The essence of mirativity.

The range of mirative meanings across the world's languages subsumes sudden discovery, surprise, and unprepared mind of the speaker ( and also the audience or the main character of a story). Mirative markers may also convey overtones of counterexpectation and new information. The range of mirative meanings may be expressed through a verbal affix, a complex predicate, or a pronoun. Evidentials whose major function is to express information source may have mirative extensions, especially in the context of the 1st person subject. The mirative category appears to be susceptible to linguistic diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]