Book Reviews

Aikhenvald, Alexandra (2004) Evidentiality (Oxford Linguistics). Oxford:

Oxford University Press. Pp. xxvii, 452.

Reviewed by Heiko Narrog

1. Introduction

Evidentiality is a grammatical category arguably absent from English and

many other European languages. In fact, according to the author of the
volume reviewed here, although every language disposes of lexical and
other means to convey the source of information, as a grammatical
category it probably exists only in about a quarter of the languages of the
world. In linguistics evidentiality has been recognized since Boas, but only
recently it has come to the attention of a larger number of linguists. This
can be attributed mostly to the collected volumes on the topic by Chafe and
Nichols (1986), Johanson and Utas (2000) and Aikhenvald and Dixon
(2003), as well as a special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics in 2001, and
also a handful of frequently cited papers like the ones by Malone (1988)
and Willett (1988). However, there can be little doubt that the present
monograph by Aikhenvald marks a major advance in the study of
evidentiality, both in terms of general recognition for the category, and in
terms of knowledge and discussion about it. Of course, this is the first high
profile monograph on the topic at all, but the scope and systematicity of
Aikhenvald’s approach would benefit any topic, even well-studied ones.
Aikhenvald works typologically and examined over 500 languages for
grammatical evidentiality. She does so under a wide range of viewpoints,
including semantic extension, interaction with other categories,
grammaticalization, and use in discourse. In general, her results are
convincing, but the information on evidentiality in individual languages
appears not to be always equally accurate. Section 2 is devoted to a broad
overview of her work. In section 3, I give an evaluation and point out some
potential problems.

SKY Journal of Linguistics 18 (2005), 379–388

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2. Summary of contents

The book consists of 12 chapters. 10 contents chapters are framed by an

introduction and a summary. A definition of the category is given right in
the beginning. “Evidentiality is a linguistic category whose primary
meaning is source of information […] To be considered as an evidential, a
morpheme has to have ‘source of information’ as its core meaning; that is,
the unmarked, or default interpretation” (p.3). Aikhenvald is particularly
intent on establishing evidentiality as a grammatical category in its own
right, and preventing it from being included in other categories, especially
modality, as has been done frequently before. For Aikhenvald, “marking
data source and concomitant categories is ‘not a function of truth or
falsity’. The truth value of an utterance is not affected by an evidential” (p.
4). Her approach to the investigation is rigorously inductive and empirical,
in the spirit of Bloomfield (“The only useful generalisations about language
are inductive generalisations”; p. 4), and based on Dixon’s Basic Linguistic
Theory.
Chapter 2 gives an overview over evidentials worldwide. Aikhenvald
proposes to distinguish systems with two, three, four, and five or more
choices of evidential marking. Those with only two choices are referred to
as “small” systems. They are divided into five types, namely (1) firsthand
and non-firsthand, (2) non-firsthand versus ‘everything else’, (3) reported
(or ‘hearsay’) versus ‘everything else’, (4) sensory evidence and reported
(or ‘hearsay’), and (5) auditory (acquired through hearing) versus
‘everything else’ (p. 25). The semantic domain covered by each of the two
terms complement each other. According to Aikhenvald, types (1) to (3)
are quite common worldwide while (4) and (5) are rather rare. In fact, (5)
has been found only in a single language so far (Euchee). These small
systems are particularly characteristic of evidential systems in Eurasia (e.g.
Finno-Ugric or Caucasian languages). A map of distributions of evidential
systems worldwide on p. 303 shows that Eurasia (including part of South
Asia) and large chunks of the Americas are the only regions in the world
with large contiguous areas of languages with evidential systems (isolated
instances can be found in other regions such as Australia and New Guinea).
Similarly to the two-term systems, systems with three or four choices are
divided into types as well. When it comes to systems with five or more
choices (e.g. Tuyuca and Central Pomo), each attested system seems to be
unique. Aikhenvald makes a valid effort here to discover patterns and bring
order into complex facts. For the reader, the borderline between different
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systems often appears to be vague. Particularly, the less terms there are in a
system, the broader and more difficult it becomes to delimit the terms. The
author is aware of this problem and addresses it in a subsection devoted to
“analytic difficulties” (2.1.2.).
Chapter 3 deals with the encoding of evidentiality. Evidentials may be
typically expressed inflectionally, with clitics, or with particles, but, as the
author states, there are hardly any morphological limitations on their
expression. Aikhenvald seems to demand, however, that in a single
language the evidentials form a coherent morphosyntactic category in order
to acknowledge the existence of an evidential “system” in a language.
Some languages have evidentials which are “scattered” among various
morphosyntactic classes (e.g. Japanese, West Greenlandic). Systems in
these languages are seen by the author “somewhat problematic and thus
only marginally relevant for the present study” (p. 81). A large part of the
chapter deals with markedness in evidential systems, and, as a special
problem, with evidentially neutral forms and omissions of evidentials.
In chapter 4, evidential extensions of non-evidential categories are
discussed. Quite often, a language does not have grammaticalized
evidentiality, but one or more of its other grammatical categories may have
evidential connotations. Thus, in many Caucasian languages, including
Georgian, the perfect, entailing a meaning component of resultativity, has
evidential connotations. Cross-linguistically, evidential extensions can be
found also with passives, nominalizations, and complementations, among
others. Also, all languages have some tools to convey reported speech, and
the borderlines between reported speech and reported evidentiality may not
always be clear. Chapter 5, discussing the meaning of evidentials, including
also their extensions into other categories, approaches from the opposite
direction, and chapter 6 follows up with extension into mirativity.
Mirativity as a category of “speaker’s ‘unprepared mind’, unexpected new
information, and concomitant surprise” (p. 195), is a category saliently
related to evidentiality. Aikhenvald argues that despite the fact that in many
languages mirativity exists only as an extension of evidential meaning,
these are separate categories. The justification comes from languages
which express mirativity as the extension of another category (e.g. Semelai;
p. 210), or have independent expression of mirativity (e.g. Kham, p. 211).
Chapter 7 brings up the topic of evidential and person. In brief, for
many evidentials what matters is the distinction between first person and
non-first person. Non-firsthand, non-visual, inferential, and reported
evidentials often presuppose use with non-first person participants. The
382 HEIKO NARROG

