Evidential Use Research Articles

Epistemic modality and evidentiality in virtual intercultural exchanges between Turkish and Texan users of English

AbstractThis study reports on data from two 6‐week virtual intercultural exchanges (VIEs) between teachers of multilingual learners in K‐12 schools in Türkiye and the United States. Using the data from these asynchronous VIEs, we focus on Turkish world Englishes speakers’ use of epistemic markers and evidentials. We examine how participants from Türkiye use markers of epistemic modality and evidentiality in intercultural encounters and how that use influences their construction of cultural information about Türkiye. Our findings show participants selectively code epistemic modality and evidentiality to indicate (their proximity to) the source of cultural information, avoid potential misunderstanding, and claim responsibility for the factuality of the information shared (or not). Our study contributes to understanding how world Englishes and Intercultural Communication intersect in multilingual contact zones that transcend borders―both real and imagined―between cultures, languages, and nations.

Comparative Analysis of Evidentiality in Spoken and Written Academic Discourse

This paper aims to explore the differences existing in the use of evidentiality in spoken and written academic discourse. Great differences are revealed in the occurrence frequency and linguistic forms of sub-types of evidentiality (shared evidentials, reporting evidentials and personal evidentials). Comparatively, writers demonstrate a proclivity towards employing shared and reporting evidentials and opting for linguistic forms conveying objectivity and discreetness due to the temporal and spatial distance inherent in the author-reader dynamic. Speakers tend to use personal evidentials to project a confident and positive self-image and display less stringent adherence to the verifiability of evidence sources because of the instantaneous nature of of (delete) speech and the interactive nature of oral communication with an audience.

Evidentiality in American Media's Coverage of China-related Epidemics from the Perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the major public health events of the 21st century and has attracted global attention from the press since its outbreak. This research focused on the analysis of news coverage on the China-related epidemic by American media, aiming at revealing the features of evidentiality in the discourse and elucidating the underlying ideologies. This study can help news readers develop an objective and comprehensive understanding of China. Methodology: This study selected 40 China-related epidemic news reports from The New York Times and The Washington Post during the pandemic. The quantitative and qualitative analyses of the selected news were conducted through AntConc4.2.2 in light of Fairclough's (1992) three-dimensional model. Results: The results of this study indicated the pervasive use of evidentiality in the coverage of the China-related epidemic by U.S. media, wherein distinct evidential markers demonstrated varying frequencies and served different functions. In terms of news sources, American media predominantly relied on hearsay evidentials to attribute information, thereby bolstering the credibility of the reports while subtly conveying a skeptical stance toward China. In terms of reporting modes, the reporting mostly used indirect discourse and employed deduction and induction evidentials to express negative attitudes toward China. All the results were highly related to the social context. Conclusion: Generally, the research underscores the widespread incorporation of evidentials in news discourse, employed to specify or obscure sources of information. Furthermore, evidentials embed certain ideologies and attitudes, which may mislead readers.

New Types of Evidence in Online Learning Spaces: A Corpus-Based Study

Following Hyland's model of metadiscourse, evidential is defined as an expression that references information from other texts. Evidence in traditional academic writing may include peer-reviewed articles, published books and personal communication with field experts. With a sharp increase in the use of online teaching and learning environments by education providers, such as Google Classroom and Canvas, and a vast range of sources of evidence available in non-traditional forms, are types of evidence in students’ academic writing changing and, if yes, how? In this study, we analysed the use of evidentials in course discussion forums by students at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam, revealing the types of evidence included in the writing. Our findings show that students’ academic writing in online teaching environments expands what is traditionally considered academic evidence to some extent, but more targeted teaching intervention may be needed to broaden the range and quality of evidentials used by students.

The role of pragmatics in the definition of evidentiality

AbstractThis paper argues that a definition of evidentiality as a linguistic notion should be based on the pragmatic properties of evidential forms and their distribution in spoken discourse. The prevailing definition of evidentiality as signaling “information source” is based on the idea that evidentials encode a solitary speaker’s perception and cognitive processes, but this definition does not fit well with observations regarding the use and distribution of evidentials. A definition of evidentiality in terms of “information source” has largely disregarded evidentials in-use, which is especially true for typologically oriented studies of evidentiality. Recent descriptions of evidentials and evidential systems have shown that evidentials encode meanings related to ownership of knowledge, rather than information source and it is evident from such descriptions that social and interactional parameters are encoded in evidential forms. The attested semantic and pragmatic complexity of evidential systems constitutes an analytical challenge that the present paper aims to address.

Does evidentiality support source monitoring and false belief understanding? A cross-linguistic study with Turkish- and English-speaking children.

