evidentialiteettiä

Evidentialiteettiä refers to the grammatical marking of the source of information. It is a feature found in many languages, where a verb or other grammatical element indicates whether the speaker knows something from personal experience, hearsay, inference, or some other means. This concept is distinct from modality, which expresses the speaker's attitude towards the truth of a proposition, such as certainty or doubt. Evidential markers provide information about the justification for a statement.

In languages with evidentiality, the speaker must explicitly signal how they acquired the information they are conveying. For example, a speaker might use one form of a verb if they saw an event happen themselves, another if they were told about it, and a third if they deduced it from evidence. This can lead to a more precise and nuanced communication of knowledge. The specific categories of evidentiality vary significantly across languages. Some languages have very elaborate systems, distinguishing between visual evidence, other sensory evidence, reported evidence, and inferred evidence. Others have simpler systems, perhaps only distinguishing between direct and indirect knowledge.

The study of evidentiality is important for understanding linguistic diversity and the ways in which different cultures conceptualize and communicate knowledge. It is a key area of research in typology, syntax, and semantics, and has implications for fields such as language acquisition and translation. While English does not have a mandatory grammatical system of evidentiality, the concept can be expressed through adverbs, modal verbs, and other lexical means.