choice of an evidential that goes counter to this rule may trigger so-called
‘first-person effects’, including the implication of irony, surprise, or lack of
intentionality or controllability. In some languages, like Eastern Pomo,
evidentials may be a means of implicit person marking, since they
presuppose the involvement of a certain person. (p. 235). Chapter 8 deals
with the interaction of evidentiality with categories other than person.
These include clause type, negation, modality, and tense and aspect. Most
conspicuous are the interactions with clause type and tense. Usually, if a
language has different evidential choices depending on clause type, it is
declarative main clauses where the most choices are available, while in
dependent clauses or imperatives the options are generally restricted. One
may talk here of different subsystems of evidentiality, depending on clause
type (e.g. p. 255). With respect to tense, many languages have more
evidential choices available in the past than in other tenses, or, they may
even have evidential marking only in the past.
Chapter 9 discusses the origin of evidentials. Like most other
grammatical categories, the most common source of evidentials is the
grammaticalization of lexical categories, first and foremost verbs. Typical
examples are verbs of speech which grammaticalize into reported or
quotative markers. This often goes hand in hand with a reanalysis of the
complement clause of such a verb as a main clause (p. 272). Evidentials
can also be grammaticalized from deictic and locative markers or
evidentiality strategies (chapter 4), among others.
Chapter 10 is one of the most impressive chapters of the book, dealing
with evidentiality in discourse and in the lexicon. The passages on how
evidentials are linked to certain types of discourse, or speech registers, and
can be manipulated by speakers for their rhetoric purposes are fascinating
to read. With respect to the lexicon, there is salient interaction between
evidentials and certain verb classes. One case that is mentioned throughout
the book is that of verbs of internal states, including emotions, desires,
physical states etc.. In many languages, one needs to use an “indirect”
evidential, for instance an inferred evidential, when referring to the internal
states of someone else than the speaker. The chapter ends with a flow chart
that shows how “correct” evidentials are chosen, depending on a variety of
factors including discourse and verb class (p. 331). Chapter 11, the last
contents chapter, expands into further issues, many of which already
emerged in the relationship between evidentials and discourse, namely the
relationships between evidentials, cognition and culture. In the first place,
this chapter brings home the point of how important evidentials are in
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languages which have them as full-fledged systems, and how much

