Evidentiality in Japanese

要旨

Abstract This chapter provides an overview of the structure, meaning and use of evidential markers in Modern Japanese and a brief summary of evidential markers through Japanese language history. Japanese has inferential evidentials and reportive markers. They are realized as suffixes on a variety of (mainly verbal) predicates, and as grammaticalized nouns. Issues that arise and are discussed in this chapter include the differentiation between markers that are semantically similar, the purported existence of direct evidential uses, the distinction between evidentials (reportives) on the one hand and quotatives on the other, the interaction with other categories of (mainly verbal) predicates such as tense, aspect, and modality, and the use in interrogatives.

主題