p or pᶜ is itself a maximal answer to polar p, when p is contingent (p ≠ ∅ and p ≠ Set.univ). This is the substrate fact Question.alt_polar_of_nontrivial.

                    theorem MartinezVera2026.mem_alt_polar_compl {W : Type u_1} (p : Set W) (hne : p ) (hnu : p Set.univ) :
                    theorem MartinezVera2026.addresses_polarQUD_self {W : Type u_1} (p : Set W) (hne : p ) (hnu : p Set.univ) :

                    p itself addresses the polar QUD over p: it equals one of the two alternatives. Requires p contingent so the polar partition is non-trivial.

                    theorem MartinezVera2026.addresses_polarQUD_compl {W : Type u_1} (p : Set W) (hne : p ) (hnu : p Set.univ) :

                    pᶜ addresses the polar QUD over p: it equals the other alternative. Requires p contingent.

                    § 3. Discourse-update map (generic; consumes substrate) #

                    updateAfterAct c a adds the propositions an act a raises to the salient set of c. The match-on-commitsToScope lives in the substrate (EvidentialAct.raisedPropositions), not here — verum studies, biased polar-question studies, and reportative-evidential studies all consume the same generic update.

                    Generic discourse-update: an act adds the propositions it raises to the salient set. The behaviour-distinguishing match is delegated to the substrate's EvidentialAct.raisedPropositions.

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                      § 4. The headline contrast (paper exx. 47–50) #

                      The proofs derive from the substrate facts present_raises_polar_negation and assert_does_not_raise_polar_negation. The match-on-commitsToScope is exercised once in the substrate; here the consequences fall out.

                      theorem MartinezVera2026.mi_felicitous_after_present {W : Type u_1} (s a : Discourse.DiscourseRole) (p : Set W) (hne : p ) (hnu : p Set.univ) :

                      After a reportative-evidential present(p) update, a =mi-marked follow-up confirming p is felicitous: the witness is the highlighted pᶜ, which is raised by present (substrate: present_raises_polar_negation) and addresses the polar QUD over p (substrate: addresses_polarQUD_compl).

                      Paper exx. 21/48. Hypotheses hne and hnu are the contingency conditions on the scope: the paper assumes contingent scopes throughout. The alternative set is the polar partition {p, pᶜ}.

                      theorem MartinezVera2026.mi_infelicitous_after_assert {W : Type u_1} (s a : Discourse.DiscourseRole) (p : Set W) (hne : p ) (hnu : p Set.univ) :

                      After a direct-evidential assert(p) update, a =mi-marked follow-up confirming p is NOT felicitous: only p itself is raised by assert (substrate: assert_does_not_raise_polar_negation), and p ⊆ pᶜ would force p = ∅, contradicting contingency.

                      Paper ex. 47 — the contrast that motivates the present/assert distinction.

                      § 5. Cross-paper bridge: Höhle 1992 ↔ MV 2026 (polar reduction) #

                      For the polar alternative-set case {β.atIssue, β.atIssueᶜ}, MV's miFelicitous reduces to Höhle's verumFelicitous: both demand that ¬β.atIssue be highlighted in the context. This makes the agreement between the focus-on-polarity (Höhle) and focus-marker (MV) accounts explicit at the type level. The disagreement with [RH04]'s CommonGround-modal verum surfaces as the partition divergence in §6 below.

                      For the polar alternative-set case with contingent scope, MV's miFelicitous reduces to Höhle's verumFelicitous: both predicates demand that ¬β.atIssue (the scope's complement) be highlighted. The contingency hypothesis hne : ∃ w, β.atIssue w rules out the degenerate empty-scope case where every q ⊆ qᶜ vacuously and the bridge would require Highlighted c univ from Highlighted c ∅ — not generally derivable.

                      The mp direction: of the two polar alternatives, only β.atIssueᶜ can satisfy q ⊆ β.atIssueᶜ non-trivially (given contingent scope). The mpr direction packages the highlighted complement directly.

