Evidentiality

Artur Lipiński, Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań, Poland
artur.lipinski@amu.edu.pl

Evidentiality is the foundation upon which speakers present information—more especially, how they mark the source or dependability of what they say. It is different from evidentials, the language signals indicating how knowledge was obtained—direct observation, inference, or hearsay. These markers affect not only the apparent power of a statement but also how speakers express responsibility, authority, and certainty.

Understanding how speakers control credibility and stance in communication depends on knowing evidentiality. In social and institutional settings, as well as in meaning-making and persuasion, it is central. Two well-known methods assist to define this idea. The functional-pragmatic approach emphasises clear evidentials as discourse aids to support assertions. Such markers, as Bednarek notes, comprise references to sources, mental-state verbs like ‘I believe’, and sensory verbs like ‘I saw.’ This point of view tightly connects epistemic responsibility and evidentiality to speaker posture.

By contrast, connected with Aikhenvald, the typological-semantic approach sees evidentiality as a grammatical and semantic category. It arranges evidentials according to the kind of evidence offered—direct visual perception, non-visual sensory input, inference, assumption, hearsay, or quotation—each reflecting a different way of grounding knowledge in language.

Beyond classification, one should also be able to separate informational value from evidential value. While evidential value relates to the capacity of material to be proof or justification, informational value relates to its relevance or novelty. In investigative journalism, for instance, information is assessed not only on what it exposes but also on how consistently it is obtained and how successfully it supports assertions or questions authority. Thus, both linguistic study and the larger dynamics of knowledge and persuasion depend on evidentiality as fundamental.

Keywords: evidentiality markers, semantic dimensions, epistemic stance

Related Entries: Epistemic/Truth, Evidence, Foundedness

References:
Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2004). Evidentiality. Oxford University Press.
Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2003). Evidentiality in typological perspective. In A. Y. Aikhenvald, & R.M.W. Dixon (Eds.), Studies in evidentiality (pp.1-31). John Benjamins.
Bednarek M. (2006). Epistemological positioning and evidentiality in English news discourse: A text-driven approach, Text & Talk 26(6),635–660.