36

Evidentiality and Mirativity

Ferdinand de Haan

1. Introduction

This chapter is concerned with the nature of evidentiality, the marking of the source of

information, or where the speaker got his or her evidence for making a statement from.1

A discussion of evidentiality is fitting in this volume, as the categories of evidentiality

and tense/aspect overlap in various respects. On a formal level, it is frequently the case

that evidentials are expressed with tense or aspect morphemes (see section 4.4). They

also share certain semantic features, something that will be discussed in section 6.

Evidentiality and tense/aspect are much closer related than is sometimes assumed in the

literature (which tends to focus on the relations between evidentiality and epistemic

modality), and this chapter lays out the reasons for treating evidentiality and mirativity as

part of tense/aspect.

An example of a prototypical evidential category is shown in (1), from the South

American language Tuyuca, which shows a sentence ending in an evidential affix -wi that

shows that the speaker saw (personally witnessed) the action described in the sentence.

This evidential affix in Tuyuca is a portmanteau morpheme, combining information about

evidentiality, tense, person, and number.

(1) Tuyuca (E. Tucanoan; Barnes, 1984, p. 257)

díiga apé-wi

soccer play-3SG.MASC.PAST.VIS

“He played soccer (I saw him play).”

Until quite recently, evidentiality was seen as an exotic notion, a feature mainly

found in non-Western (or non-Indo-European) languages, such as the languages of the

Americas and Asia (this despite the presence of a work like Haarmann (1970), on indirect

evidentiality in the languages of Europe). However, in recent years studies of

evidentiality have shown that evidentiality and evidential strategies do play an important

role in the languages of Europe, even though evidentiality may not be expressed in quite

the same way as in, for instance, languages of the Americas, such as Tuyuca. This

chapter explores the various ways in which evidentiality manifests itself in language,

with discussions of the various types of evidentiality (the semantic side of evidentiality)

and the ways evidential notions are expressed crosslinguistically (morphosyntactic

expressions of modality). The focus is on work in the functional-typological tradition, but

other viewpoints receive some attention as well.

In the recent literature, discussions of the status of evidentiality have revolved

around questions of whether evidentiality is a grammatical category in its own right (i.e.,

separate from other linguistic areas) or whether it is part of some other category. In this

chapter, two such areas are discussed, namely the interaction of evidentiality and

(epistemic) modality, and the relationship between evidentiality and tense/aspect. The

interaction between evidentiality and epistemic modality revolves around discussions of

whether evidentials, like epistemic modals, show a diminished degree of confidence in

the truth of the statement. The literature is divided on whether evidentials, especially

evidentials encoding indirect evidence, necessarily show this diminished belief in the

truth of the proposition on the part of the speaker. This discussion is exemplified by an

examination of the epistemic modal must and related verbs in other Germanic languages

and by a comparison of these verbs with evidentials in languages that are more

grammaticalized. The discussion of the relationship between evidentiality and

tense/aspect is framed in terms of the similarities in locating actions and events with

respect to the speaker and the moment of speech. Reasons for these similarities are

discussed and a possible solution is found by looking at evidentiality as a deictic

category.

Finally, a relatively new category is discussed, namely mirativity, the marking of

unexpected information. This category has been linked to evidentiality, in that both are

usually, but not exclusively, expressed by the same morpheme. However, in recent years

enormous strides have been made in our understanding of mirativity, and it has been

shown that this category has some unique properties that set it apart from evidentiality.

2. A Brief History of Evidentiality

This section gives an overview of the history of evidentiality and discusses some of the

more important and influential publications in this area. In an overview such as this it is

of course impossible to mention all studies on evidentiality, especially since in recent

years many studies have appeared on “evidentiality in language X” which almost

invariably add to our understanding of evidentials, but here we concentrate on theoretical

and typological studies.

The best place to start is undoubtedly Franz Boas’ “Introduction” to the first

volume of the Handbook of American Indian Languages (1911), which highlighted the

fact that certain morphemes in languages of North America have a meaning which is

unlike those present in English. The following quote serves to exemplify Boas’ thoughts,

not only on evidentiality, but also on its role in language (1911, p. 39):

. . . [I]t will be recognized that in each language only a part of the complete

concept that we have in mind is expressed, and that each language has a peculiar

tendency to select this or that aspect of the mental image which is conveyed by

the expression of the thought. To use again the example which I mentioned

before, The man is sick. We express by this sentence, in English, the idea a

definite single man at present sick. In Kwakiutl this sentence would have to be

rendered by an expression which would mean, in the vaguest possible form that

could be given to it, definite man near him invisible sick near him invisible.

Visibility and nearness to the first or second person might, of course, have been

selected in our example in place of invisibility and nearness to the third person.

An idiomatic expression of the sentence in this language would, however be much

more definite and would require an expression somewhat like the following, That

invisible man lies sick on his back on the floor of the absent house. . . . if we take

into consideration further traits of idiomatic expression, this example might be

further expanded by adding modalities of the verb; thus the Kwakiutl . . . would

require a form indicating whether this is a new subject introduced in conversation

or not; and, in case the speaker had not seen the sick person himself, he would

have to express whether he knows by hearsay or by evidence that the person is

sick, or whether he had dreamed it.

Perhaps one of the first scholars to incorporate evidentiality into a larger theory

was Roman Jakobson in his famous 1957 [1971] paper on “Shifters” who compared

evidentiality to other verbal and nominal categories by breaking these categories down

into semantic features (1971, p. 135). Evidentiality in Jakobson’s theory is seen as an

interaction between events, not participants. There are three events involved, a narrated

event, a speech event and a narrated speech event, the last one being the source of

information of the narrated event. When the speech event is the same as the narrated

event, then we have direct information. When the two speech events are different, we are

dealing with indirect evidence. An example can be seen in the following quotation (1971,

p. 135):2

Bulgarian conjugation distinguishes two semantically opposite sets of forms:

“direct narration” (Ens = Es) vs. “indirect narration” (Ens ≠ Es). To our question,

what happened to the steamer Evdokija, a Bulgarian first answered: zaminala “it

is claimed to have sailed,” and then added: zamina “I bear witness; it sailed.”

In this theory, evidentials, like tense, mood and person, are shifters,3 whose

meaning “cannot be defined without a reference to the message” (1971, p. 131).

Categories such as gender, number and aspect are not shifters. Jakobson more or less

explicitly sets evidentiality apart from mood/modality, which is defined as “ . . . the

relation between the narrated event and its participants with reference to the participants

of the speech event: . . . this category ‘reflects the speaker’s view of the character of the

connection between the action and the actor or the goal.’” The formula Jakobson uses is

PnEn/Ps (1971, p. 135). This shows that Jakobson views evidentiality as an interaction of

events, but mood and modality primarily as an interaction of speech act participants and

the narrated event.

