In linguistics, mirativity, initially proposed by Scott DeLancey, is a grammatical category in a language, independent of evidentiality,^[1][2] that encodes the speaker's surprise or the unpreparedness of their mind.^[1][3] Grammatical elements that encode the semantic category of mirativity are called miratives (abbreviated MIR).^[4][5]

Albanian has a series of verb forms called miratives or admiratives. These may express surprise on the part of the speaker, but may also have other functions, such as expressing irony, doubt, or reportedness.^[6] The Albanian use of admirative forms is unique in the Balkan context. It is not translatable in other languages. The expression of neutral reportedness can be rendered by 'apparently'.^[7]

While acknowledging the Balkanist term admiratives, DeLancey (1997) promoted miratives as a cross-linguistic term, which he adapted from Jacobsen's (1964) description of the Washo language.^[8][9] According to DeLancey (1997), Turkish, Hare, Sunwar, Lhasa Tibetan, and Korean exhibit a grammatical category to mark information that is new to the speaker.^[4]

In Turkish, the verbal suffix -mIş appears in the same slot as the past tense -di. ^[10][11]

While it is reasonable to assume that -mIş marks indirect evidentiality^[12] as long as 'inference' and 'hearsay' interpretations^[13] are concerned, this does not explain the 'surprise' use of the suffix in the following sentence: ^[13][14]

Citing DeLancey as a predecessor, many researchers have reported miratives in the Tibeto-Burman family and other languages.^[15][16]

Unlike evidentials, miratives may mark novelty of information to anyone involved in the conversation rather than the speaker’s source of information,^[28] although what is labelled as 'miratives' varies in meaning. Aikhenvald (2012) analyses variations of mirative meanings as follows:^[29]

1. Sudden discovery, sudden revelation or realization by the speaker, by the audience (or addressee), or by the main character;
2. Surprise of the speaker, of the audience (or addressee), or of the main character;
3. Unprepared mind of the speaker, of the audience (or addressee), or of the main character;
4. Counter-expectation to the speaker, to the addressee, or to the main character;
5. Information new to the speaker, to the addressee, or to the main character.

Apparently, a mirative marker does not always cover all of those values. For example, !Xun, a Northern Khoisan language has a mirative particle kohà, which can follow an evidential marker but is in complementary distribution with the counter-expectation marker kò.^[28] This suggests that mirativity forms a different grammatical category from evidentiality while surprise and counter-expectation are expressed by different particles in the language.

Many languages can express surprise or new information using an interjection like 'Wow!'.^[30] In English, the expression of surprise can be rendered by 'oh, look!' or 'lookee there!'. Intonation can also contribute to expression of mirative meanings.^[31]

Some languages have a sentence-final particle (SFP) for mirativity. In Cantonese, the SFP wo³ expresses noteworthiness while wo⁴ is associated with unexpectedness, both of which fit the definition of miratives in contrast with the hearsay evidential wo⁵.^[32]

Mirativity can be expressed through verbal morphology, as is the case with the "sudden discovery tense" marker -naq in Tarma Quechua:^[33][34]