speakers are aware of their importance. If speakers of a language with
evidentials communicate in a language that doesn’t have them, they often
try to make up for them with lexical means, which leads to awkward
results. For them, lack of evidentials may mean lack of precision or even
lack of truthfulness (p. 333-338).
Chapter 12 provides a concise summary of the book. It is followed by
a “fieldworker’s guide” with a catalogue of questions, which should be
very welcome by any field linguists working on a language with
evidentiality. In fact, as Aikhenvald states, “most languages with large
evidentiality systems are spoken by small groups of indigenous peoples”
(p. 334), and given the ongoing catastrophic decline of languages spoken
by small communities world-wide, high-quality documentation of
languages, including evidentiality systems, and by means of a solid
descriptive framework like Dixon and Aikhenvald’s, is an urgent task.

3. Critical evaluation

As was already stated in the introduction, this is a highly important book

which takes the field a step forward. Not only is this the first systematic
monographic account of evidentiality as a category, the description is
accomplished in admirable systematicity and comprehensiveness. From
meaning range to formal expression to grammaticalization, one gets the
feeling that the book provides the (preliminary) answer to every question
that naturally emerges when dealing with this category.
When it comes to accuracy in detail, however, this book may be
somewhat controversial. I will mention here just a few points that I noticed
and that I think may point to issues where closer investigation is desirable.
A thread running throughout the book is that Aikhenvald’s data are most
convincing, and her account is most compelling, when she draws on the
data from languages of which she has first-hand knowledge. These are
most importantly Tariana (see Aikhenvald 2003) and Estonian. There are
also a number of other languages with which the author either appears to be
well acquainted (e.g. Tucano, Quechua, varieties of Portuguese and
Spanish in South America), or for which she can rely on data that she
obtained directly from specialists on the language (e.g. Jarawara/Dixon or
Qiang/LaPolla). In the case of many other languages, the data of which are
taken from grammars or papers, the description seems to stand on more
shaky feet. This is a methodological problem for language typology in
384 HEIKO NARROG

general, and one with which anyone who has experience of working
typologically can only sympathize. Perhaps one ought to simply admire the
number of languages Aikhenvald manages to cover with first-hand or near
first-hand data.
On the other hand, I should say that I found the treatment of those
languages I happen to have some first-hand knowledge of myself a little
problematic, and this inevitably made me wonder about the reliability of
data from all the other languages that do not belong to the author’s main
sources. The first case in point is German. If it makes sense at all to claim
that German has grammaticalized evidentiality (Aikhenvald believes that it
doesn’t), the prime evidence would certainly be the evidential (‘reported’
or ‘quotative’) constructions of the modal verbs sollen and wollen. Sollen is
brought up with the following example on p. 150:

(1) Er soll sich das Bein gebrochen haben

‘Apparently he has broken his leg’

The translation here is misguided. Instead of apparently, sollen should have

been rendered with allegedly in English. Sollen + perfect is a construction
that unambiguously marks the reported, or, as the common term in the
literature goes, “quotative” (cf. Diewald 1999, Letnes 1997). Consider, in
contrast, the explanation that is given by Aikhenvald (p. 150): “In German,
the modal verb sollen ‘must’ may indicate that the speaker is reporting the
information from someone else or that they inferred it or assumed it […]
The English must may have similar meaning.” As stated above, the
meaning in this construction is clearly reported and not inferred or
assumed. English must, at least in the standard varieties, has no comparable
use. In fact, if anything, the inferential use of English must corresponds to
the inferential use of German müssen (cf. Mortelmans 2001), rather than
sollen.
Apart from the problematic interpretation of these data from a specific
language, the question arises here where grammaticalized evidentiality
begins. For Aikhenvald, the criterion is whether a “morpheme” has
evidentiality as its primary meaning. In the case of German, the evidential
meaning of wollen and sollen is certainly not primary for the morphemes.
However, there are two constructions, namely sollen and wollen in present
tense form and with perfect main verbs that are specialized on evidentiality.
Taking into account that there is a growing recognition of the importance
of constructions (versus morphemes “in isolation”) in linguistics, I think
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that the existence of these specialized grammatical constructions is a good