The study of evidentiality as a category in its own right started in the 1980s,

despite the appearance of earlier studies such as Haarmann (1970), which seems to have

had little influence in Anglo-Saxon linguistics. In 1981 a symposium on evidentiality was

held at UC Berkeley, which lead to the publication of Chafe and Nichols (1986),

containing several papers that are still important, mostly on evidentials in specific

languages or language families, but also papers that lay the foundation for theoretical

examinations of evidentiality (such as Anderson, 1986 on establishing criteria for

evidentials and drawing a semantic map for evidentiality). Another paper from the

symposium, Givón (1982), was published separately. It started research into the relation

between evidentiality and epistemic space, a still-ongoing area of interest (see section 5).

Palmer (1986) devotes a lot of space on evidentiality in his still-influential book on mood

and modality. He considered evidentiality as part of epistemic modality, mainly based on

data from Indo-European languages, which have since been shown to be atypical (see

section 4 below). Willett (1988) is the first typological study of evidential categories and

their hierarchical structure, examining the relationship between direct and indirect

evidence, coming to the conclusion that there is a diminished degree of confidence in the

truth of the proposition when indirect rather than direct evidentials are used. Among non-

English publications Guentchéva (1996) was influential in the French literature. The term

médiatisée is used instead of a literal translation of evidentiality to highlight the fact that

we are dealing with mediated utterances, i.e., the speaker is not expressing an opinion on

the truth of the statement s/he is reporting on.

The close relationship between evidentiality and epistemic modality was

questioned in de Haan (1999), a study examining this relationship and coming to the

conclusion that the two areas are best kept separate, even though in some languages they

may be expressed by the same linguistic material. This was elaborated upon in de Haan

(2005), which considered evidentiality a deictic category, viewing evidentials as similar

to demonstratives. This will be elaborated upon in section 6 below. Aikhenvald (2004) is

the largest study to date on evidentials. It is based on data from about 500 languages, and

covers most aspects, from a typology of evidential systems to issues of diachrony.

Aikhenvald limits herself to grammaticalized evidentials, however, specifically

excluding lexical evidentials such as adverbs and lexical verbs. The study of lexical

evidentials is taken up in Squartini (2008) and Wiemer (2008), who find that studying

lexical evidentials can help greatly with establishing grammaticalization paths and the

study of evidentiality as a category.

In formal linguistics, evidentials had not received much attention until Cinque’s

(1999) work on the cartography of categories included evidentiality as a separate

category (and thus, by implicature, as a separate category from any type of modality). He

did not distinguish between types of evidentials, however. Work in formal semantics

include Garrett (2001) on evidentials in Tibeto-Burman and Faller (2002) on evidentials

in Cuzco Quechua. Both works lay the foundation for work on evidentiality within formal

semantics, and it is followed up in such studies as McCready and Ogata (2007);

Matthewson, Davis, and Rullmann (2008); and Portner (2009).

Finally, in anthropological linguistics the focus is on the interaction of

evidentiality and culture. In these studies, the emphasis is on how evidentiality can reveal

something about the worldview of the culture that is investigated. Representative studies

include Basso (2008), a study of the differences between evidentiality and epistemic

modality in the Cariban language Kalapalo, and Nuckolls (1993), a study on evidentials

in Quechua from an anthropological linguistics point of view.

3. Types of Evidentiality

This section briefly outlines the various types of evidentiality that can be found in the

world’s languages. The section is meant as a brief introduction to the semantics of

evidentiality and it also serves to introduce terminology for the sections that follow.

Given the brief nature of the section, it consequently will omit many details of evidential

systems in particular languages.

Broadly speaking, evidentials fall into one of two groups, those evidentials that

mark that the speaker somehow witnessed the action or event described, and those

evidentials that mark that the speaker is or was not present at the action or event. The first

group will be referred to here as direct evidentials, the second group as indirect

evidentials. Evidentials as source-of-information markers therefore form a connection

between the speaker and the action or event s/he is describing.

Direct evidentials, also sometimes referred to as firsthand or sensory evidentials,

detail the various ways in which the speaker can have personally witnessed the action.

The most common one is a visual evidential, which states that the speaker saw the action

in question. An example is (2), from Ainu.4

(2) Ainu (Isolate; Shibatani, 1990, p. 84)

apto as siri-ne

rain fall DIRECT-be

“It has just rained.”

Another direct evidential is the auditory evidential, marking the fact that the

speaker heard the action, but did not see it. Such auditory evidentials are rarer than visual

evidentials, but they do occur in various places around the globe. They are prevalent in

the Pomo (California) and Tucanoan (Colombia/Brazil) languages and also in at least one

New Guinean language, Fasu (3). It would appear that the presence of an auditory

evidential entails the presence of a visual evidential (but not vice versa).

(3) Fasu (Trans-New-Guinea; Loeweke and May, 1980, p. 71)

pe-sa-rakae

come-CUST5-AUD

“I hear it coming.”

The other senses are rarely, if ever, represented by individual evidentials, but on

occasion one can find nonvisual evidentials that cover all nonvisual senses. Such

languages include the Arawakan language Tariana (Aikhenvald, 2004), the Wakashan

language Makah (Jacobsen, 1986) and various languages from the Pomo language

family. Example (4) is from Wintu:

(4) Wintu (Penutian, Wintuan; Pitkin, 1984, p. 183, glosses mine)

kupa-nthe˙

chop.wood-NVIS

“He is chopping wood (if I hear him or if a chip flies off and hits me).”

There are two main types of indirect (or secondhand) evidentials, namely hearsay

evidentials (also referred to as quotatives) and inferential evidentials. Hearsay evidentials

denote that the speaker has heard about the action or event from somebody else or that

the statement is part of a story or myth. Inferential evidentials are evidentials that show

that the speaker has based his or her statement on the presence of some kind of evidence

(e.g., animal tracks in the snow, bear droppings, etc.) or on the basis of a purely logical

deduction.6 In many languages hearsay and inferential evidentials are formally separated.

Some languages with these two indirect evidentials are Ainu (Shibatani, 1980), West

Greenlandic (Fortescue, 1984), and many languages in the Americas such as Serrano

(Hill, 1967) and the Pomoan languages. Example (5) is from Andoke.

(5) Andoke (Andoke; Landaburu, 1979, pp. 120–121)

a. pái b-aya-há púke o-ĩ-ti-ʌ

Pai ASS-PRON-QUOT canoe NOMIN-NOMIN-make-VERBSUF

“Pai has made a canoe, they say.”

b. pái b-aya-ni púke o-ĩ-ti-ʌ

Pai ASS-PRON-INFER canoe NOMIN-NOMIN-make-VERBSUF

“Pai has made a canoe (I infer).”

Note the presence of the assertive prefix b- in both examples, showing that there

is really no doubt on the part of the speaker, even though indirect evidentials are used.

Note also that the absence of an indirect evidential in Andoke entails direct evidence,

thus direct evidence is represented by a zero morpheme (ibid.).