This study investigates the impact of evidentiality on source monitoring and the impact of source monitoring on false belief understanding (FBU), while controlling for short-term memory, age, gender, and receptive vocabulary. One hundred (50 girls) monolingual 3- and 4-year-olds from Turkey and the UK participated in the study in 2019. In Turkish, children's use of direct evidentiality predicted their source monitoring skills, which, in turn, predicted their FBU. In English, FBU was not related to source monitoring. Combined results from both languages revealed that Turkish-speaking children had better FBU than English-speaking children, and only for Turkish-speaking children, better source monitoring skills predicted better FBU. This suggests an indirect impact of evidentiality on FBU by means of source monitoring in Turkish.

‘The study has clear limitations’: Presentation of limitations in conclusion sections of PhD dissertations and research articles in applied linguistics

How limitations are acknowledged and discussed has a profound impact on the extent the research is evaluated and accepted by its intended readers. However, little attention has been drawn to the presentation of limitations in the EAP literature. This study seeks to remedy the oversight by exploring how this discursive practice is mediated by metadiscourse, how limitations are rhetorically contextualized and how much these rhetorical investments differ between PhD dissertations and research articles in applied linguistics. A corpus-based analysis of 100 PhD dissertations and 200 published articles in applied linguistics shows that PhD dissertation writers make more use of frame markers but less use of code glosses, evidentials, and hedges in the acknowledgment of limitations than published writers do in limitations steps. It is also found that limitations pertaining to the overall quality of research and writers’ competence are far more often self-reported in PhD dissertations than in research articles, and PhD dissertation writers tend to attribute the limitations to situational constraints in research context and unmanageable complexity of research subjects. The results support the two-genre perspective (El-Dakhs, 2018; Kawase, 2015) and demonstrate that discussing limitations is a strategically self-critical but promotional effort in conclusion sections.

EVIDENTIALITY IN TEXTS OF THE JOURNALISTIC STYLE IN THE MODERN GERMAN LANGUAGE

The article is dedicated to examining the peculiarities of employing the category of evidentiality in texts of the journalistic style in the modern German language. Life in society is impossible without communication between people. As communicants, they exchange various information, expressing their views, emotions, and attempting to convey their own point of view to their interlocutors. Often, communicants pass on information, other people's thoughts, assumptions, and so on. Therefore, in the modern communicative process, there arises a need to specify the source of certain information. The main purpose of this is an attempt to lend greater credibility and authority to the message. For German-language journalistic style, the use of inferential and reportative evidentiality is characteristic. We believe that these types are determined by the fact that indicating the source of information is an integral component of professional media text. This is because journalists, when including the opinions of others (politicians, celebrities, or ordinary witnesses) in their materials, can present an event in light of various ideologies, provide it with a certain assessment, and thus influence the audience's opinion. Indicating the source of information is an indispensable feature of a media text, as it allows for the confirmation or refutation of the credibility of certain information. Evidential markers help readers verify the facts and opinions presented by the journalist, and based on this, form their own opinion. Citing sources is a central characteristic of a media text, providing it with the necessary objectivity. This is why evidentiality, as a linguistic category, plays a leading role in the information space of any developed linguistic culture.

From visual perception to inferential evidentiality1

Many languages use verbs of perception to express evidentiality. This paper studies the evidential use of the object-oriented perception verb eruitzien ‘look’ in Dutch. The results of a Twitter corpus study show that, whereas ziet eruit alsof ‘looks as if’ occasionally comes with an evidential interpretation, the construction ziet ernaar uit ‘looks like’ predominantly expresses inferential evidentiality. A diachronic investigation shows how the evidential reading of this construction developed from the object-oriented use of the verb, through a stage in which the construction is used to mark a prediction. This predictive reading, which is still available in present-day Dutch, is not evidential. It does not indicate a speaker has supporting evidence for a factual claim, but rather they have evidence for something they expect to become a fact in the near future. Our diachronic study also reveals how another construction, with a subject-oriented verb (eruit) zien ‘see (from it)’, once used to be an expression of inferential evidentiality as well. This particular construction appears to have lost the competition to its object-oriented counterpart ziet ernaar uit ‘looks like’, as it is no longer attested. We argue that the construction ziet ernaar uit ‘looks like’ has fully developed into an evidential construction, since its current primary function is to express evidentiality.

The quantification of intelligence in nineteenth-century craniology: an epistemology of measurement perspective

Craniology – the practice of inferring intelligence differences from the measurement of human skulls – survived the dismissal of phrenology and remained a widely popular research program until the end of the nineteenth century. From the 1970s, historians and sociologists of science extensively focused on the explicit and implicit socio-cultural biases invalidating the evidence and claims that craniology produced. Building on this literature, I reassess the history of craniological practice from a different but complementary perspective that relies on recent developments in the epistemology of measurement. More precisely, I identify two aspects of the measurement culture of nineteenth-century craniologists that are crucial to understand the lack of validity of craniological inference: their neglect of the problem of coordination for their presupposed quantification of intelligence and their narrow view of calibration. Based on my analysis, I claim that these methodological shortcomings amplified the impact of the socio-cultural biases of craniologists, which had a pervasive role in their evidential use of measurement. Finally, my argument shows how the epistemology of measurement perspective can offer useful tools in debates concerning the use of biological evidence to foster social discourse and for analyzing the relationship between theory, evidence, and measurement.

