There are languages out there in which the epistemic status is a mandatory part of a sentence (“I’ve seen”, “so I have been told”, “I think”, etc.)
Is this true? Examples?
Yes, this is absolutely true! These grammatical features are called evidentials or evidentiality markers, and they’re mandatory in many languages around the world.
Examples:
Turkish is a classic example. It has two past tenses that encode evidentiality:
-di (direct/witnessed past): “I saw it happen”
-miş (indirect/inferred past): “I heard/inferred it happened”
So “geldi” means “he came” (and I witnessed it), while “gelmiş” means “he came” (but I didn’t see it—I heard about it or saw evidence of it).
Quechua (Andean languages) has several evidential markers:
-mi: direct knowledge
-si: reported/hearsay
-chá: conjecture
Tibetan has a rich evidential system distinguishing personal knowledge, inference, and hearsay.
Japanese has evidential markers too, though they’re sometimes considered less grammaticalized:
rashii: hearsay (“I heard that...”)
yōda: inference based on evidence
sōda: reported information
Bulgarian and other Balkan languages have “renarrative” mood marking information learned from others rather than directly experienced.
The key point is that in these languages, you often cannot make a statement about a past event without indicating your epistemic basis for the claim. Leaving it out would be grammatically incomplete, like forgetting to conjugate a verb in English. This forces speakers to constantly track and communicate their source of knowledge.
There are languages out there in which the epistemic status is a mandatory part of a sentence (“I’ve seen”, “so I have been told”, “I think”, etc.)
Asking Claude for examples
Is this true? Examples?
Yes, this is absolutely true! These grammatical features are called evidentials or evidentiality markers, and they’re mandatory in many languages around the world.
Examples:
Turkish is a classic example. It has two past tenses that encode evidentiality:
-di (direct/witnessed past): “I saw it happen”
-miş (indirect/inferred past): “I heard/inferred it happened”
So “geldi” means “he came” (and I witnessed it), while “gelmiş” means “he came” (but I didn’t see it—I heard about it or saw evidence of it).
Quechua (Andean languages) has several evidential markers:
-mi: direct knowledge
-si: reported/hearsay
-chá: conjecture
Tibetan has a rich evidential system distinguishing personal knowledge, inference, and hearsay.
Japanese has evidential markers too, though they’re sometimes considered less grammaticalized:
rashii: hearsay (“I heard that...”)
yōda: inference based on evidence
sōda: reported information
Bulgarian and other Balkan languages have “renarrative” mood marking information learned from others rather than directly experienced.
The key point is that in these languages, you often cannot make a statement about a past event without indicating your epistemic basis for the claim. Leaving it out would be grammatically incomplete, like forgetting to conjugate a verb in English. This forces speakers to constantly track and communicate their source of knowledge.
Interesting.