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Evidentiality

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Inlinguistics,evidentiality[1][2]is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whetherevidenceexists for the statement and if so, what kind. Anevidential(alsoverificationalorvalidational) is the particulargrammaticalelement (affix,clitic,orparticle) that indicates evidentiality. Languages with only a single evidential have had terms such asmediative,médiatif,médiaphorique,andindirectiveused instead ofevidential.

Evidentiality may be direct or indirect:direct evidentialsare used to describe information directly perceived by the speaker throughvisionas well as othersensory experienceswhileindirect evidentialsconsist of the other grammatical markers for evidence such asquotativesandinferentials.[3]

Introduction

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All languages have some means of specifying the source of information. European languages (such asGermanicandRomance languages) often indicate evidential-type information throughmodal verbs(Spanish:deber de,Dutch:zouden,Danish:skulle,‹See Tfd›German:sollen) or otherlexicalwords (adverbials,English:reportedly) or phrases (English:it seems to me).

Some languages have a distinctgrammatical categoryof evidentiality that is required to be expressed at all times. 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, asI 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)[4]reports that about a quarter of the world's languages have some type of grammatical evidentiality. She also reports that, to her knowledge, no research has been conducted on grammatical evidentiality insign languages.Laura Mazzoni has since conducted a preliminary study on evidentiality inItalian Sign Language (LIS).[5]

Many languages with grammatical evidentiality mark evidentiality independently fromtense-aspectorepistemic modality,which is the speaker's evaluation of the information, i.e. whether it is reliable, uncertain, probable.

Grammatical evidentiality may be expressed in different forms depending on the language, such as throughaffixes,clitics,orparticles.For example,Japanesehas inferential evidentials and reportive markers that are realized as suffixes on a variety of mainly verbal predicates, and as grammaticalized nouns.[6]In another example,Eastern Pomohas four evidentialsuffixesthat are added to verbs:-ink’e(nonvisual sensory),-ine(inferential),-·le(hearsay), and-ya(direct knowledge).

Evidentials inEastern Pomo[7]
Evidential type Example verb Gloss
nonvisual sensory pʰa·békʰ-ink’e "burned"
[speaker felt the sensation]
inferential pʰa·bék-ine "must have burned"
[speaker saw circumstantial evidence]
hearsay (reportative) pʰa·békʰ-·le "burned, they say"
[speaker is reporting what was told]
direct knowledge pʰa·bék-a "burned"
[speaker has direct evidence, probably visual]

The use of evidentiality haspragmaticimplications 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; a person who makes a false statement qualified as a personally observed fact will probably be considered to have lied.

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"[8]in a statement. In his dissertation onNanti,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 markerkawhich translates to "presumably," to deflect responsibility for the girl's mistake.[8]

Some languages are borderline cases. For example, theRomance languagesare mostly like English in not having grammatical evidentiality, but do have aconditional moodwhich has three uses: conditions, future-in-the-past, and hearsay. Thus in journalisticFrench,there is frequently a distinction betweenIlareconnu sa culpabilitéandIlauraitreconnu 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 inSpanish(Élhareconocido su culpavs.Élhabríareconocido su culpa) and inPortuguese(Elereconheceusua culpavs.Eleteria reconhecidosua culpa).

Alexandra Aikhenvaldidentified five semantic categories that recurrently occur across languages of the world:[9][10]

  • 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.[11][12]

Types according to Aikhenvald

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Following thetypologyofAlexandra Aikhenvald,[4][13]there are two broad types of evidential marking:

  1. indirectivity marking ( "type I" )
  2. 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).

Indirectivity (type I)

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Indirectivity(also known asinferentiality) systems are common inUralicandTurkic languages.These languages indicate whether evidence exists for a given source of information; thus, they contrastdirectinformation (reported directly) andindirectinformation (reported indirectly, focusing on its reception by the speaker/recipient). Unlike the otherevidential "type II"systems, an indirectivity marking does not indicate information about the source of knowledge: it is irrelevant whether the information results from hearsay, inference, or perception; however, some Turkic languages distinguish betweenreported indirectandnon-reported indirect,see Johanson 2003, 2000 for further elaboration. This can be seen in the followingTurkishverbs:

In the wordgeldi,theunmarkedsuffix-diindicatespast tense.In the second wordgelmiş,the suffix-mişalso indicates past tense butindirectly.It may be translated into English with the added phrases 'obviously', 'apparently' or 'as far as I understand'. The direct past tense marker-diis unmarked (or neutral) in the sense that whether or not evidence exists supporting the statement is not specified.

