Four types of evidentiality in the native languages of Brazil

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Processo FAPESP: 2009/09297-0

In this paper we argue that the notions generally grouped together under the heading of evidentiality actually belong to four different evidential subcategories, which are different from one another in terms of their semantic scope. The hierarchical, scopal architecture of Functional Discourse Grammar is used to define these four categories. After giving our arguments for this new classification, we test a number of predictions that follow from it concerning the coexistence of evidential subcategories within a language and the co-occurrence of evidential markers in a single clause. We investigate our predictions in a sample of 64 native languages of Brazil. The data from these languages show that the presence of one or more of the four evidential subcategories can be systematically described in terms of an implicational hierarchy.