ground for claiming that German has grammaticalized evidentiality. On the
other hand, it would certainly be an overstatement to assert that German
has an evidential “system.”
Few would doubt that Japanese has grammaticalized evidentiality.
However, in the system presented in this book, it is one of the languages
with “scattered” means of encoding modality. Therefore, in the author’s
view, Japanese does not have evidentiality as a unitary grammatical
category, and systems like that of Japanese are viewed as “only marginally
relevant for [this] study of evidentiality.” Accordingly, the Japanese
evidentials are labeled as mere “so-called” evidentials (Aikhenvald 2004:
81). Again, as Japanese is a fairly well-documented language like German,
I feel that a closer investigation of the facts should have been possible (the
author appears to base herself exclusively on Aoki 1986). This, then, might
have led to a quite different, and arguably more accurate, interpretation.
Japanese has four morphemes in the verbal complex which are widely
recognized as being evidential. These are the nominal-adjectival suffix –
soo for apparent imminence, the adjectival particle rasii for reported and
inference, the particle soo for reported, and the (almost) synonymous noun
yoo and nominal-adjectival particle mitai for inference based on
appearance. Superficially, they are diverse indeed. But in terms of
morphosyntactic combination, four of them, namely rasii, soo, yoo and
mitai basically occupy the same structural slot in the verbal complex.
Morphemes in the verbal complex, can, on the basis of their distribution, be
classified into three classes, namely A inflections, B derivational suffixes,
and C particles. These are combined according to the formula
Verb+Br+A+(Cr+Br+A) r. (“r” signals recursivity). Everything except one
inflection (A) is optional. Despite their different morphological makeup
rasii, soo, yoo and mitai basically participate in slot C, and –soo in slot B.
The combinations of morphemes are only partially restricted
morphologically, but most simply by what makes sense. The particle soo
can indeed appear further outside in recursive combination than other C
morphemes, but not as the result of any morphological restrictions, or
because it would occupy a different slot in a template, but simply to the
extent that it makes sense. While all other evidentials in Japanese combine
some kind of evidence with inference, soo is purely reported without any
inferential connotations. It is understandable if evidentials which combine
evidence with inference are labeled as “so-called” evidentials, although
Aikhenvald recognizes inferentials as regular members of evidentials
386 HEIKO NARROG

systems. I find it highly debatable from any perspective, however, if even a

pure reported suffix is demoted to the status of a “so-called” evidential.
From a broader point of view, the case of Japanese seems to raise the
question of whether it is justified to exclude systems with markers that
have divergent morphological properties as marginal. As shown here, they
may appear to be mixed only from a specific theoretical viewpoint, or in a
specific description. Also, no clear borderline is given between so-called
“scattered” evidentiality (p. 80-82) on the one hand, and evidentiality
subsystems (p. 82-87). In the viewpoint of the present book, it is apparently
only the latter which merit closer investigation.
Another point in which the author is perhaps not entirely successful is
the discussion of the relationship between evidentiality and modality.
Aikhenvald quite vigorously maintains that these are different categories,
but I feel that the arguments presented in the book will not be sufficient to
really lay this issue to rest. Apparently, the central argument is that
“marking information source as a grammatical category does not imply any
reference to validity or reliability of knowledge or information” (p. 5). If
this turns out to be true, I find this a strong argument indeed, but as it
stands now, it is simply a claim, and perhaps a book chapter of its own or a
stand-alone paper would be necessary in order to back up this claim in
more detail. Other arguments appear to be less convincing, or of purely
rhetorical nature. Thus, for instance, it doesn’t really matter that evidentials
have been grouped with epistemics from the point of view of European
scholars who are not familiar with evidentiality from their own languages
(p. 7). The only thing that counts is if this view is actually correct or not.
The fact that evidentials may be compatible with irrealis or other mood and
modality marking (e.g. p. 68) tells little as well. In many if not most
languages, markers of different modalities are compatible with each other.
Even in many Germanic languages deontic and epistemic modals may
occur in the same clause (usually the epistemic modal takes the deontic one
in its scope), and even epistemic markers in different slots may co-occur
with each other. Subjunctive marking and modals may also co-occur
frequently. Therefore, nothing emerges from this that would speak against
regarding evidentiality as one type of modality on a par with epistemic
modality, irrealis, or deontic modality. On the other hand, as the author
remarks herself, in other languages, evidentiality and mood/modality are
mutually exclusive or occupy the same slot in the morphological template
(e.g. p. 13, 68). As I mentioned above, it may be questioned whether the
author does not place too much weight on morphosyntactic criteria when
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identifying grammatical evidentiality in languages. If morphosyntactic