Evidentiality (type II)

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The other broad type of evidentiality systems ( "type II" ) specifies the nature of the evidence supporting a statement. These kinds of evidence can be divided into such categories as:

  • Sensory
    • Visual
    • Non-visual
  • Inferential
  • Assumed
  • Reportative
    • Hearsay
    • Quotative

Sensoryevidentials can often be divided into different types. Some languages markvisualevidence differently fromnonvisualevidence that is heard, smelled, or felt. TheKashaya languagehas a separateauditoryevidential.

Aninferentialevidential indicates information was not personally experienced but was inferred from indirect evidence. Some languages have different types of inferential evidentials. Some of the inferentials found indicate:

  1. Information inferred by direct physical evidence
  2. Information inferred by general knowledge
  3. Information inferred/assumed because of speaker's experience with similar situations
  4. Past deferred realization

In many cases, different inferential evidentials also indicate epistemic modality, such as uncertainty or probability (seeepistemic modalitybelow). For example, one evidential may indicate that the information is inferred but of uncertain validity, while another indicates that the information is inferred but unlikely to be true.

Reportativeevidentials indicate that the information was reported to the speaker by another person. A few languages distinguish betweenhearsayevidentials andquotativeevidentials. Hearsay indicates reported information that may or may not be accurate. A quotative indicates the information is accurate and not open to interpretation, i.e., is a direct quotation. An example of a reportative fromShipibo(-ronki):

Aronkiai.

a-

do-

ronki-

REPRT-

ai

INCOMPL

a-ronki- ai

do-REPRT- INCOMPL

"It is said that she will do it." / "She says that she will do it."[15]

Typology of evidentiality systems

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The following is a brief survey of evidential systems found in the languages of the world as identified in Aikhenvald (2004).[4]Some languages only have two evidential markers while others may have six or more. The system types are organized by the number of evidentials found in the language. For example, a two-term system (A) will have two different evidential markers; a three-term system (B) will have three different evidentials. The systems are further divided by the type of evidentiality that is indicated (e.g.A1,A2,A3,etc.). Languages that exemplify each type are listed in parentheses.

The most common system found is the A3 type.

Two-term systems:

Three-term systems:

Four-term systems:

  • C1. visual sensory, nonvisual sensory, inferential, reportative (e.g.Tariana,Xamatauteri,Eastern Pomo,EastTucanoan languages)
  • C2. visual sensory, inferential #1, inferential #2, reportative (e.g.Tsafiki,Pawnee,Ancash Quechua)
  • C3. nonvisual sensory, inferential #1, inferential #2, reportative (e.g.Wintu)
  • C4. visual sensory, inferential, reportative #1, reportative #2 (e.g.Southeastern Tepehuan)
  • C5. witness (non-subjective, non-renarrative), inferential (subjective, non-renarrative), renarrative (non-subjective, renarrative), dubitative (subjective, renarrative) (e.g.Bulgarian)[17]

Five-plus term systems:

  • visual sensory, nonvisual sensory, inferential, reportative, assumed (e.g.Tuyuca,Tucano)
  • witness, inferential, reportative, assumed, "internal support" (e.g.Nambikwaran languages)
  • visual sensory, nonvisual sensory, inferential, reported, heard from known source, direct participation (e.g.Fasu)
  • nonvisual sensory, inferential #1, inferential #2, inferential #3, reportative (e.g.Western Apache)
  • inferential, anticipation, performative, deduction, induction, hearsay, direct observation, opinion, assumed, "to know by culture", "to know by internal" (Lojban)[18]

Evidentiality marking and other categories

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Evidential systems in many languages are often marked simultaneously with other linguistic categories.[19]For example, according to Aikhenvald, a given language may use the same element to mark both evidentiality andmirativity,i.e., unexpected information. She claims that this is the case ofWestern Apachewhere the post-verbal particlelą̄ą̄primarily functions as a mirative but also has a secondary function as an inferential evidential. This phenomenon of evidentials developing secondary functions, or other grammatical elements such as miratives andmodal verbsdeveloping evidential functions is fairly widespread. The following types of mixed systems have been reported:

  • evidentiality with mirativity
  • evidentiality withtense-aspect
  • evidentiality withmodality(this is discussed in the next section below)

In addition to the interactions with tense, modality, and mirativity, the usage of evidentials in some languages may also depend on theclausetype,discoursestructure, and/or linguisticgenre.

