Overview of the Trio language. Brings together both extralinguistic factors, such as historical, economic, sociological and cultural factors that have and still contribute to the present-day status of the Trio Amerindians and their language and internal sociolinguistic factors, that is, factors that influence the choice of what the Trio speak to whom, how, and when. Shows that Trio sociolinguistically-speaking is in a strong position.

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© eithne b. carlin and jimmy mans, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�80��0_005 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC 3.0) License.

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This chapter investigates the phenomenon of evidentiality in two Cariban languages, showing that the statement of source of information is not only a matter of grammatical expression, rather as a category it permeates the cultures of these Cariban peoples. Trio and Wayana distinguish a witnessed versus non-witnessed evidentiality pattern. Wayana has an additional reportative marker that has developed out of the non-witnessed form. This chapter looks into the use of evidentials in everyday speech as well as in oral traditions and shows how Trio and Wayana storytellers use evidential forms as a perspectivization strategy to position themselves vis-à-vis the source of information contained in the narratives. In addition, this chapter shows how the discourse of shamanic journeying is distinguishable from that of a speaker who has entered into an altered state of consciousness, such as coma, sleep-state and the like.