Contrastive Analysis on Metadiscourse Markers Used in Blotter Entries

This quantitative study analyzed the use of the metadiscourse markers used in the blotter entries taken from two police stations in the country. Using Metadiscourse Analysis of Hyland, the study reveals that blotter entries from Region 6 contain more hedges and logical connectives; however, blotter entries from National Capital Region (NCR) contain more evidentials. This study concludes that writers of blotter entries from Region 6 are more cautious while writers of blotter entries from NCR tend to sound more certain or authoritarian by observing the use of evidentials. This study also shows that writers from the two discourse communities are aware of the usage of logical connectives as they are evident or can be observed in the collected sample blotter entries.

The use of boosters and evidentials in British campaign debates on the Brexit referendum

Abstract Little attention has been given to the role of metadiscoursal devices in non-academic discourses with an overtly persuasive component such as political discourse. We address this gap by analysing the presence and function of evidentials and boosters in the 2016 campaign debates on the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum (also known as the Brexit referendum). In this vein, our objectives are first, to analyse the evidentials and boosters most frequently used in these debates and relate them to the speakers’ goals, and second, to contrast the use of these devices with the results of the referendum. Data were quantitatively analysed with METOOL, a tool specifically developed to detect metadiscoursal strategies. The results showed how the strategies identified here tended to work in combination towards the representation of a credible self, challenging opposing views on the same issue. Finally, conclusions were drawn.

Evidentiality in Turkish as L2: Evidence from the final attainment of Russian immigrants

The study examines use of evidentiality in the Turkish language, which requires the activation of the morphology-pragmatics interface, by Russian L1 immigrants, who are advanced L2 users of Turkish. The data were collected via using a narrative, discourse completion and grammaticality judgement task. Quantitative and qualitative inter-group analyses were conducted. The findings have revealed that the use of Turkish evidential markers of the Russian immigrant group shows differences in their use and grammaticality judgement of evidentiality in Turkish when they are compared with native Turkish speakers. Our findings suggest that evidentiality in Turkish is challenging even for advanced L2 users.

Visual perception-based adverbials: Cross-linguistic equivalence and differences

The present study explores structural and functional properties of two sets of evidential adverbials in English, Polish and Lithuanian by addressing their scope, position, evidential status, functional extension, grammaticalization and distribution in different types of discourse. The first set includes units originally related to the meaning ‘visible to the eye’: evidently, ewidentnie, oczywiście and akivaizdžiai; the second set covers units connected with the original meaning of distinctness and transparency: clearly, wyraźnie and aiškiai. The findings suggest that formal and functional cross-linguistic similarities are shared mostly by clearly, wyraźnie and aiškiai, which function as manner adverbials or inferential evidentials. By contrast, significant differences mirroring the functional extension of the adverbials and their degree of grammaticalization have been displayed by evidently, oczywiście, ewidentnie and akivaizdžiai. Unlike the English and Polish adverbials, the Lithuanian akivaizdžiai tends to occur as a manner adverbial or show ambiguous interpretation between the manner and evidential use, which reflects its least grammaticalized status. However, the Polish oczywiście has displayed a variety of interpersonal functions that show a complete bleaching of its evidential use, supported by the high frequency, positional mobility, interactional contexts of use of the marker, incompatibility with perceptual evidence and discourse marker status.

CONTRASTIVE INTERLANGUAGE ANALYSIS OF EVIDENTIALITY IN PHD DISSERTATIONS

The present study investigates evidentiality in its broadest sense (Chafe 1986) in PhD dissertations as a genre of academic writing. For this purpose, Chafe’s taxonomy (1986), revised by Ifantidou (2001), has been used as a framework in order to analyze three different groups of datasets, including one group of native speakers of English and two groups of non-native speakers: a group of Turkish speakers of English and the other non-native speakers with diff erent L1 backgrounds. The texts of these three groups are examined in order to fi nd out whether the native language of the participants is a factor in the choice of evidential markers. The results show that the native speakers of English use evidential markers more frequently compared to the non-native authors. In terms of the Native Language/Interlanguage comparison in Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger 1996, 1998), the overall use of evidentiality reveals that non-native authors do not show native-like features in the use of evidentiality. In terms of the Interlanguage/Interlanguage comparison, Turkish authors of academic texts diff er from the authors with various native language backgrounds in terms of the use of evidentiality.

