Legislación y normativa estatal

speak-er’s sight or be naturally invisible. For jungle dwellers, this situation is a daily experience. Animals are usually invisible but are frequently heard at a distance.

5. Modality of certainty: the speaker has witnessed what he is describ-ing. Certainty, according to Gómez-Imbert, may be sensitive (visual) or intellectual (one maintains that he knows well what he is saying).

Categories 3, 4, and 5 are linguistic markers that deal with levels of truth. They constitute a three-step scale toward fully assured utterances. The difference between auditive and visual perception can be paired with the difference between a doubtful statement and a certain one. Citation and inference are not trust-able modalities. The first deals with possible lies and the second with false inference, that is, sincere error (Gómez-Imbert 1982).

Evidentials in the Northwest Amazon

After Gómez-Imbert, other linguists have more extensively studied such grammatical particularities, usually described as

“evidential systems,” in the Vaupés-Rio Negro area. Their occur-rences, number, conditions of use, and interpretation may vary among the various language families and dialects spoken in this region. Evidentials are lexical or grammatical means to specify the nature of the evidence on which a statement is based (Aikhen-vald 2003a: 1). As an optional feature, evidentiality is universal, as every language in the world possesses lexical means to specify the source of knowledge that is at stake in a statement. Clauses like “I hear that,” “I guess,” “they say,” and adverbs like “alleg-edly” exist everywhere.

However, not all languages have evidentiality as a grammat-ical category, and they may differ in how precisely they distin-guish among sources of information. The simplest systems re-viewed worldwide by Aikhenvald and Dixon (2003) consist of a distinction between indirect and direct sources (that is, hearsay and the others). More complicated systems may have up to seven markers and specify the kind of evidence: either sensory (visual, auditory), spatial (close, distant), or cognitively based (inferred, assumed, reported).

While they are not so common worldwide, such complex sys-tems as the Tatuyo described by Gómez-Imbert have been found in various groups of the northwestern Amazon. Visual evidentials are present in several eastern Tucanoan languages of the Vaupés-Rio Negro area. Visual/nonvisual obligatory contrasts have been recorded in Tuyuca (Barnes 1984; Malone 1988), Barasana (Jones and Jones 1991), Tucano proper (West 1980), Desana (Barnes 1984; Miller 1999), and Cubeo (Morse and Maxwell 1999).

The nonvisual evidence may be unspecified or—as in Tatuyo—

frequently typified as a sensory experience, with auditory coming first: “the speaker heard, tasted, smelt, or felt the event or state”

(Barnes, for Tuyuca, 1999: 214). The Tanimuka-Letuama (cen-tral Tucanoan) system seems slightly different. It has three eviden-tial suffixes, and one of them specifies direct auditory informa-tion, as opposed to other inferred or hearsay modalities (Strom

1992: 90). As the latter are optional, the description permits us not to conclude that visual evidence is the default category but that is a possibility.

Another interesting point is that major language variations are no obstacle to the diffusion of morphosyntactic structures in the Vaupés-Rio Negro area. A sophisticated evidential system has been described by Aikhenvald among the Tariana, who are an Arawakan-speaking community living on the Brazilian banks of the Vaupés River. This system comprises five evidential markers (visual, nonvisual, inferred generic, inferred specific, reported) that combine with three tenses (present, recent past, remote past) (Aikhenvald 2003b: 133). There is no default category, so every statement must contain an indication of how the information was acquired (Aikhenvald 2003b: 134). In Tariana, the visual/non-visual contrast is semantically similar to the Tuyuca system, but has no spatial close/distant distinction as in Tatuyo, and both ev-idential systems combine with tense variations.

The Tariana people have been living close to Tucanoan speak-ers for three to four centuries and do intermarry with them. As grammatical evidentiality is not often found in the Arawakan language family, Aikhenvald concludes that the Tarianas’ fine-grained evidential system has been borrowed from Tucano. Nev-ertheless, she notices that several Arawakan-speaking groups liv-ing in the north Amazon and upper Orinoco do have a minimal nonobligatory system contrasting direct/hearsay statements. These are the Piapoco (Vaupés), the Achagua (Meta), and, in between, the whole array of Baniwa-Curripaco-speaking groups dwelling on the Içana and Rio Negro River banks with whom we are di-rectly concerned in this chapter.

Whether or not a specific visual/nonvisual evidential contrast exists in Curripaco grammar is a question that is beyond the scope of this essay. Aikhenvald states that “the Baniwa-Kurripako di-alect to the north and north-east . . . is the Tariana’s closest rela-tive outside the Vaupés” (Aikhenvald 1999: 385). However, she

finds no evidence that a fine-grained evidential system exists in Curripaco and thus supports the idea that it does not. But absent a full description of Curripaco grammar, the question remains open. If, as noted by de Haan, evidentiality is “more of an ar-eal feature than a genetic feature . . . given the ease with which it spreads from language to language” (n.d.: 1), we should be cau-tious in our conclusions.

