The Enlhet Revelative

Abstract

This paper describes the Enlhet revelative nooka’ and proposes a unified semantic analysis for it. Prima facie, nooka’ has evidential, mirative, and temporal nuances in its meaning. Against this, we establish that the core meaning of nooka’ is a change in epistemic state, and that the particle is not associated to specific sources of evidence nor to contradicting a previous expectation. The evidential properties of the particle arise from interactions between the time of the event and evidence acquisition time, while any mirative properties of nooka’ are occasional concomitants, but are not necessarily associated with the particle. We show how the evidence acquisition time implicit in nooka’ differs from the main narrative time. Our analysis characterizes nooka’ as a revelative, a category that has been identified in various other languages, but which is still poorly understood.