Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Volume 48, Issue 3, 2024

This paper introduces the main notions that are addressed in this special issue, namely evidentiality, modality, and grammaticalization. It defines each notion and briefly synthesizes the literature. It also presents some of the controversies which surround the ideas that prevail in these research fields. Crosslinguistic examples illustrate the main evidential and modal categories, and clarify why the two domains are both distinct and related. The paper then sketches the main pathways of grammaticalization of modal and evidential markers as they have been documented in typological work. Finally, it introduces the contributions to this special issue, highlights the new insights, and discusses what remains to be investigated on the links between evidentiality, modality, and grammaticalization.

We focus on the grammatical expression of four major groups of meanings related to knowledge: I. Evidentiality: grammatical expression of information source; II. Egophoricity: grammatical expression of access to knowledge; III. Mirativity: grammatical expression of expectation of knowledge; and IV. Epistemic modality: grammatical expression of attitude to knowledge. The four groups of categories interact. Some develop overtones of the others. Epistemic-directed evidentials have additional meanings typical of epistemic modalities, while egophoricity-directed evidentials combine some reference to access to knowledge by speaker and addressee. Over the past thirty years, new evidential choices have evolved among the Tariana – whose language has five evidential terms in an egophoricity-directed system – to reflect new ways of acquiring information, including radio, television, phone, and internet. Evidentials stand apart from other means of knowledge-related categories as tokens of language ecology corroborated by their sensitivity to the changing social environment.

This paper seeks to answer three questions: (1) What is the difference between grammatical and lexical indications of information source? (2) What qualifies an element for grammaticalization as an evidential? (3) How can we identify grammatical evidentials and instances of evidential grammaticalization? The answers proposed are as follows: (1) The difference between grammatical and lexical indications of information source is a difference between indications conventionalized as discourse secondary and indications conventionalized as potentially discourse primary. (2) A candidate for grammaticalization as an evidential must (i) have propositional scope, (ii) belong in the conceptual domain of information source, (iii) be frequent enough to pass the threshold for conventionalization, and (iv) be discourse secondary, but not by convention. (3) Grammatical evidentials and instances of evidential grammaticalization can be identified based on focusablity, addressability and modifiability.

This article argues that the widespread view that the diachronic processes of grammaticalization and of subjectification go hand in hand, and that highly subjectivized meanings typically correlate with highly grammaticalized forms, should be revised. The point is made on the basis of the case of the diachrony of the Dutch modal verbs. Corpus data show that four of these verbs recently got involved in a process of collective re-autonomization, while the two other modals in the language do not. This correlates with differences in the semantic development of the verbs: the four re-autonomizing verbs do, but the two outliers do not show a regular process of (inter)subjectification. The paper unravels through which mechanisms the grammatical and the semantic developments may correlate, hence why highly subjectivized meanings do not necessarily like a grammatical status.

This article investigates the grammaticalization patterns of evidentiality from a cross-linguistic perspective with a focus on Lhasa Tibetan. It documents the history of the evidential morphemes ’dug, -song, -bzhag, and =ze from Old Literary Tibetan to modern spoken Lhasa Tibetan. Our analyses show that these morphemes started grammaticalizing before encoding evidentiality. We argue that, through pragmatic strengthening, evidentiality tends to infiltrate forms which have already grammaticalized to express other semantic domains. These patterns of grammaticalization are confirmed by diachronic and reconstructed data from genetically unrelated languages. Evidentiality thus tends to be a ‘grammaticalization passenger’ (i.e., a conventionalized meaning which used to be merely implied from the recurrent contexts of a grammaticalized form) rather than a ‘grammaticalization target’ (i.e., a functional domain which triggers grammaticalization). This may explain why evidentiality is less often grammaticalized than other notions, such as time or modality, in the world’s languages.

Reportative evidential markers are – in contrast to other evidential markers – compatible with distancing interpretations, in which the speaker denies the truth of what is being reported. This exceptional behaviour of reportatives is termed ‘reportative exceptionality’ (AnderBois 2014). In this paper, which addresses French, Dutch and German reportative markers, we argue that they differ with respect to the frequency with which such distancing interpretations actually arise. The French reportative conditionnel most frequently occurs with distancing interpretations, whereas German sollen hardly occurs with this function. Dutch zou takes up an intermediate position. It is claimed that the higher compatibility of the conditionnel with distancing interpretations can be accounted for by a number of factors: its general preference for contexts in which other perspectives than the speaker’s are highly salient; the fact that it has past tense morphology; and its general semantic make-up in which the marking of hypotheticality is a key function.

This article argues that the evidential system of Khams Tibetan, a cluster of Tibetic languages spoken in the south-eastern Tibetosphere, should be considered a verb paradigm. We propose a paradigm with six evidential categories (egophoric, statemental, visual sensory, nonvisual sensory, sensory inferential, and logical inferential) for all the verb classes. We focus on two varieties – rGyalthang and Lhagang – and examine how these evidential categories are encoded with distinct morphemes. We then discuss the main evidential forms of the copulative and existential verbs available in Khams Tibetan varieties as a whole, as well as their morphological relationship. Our analyses lead us to argue against a differential treatment of evidentiality depending on verb categories. The article concludes that describing the evidential paradigm may be the first essential task in writing a grammar of a Tibetic language.