In many languages hearsay and inferential evidentials are rolled into one indirect

evidential, quite often as part of the verbal system (see section 6). Such languages include

Turkish (Aksu-Koç and Slobin, 1986), Takelma (Sapir, 1922), Sherpa (Woodbury, 1986),

and Mangarayi (Merlan, 1982). An example from Takelma is shown in (6):

(6) Takelma (Takelma; Sapir, 1922)

mena yap’a domkhwa-kh

bear man kill-INFER:3SG

“It is said that the bear killed the man.”

“The bear evidently has killed the man.”

In certain languages there is either a hearsay or an inferential evidential, but not

both. For instance, in Sarcee there is an inferential suffix -là, but apparently no hearsay

evidential (Cook, 1984, p. 35) while Suena only has a quotative particle sia (see example

(20) in section 4 below).

There are various minor types of evidential which only occur in one or two

languages. For instance, Kwakiutl has an indirect evidential which shows that the

information for the statement came to the speaker in a dream. Such evidentials are

subtypes of other kinds of evidentials (in the Kwakiutl case, hearsay).

We now turn to the interrelationship of direct and indirect evidentiality. It would

seem to be a near absolute universal that if a language has grammaticalized direct

evidentials, it also has grammaticalized indirect evidentials. Or, to put it another way,

indirect evidentials are grammaticalized before direct evidentials. Pragmatically, the

reasoning seems to be that statements made by the speaker are assumed to convey direct

evidence unless stated otherwise. Hence the abundance of lexical material and

grammaticalized evidentials to mark indirect evidence, as this is the marked member of

the opposition. Once grammaticalized indirect evidentials are present, direct evidentials

can be grammaticalized. It must be remembered that it is not necessarily the case that in

languages with only grammaticalized indirect evidentials the absence of indirect

evidentials entails direct evidence. Only in a small number of languages, such as the

Cariban language Hixkaryana (Derbyshire, 1979, p. 144) and in Andoke (Landaburu,

1979, see (5) above) is the absence of an indirect evidential tantamount to an expression

of direct evidentiality. In other words, direct evidence in Hixkaryana and Andoke is

marked with a zero morpheme.

In a number of studies (including Willett, 1988; de Haan, 1999; Faller, 2002) the

evidential categories are treated as an implicational hierarchy, where the presence of a

member higher on the hierarchy means that the members lower on the hierarchy are also

present. One such hierarchy, from de Haan (1999) is presented in Figure 1.

[Insert Figure 36.1. Evidential hierarchy]

The question is: what does this hierarchy represent? Beyond the mere

representation of the entailments in the hierarchy, it has also been thought of as

representing different levels of truth values. That is, a direct evidential is thought of as

being more truthful than an indirect evidential. This may not be a true or complete

analysis of the hierarchy, as there are many languages in which the indirect evidentials do

not show any sign of a diminished level of confidence in the truth of the statement (de

Haan, 1999). More on the relation between modality and evidentiality can be found in de

Haan (1999), Portner (2009) (for the position in formal semantics), and in section 5

below.

4. Grammatical and Lexical Evidentiality

4.1. Modal Verbs

Looking at the ways in which evidentiality is coded in the languages of the world, we can

observe a wide variety of lexical and grammatical means. This section looks at this

variety.

While it may not always be obvious, evidentiality can be expressed via modal

verbs. This is the case in certain European languages, especially those from the Germanic

language family (de Haan, 2009), but also in languages that have been areally influenced

by Germanic languages, such as Finnish (Kangasniemi, 1992) and Polish (Hansen, 2001).

It would appear to be an extension of epistemic modals, which did not take place in

English (but see Traugott, 1989 for an alternative view), but did occur in most other

Germanic languages. Some examples are:

(7) Dutch (W. Germanic; De Haan 1999)

Het moet een goede film zijn.

It must.3SG.PRES a good movie be.INF

“It is said to be a good movie.”

(8) Swedish (N. Germanic; Holmes and Hinchcliffe, 1993, p. 293)

Hon skall vara vacker.

she QUOT be beautiful

“She is said to be beautiful.”

(9) Polish (W. Slavic; Hansen, 2001, p. 139)

W Grecji ma padać

In Greece QUOT rain.INF

“It is said to rain in Greece.”

4.2. Verbal affix

The definition of a verbal affix as opposed to a marker of mood is not always easy to

make. Here we will use the heuristic that verbal affixes of modality and evidentiality are

never obligatory, as opposed to markers of mood (see de Haan 2006, for discussion).

Evidentiality expressed as verbal affixes are widely attested in the world’s languages.

Some examples include:

(10) Koasati (Muskogean; Kimball, 1991, pp. 195, 207)

a. if-ó-:li-:s /ifó:lis/

dog-be-INFER-IMM.PAST

“One might guess it’s a dog.”

b. nipó-k aksóhka-ha /nipók aksóhkaha/

meat-SUBJ char-AUD

“It sounds like the meat is charring.”

(11) Mam (Mayan; England, 1983, p. 14)

at-ø jun xaq-ch

LOC.PRED-3SG.A one rock-QUOT

“There’s a rock, he says.”

(12) Tamil (S. Dravidian; Asher, 1985, p. 172)

Neettu ceŋkattle maze pencut-aam

yesterday Chengam.LOC rain fall.PAST.3SG.INDIR

“It seems it rained in Chengam yesterday.”

It is not always clear in grammatical descriptions whether we are dealing with a

verbal affix (which is optional) or a more obligatory morpheme, such as a mood

morpheme. Sometimes an evidential morpheme is labeled as “mood” even though it is

apparently optional. In such cases, the morpheme is labeled as a verbal affix.

4.3. Clitic

Given that evidentiality is a phenomenon that essentially has the entire proposition in its

scope, it is not surprising that it can be expressed by a clitic that attaches itself to a word

that is sentence initial (or possibly final), regardless of the word class. An example of this

is Takelma (Sapir, 1922, p. 274). Among other expressions of evidentiality, Takelma has

a Quotative clitic-hiʔ attested only in myths, which is (most commonly) attached to the

first word in the sentence.

(13) Takelma (isolate; Sapir, 1922, pp. 274, 292)

a. ganē-hiʔ

and.then-QUOT

“And then, it is said . . . ”

b. naga-ihiʔ

say.AOR.3SG-QUOT

“He said, it is said . . . ”

An example of what seem to be word-final clitics is Georgian (Aronson, 1990)

where several morphemes can occur at the end of a subordinate clause to mark a form of

indirect speech. For instance, the Quotative morpheme -o is used when the subject of the

main clause is any person except 1SG.

(14) Georgian (Kartvelian; Aronson, 1990, p. 283)

Man tkv-a, xval me k’ino-ši c’a-(v-)val-o.

he-ERG he-said-it tomorrow I movies-to I-will-go-REP

“He said he would go to the movies tomorrow.”

Note that Aronson calls these morphemes particles, but they are written as part of

the preceding word. This shows that the difference between a clitic and a particle is not

always straightforward and perhaps to a certain degree language-dependent.

4.4. Part of the Tense-Aspect System

In a number of languages and language families around the world evidentiality is part of

the tense-aspect system. This will be further elaborated upon in section 6 below. Here we

will touch upon the basic facts.

