Interactional, cross-linguistic, theoretical and areal perspectives on evidentiality and egophoricity

Research project at the University of Helsinki, Department of Modern Languages (General Linguistics) led by Dr. Seppo Kittilä, funded by the Academy of Finland for the years 2013-2017.

Evidentiality as a linguistic notion refers to the source of information speakers have for their statements. The statements can be based on, for example, direct sensory evidence, hearsay, inference, or on shared or private information. All languages can refer to the source of information somehow, but languages differ according to whether evidentiality is an obligatory (verbal) category or not.

The project studies evidentiality from different perspectives both cross-linguistically and focusing on individual languages of Eurasia, especially concentrating on Uralic languages in comparison to their neighbouring languages and the Sino-Tibetan border area.