Evidentiality

Abstract

Human societies show a deep concern with how people know things and how relationships to knowledge are constructed and portrayed in talk. The term evidentiality refers to particular linguistic resources for talking about knowledge and especially to grammaticalized markers that indicate knowledge sources. Evidential marking is found in diverse languages around the world. This review discusses cross-linguistic evidential meanings and examines research on evidentials in practice, with a focus on their interpretation as stance markers and deictic elements. Evidentiality is a fascinating accomplishment in language structure, meaning, and use and can tell us about shared and disparate visions of knowledge and sociality across cultures. Show more