In Tuyuca, as in a number of other Tucanoan languages, evidentiality, tense and

person form a portmanteau morpheme (Barnes, 1984). In this language, the past and

present have evidential distinctions (four for the present and five for the past tense), while

the future has none. The following table from Barnes (1984) illustrates the interaction of

evidentiality, person and tense for visual evidentiality. Other types of evidentiality work

the same, although the hearsay evidential does not have a present tense paradigm, as it is

impossible to have only indirect evidence about an action currently in progress in

Tuyuca.

[Insert Table 36.1]

The Visual Evidential paradigm in Tuyuca (Barnes, 1984, p. 258)

That we are dealing with a grammaticalization of tense > evidentiality can be

illustrated by comparing the forms with those of related languages:

(15) Carapana (E. Tucanoan; Metzger, 1981, p. 34)

pa-wõ

work-3.SG.FEM.PAST

“She worked.” (no apparent evidential reading)

(16) Tucano (E. Tucanoan; West, 1980, p. 29)

ní-wõ

be-3.SG.FEM.PAST.DIRECT

“She was.” (witnessed past)

Tuyuca is a famous example, and it is a language with a complex interaction of

tense and evidentiality, but the same interaction can be seen in many languages. In many

cases, the interaction is limited to the past tense, presumably because especially in the

past tense it can be considered important to distinguish between witnessed and

unwitnessed events. A famous case is Turkish (see, e.g., Aksu-Koç and Slobin, 1986),

whose two past tenses show an evidential split, the form-DI conveys witnessed events

and -mIş is used for indirect evidentiality.7 Similar examples include the Finno-Ugric

language Komi (Leinonen, 2000), several Caucasian languages such as including Ingush

(Nichols, 1994), languages of the Tibeto-Burman and Tungusic families, including

Sherpa (Woodbury, 1986) and Evenki (Nedyalkov, 1997, p. 239). Example (17) shows a

direct-indirect split in the past tense in Khalkha Mongolian:

(17) Khalkha Mongolian (Mongolian; Svantesson, 2003, p. 167)

a. Xan ir-lee

King come-DIRECT.PAST

“The king has arrived.”

b. Xan ir-jee

king come-INDIR.PAST

“The king has [reportedly] arrived.”

The interaction of evidentiality and (past) tense seems especially prevalent in

Asia, pervading many different language families, so this might be an areal feature. The

feature does come up in other languages, though. For instance, languages of the Pomo

family of California have a visual evidential (in many cases -ya), which has been

analyzed either as a past tense morpheme or a perfective aspect morpheme.

4.5. Mood

In a number of languages mood can be used to mark evidentiality, specifically indirect

evidentiality. The mood corresponding to the subjunctive is normally the one used to

mark indirect evidentiality. (It is in general not known if the corresponding indicative

mood is used to mark specifically direct evidence, or whether this is a pragmatic

inference.) An example of a language with an interaction of evidentiality and mood is

German:

(18) German (W. Germanic)

Er sei krank.

he be.3SG.SUB ill

“He is said to be ill.”

Other languages that mark indirect evidentiality through mood include French,

but also the Algonquian language Passamaquoddy (Leavitt, 1996) and the Australian

languages Mangarayi (Merlan, 1982) and Gooniyandi (McGregor, 1990). An example

from Mangarayi is shown in (19):

(19) Mangarayi (Gunwinyguan; Merlan, 1982, p. 150)

najiŋ-gana doʔ a-wula-ma-ri maiga Gumja

place-ABL shoot IRR-3PL-AUX-PC up.to Gumja

“They supposedly shot from Najig right up to Gumja.”

Expression of evidentiality in the mood system does not seem to be a very

common trait, although it must be said that more research is definitely needed here.

4.6. Separate Particles

In a large number of languages evidentiality is expressed with particles. It is not always

easy to tell the difference between particles and more lexical means of expression, such

as adverbs. In the large majority of cases these particles denote some kind of indirect

evidentiality. Some examples are shown in (20)–(22). Note that Apalai (22) is a rare

example of a visual evidential particle. The etymology of this particle is unclear.

(20) Suena (Trans-New-Guinea, Binanderean; Wilson, 1974, p. 151)

Oneki gutu-ra bam-I sia.

Oneki isle-to went-he QUOT

“Oneki reportedly went to the island.”

(21) N. Puebla Nahuatl (S. Uto-Aztecan; Brockway,1979, pp. 147–148)

mač say=inon ki-maka-ti-ka

QUOT just=that it-give-CONN-be

“He was giving him just that (it is said).”

(22) Apalai (N. Cariban; Koehn and Koehn, 1986, p. 119)

moro puh t-onah-se rohke

that VIS NF-finish-CMPL only

“I could tell it was all gone.”

There are a number of languages that have more than one way of marking

evidentiality. Most often, these languages combine particles with verbal material. For

instance, the Australian language Diyari uses a particle to mark hearsay and a verbal affix

for direct sensory evidence, as shown in (23).

(23) Diyari (Australian, Pama-Nyungan; Austin, 1981, p. 173)

a. apa talara wakara-la ŋana-yi-ku

water rain.ABS come-FUT AUX-PRES-SENS

“It looks/feels/smells like rain will come.”

b. pinti nawu wakara-yi

QUOT 3SG.NFUT come-PRES

“They say he is coming.”

If there is a mix of particle and more grammaticalized material, the particle

usually marks a form of indirect evidence, while the verbal affix or tense-aspect

morpheme marks either direct or indirect evidence. On occasion, there can be a direct-

indirect evidential split in the verbal system, and a separate particle for a specific type of

evidentiality. This seems to be the case for Amdo Tibetan (Sun, 1993), which has a

separate particle se for hearsay and a direct-indirect split in the verb system.

4.7. Lexical Evidentiality

Finally, there are countless ways of marking evidentiality lexically (non-grammatically).

These ways include adverbs such as English allegedly and reportedly, but also tags like it

seems (that) . . . or complex constructions such as I saw John crossing the street vs. I saw

that John had crossed the street. This brings us in the area of reported speech marking,

which has certainly relevance for the study of evidentiality, but the connection between

the two is yet to be investigated satisfactorily. The same is true for logophoricity,8 which

has been claimed to have relevance for evidentiality (Speas, 2004), but it still has not

been convincingly established that there is a connection between the two.

5. Evidentiality and Modality

In this section we will take a look at the ways evidentiality and modality are linked. We

have already seen that in some languages modal verbs can take on evidential meanings,

but in this section we will look at the debate of whether evidentiality is inherently modal.

As mentioned in section 2 and 3 above, Palmer (1986, p. 51) lists evidential

notions such as hearsay and inference under epistemic modality, a practice also found in

such works as Givón (1982) and Willett (1988). It is still widely held, but in recent years

some other views have been discussed in the literature. In studies such as de Haan (1999,

2005) some doubt has been cast upon this, for a number of reasons. For one, evidentials

can co-occur with epistemic modals in certain languages. The following examples from

Western Tarahumara exemplify this. A sentence with a quotative can optionally be

followed by an epistemic affix showing the level of truth the speaker assigns to the

statement. A sentence such as (24b) also shows that indirect evidentials do not inherently

show a diminished belief in the truth of the statement.

