Knowledge predication in language use

Much of our communication relates to knowledge; most languages have dedicated lexical forms for expressing who knows things and what they know: knowledge predication forms, e.g. English know.

These forms’ use has been studied in some large, mainly European, languages, but it remains unknown how they are used in the rest of the world’s languages. What do people talk about knowing?

What is the communicative function of talking about knowing?Many languages do not make do with one form for knowledge predication, e.g. Naro, where ‘know’ is !’ãa and ‘not know’ is |’úú. What other kinds of distinctions in meaning are made cross-linguistically and how do these compare across languages?

And how are the different knowledge predication forms used across languages; can their use tell us something about the apparent communicative need for detailed expression of knowledge?These are the issues which will be investigated in the proposed semantic typological project.

Taking a usage-based perspective on language, I will consider the contexts in which knowledge predications occur in original texts from languages around the world.The investigation of knowledge predication cross-linguistically is of interest from the point of view of understanding language—as knowledge predication forms appear to be almost universal—but for the same reason, it is also important to understanding human cognition more generally, and how we conceive of and interact with the world and each other.