6.2 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evidentiality | 1/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:56:06.594635+00:00 | kb-cron |
In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and if so, what kind. An evidential (also verificational or validational) is the particular grammatical element (affix, clitic, or particle) that indicates evidentiality. Languages with only a single evidential have had terms such as mediative, médiatif, médiaphorique, and indirective used instead of evidential. Evidentiality may be direct or indirect: direct evidentials are used to describe information directly perceived by the speaker through vision as well as other sensory experiences while indirect evidentials consist of the other grammatical markers for evidence such as quotatives and inferentials.
== Introduction == All languages have some means of specifying the source of information. European languages (such as Germanic and Romance languages) often use modal verbs (Spanish: deber de, Dutch: zouden, Danish: skulle, German: sollen) or other lexical words (adverbials, English: reportedly) or phrases (English: it seems to me). Some languages have a distinct grammatical category of evidentiality that is required to be expressed at all times. In contrast, the elements in European languages indicating the information source are optional and usually do not indicate evidentiality as their primary function; thus, they do not form a grammatical category. The obligatory elements of grammatical evidentiality systems may be translated into English, variously, as I hear that, I see that, I think that, as I hear, as I can see, as far as I understand, they say, it is said, it seems, it seems to me that, it looks like, it appears that, it turns out that, alleged, stated, allegedly, reportedly, obviously, etc. Alexandra Aikhenvald (2004) reports that about a quarter of the world's languages have some type of grammatical evidentiality. Laura Mazzoni has since conducted a preliminary study on evidentiality in Italian Sign Language (LIS). Grammatical evidentiality may be expressed in different forms depending on the language, such as through affixes, clitics, or particles. For example, Japanese has inferential evidentials and reportive markers that are realized as suffixes on a variety of mainly verbal predicates, and as grammaticalized nouns. As another example, Eastern Pomo uses four evidential suffixes that are added to verbs: -ink’e (nonvisual sensory), -ine (inferential), -·le (hearsay), and -ya (direct knowledge).
Many languages with grammatical evidentiality mark evidentiality independently from tense-aspect or epistemic modality, which is the speaker's evaluation of the information, i.e. whether it is reliable, uncertain, probable. The use of evidentiality has pragmatic implications. In languages that do not mark evidentiality distinctly from epistemic modality, for example, a person who makes a false statement qualified as a belief may be considered mistaken, while a person who makes a false statement qualified as a personally observed fact will probably be considered to have lied. More generally, a speaker of a language that does have obligatory grammatical evidentiality is required to cognitively engage with the source of their belief of any statement in a manner that the speaker of languages without obligatory evidentiality may gloss over. In some languages, evidential markers also serve other purposes, such as indicating the speaker's attitude towards, or belief in, the statement. Usually a direct evidential marker may serve to indicate that the speaker is certain about the event stated. Using an indirect evidential marker, such as one for hearsay or reported information, may indicate that the speaker is uncertain about the statement, or doesn't want to take responsibility for its truth. A "hearsay" evidential may then have the undertone of "that's what they say; whether or not it's true is nothing I can take responsibility for". In other languages, this is not the case. Therefore, one should distinguish between such evidential markers that only mark source of knowledge, and such evidential markers that serve other functions, such as marking epistemic modality. Evidentials can also be used to "deflect culpability" in a statement. In his dissertation on Nanti, a Peruvian Amazonian language, Lev Michael refers to an example in which a young girl is accidentally burned, and a community member questions her mother about how it happened. Her mother uses the evidential marker ka which translates to "presumably," to deflect responsibility for the girl's mistake. Some languages are borderline cases. For example, the Romance languages are mostly like English in not having grammatical evidentiality, but do have a conditional mood which has three uses: conditions, future-in-the-past, and hearsay. Thus in journalistic French, there is frequently a distinction between Il a reconnu sa culpabilité and Il aurait reconnu sa culpabilité: both translate to "He has admitted his guilt," but with an implication of certainty with the first, and the idea of "reportedly" with the second. The same happens in Spanish (Él ha reconocido su culpa vs. Él habría reconocido su culpa) and in Portuguese (Ele reconheceu sua culpa vs. Ele teria reconhecido sua culpa). Aikhenvald identified five semantic categories that recurrently occur across languages of the world:
Visual Sensory Non-Visual Sensory Inferentials Hearsay Reportatives Quotative Reportatives No language has been reported to have special forms for smell, taste or feeling although these may be covered by non-visual evidentials.
== Types according to Aikhenvald == Following the typology of Alexandra Aikhenvald, there are two broad types of evidential marking:
indirectivity marking ("type I") evidential marking ("type II") The first type (indirectivity) indicates whether evidence exists for a given statement, but does not specify what kind of evidence. The second type (evidentiality proper) specifies the kind of evidence (such as whether the evidence is visual, reported, or inferred).