(24) Western Tarahumara (Uto-Aztecan; Burgess, 1984, p. 104)

a. alué hu-rá

he be-QUOT

“They say it is he.”

b. rahá-ra-guru

burn-QUOT-truth

“They say he burned it and it’s probably true.”

c. simí-le-ga-ra-e

go-PAST-STAT-QUOT-DUB

“Someone said he went but he did not.”

Current work on the interaction of evidentiality and modality is focused on the

border areas between the two categories. To illustrate this we will take the English modal

must as an example. As we have seen in section 4 above, the cognates of this modal in

other Germanic languages (such as Dutch moeten, example (7)) has been analyzed as

having evidential as well as epistemic meanings, but traditionally English must has been

seen as epistemic but not evidential. In a sentence such as John must be in the office the

use of must is considered to refer to the high, but not absolute, confidence the speaker has

in the truth of what is being said. The example can be paraphrased as I am almost certain

that John is in the office. Although this view is frequently found in the literature,9 there

are several studies, some going back a long way, that point to problems with this view. In

formal semantics, this view is prevalent, but certainly not universal. While studies such as

Kratzer (1977) and much recent work (see Portner, 2009 for a relevant overview) try to

fit must into a truth-conditional framework, already Karttunen (1972) showed that must

and the logical operator of necessity are not equivalent. Karttunen’s work is elaborated

upon in work by Westmoreland (1998) and in subsequent research (such as Faller, 2002)

which try to look for an evidential component in must.

The functionalist literature shows a similar development, as does the literature by

English scholars. While the prevalent view still is one of strong confidence in the truth of

the speaker’s utterance (e.g., Van der Auwera and Plungian, 1998; Nuyts, 2001), there

are studies that link must to something akin to an evidential. Coates (1983, p. 41) calls the

use of must in sentences such as (25) epistemic but defines it as follows: “Epistemic

MUST conveys the speaker’s confidence in the truth of what he is saying, based on a

logical process of deduction from facts known to him (which may or may not be

specified).” [italics mine]. Thus, even though Coates still considers relative confidence to

be an integral part of the meaning of must, she places great weight in the fact that the

confidence is derived from a deduction of evidence. However, this deduction from

evidence is not part of Coates’ core characteristics of epistemic must while speaker

confidence is (Coates 1983, p. 42). Palmer (1990, p. 53) also subscribes to the argument

that epistemic must has deduction from evidence as a key meaning component, even more

so than speaker confidence. Palmer mentions that must has some characteristics of an

evidential. He states that must can often be paraphrased by the only possible conclusion is

that . . . (1990, p. 54). An example he gives is (25):

(25) He must have been discouraged because he’s been hitting Mitoff with

everything in the book and still he cannot keep this man away.

However, this is probably too optimistic a view. While it is true that in example

(25) above must might be paraphrased by the only possible conclusion is that . . . , it turns

out that this is merely a special case of the overall picture. If we look at corpus data, we

see that “epistemic” must is a very atypical modal. For instance, it is used in restricted

syntactic contexts (de Haan, 2009), occurring in fewer syntactic frames than deontic

must. As far as confidence in the truth of the proposition is concerned, in fact must has a

wide confidence interval, ranging from almost absolute certainty to indifference on the

part of the speaker whether the statement is true. In the last case its truth level is similar

to that of epistemic may. An example is shown in (26), from the Switchboard Corpus.

Note that epistemic must (the second instance: I must get) is aligned with the weak modal

adverb probably showing that the use of must in (26) is not due to a strong commitment

to the truth of the proposition.

(26) But, you know, people, it’s like your name must be on a list or something,

because I know at my office, I get calls, I mean, I must get at least, I probably

average at least a call a day,

Based on corpus instances of must it seems that in its epistemic sense it often

occurs in contexts where overt evidence is present, usually in subordinate clauses with

because or for. The first occurrence of must in (26) above shows that. Even in cases

where evidence is not present overtly it is usually referred to in the extended context or is

available in the discourse through shared world knowledge. For these reasons, de Haan

(2009) assumes that the basic meaning of must is to convey a conclusion based on

evidence. It is the overt evidence is evaluated (de Haan, 1999), rather than the entire

proposition and must is used to show that we are dealing with an evaluation of evidence.

It is this connection between must and evidence that has lead some scholars

(Westmoreland, 1998, for instance) to classify must as an evidential. However, some

caveats are in order. The most commonly used definition of evidentiality states that

evidentials are morphemes that mark the source of evidence for the statement, and the

verb must does not do that. Evaluation of evidence is not necessarily the same as marking

the source of the evidence, which is a simple assertion. We can of course broaden the

definition of evidentiality to include evaluation but that would defeat the purpose of

having a clear definition of evidentiality and we are running the risk that we end up with

a definition that is not applicable crosslinguistically. There are clear differences between

the evaluative use of must and for instance the Tuyuca Inferential.10

If we compare must in its evaluative sense with its Dutch cognate moeten, moeten

does the same as English must, namely saying that the statement was arrived at by

evaluating evidence, while moeten in its evidential sense asserts that there is (indirect)

evidence for the statement but that the speaker refrains from making a judgment.11 Only

in its evaluative sense can moeten be felicitously be translated by must. In its evidential

sense, another translation mechanism must be sought, such as allegedly or be said that,

depending on the correct source of evidence (de Haan, 2009).

We are then left with two possibilities depending on whether we classify

evaluatives as evidential. If we do, then must is an evidential. The way to settle the matter

is to look at languages in which evidentiality plays a larger role than in the Germanic

languages (a language like Tuyuca, say), and see if evaluation plays a role in such

languages. It is understood that assertion of evidence is a key component of evidentiality

(indeed, the key component according to de Haan, 1999, 2005), but other functions can

be part of evidentiality, including evaluation of evidence as seen in must. However, that

is to be determined by crosslinguistic studies, and not by a priori proclamation.

A second modal verb that has been argued to have evidential nuances is will. The

canonical example is (27), where the use of will is not to denote the future, but to denote

that, based on some kind of evidence, an action will follow. In (27), based on the

knocking the action of discovering that the postman is at the door is predicted. De Haan

(2009) calls this the predictive use of will where an action is predicted based on some

kind of evidence. Because a predicted action is yet to occur, it is logical to use a marker

of the future.

(27) [Someone’s knocking on the door.] That will be the postman.

This is quite common crosslinguistically and seems to be associated with

morphological expressions of the future. Thus, the same predictive meaning is seen in

Italian, which uses a morphological future:

(28) Italian (Palmer, 1986, p. 62, my translation)

Suonano. Sará Ugo.

ring.3PL.PRES be.3SG.FUT.INDIC Ugo.

“It’s ringing. That’ll be Ugo.”

