Bulgarian Evidentials and Why They are Great
Ah, Bulgarian, what a great language. It’s the only Slavic language without declension, and it’s got post-positional articles, diminutive verbs, a homely little question particle, and a phonology you can actually pronounce…
But wait there’s more!
Order now, and Bulgarian will come with FOUR evidentials! That’s right, four.
You can say:
1st evidential: “The dog ate the fish (I saw it happen)”
2nd: “the dog has eaten the fish (here is the evidence)” “
3rd: (it is said that) the dog ate the fish”
4th: “the dog (supposedly) ate the fish.”
I’d also add a 0th evidential, where you strip all personal comment off the verb by using the present tense even when talking about the past (“In 1492, the dog eats the fish).
Isn’t that great? Evidentials are rare in Europe.
But the thing that blows my mind about this whole mess is that before I did some research, I thought Bulgarian just had two evidentials (I-did-see-it and I-didn’t-see-it), the I-didn’t-see-it , the evidential function glued onto what I had been told is the present perfect.
Certainly, my students think of it that way. They think that the “I have done” form in English (present perfect, emphasizing the connection between an action in the past and its connection to the present) is a good translation for the “Az sam napravil” (2nd evidential, indicating that you were not there to see the action and can only deduce from the result that it happened).
As you can guess, there is IS some overlap. An English-speaker might say “Someone has eaten my cake” while looking at a crumb-strewn plate, in the same way a Bulgarian-speaker would say “Nyakoi e izyal moita torta,” but the English speaker might as well say “someone ate my cake.” But when an English speaker would have no choice but to say “my great-great-grandmother came from Ukraine,” in Bulgarian you have to say “pra-pra-babata mi e idvala ot Ukraina” (she is dead and I never met her). And this would be TOTALLY DIFFERENT from the English “my great-great grandmother has come from Germany” (implying that she is somehow still alive and traveling).
Even the wikipedia article on the subject talks this way, calling the 2nd evidential the “present perfect” or “past indefinite,” and then noting exceptions (it can’t be used for events occurring in the present, it is used to indicate actions you didn’t witness), as if the Bulgarian 2nd evidential is a wrong or broken (or at least aberrant) present perfect.
This is a consensus that has emerged between patronizing and superior English-speakers and Bulgarian-speakers who assume that the Anglosphere must be right about SOMETHING, given the fact they won the Cold War. And then they go on to shovel all the half-baked political rhetoric they can on top of the mistaken assumption that the Bulgarian must be inferior to English.
I’ve heard that the Bulgarian evidential system was:
Forced upon the language of the Slavic people by their cruel Ottoman masters
Indicative of a culture where nobody trusts each other
A remnant of Old Church Slavonic (it isn’t), implying Bulgarian is out-moded and primitive
(Sometimes from the same person) that it is a corruption of the pure Slavic verb system
Basically useless anyway, since why would you need to communicate evidentiality?
And it’s none of those things. It’s. Just. Language. People! God! Damn!
Deep breaths now.
But wait there’s more!
Order now, and Bulgarian will come with FOUR evidentials! That’s right, four.
You can say:
1st evidential: “The dog ate the fish (I saw it happen)”
2nd: “the dog has eaten the fish (here is the evidence)” “
3rd: (it is said that) the dog ate the fish”
4th: “the dog (supposedly) ate the fish.”
I’d also add a 0th evidential, where you strip all personal comment off the verb by using the present tense even when talking about the past (“In 1492, the dog eats the fish).
Isn’t that great? Evidentials are rare in Europe.
I know this, as I have sampled all your human languages
But the thing that blows my mind about this whole mess is that before I did some research, I thought Bulgarian just had two evidentials (I-did-see-it and I-didn’t-see-it), the I-didn’t-see-it , the evidential function glued onto what I had been told is the present perfect.
Certainly, my students think of it that way. They think that the “I have done” form in English (present perfect, emphasizing the connection between an action in the past and its connection to the present) is a good translation for the “Az sam napravil” (2nd evidential, indicating that you were not there to see the action and can only deduce from the result that it happened).
As you can guess, there is IS some overlap. An English-speaker might say “Someone has eaten my cake” while looking at a crumb-strewn plate, in the same way a Bulgarian-speaker would say “Nyakoi e izyal moita torta,” but the English speaker might as well say “someone ate my cake.” But when an English speaker would have no choice but to say “my great-great-grandmother came from Ukraine,” in Bulgarian you have to say “pra-pra-babata mi e idvala ot Ukraina” (she is dead and I never met her). And this would be TOTALLY DIFFERENT from the English “my great-great grandmother has come from Germany” (implying that she is somehow still alive and traveling).
Even the wikipedia article on the subject talks this way, calling the 2nd evidential the “present perfect” or “past indefinite,” and then noting exceptions (it can’t be used for events occurring in the present, it is used to indicate actions you didn’t witness), as if the Bulgarian 2nd evidential is a wrong or broken (or at least aberrant) present perfect.
This is a consensus that has emerged between patronizing and superior English-speakers and Bulgarian-speakers who assume that the Anglosphere must be right about SOMETHING, given the fact they won the Cold War. And then they go on to shovel all the half-baked political rhetoric they can on top of the mistaken assumption that the Bulgarian must be inferior to English.
I’ve heard that the Bulgarian evidential system was:
Forced upon the language of the Slavic people by their cruel Ottoman masters
Indicative of a culture where nobody trusts each other
A remnant of Old Church Slavonic (it isn’t), implying Bulgarian is out-moded and primitive
(Sometimes from the same person) that it is a corruption of the pure Slavic verb system
Basically useless anyway, since why would you need to communicate evidentiality?
And it’s none of those things. It’s. Just. Language. People! God! Damn!
Deep breaths now.
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