A mirative is a particular grammatical element in some languages that indicates unexpected and new information. The grammatical category

Grammatical category

A grammatical category is a semantic distinction which is reflected in a morphological paradigm. Grammatical categories can have one or more exponents. For instance, the feature [number] has the exponents [singular] and [plural] in English and many other languages...

 involving miratives is known as mirativity.

The seminal article on mirativity is Scott DeLancey

Scott DeLancey

Scott DeLancey is an American linguist . His work focuses on typology and historical linguistics of Tibeto-Burman languages as well as Plateau Penutian, especially the Klamath language....

 (1997).

Examples

Languages that have miratives include Ainu

Ainu language

Ainu is one of the Ainu languages, spoken by members of the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō....

, Albanian

Albanian language

Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...

, Tibetan

Tibetan language

The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...

, Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

, Western Apache

Western Apache

Western Apache refers to the Apache peoples living today primarily in east central Arizona. Most live within reservations. The White Mountain Apache of the Fort Apache, San Carlos, Yavapai-Apache, Tonto Apache, and the Fort McDowell Mohave-Apache Indian reservations are home to the majority of...

, Barbacoan languages

Barbacoan languages

Barbacoan is a language family spoken in Colombia and Ecuador.-Family division:Barboacoan consists of 6 languages:*Northern* Awan...

 (Tsafiki, Cha'palaa, Awa Pit), Hare (Slavey

Slavey language

Slavey is an Athabaskan language spoken among the Slavey First Nations of Canada in the Northwest Territories where it also has official status....

), Korean

Korean language

Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...

, and the constructed language Na'vi

Na'vi language

The Na’vi language is the constructed language of the Na’vi, the sapient humanoid indigenous inhabitants of the fictional moon Pandora in the 2009 film Avatar. It was created by Paul Frommer, a professor at the Marshall School of Business with a doctorate in linguistics...

.

Aymara

The non-personal knowledge past tense paradigm may be used to express the mirative in the Aymara language

Aymara language

Aymara is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over three million speakers. Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Peru and Bolivia...

. This usage is most striking with a first-person actor:

Ukaruw jamp’att’ataytxa.

{Uka-ru-w(a) jamp’a.t(a)-t’a-tayt(a)-xa}

that.one-ALL-AFF kiss-M-1->3non.personal.knowledge-TOP

‘I’ve kissed that one.’

Turkish

Korean

Na'vi

Miratives and evidentials

Miratives often have a dual function indicating inferential evidentiality

Evidentiality

In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and/or what kind of evidence exists. An evidential is the particular grammatical element that indicates evidentiality...

. Although there is an overlap between the marking of mirativity and evidentiality in some languages (e.g. Tibetan), other languages have two independent systems that mark both of these separately (e.g. Western Apache).

Translation into English

Miratives are often translated into English with an exclamatory intonation

Intonation (linguistics)

In linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...

pattern.

External links

• Summary of mirative postings at LinguistList (includes bibliography)