REPORTIVE EVIDENTIALITY. A THEORETICAL REVISION

Abstract

Notwithstanding the wide-ranging investigations into the phenomenon of reportive evidentiality, there is still a need for clarification of its scope and related notions. This paper presents a theoretical revision of reportive evidentials, i.e., those cases in which the speaker/writer reports the evidence given by another information source. The review starts with an examination of the main taxonomies foundin the field of linguistics, suggesting the use of the term ‘reportive’ to encompass reporting markers. The paper continues by discussing the relationship between reportive evidentiality and reported speech. We support that there is a cline of functions between the two categories. Despite this, we single out possible criteria to distinguish reporting expressions. They focus on the presence of the original source of the information, as well as the propositional scope of the reporting and reported segments. We conclude by presenting some areas to further explore these issues, such as the relation between reported speech and modality.