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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evidentiality | 3/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:56:06.594635+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Tense === Some languages may only distinguish between direct and indirect evidentials in the past tense. This is the case for Georgian (Kartvelian), Turkish (Turkic), Komi-Zyrian (Finno-Ugric), Haida (a language isolate in British Columbia and Alaska), and Ika (Chibchan).
=== Epistemic modality === Evidentiality is often considered to be a sub-type of epistemic modality (see, for example, Palmer 1986, Kiefer 1994). Other linguists consider evidentiality (marking the source of information in a statement) to be distinct from epistemic modality (marking the degree of confidence in a statement). An English example:
I see that he is coming. (evidential) I know that he is coming. (epistemic) For instance, de Haan states that evidentiality asserts evidence while epistemic modality evaluates evidence and that evidentiality is more akin to a deictic category marking the relationship between speakers and events/actions (like the way demonstratives mark the relationship between speakers and objects; see also Joseph 2003). Aikhenvald (2003) finds that evidentials may indicate a speaker's attitude about the validity of a statement but this is not a required feature of evidentials. Additionally, she finds that evidential-marking may co-occur with epistemic-marking, but it may also co-occur with aspectual/tense or mirative marking. Considering evidentiality as a type of epistemic modality may only be the result of analyzing non-European languages in terms of the systems of modality found in European languages. For example, the modal verbs in Germanic languages are used to indicate both evidentiality and epistemic modality (and are thus ambiguous when taken out of context). Other (non-European) languages clearly mark these differently. De Haan (2001) finds that the use of modal verbs to indicate evidentiality is comparatively rare (based on a sample of 200 languages).
=== Clause type === Evidential categories are more likely to be marked in a main declarative clause than in the other types of clauses. In some languages, however, evidential forms may appear in questions or commands as well.
=== Terminology === Although some linguists have proposed that evidentiality should be considered separately from epistemic modality, other linguists conflate the two. Because of this conflation, some researchers use the term evidentiality to refer both to the marking of the knowledge source and the commitment to the truth of the knowledge.
== In English (not grammaticalized) == Evidentiality is not considered a grammatical category in English because it is expressed in diverse ways and is always optional. In contrast, many other languages (including Quechua, Aymara, and Yukaghir) require the speaker to mark the main verb or the sentence as a whole for evidentiality, or offer an optional set of affixes for indirect evidentiality, with direct experience being the default assumed mode of evidentiality. Consider these English sentences:
I am hungry. Bob is hungry. We are unlikely to say the second unless someone (perhaps Bob himself) has told us that Bob is hungry (We might still say it for someone incapable of speaking for themself, such as a baby or a pet). If we are simply assuming that Bob is hungry based on the way he looks or acts, we are more likely to say something like:
Bob looks hungry. Bob seems hungry. Bob would be hungry by now. Bob must be hungry by now. Here, the fact that we are relying on sensory evidence, rather than direct experience, is conveyed by our use of the word look or seem. Another situation in which the evidential modality is expressed in English is in certain kinds of predictions, namely those based on the evidence at hand. These can be referred to as "predictions with evidence". Examples:
Look at those clouds! It's going to rain! (Compare "It will rain!").
=== Possible exceptions === The suffix "-ish" can be considered to be a grammaticalized marker of uncertainty.
== Western history of the concept == The notion of evidentiality as obligatory grammatical information was first made apparent in 1911 by Franz Boas in his introduction to The Handbook of American Indian Languages in a discussion of Kwakiutl and in his grammatical sketch of Tsimshianic. The term evidential was first used in the current linguistic sense by Roman Jakobson in 1957 in reference to Balkan Slavic (Jacobsen 1986:4; Jakobson 1990) with the following definition:
"EnEns/Es evidential is a tentative label for the verbal category which takes into account three events — a narrated event (En), a speech event (Es), and a narrated speech event (Ens). The speaker reports an event on the basis of someone else's report (quotative, i.e. hearsay evidence), of a dream (revelative evidence), of a guess (presumptive evidence) or of his own previous experience (memory evidence)." Jakobson also was the first to clearly separate evidentiality from grammatical mood. By the middle of the 1960s, evidential and evidentiality were established terms in linguistic literature. Systems of evidentiality have received focused linguistic attention only relatively recently. The first major work to examine evidentiality cross-linguistically is Chafe & Nichols (1986). A more recent typological comparison is Aikhenvald (2004).
== See also == Epistemology – Philosophical study of knowledge Linguistic modality – Phenomenon whereby language is used to discuss possible situationsPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets Epistemic modality – Type of linguistic modality Mirativity – Grammatical category which conveys surprise Egophoricity – Linguistic encoding of personal knowledge Grammatical mood – Grammatical feature of verbs Evidence theory – Mathematical framework to model epistemic uncertaintyPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
== References ==