miratives

Noun

mirative (countable and uncountable, plural miratives)

1. (uncountable) A grammatical mood that expresses (surprise at) unexpected revelations or new information.
   • Although the Maidu 'evidential' -wéw (Shipley 1964:45) might correspond somewhat to the Washo visual, and the (unexemplified) Sierra Miwok 'circumstantial evidence' marker taˀ, tat, ˀiš- (Freeland 1951:169) may correspond to the Washo inferential (mirative).1986, Wallace [L.] Chafe, Johanna Nichols, editors, Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing Corporation, →ISBN, footnote 7, page 8
2. (countable) (An instance of) a form of a word which conveys this mood.
   • [T]he speaker had heard on the radio that a bear had attacked a woman. From the description of her wounds on the radio, he infers, using the mirative/inferential particle lą̄ą̄, that she was dragged by the bear. […] This particle also implies that the speaker was surprised at the event. Bear...2003, Willem J. de Reuse, “Evidentiality in Western Apache (Athabaskan)”, in Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon, editors, Studies in Evidentiality (Typological Studies in Language; 54)...

See all 3 meanings of mirative