Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun linguistics The encoding into a language of the source of information being communicated, so as to distinguish (for example) hearsay from something actually witnessed.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • But in some languages, including Tariana, you always have to put a little suffix onto your verb saying how you know something - we call it "evidentiality".

    Boing Boing: January 25, 2004 - January 31, 2004 Archives 2004

  • This is what linguists call evidentiality: "probably" modifies a statement in a way that indicates how much the speaker believes it to be true.

    Big Ideas 2009

  • Paradoxical as it sounds, we must never forget that there is a kind of evidentiality in the form of beauty itself.

    Criminal Psychology: a manual for judges, practitioners, and students 1911

  • What makes Tuyuca so unique is its use of evidentiality: Each verb must contain a suffix that describes how the speaker knows the information they are stating eg: Diga ape-wi means that "the boy played soccer and I know because I saw him."

    Ben Colclough: Learning The Lingo: The 5 Hardest Languages To Master Ben Colclough 2011

  • Whether it's distinguishing modes of being in Spanish, evidentiality in Turkish, or aspect in Russian, learning to speak these languages requires something more than just learning vocabulary: it requires paying attention to the right things in the world so that you have the correct information to include in what you say.

    HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? - By Lera Boroditsky William Harryman 2009

  • Whether it's distinguishing modes of being in Spanish, evidentiality in Turkish, or aspect in Russian, learning to speak these languages requires something more than just learning vocabulary: it requires paying attention to the right things in the world so that you have the correct information to include in what you say.

    How Does Our Language Shape The Way We Think By Lera Boroditsky William Harryman 2009

  • Giving it the meaning of evidentiality works exceptionally well with its proposed etymology from an originally independent temporal-spatial "hic-et-nunc" particle attached to pronominal endings in pre-IE, in turn fashioned from the demonstrative stem *i- "he, she, it".

    Archive 2007-05-01 2007

  • Giving it the meaning of evidentiality works exceptionally well with its proposed etymology from an originally independent temporal-spatial "hic-et-nunc" particle attached to pronominal endings in pre-IE, in turn fashioned from the demonstrative stem *i- "he, she, it".

    The headache of the Indo-European subjunctive 2007

  • She notes how the pasive is spreading like an STD and says also that evidentiality systems spread quickly in environments where it looks like evasiveness not to use evidentiality markers, even in oyur own language that doesn't traditioanlly have them.

    languagehat.com: WHEN A LANGUAGE DIES. 2005

  • Whewell's Ideas organize the forms of experimental evidentiality by way of the axioms.

    Dashed Off 2005

Comments

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  • “You cannot simply say, as in English, “An animal passed here.” You have to specify, using a different verbal form, whether this was directly experienced (you saw the animal passing), inferred (you saw footprints), conjectured (animals generally pass there that time of day), hearsay or such. If a statement is reported with the incorrect “evidentiality,” it is considered a lie.”

    The New York Times, Does Your Language Shape How You Think?, by Guy Deutscher, August 26, 2010

    August 30, 2010