situatave

Situatave is a proposed grammatical category in linguistic theory intended to encode information about the situational context of a described event. The term blends 'situation' with a suffix-like element to signal that the clause carries information about the scene, such as the observer’s presence, the physical setting, or the perceived immediacy of the event. It is presented as distinct from tense, aspect, or mood, focusing on the relation between the event and its surrounding situation rather than time or attitude.

Most discussions treat situatave as a flexible marker that can be realized as a verb suffix, a separate particle, or a clause-internal element. It is often connected to, or contrasted with, evidentiality and deixis, because it helps encode who witnessed the event, where it occurred, or how directly the speaker is involved. Typological sketches suggest languages may encode situatave in different slots or rely on multi-layered markers.

Examples are typically hypothetical. In a hypothetical language S, a verb with a situatave suffix -va on 'overflow' could be read as 'the river overflowed, observed by the speaker.' A dedicated situational marker might also indicate setting, such as 'the camp is under attack here and now,' signaling immediate perceptual framing rather than the event’s time.

Reception in the literature is preliminary. Proponents argue that situatave offers a way to capture context-sensitive meaning beyond existing categories, while critics call for more cross-linguistic data to determine whether it denotes a distinct phenomenon or overlaps with deixis and evidentiality.

See also: deixis, evidentiality, mood, aspect, tense.