Evidentiality in Uzbek and Kazakh

CHAPTER 2 
PREDICATION IN UZBEK AND KAZAKH 
Before any formal study of evidentiality in Uzbek and Kazakh may be undertaken, it is necessary 
to understand the processes that create complete predicates from verbs and other lexical 
categories. Predication occurs in a similar fashion in most of the Turkic languages, so the 
statements made here about Kazakh and Uzbek can be applied to most other members of the 
family as well. 
Predication in the Turkic languages can be broken into two main types: verbal and non-
verbal. Verbal predicates are characterized by their ability to take voice morphology, to be 
directly marked with negation, and to take certain TAM suffixes. Non-verbal predicates may be 
divided into five classes: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, existentials, and deontics. Complex 
predicates may be formed with the assistance of a copula (e- in both Uzbek and Kazakh). The 
copula is necessary to express negation and non-present/non-generic verbal categories on non-
verbal predicates and to form complex past, perfect, and conditional forms. 
The first section of this chapter reviews the form and function of the three main types of 
agreement markers found in Uzbek and Kazakh. The first section discusses the various types of 
agreement markers found in these languages, while the following section discusses the 
distinctions between the various verbal categories that may behave as predicates: verbs and the 
five aforementioned categories of non-verbs. In the third section, simplex verbal morphology is 
divided into two categories: finite forms, which occur only in predicates, and non-finite forms: 
participles, gerunds, infinitives, and converbs, which occur both as predicates and in other 
syntactic positions. The fourth section covers the copula, which allows certain verbal categories 
to be expressed when the predicate is non-verbal or when the verb is non-finite. In the final 

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section, I summarize the findings of the previous sections and outline the course of study for the 
rest of this work by specifying which pieces of the predicate are relevant to the study of 
evidential meaning in Uzbek and Kazakh. The data presented in this chapter is primarily 
morphosyntactic and relates to the distribution of morphemes; the semantic properties of 
individual morphemes will be further expounded upon in later chapters.