Visual Evidentials and Epistemic Value

Aikhenvald states that among the Tariana, “the use of evidentials correlates with cultural stereotypes and with conventional atti-tudes to information” (2003b: 159). As an example, she notes that the visual/nonvisual markers apply to such modern media as television (visual) and telephone (nonvisual). The case seems quite obvious. But she also reports that evidentials are not only sensory or spatiotemporal markers; they have a different cog-nitive value as shown by a “number of epistemic extensions”

(Aikhenvald 2003b: 161). Some of the best evidence she presents, like the evidence Gómez-Imbert offers for the Tatuyo people, con-cerns the way Tariana-speakers report dreams. Whereas shamanic visions are cast in the visual mode, ordinary people’s nocturnal dreams are reported as nonvisual evidence. To Aikhenvald, vi-sual evidentials in Tariana have an obvious epistemic value. The contents of shamans’ dreams, which in fact are not proper vi-sual experiences, are cast as vivi-sual because shamans are reliable sources of information. “Visual evidentials are associated with

‘omniscience.’ Shamans and evil spirits have access to supernat-ural knowledge and know it all” (Aikhenvald 2003b: 159). It ap-pears that, for the Tariana, the visual mode is also the most au-thoritative. In sharp contrast, among devout Catholics, such a

“true fact” as the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is def-initely not a visual experience.

Gómez-Imbert, who disagrees with de Haan and other linguists’

views of such grammatical entities as spatiotemporal or

testinial markers, strongly advocates labeling them “cognitive mo-dalities” rather than evidentials. Significantly, she points out the modern use of the inferential mode among the Tatuyo, not only for reporting information from printed texts but also from pho-tographs and drawings. Although the latter are images, they are not reported as visual information because they are not consid-ered direct evidence. Nevertheless, printed texts and images are not cast as simple “hearsay” statements; as noted by Aikhenvald in Tariana, some “proof of the validity of the information can be seen as printed in the book” (Aikhenvald 2003b: 161).

There is evidence that the visual/nonvisual contrast has an epis-temic value in Tatuyo as in Tariana. Gómez-Imbert states that in Tatuyo, the visual marker characterizes an event “fully perceived”

by a speaker: “He has no doubt on the identity of the agent nor on the action itself” (2003: 120). Moreover, she notices that the visual cognitive modality encompasses “physically and psycho-logically evident facts, generally accepted truths (the sun is hot) and culturally admitted truths such as moral values and tradi-tional behaviours and techniques” (2003: 121).

It appears then that in both languages, evidentials can be dis-tributed on an epistemic scale running from the visual mode (en-compassing the most valuable information) down to the “hear-say” mode, connoting the unreliability of the information. The nonvisual marker comes second in Tariana, and third in Tatuyo after the “visual long distant” marker. Although this order-ing may be suspect, as an observers’ construct, Aikhenvald and Gómez-Imbert classify visual and nonvisual markers close to one another because both are direct sensory experiences, whereas in-ferred and reported markers are indirect ones. In spite of their proximity, the epistemic value order in which the visual and non-visual markers appear is unambiguous. A non-visually marked state-ment ought to be more fully authorized or reliable than a non-visual sensory-based one. An auditive experience like hearing a voice in the night or a plane motor in a cloudy sky is not, in the

Tatuyo way, a “fully perceived fact.” Paraphrasing Gómez-Im-bert, we could write that it leaves some doubt “about the precise identity of the agent and of the action.”

Evidentials and Jurupari Ritual

This discussion of linguistics and evidential systems among the Tatuyo and Tariana obviously raises many questions that are still vigorously debated among anthropologists and linguists. What kind of relation should be drawn between morphosyntactic struc-tures, psychological categories, and cultural attitudes? Do we have to suppose a strict correspondence between visual/nonvi-sual discriminating evidential systems and ritual arrangements?

Trying to discuss these points on theoretical grounds would lead us far beyond the aim of this essay. Gómez-Imbert, for her part, discusses the relation between language structure and experience.

She concludes that grammatical categories are “fossilized psycho-logical categories,” and as such, “perception and conceptualiza-tion” are reflected in them. She adds that, functionally, evidentials should facilitate the expression of specific ideas (2003: 120). Ai-khenvald does not discuss this point, but simply states, as noted above, that the use of evidentials “correlates with cultural ste-reotypes and with conventional attitudes to information.” Cor-relation is one word we can appropriate to characterize the re-lation between the use of visual/nonvisual evidential markers in discourse and the enacting of a visual prohibition during Juru-pari rites. Yet we still have a problem, as the existence of such a grammatical distinction is not confirmed in Curripaco language.

The point we will try to make thus diverges from the classical discussion about language-thought relation and is more an inter-pretative suggestion than an ethnolinguistic statement. Let us re-call a few linguistic and ethnographic points:

1. Fine-grained evidential systems such as those considered above are