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

Funded by the Academy of Finland 2013-2017

Researchers: Seppo Kittilä (PI), Lotta Jalava, Erika Sandman, Sami Honkasalo

Website: https://blogs.helsinki.fi/evid-ego/

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 studied 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.