evidencial

Evidencial, or evidential, is a grammatical category used in linguistics to express the source, reliability, or manner in which a speaker obtained information about a proposition. It encodes the speaker's evidence for what is being stated, such as direct perception, memory, inference, or reported information from others. In languages with evidentiality, the marker often appears on the verb or adjacent clausal elements and can interact with tense, aspect, or mood.

Common types include direct evidentials (perception, present memory), inferential evidentials (reasoning, inferences), and reportative or quotative evidentials (information from another source or quotation). Some languages also distinguish visual vs non-visual evidence, or use multiple markers for different sources.

Evidential systems have been documented in many languages around the world, notably in the languages of the Caucasus and the Americas. In Turkish, for example, a suffix such as -miş conveys information that is hearsay or inferred rather than directly observed. In other languages, evidentiality may be marked by separate particles, tone, or word order, and in some cases it is a mandatory grammatical category.

Beyond grammar, evidentiality intersects with epistemology and pragmatics, shaping how speakers present knowledge and how listeners interpret claims. See also: evidentiality, epistemic modality, direct vs indirect evidence.