It can be shown that the predictive function is different from the regular future

meaning, because the predictive can be used in cases where the future meaning is not

available. This too seems to be crosslinguistically valid, as can be seen from the

following two examples from English (29) and Italian (30). In both cases the reference is

not to a future event, but to an event in the past.

(29) [Context: Person A is stating that “Sophie” had been talking about person B

behind his back. Person B is stating that it can’t have been person B Sophie

was talking about] B: . . . and I doubt that Sophie will have been talking about

me. I’ve not worked on any of the McCoy DVDs.

(30) Italian (Palmer, 1986, p. 62, my translation)

Hai idea dove siano? Saranno tornati a casa

Have.2SG.PRES idea where be.3PL.PRES be.3PL.FUT.INDIC return to

home

“Do you have any idea where they are? They’ll have gone home.”

There is a connection between evidentiality and the predictive function of the

future, as the predictive function is based on evidence somehow present in the discourse,

but whether this compares to expressions of evidentiality is a matter of crosslinguistic

research.

The relationship between the evaluative meaning of must and the predictive

meaning of will is also a matter of debate. For instance, Perkins (1983, p. 45) concludes

that must shows that the speaker is “aware” of evidence, which does not have to be

present with will. In the case of will it denotes that circumstances are merely disposed

towards the proposition being true. This seems plausible, since most cases of evaluative

must in English do have overt evidence in the context, while it seems optional with will;

the English sentence (29) has overt evidence, while the Italian example (30) does not.

6. Evidentiality and Tense/Aspect

We saw above that evidentiality and modality have some features in common, but it goes

too far to say that evidentiality and epistemic modality are exponents of the same

linguistic category. In section 4 above we saw that evidentiality can be expressed using

tense/aspect morphemes and in this section we will investigate how this interaction can

help us determine the place of evidentiality in the wider area of human interactions. In

this section we will concentrate on two areas. The first is the nature of visual evidentials,

as they are the clearest examples of the relation between the evidentiality and tense. They

also show the relation between evidentiality and deixis (for further details see de Haan,

2005). The second area concerns the question of whether certain tenses and aspects are

more likely to develop evidential readings.

While it has been thought that visual evidentials derive from words denoting a

visual event, such examples are rare. One genuine instance of this is Maricopa, where

actions witnessed visually are expressed by the morpheme-ʔyuu which comes from the

verb yuu “to see.”

(31) Maricopa (Yuman; Gordon, 1986, p. 85)

Waly-marsh-ma-ʔyuu.

NEG-win.DUAL-NEG-VIS

“(I saw) They didn’t win.”

Anderson (1986, p. 305) reserves the category of “visual evidential” for those

morphemes that actually come from a previous vision word. He explicitly rejects the

claim that visual evidentials develop from tense and aspect morphemes (1986, p. 305),

viewing them rather as pragmatic extensions (or default values) of their normal temporal

or aspectual meaning. While it is certainly true that visual evidentials developed from

tense/aspect morphemes did so under a process of pragmatic extension, that is not a

reason to deny them the status of evidentials. Indeed, the development tense/aspect >

evidential is a key piece of evidence for considering evidentiality a deictic category: it is

deictic elements such as tense morphemes that serve as the basis for evidentials.

Languages with a direct—indirect split in the verbal system include, as

mentioned, Turkish, several Uralic and Tibeto-Burman languages (see section 4). In the

Americas they can be found in the Amazon region of South America and in certain parts

of North America, especially in the US Southwest. In the rest of this section we present

three aspects of the visual evidentiality—tense/aspect interaction.

6.1. Southern Athabaskan

Like the other Athabaskan languages, San Carlos Apache is an aspect-prominent

language. There are no tense morphemes present on the verb. There is, however, a clitic

morpheme -nìʔ/-ǹʔ, which refers to “an action or condition in the past, known by

participation or direct report.”

(32) San Carlos Apache (Athabaskan, W. Apache; Edgerton, 1963, p. 119–120)

ʔíítšo ntšààhíí-žą hìk’èh ké hàdàg gònèèzìhíí

coat that.which.is.big-just and shoe upward that.which.is.long

dààgòlíí-nìʔ

they.exist-VIS

“There were just overcoats and galoshes.”

The morpheme -nìʔ has cognates in other Athabaskan languages and it would

appear that it is used for past tense reference, without evidential connotations. In

Chiricahua Apache (Hoijer 1946, p. 84), the clitic -n is glossed simply as “past tense”.

The same is true for Navajo (Sapir and Hoijer, 1967, pp. 67, 114), where the clitic -nìʔ is

glossed as “past tense” (33a). There is a possible related clitic in Navajo, -nì/-n (without

final glottal stop), which is glossed by Sapir and Hoijer (1967, p. 114) as “certainly, for a

fact”. It therefore marks speaker assertion. Given the close semantic relation between past

tense, visual evidence, and speaker assertion, it is quite possible that the two clitics are

related. An example of the certainty clitic is shown in (33b).

(33) Navajo (Athabaskan; Sapir and Hoijer, 1967, p. 114)

a. sìcìʔ dìšníì-nìʔ

my.daughter I.told.her-PAST

“I told my daughter.”

b. ʔàkot’éélá dìšní-nì

in.that.fashion I.spoke-ASS

“I certainly spoke in that fashion.”

From the few isolated examples given it is impossible to make any determination

whether the clitic -nìʔ is restricted in Navajo to situations the speaker witnessed

personally.

6.2. Pomo

There are languages in which the visual evidentials seem to have arisen out of aspectual,

rather than tense morphemes. Such languages include most notably the Pomoan

languages of California (see e.g., Oswalt, 1986), but also Wintu (Pitkin, 1984). For

instance, in Kashaya Pomo, two Visual evidentials are present, -wa and -ya. These

correlate with imperfective and perfective aspect, respectively, as in (34) below:

(34) Kashaya Pomo (Pomoan; Oswalt, 1986, p. 36)

a. qowaq-ya /qowahy/

pack-VIS.PERF

“(I just saw) he packed.”

b. qowaq-wa /qowá:qh/

pack-VIS.IMPER

“(I see) he is packing.”

In other Pomoan languages, cognates of these morphemes are considered tense

morphemes, rather than aspect morphemes. Thus, in Northern Pomo (O’Connor, 1992),

the morpheme -ye (cognate with Kashaya -ya) is consistently referred to as a

“perfective/past tense morpheme.” In Eastern Pomo (McLendon, 1975, p. 95), a

morpheme -ya is listed as an indicative suffix, i.e., a mood marker (and no visual

evidential is listed in the grammar).

6.3. Sanuma

Sanuma is a Yanomami language spoken in Northwestern Brazil and Venezuela

(Borgman, 1990). The interaction between visual evidentiality and tense is handled

slightly differently from the languages discussed above. Like the Eastern Tucanoan

languages, tense is always expressed as a portmanteau form with an evidential-type

modality (Borgman, 1990, p. 165). However, from the examples in the study it appears

that visual evidentiality is not an obligatory category. Sanuma has a large number of

visual evidentials, but all of them start with the morpheme ku- or one of its allomorphs.