Evidentiality in science from specialization to popularization: A case study of COVID-19 texts

AbstractSince the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, medical texts on the pandemic have enjoyed wide popularity, and one of the key issues has always been the accuracy and dependability of the information they contain. The use of evidentiality, a linguistic system which functions to indicate the source and credibility of information, is thus worth exploring in COVID-19 texts. Adopting a synthesized framework within the overall model of systemic functional linguistics, this paper sets out to investigate the lexicogrammar and semantics of evidentiality on the basis of data collected in the form of both specialized and popular texts on COVID-19. Evidentiality in these texts is explored along four dimensions: (i)evidential taxonomy, where specialized texts favor reporting, while popular texts favor belief and inferring; (ii)information source, where specialized texts highlight the voices of authorship, original research, and patients, whereas popular texts highlight the voices of scientists, institutions, countries, and laypeople; (iii)modalization, where specialized texts typically indicate a higher degree of modal responsibility than their popular counterparts; and (iv)engagement, where specialized texts favor dialogic expansion and popular texts favor contraction. It is hoped that these findings will shed light on linguistic variation according to different contextual configurations, as well as clarifying rhetorical conventions in discourse communities of science.

Intuitive Expertise in Moral Judgments

ABSTRACT According to the ‘expertise defence’, experimental findings suggesting that intuitive judgments about hypothetical cases are influenced by philosophically irrelevant factors do not undermine their evidential use in (moral) philosophy. This defence assumes that philosophical experts are unlikely to be influenced by irrelevant factors. We discuss relevant findings from experimental metaphilosophy that largely tell against this assumption. To advance the debate, we present the most comprehensive experimental study of intuitive expertise in ethics to date, which tests five well-known biases of judgment and decision-making among expert ethicists and laypeople. We found that even expert ethicists are affected by some of these biases, but also that they enjoy a slight advantage over laypeople in some cases. We discuss the implications of these results for the expertise defence, and conclude that they still do not support the defence as it is typically presented in (moral) philosophy.

Are "Modal Adverbs" automatically Modal Markers? The Case of French "Certainement" with its Epistemico-Modal and its Evidential Use

The French adverb certainement (‘certainly’) is labelled a “modal adverb”. It has two (sentence adverb) uses according to the literature, called “strong modal use” and “weak modal use”. The strong modal use is indeed strong (epistemico-)modal in that it indicates total certainty, whether subjective or intersubjective. What is called its “weak modal use” is shown to be an evidential use. It indicates primarily that the content qualified by the adverb results from a non-monotonic inference, performed by the speaker, whose conclusions are plausible, defeasible, and thus never totally certain. This is due to the presence of an evidential-inferential component in its meaning. As for the so-called weak modal element of “probability” in its meaning, we reanalyse it as “non- certainty” and argue it is an element of utterance meaning, a property of quasi-assertions to which non-monotonically inferred content gives rise. Finally, we claim that the adverb also has a meaning component that we call “epistemic posture of certainty”, shown to be different from epistemic modality. On the basis of three parameters and their values, we show how certainementcan be interpreted, in a series of contextual configurations, either as an instance of its epistemico- modal use or of its evidential use.

Looks like a duck, quacks like a hand: Tools for eliciting evidential and epistemic distinctions, with examples from Lamjung Yolmo (Tibetic, Nepal)

AbstractThis article describes the use of eight research tools used in the documentation of evidential and modal use in Lamjung Yolmo, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal. For each tool, the methodology is described, and some examples of the usefulness and limitations are discussed. The methods include use of existing and novel tools and materials. Image tasks included the existing resources Family Problem Picture Task and Jackal and Crow, as well as optical illusions. Object tasks included the hidden objects game and magic tricks. Listening and talking tasks included the game twenty questions, reporting previous speech, and a grammaticality judgement task based on multiple reports. Making research methods more transparent, and the open sharing of data and materials, allows us to move forward with better understanding of the contexts of evidential use, and more nuanced cross-linguistic typological analysis of evidential systems.

Looks like a duck, quacks like a hand: Tools for eliciting evidential and epistemic distinctions, with examples from Lamjung Yolmo (Tibetic, Nepal)

AbstractThis article describes the use of eight research tools used in the documentation of evidential and modal use in Lamjung Yolmo, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal. For each tool, the methodology is described, and some examples of the usefulness and limitations are discussed. The methods include use of existing and novel tools and materials. Image tasks included the existing resourcesFamily Problem Picture TaskandJackal and Crow, as well as optical illusions. Object tasks included thehidden objectsgame and magic tricks. Listening and talking tasks included the gametwenty questions, reporting previous speech, and a grammaticality judgement task based on multiple reports. Making research methods more transparent, and the open sharing of data and materials, allows us to move forward with better understanding of the contexts of evidential use, and more nuanced cross-linguistic typological analysis of evidential systems.