However, despite the intersection of evidentiality systems with othersemanticorpragmaticsystems (through grammatical categories), Aikhenvald believes that several languages do mark evidentiality without any grammatical connection to these other semantic/pragmatic systems. More explicitly stated, she believes that there are modal systems which do not express evidentiality, and evidential systems which do not express modality. Likewise, there are mirative systems which do not express evidentiality, and evidential systems which do not express mirativity.

Aside from those,egophoricitymay interact with evidentiality as well.[20]

Tense

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Some languages may only distinguish between direct and indirect evidentials in the past tense.[21]This is the case forGeorgian(Kartvelian),Turkish(Turkic),Komi-Zyrian(Finno-Ugric),Haida(alanguage isolateinBritish ColumbiaandAlaska), andIka(Chibchan).[3]

Epistemic modality

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Evidentiality is often considered to be a sub-type ofepistemicmodality (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 seethat he is coming. (evidential)
I knowthat he is coming. (epistemic)

For instance, de Haan[22][23][24]states that evidentialityassertsevidence while epistemic modalityevaluatesevidence and that evidentiality is more akin to adeicticcategory marking the relationship between speakers and events/actions (like the waydemonstrativesmark the relationship between speakers and objects; see also Joseph 2003). Aikhenvald (2003)[2]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)[23]finds that the use of modal verbs to indicate evidentiality is comparatively rare (based on a sample of 200 languages).

Clause type

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Evidential categories are more likely to be marked in a main declarativeclausethan in the other types of clauses.[25]In some languages, however, evidential forms may appear in questions or commands as well.[25]

Terminology

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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 termevidentialityto refer both to the marking of the knowledge source and the commitment to the truth of the knowledge.

In English (not grammaticalized)

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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 (includingQuechua,Aymara,andYukaghir) 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 theseEnglishsentences:

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:

Boblookshungry.
Bobseemshungry.
Bobwould behungry by now.
Bobmust behungry by now.

Here, the fact that we are relying on sensory evidence, rather than direct experience, is conveyed by our use of the wordlookorseem.

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'sgoing torain! (Compare "It will rain!" ).

Possible exceptions

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The suffix "-ish" can be considered to be agrammaticalizedmarker of uncertainty.

Western history of the concept

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The notion of evidentiality as obligatory grammatical information was first made apparent in 1911 byFranz Boasin his introduction toThe Handbook of American Indian Languagesin a discussion ofKwakiutland in his grammatical sketch ofTsimshianic.The termevidentialwas first used in the current linguistic sense byRoman Jakobsonin 1957 in reference toBalkanSlavic(Jacobsen 1986:4; Jakobson 1990) with the following definition:

"EnEns/Esevidential 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 fromgrammatical mood.By the middle of the 1960s,evidentialandevidentialitywere 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 recenttypologicalcomparison is Aikhenvald (2004).[4]

See also

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References

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  1. ^de Haan 2012.
  2. ^abAikhenvald 2003.
  3. ^abde Haan 2013.
  4. ^abcdAikhenvald 2004.
  5. ^Mazzoni 2008.
  6. ^Narrog & Yang 2018.
  7. ^McLendon 2003.
  8. ^abMichael 2008.
  9. ^Aikhenvald 2004,pp. 63–64.
  10. ^Aikhenvald 2018,p. 12.
  11. ^Aikhenvald 2004,p. 64.
  12. ^Aikhenvald 2018,p. 13.
  13. ^Aikhenvald 2006.
  14. ^Johanson 2003,p. 275.
  15. ^Valenzuela 2003,p. 39.
  16. ^Khalilova 2011.
  17. ^Gerdzhikov 1984.
  18. ^"BPFK Section: Evidentials - La Lojban".mw.lojban.org.Baupla Fuzykamni.Retrieved2017-08-06.
  19. ^Bergqvist & Kittilä 2020.
  20. ^Aikhenvald 2018,pp. 12–13.
  21. ^Aikhenvald 2004,p. 261.
  22. ^de Haan 1999.
  23. ^abde Haan 2001.
  24. ^de Haan 2005.
  25. ^abAikhenvald 2004,p. 242.