There is a difference between present witnessed (visual) and past witnessed morphemes.

The present witnessed forms combine the morpheme ku- plus a demonstrative, such as

kulatili “far away inland from the river,” kupoli “up above in air, tree, etc,” kupokili

“down below in hole, earth, etc,” and kimati “going away from speaker on same level”

(example (35a) below) (for a full list see Borgman, 1990, p. 166). The past witnessed

forms combine ku- and a tense morpheme, denoting various degrees of remoteness. They

are ke/kehe/kuhe “immediate past (same part of day),” kupi/köpi/kipi “recent past (same

24 hour period, but not same part of day)” and kupili/köpili/kipili “distant past (yesterday

or before).”

The most common present visual evidential is -kule “near speaker,” which can be

used with any verb. The other visual evidentials are more restricted in their use, being

intimately tied to a specific location or motion. The evidential -kule is also the one which

developed more abstract meanings: -kule can be used when the act of witnessing is not

strictly simultaneous with the moment of speech which would be expected of a present

witnessed evidential. This is shown in (35b):

(35) Sanuma (Yanomami; Borgman, 1990, pp. 167, 166)

a. olö kökö wani hole-a ki-mati

snake CLA DEPR crawl-DUR PRES.WIT-away

“A snake is crawling away.”

b. ĩ na töpö ku kule

REL like 3PL say PRES.WIT

“That is what they are saying.”

Sentence (35b) was used in the context where the speaker had just come from a

conversation in another house and reported on what was discussed. The witnessed tense

can be used because it shows that the speaker was present in the same deictic sphere as

the action described. This probably means that -kule is the morpheme with the most claim

to evidential status. The presence of the other forms do show a connection between visual

evidentiality and deixis that goes beyond the mere witnessing of an action. Witnessed

events in the past tense in Sanuma are not located in space, given that the event has taken

place and there is no need to locate it anywhere. The hearer does not need to know the

precise location of the event. It is much more relevant when exactly the event took place,

and past witnessed morphemes are encoded for that. This is shown in (36a)–(c):

(36) Sanuma (Yanomami; Borgman, 1990, pp. 28, 154, 153)

a. ipa sai ha hama töpö hasu-ki ke.

my house by visitor 3PL pass.by-FOC IMM.PAST.WIT

“The visitors passed by my house.”

b. ĩ ka pi ti-ki pata hila ku-pi.

REL INT PRT CLA-DUAL AUG name WIT-REC.PAST

“What did I name that big tree (I referred to) this morning?”

c. ĩ naha ĩ a ku-la-so ku-pili.

REL like REL 3SG say-EXT-FOC WIT-DIS.PAST

“Like that that one finally said.”, “Like that he said.”

Thus, present events are located spatially, and past events are located temporally

in Sanuma.

Based on data such as those presented in this section, and more, it was proposed

in de Haan (2005) to consider evidentiality a deictic category, and in particular an

example of propositional deixis. An evidential grounds an action or event with respect to

the speaker, just as a demonstrative grounds an object with respect to the speaker. In

other words, the relation between a proposition and an evidential is analogous to the

relation between a noun (phrase) and a demonstrative.

We will now turn to the question of whether certain tenses and aspects are more

likely to develop evidential meanings than others (or, in the case of evidential separate

from tense/aspect morphemes, co-occur with them). We will concentrate on tense rather

than aspect in the remainder of this section, as the correlation between aspect and

evidentiality is still poorly understood. From limited data it would seem that as of yet no

clear crosslinguistic conclusions can be drawn.

As far as the correlation of tense and evidentiality is concerned, it may seem

obvious at first glance that the past tense is in general more likely to develop evidential

readings than the future. As Aikhenvald (2004, p. 261) observes, a language will not have

more evidentiality choices in a non-past tense than in a past tense. This may be due to the

fact that past tense events have already happened and are more likely to have different

possible interpretations. On the other hand, future tense evidentials seem less likely as

they concern events that have not yet happened. In Tuyuca, the future tense makes no

evidential distinctions, unlike the past (5 distinctions) and present (4 distinctions)

tenses.12 In many languages an evidential morpheme can co-occur with a future tense

morpheme, but there may be additional meanings beyond pure evidential ones.

Aikhenvald (2004, pp. 261–263) mentions some cases, for instance in Shipibo-Konibo

(Panoan; Valenzuela 2003, p. 35) the combination of the direct evidential -ra and future

tense yields a certainty rather than a firsthand interpretation. There is a complex

interaction between tense, aspect and type of evidentiality that does not lend itself well to

capture in typological rules and in many cases only a language-specific analysis will

work. As mentioned by Aikhenvald (2004, p. 266), it is not even possible to assume that

certain types of evidentiality make fewer tense distinctions than others; in the Samoyedic

languages Selkup and Nganasan, sensory evidentials have fewer tense distinctions than

reported evidentials, while in the East Tucanoan languages (such as Tuyuca), the

secondhand evidentials have fewer, as there is no present tense reported evidential.

From this we might tentatively conclude that the interaction between tense (and

aspect) and evidentiality is highly idiosyncratic, though a fuller typological investigation

into this area is highly desirable. But it may turn out that this interaction is governed not

by crosslinguistic patterns but by diachronic changes in individual languages or language

families.

7. Mirativity

Mirativity is a phenomenon that is related to evidentiality, since quite often mirativity

makes use of the same morphemes as evidentiality in those languages that have both.

Mirativity can be defined as the marking of unexpected information, information that

somehow shocks or surprises the speaker. The foundational paper on mirativity is

DeLancey (1997). An example from Turkish is shown in (37).

(37) Turkish (DeLancey, 1997, p. 37, my translations)

a. Ecevit istifa et-miş

Ecevit resignation make-PAST.MIR

“Ecevit has resigned!”

b. Nixon istifa et-ti

Nixon resignation make-PAST.DIR

“Nixon resigned.”

As mentioned in section 4 above, Turkish has two past tenses, which correspond

to an evidential distinction between direct and indirect evidence. The past tense -miş,

which in its evidential sense denotes indirect evidence, can also be used if the

information in the sentence was unexpected to the speaker. In (37a) the resignation of the

Turkish prime minister Ecevit came suddenly and was somewhat of a shock, while the

resignation of President Nixon was widely expected and not a shock at all. This

distinction can be found in many languages and is similar to what McCawley (1971) calls

the Hot News Perfect in English, which accounts for the translation of (37a) above.

DeLancey (1997) notes that in many languages there is a connection between

(indirect) evidentials and miratives. He cites examples from Hare Slave, and several

Tibeto-Burman and Dardic languages, among others. Example (38) from the Athabaskan

language Hare, shows the mirative use of the indirect evidential particle lõ.

(38) Hare (Athabaskan; DeLancey, 1997, pp. 38, 39; glosses slightly adapted)

a. júhye sa k’inayeda lõ

hereabout bear walk.around.IMPER INDIR

“I see there was a bear walking about here.”

b. heee, gúhde daweda! ch’ifi dach’ida lõ

hey up.there sit guy sit MIR

“Hey, he is sitting up there! The guy is sitting up there.”

