Evidentiality: The framework

[Extract] There are, in every language, means for saying how one knows what one is talking about, and what one thinks about what one knows or has learnt. Every language has some means of phrasing inferences and assumptions, evaluating probability and possibility, and expressing belief or disbelief. The source of knowledge can be expressed in a variety of ways. In quite a few languages one has to specify the information source on which a statement is based-whether the speaker saw the event happen, didn’t see it but heard it (or smelt it),made an inference about it based on visual traces or reasoning or general knowledge, or was told about it. This is the essence of evidentiality, or grammatical marking of information source-rather an exciting phenomenon loved by journalists and the general public. This is how Franz Boas (1938: 133) put it: ’while for us definiteness, number, and time are obligatory aspects, we find in another language location near the speaker or somewhere else, source of information-whether seen, heard, or inferred-as obligatory aspects’.