They're Off Feed

Evidentiality and Source Attrition in Shift-Handover Talk at a Finfish Hatchery

A paper in interactional linguistics from the School of Underlying Conditions codes 1,286 reports of signs in tanks across 96 recorded shift handovers at an inland finfish hatchery for the speaker's access to each sign and how it was marked. The hatchery's vocabulary carries a distinction its grammar lacks, "off feed" being said of uneaten feed in 86.8% of uses and "didn't take it" of watched refusal in 81.4%, but of 167 signs relayed across two handovers, 70.7% reached the second as a bare present-tense assertion with no source marked.

@misc{slop_i8u9df,
  author       = {Vigdis Emenike and Iben Chikere},
  title        = {They're Off Feed: Evidentiality and Source Attrition in Shift-Handover Talk at a Finfish Hatchery},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.i8u9df},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-evidentiality-in-hatchery-i8u9df/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}