Example (38a) show the standard indirect use of the particle lõ: the speaker was

not present when the bear was around, but can see the result of the action (inference) or

was told about it (hearsay). The indirect evidential reading is not available in (38b)

because it is made clear in the context that the speaker was a witness to the man sitting up

in a tree. As there is a mismatch between the indirect evidential particle and the speaker’s

presence at the event, the interpretation of lõ in (38b) cannot be evidential but must be

mirative: the speaker is surprised at seeing the man in the tree.

While there is a connection between evidentiality and mirativity (see also

DeLancey, 2001), it is not universally the case that these two categories are expressed by

one and the same morpheme. For instance, in Kalapalo, the mirative is expressed by the

affix -seku, which does not seem to have evidential meanings (Basso, 2008):

(39) Kalapalo (Cariban; Basso, 2008, p. 230)

ege-seku=apa wãke ukw-oto e-ni wãke tis-iña, wege wãke

you-MIR=EM EM dual-parent kill-NOM EM 1+3-BEN you EM

“I was shocked to realize you, the killer of our parent, preyed on us, that it

was you.”

There appears to be a connection between mirativity and speech act. Many (but

not all) examples of miratives involve an exclamative speech act. As can be seen in (38b)

above, the Hare example is an exclamative (as evidenced by the exclamative particle hey)

and the same is probably also true for the Turkish example (37b). In Ainu, the visual

evidential morpheme siri can be used miratively, as in (40):13

(40) Ainu (isolate; Nikolaeva, 2009)

a. húci ek kor an siri ne.

grandma come while be VIS COP

“(I see that) grandmother is coming.”

b. e-easkay siri.

2SG-ca.do VIS.MIR

“You are really skillful [while observing an activity].”

However, there are also examples where mirativity is not obviously linked to an

exclamative speech act. An example is Buryat (Skribnik, 2009), which has a rather large

system of converbs, two of which, =hAn= and =tAr= form an opposition expected vs.

unexpected course of events, respectively. Examples are shown in (41). If we wish to

hold on to the thought that mirativity marks unexpected events, then these examples

count as mirative, despite the fact that these are obviously not exclamative speech acts.

(41) Buryat (Mongolian; Skribnik, 2009)

a. tere xün udaan übde=že bai=han=aa naha

this man long be.ill=CONV AUX=CONV=REFL die

bara=š=oo

INTENS=PAST.3SG

“This man died after being ill for a long time (expected course of events).”

b. *tere xün udaan übde=že bai=tar=aa naha

this man long be.ill=CONV AUX=CONV=REFL die

bara=š=oo

INTENS=PAST.3SG

“This man died after being ill for a long time (unexpected course of

events).”

c. xaluun haixan uder=nüüd xodo bai=tar=aa /bai=han=aa olybon

warm good day=PL a.while be=CONV=REFL cold

una=han bai=gaa

fall=PART be=PAST.3SG

“For a while the weather (lit. days) was warm and beautiful, and then it

got cold.”

The converb =hAn= marks expected course of events, so that (41a) is perfectly

natural and (41b) is not, as the result is expected from the state described in (41b). In

other cases the choice is optional, as in (41c). Either one can be used, depending on

whether the weather turning cold is expected (e.g., in the autumn) or unexpected (e.g., in

the spring). Skribnik (2009) discusses other instances of the expected vs. unexpected

information opposition. This opposition also occurs, for instance, in various types of

adverbial and causal constructions. As remarked by Skribnik, the marking of expectations

permeates the grammar on various levels and it goes far beyond the normal level of

mirative marking.

The question is whether such examples are instances of mirativity or whether we

should limit mirativity to exclamative speech acts. The latter has the advantage that we

can draw the generalization that miratives are evidentials, which occur in exclamatives.

That does entail that we must treat cases such as the Buryat examples differently from

miratives. We would have to say that the marking of unexpected information is not a

sufficient condition for being mirative. We would also have to have these morphemes

occur in a specific speech act, the exclamative. Whether such methodological sleight-of-

hand is worth the cost, must be determined by the number of languages that have

constructions similar to the Buryat examples and their degree of similarity. In short, more

work needs to be done here, both on the interaction of evidentiality and mirativity and on

the relationship between mirativity and speech act theory.

8. Conclusions

While the study of evidentiality is not as old as other speaker-oriented categories, such as

tense and deixis, there has been a tremendous amount of progress in the last couple of

decades on establishing the nature of evidentiality (and mirativity) and its place in the

overall framework of human language, the theoretical gains made in the past decades

having provided a solid foundation for future research into evidentiality. Nevertheless,

there is more work to be done in these areas. In the upcoming years, attention will no

doubt be focused more on the small-scale investigation of evidentials and evidential-like

morphemes in a single language or language family, regardless of the theoretical

framework involved.

1 This paper is based on materials presented at various conferences over the years. I thank

the participants and commenters for the stimulating discussions. Thanks are also due to

Bob Binnick for editorial guidance and suggestions for improvements. All remaining

errors are my own.

2 In Jakobson’s terminology, E stands for event, and P for participant. The superscripts n,

s and ns stand for narrated, speech and narrated speech, respectively.

3 The term shifter comes from the works of Otto Jespersen and Charles Peirce.

4 Shibatani (1990, p. 83) calls sir “visual evidence” a particle, despite the fact that it is

apparently attached to the verb to be. If sir is indeed a particle, then it is a rare case of a

particle marking direct evidence. See section 4 below. Also see section 7, example (40)

where the mirative functions of this affix/particle will be discussed.

5 For the abbreviations used in the glosses, see the table of abbreviations in this

volume.—Editor.

6 In early descriptions of evidentials, for instance in Boas’ Handbook of American Indian

Languages, the term evidential is used for what we now call an inferential evidential.

7 The past tense also has mirative overtones, see section 7 below.

8 Logophoricity is a type of anaphoric marking which is used to establish co-referentiality

between subjects, or, conversely, that two subjects are not co-referent. Apart from its

grammatical marking it has been argued that logophoric pronouns mark point of view as

well, hence the connection with evidentiality. Logophoricity seems to be predominately

found in languages of Africa. This phenomenon might be one reason why evidentials

seem to be much rarer in these languages: African languages use logophoric pronouns

rather than dedicated evidentials, although, as mentioned in the text, it has still not been

established that logophoricity is an evidential strategy.

9 For instance in Ehrman (1966, p. 67) where must is used to mark “high probability,”

although her prototype meaning for must in general is “the predication is required by

some aspect(s) of the state of the world.” This definition does seem to allow for a

deduction analysis for epistemic must.

10 Note that Barnes (1984) does not use the verb must to translate instances of the

inferential in Tuyuca.

11 It is not a coincidence that the evidential use of moeten is found in the more objective

registers of language use, such as newspaper language.

12 There is no present-tense secondhand evidential in Tuyuca.

13 The hearsay particle hawe is also used for both hearsay and mirativity.

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