Evidentiality reconsidered

This article reconsiders the semantic status of the traditional concept of evidentiality, typically featuring ‘experientiality’ as the coding of directness of information, and ‘inferentiality’ and ‘hearsay’ as the marking of two different types of indirect information sources, as well as of two less traditional categories often associated with evidentiality, viz. ‘mirativity’ and ‘subjectivity’. It argues that these dimensions do not constitute a semantically coherent domain. While inferentiality belongs in the system of ‘qualifications of SoAs’ (traditionally: ‘TAM markers’), and can be considered akin to categories such as deontic and epistemic modality (i.e., to be ‘attitudinal’), the four other dimensions have a very different nature, which positions them outside the ‘normal’ qualificational system.

• Affiliations: 1: University of Antwerp