Further reading

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  • Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.; & Dixon, R. M. W. (1998). Evidentials and areal typology: A case-study from Amazonia.Language Sciences,20,241-257.
  • Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.; & Dixon, R. M. W. (Eds.). (2003).Studies in evidentiality.Typological studies in language (Vol. 54). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.ISBN90-272-2962-7;ISBN1-58811-344-2.
  • Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.; & Dixon, R. M. W. (Eds.). (2014)The Grammar of Knowledge: A Cross-Linguistic Typology.Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-870131-6
  • Blakemore, D. (1994). Evidence and modality. In R. E. Asher (Ed.),The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics(pp. 1183–1186). Oxford: Pergamon Press.ISBN0-08-035943-4.
  • Chafe, Wallace L.; &Nichols, Johanna.(Eds.). (1986).Evidentiality: The linguistic encoding of epistemology.Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
  • Comrie, Bernard. (2000). Evidentials: Semantics and history. In L. Johanson & B. Utas (Eds.).
  • de Haan, Ferdinand (2013b), "Coding of Evidentiality", in Dryer, Matthew S.; Haspelmath, Martin (eds.),WALS Online (v2020.3),retrievedFebruary 3,2024
  • Faust, Norma. (1973).Lecciones para el aprendizaje del idioma shipibo-conibo[Lessons for learning the Shipibo-Conibo language]. Lima: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
  • Guentchéva, Zlatka. (1996a). Introduction. In Z. Guentchéva (Ed.) (pp. 11–18).
  • Guentchéva, Zlatka (Ed.). (1996b).L’Énonciation médiatisée.Bibliothèque de l’information grammaticale. Louvain: Éditions Peeters.ISBN90-6831-861-6;ISBN2-87723-244-1.
  • Johanson, Lars. (2000). Turkic indirectives. In L. Johanson & B. Utas (Eds.) (pp. 61–87).
  • Jacobsen, W. H., Jr. (1986). The heterogeneity of evidentials in Makah. In W. L. Chafe & J. Nichols (Eds.) (pp. 3–28).
  • Jakobson, Roman. (1990). Shifters and verbal categories. InOn language(pp. 386–392). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1957).
  • Johanson, Lars. (2003). Evidentiality in Turkic. In A. Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (Eds.) (pp. 273–290).
  • Johanson, Lars; & Utas, Bo (Eds.). (2000).Evidentials: Turkic, Iranian and neighboring languages.Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.ISBN3-11-016158-3.
  • Joseph, Brian D. (2003). Evidentials: Summation, questions, prospects. In A. Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (Eds.) (pp. 307–327).
  • Kiefer, Ferenc. (1994). Modality. In R. E. Asher (Ed.),The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics(pp. 2515–2520). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • LaPolla, Randy J. (2003). Evidentiality in Qiang. In A. Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (Eds.) (pp. 63–78).
  • Maslova, Elena. (2003). Evidentiality in Yukaghir. In A. Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (Eds.) (pp. 237–241).
  • Noël, Dirk. (2001). The passive matrices of English infinitival complement clauses: Evidentials on the road to auxiliarihood?Studies in Language,25,255-296.
  • Palmer, F. R.(1986).Mood and modality.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN0-521-26516-9,ISBN0-521-31930-7.(2nd ed. published 2001).
  • Palmer, F. R. (1994). Mood and modality. In R. E. Asher (Ed.),The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics(pp. 2535–2540). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Slobin, Dan Isaac; Aksu, Ayhan A. (1982)."Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Use of the Turkish Evidential"(PDF).In Hopper, Paul J. (ed.).Tense-Aspect: Between semantics & pragmatics.Typological Studies in Language. Vol. 1. John Benjamins. p. 185.doi:10.1075/tsl.1.13slo.ISBN978-90-272-2865-9.Archived fromthe originalon April 2, 2024.
  • Speas, Peggy.(2010) 'Evidentials as Generalized Functional Heads.' in A.M. diScuillo, ed. Interface Legibility at the Edge. Oxford University Press.
  • Willet, Thomas L. (1988). A cross-linguistic survey of the grammaticalization of evidentiality.Studies in Language,12,51-97.
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