reportative

Reportative is a grammatical category found in some languages that marks information as being sourced from someone else or from hearsay, rather than from direct personal observation. It is often described as a type of evidential or discourse marker that signals the origin of knowledge—specifically, that the clause conveys reported information rather than the speaker’s own experience.

In languages with a dedicated reportative form, the marker can appear as a distinct verb form, a suffix or particle on the main verb, or as a quotative word used to introduce reported speech. The reportative may interact with tense, aspect, and mood, and can co-occur with other evidential categories such as direct evidence, inference, or memory. Some languages have a single, broad reportative marker, while others encode different degrees or kinds of reporting (for example, distinguishing hearsay from quotation).

Documentation of reportatives is common in linguistic typology and grammars of diverse language families. They are often discussed alongside broader evidential systems and quotative constructions. While related to the general notion of quotatives, reportatives are typically framed as a grammatical means to indicate the source of information within clause structure, rather than purely as a pragmatic reporting device.

Usage and interpretation of a reportative can affect how listeners assess credibility and certainty, since the marker foregrounds the information’s origin. The exact semantic and syntactic realization of a reportative varies across languages, reflecting broader patterns of evidentiality and discourse marking in human language.