                      The MV =mi denotation packaged as a VerumOperator over the polar alternative set {β.atIssue, β.atIssueᶜ}. The shared abstraction lets mi_polar_iff_verumFelicitous (above) be re-stated as a felicity equivalence between two VerumOperator W instances.

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                        Cross-paper bridge restated at the VerumOperator level: under contingent scope, MV's polar-reduction operator and Höhle's verum-focus operator are extensionally equivalent.

                        § 6. Cross-framework divergence: MV's partition vs R&H's verum partition #

                        Romero & Han 2004 analyse verum as a CommonGround-modal operator forSureCG producing an unbalanced polar partition {forSureCG p, ¬forSureCG p} (line-b account). MV implicitly takes a line-a (focus over polarity) position: the partition over which =mi operates is the standard polar {p, pᶜ}. These two partitions are in general distinct — the line-a/b debate (Goodhue 2022a §1) is non-vacuous.

                        theorem MartinezVera2026.mv_partition_can_diverge_from_romeroHan_partition :
                        ∃ (W : Type) (p : Set W) (verumP : Set W), verumP p {p, p} {verumP, verumP}

                        The MV polar partition {p, pᶜ} and the R&H verum partition {forSureCG p, ¬forSureCG p} are in general distinct. There exist contexts (witness: any model where forSureCG p ≠ p) in which MV's line-a focus partition and R&H's line-b VERUM partition pick out different cells.

                        Witness construction: the forSureCG operator can fail to coincide with p whenever the speaker's epistemic state and conversational goals don't trivially settle p — which is the very case that makes verum interesting (cf. R&H §3 on biased polar questions).

                        § 7. The defining commitment contrast (corollary of substrate) #

                        Direct evidentials commit the speaker to scope; reportatives do not. This is MartinezVera2026.assert_commitsToScope and present_commitsToScope packaged as a single statement. The reason present highlights ¬p (and assert doesn't) is downstream of this commitment difference, formalised in the substrate's present_raises_polar_negation / assert_does_not_raise_polar_negation.

                        § 8. Cross-Quechuan family contrast (paper §5) #

                        A label-only typology of published =mi analyses across Quechuan varieties. This is currently a decide-distinct enum, not a semantic taxonomy — each cell is a stand-in for a future per-paper study file (Faller2002, Tellings2014, Grzech2020, Bendezú2023). Once those exist, this enum should be replaced by MiSemantics W-shaped inhabitants whose pairwise distinctness becomes a substantive theorem about predicted felicity profiles, not an enum tautology.

                        Currently retained as a drift sentry: if a future formalisation collapses any two analyses into one (e.g. by treating "epistemic authority" as a sub-case of "verum + focus"), the pairwise_distinct proof fails and forces a re-evaluation of the paper's typological-divergence claim.

                        Analytic stance taken on =mi in a given Quechuan variety, as surveyed in paper §5. Five mutually-incompatible claims, one per variety. Each is a label awaiting a future per-paper study.

                        • verumPlusFocus : MiAnalysis

                          Verum + focus marker requiring discourse sensitivity to the QUD (Saraguro Kichwa per [MV26]).

                        • verumPlusContrast : MiAnalysis

                          Verum + corrective contrast (Conchucos Quechua per [Ben23]).

                        • directEvidentialOnly : MiAnalysis

                          Pure (best-possible-grounds) direct evidential (Cuzco Quechua per [Fal02], [San10]).

                        • pureEvidentialNoFocus : MiAnalysis

                          Pure evidential, no focus role (Imbabura Kichwa per [Tel14]).

                        • epistemicAuthority : MiAnalysis

                          Epistemic-authority marker (Upper Napo Kichwa per [Grz20]).

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                            The cross-Quechuan map from variety to published =mi analysis.

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                              The five published analyses are pairwise distinct as labels. Drift sentry: collapsing two cases breaks this.