criteria are applied it should be done consistently, which might then,
questionably, lead to the exclusion of markers which are in a paradigmatic
relationship with epistemic or other modal markers. The typologically more
profitable way, however, I suggest, is to view the category rigorously
semantically, taking into account that morphosyntax is always the product
of historical vagaries, and hardly ever consistent across languages, or even
within one language. This would lead to a broader view of evidentiality in
language. It deserves mentioning in this connection that recently a fruitful
line of research of evidentiality in languages such as English, Dutch,
German and Spanish has developed in functional and cognitive linguistics.
The author apparently disapproves of the use of the term “evidentiality” in
these languages, but with a few exceptions she cautiously avoids to
comment on and (potentially) confront this type of research in any detail.
Other theoretical issues that would have benefited from more
discussion are the question of obligatoriness of the category, which is far
from trivial if unmarked forms are also regarded as part of the system, and
the distinction of “scattered” evidentiality and evidentiality sub-system,
mentioned above. In general, it would be good to have a coherent picture
about what is understood by “sub-system.”
The book is generously equipped with indexes (language index, author
index, subject index). One, however, is sorely missing, namely a list of
those 500 languages which the author based her study on, and, most
importantly, her (preliminary) judgment of which of these languages do
have grammatical evidentiality, and if so, which system (chapter 2) they
adhere to. The book would gain considerably in transparency if such a list
were provided. Aikhenvald’s hypotheses would become more testable, and
I sincerely hope that a second edition or a paperback edition will come with
it.
The prose of the volume is very dense and repetitious. Therefore it is
suitable as a reference work rather than as a book to be read from the
beginning to the end. In fact, the repetitions should be quite helpful if the
book is used as a reference because the reader can be sure that an issue is
mentioned at every point where it is relevant. The book is carefully edited
and comes in a high-quality printing and binding.
Overall, I can only repeat from the introduction that this is a book that
represents a considerable advance in research on evidentiality. There is
little doubt that it will become a reference on the topic for years to come.
The author, on the other hand, has firmly established herself with this
388 HEIKO NARROG

publication as the number one expert on evidentiality. Claims about

particular languages or particular theoretical claims may turn out to be
disputable, or may even be shown to be mistaken. In this respect, the book
is reminiscent of genealogical-typological work of Greenberg. Painted in
bold strokes, specific claims have been contested, often vigorously, and
sometimes justifiedly, by specialists on particular languages or language
areas. This doesn’t lessen the overall significance of the work. Aikhenvald
has opened the floor for discussion, and everyone with an interest in this
area can only appreciate this.

References

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (2003) A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. and R.M.W. Dixon (eds.) (2003) Studies in Evidentiality.
Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Aoki, Haruo (1986) Evidentials in Japanese. In: Chafe, Wallace L. and Joanna Nichols
(eds.), Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, pp. 223-238.
Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Diewald, Gabriele (1999) Die Modalverben im Deutschen. Grammatikalisierung und
Polyfunktionalität. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Johanson, Lars and Bo Utas (2000) Evidentials: Turkic, Iranian and Neighbouring
Languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Letnes, Ole (1997) Sollen als Indikator für Redewiedergabe. Debus, Friedhelm and
Oddleif Leirbukt (eds.) Studien zu Deutsch als Fremdsprache III, 119-134.
Hildesheim: Olms.
Malone, Terrell (1988) The origin and development of Tuyuca evidentials. International
Journal of American Linguistics 54/2, 119-140.
Mortelmans, Tanja (2001) On the ‘evidential’ nature of the ‘epistemic’ use of the
German modals müssen and sollen. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 14, 131-148.
Willett, Thomas (1988) A cross-linguistic survey of the grammaticalization of
evidentiality. Studies in Language 12/1, 51-97.

Contact information:

Heiko Narrog
GSICS
Tohoku University
Aoba-ku, Kawauchi 41
Sendai 980-8576
JAPAN
e-mail: [email protected]