Epistemic perspective of temporal deictics

Abstract Deictic items encoding coordinative dimensions of space and time often grammaticalize into markers of epistemic categories. This study examines what kind of epistemic system is formed by the tense-deictic retrospectivizing particles əʎe / əʎə and ulmaʃ / ələn in the Mari languages. Based on a corpus study, the paper proposes a new perspective-based approach to the evidentiality of the particle constructions and shows how they also participate in a discourse-interactive custom of Common Ground management. Both functions stem from the internal semantics of the particle constructions which in essence are multiple perspective constructions expressing two observer positions with respect to one state of affairs. Crucially, also spatial deictics express epistemic differences based on observer positions, but they have different communicational properties. Spatial environment allows intersubjective reference to speaker and addressee perspectives, while the Mari temporal particle constructions are fully speaker-anchored. Thus, the epistemic grammaticalization potential of the two types of deictics is shown to be different.