Evidentiality in Uzbek and Kazakh

4.1 
Use and Meaning of Ekan/Eken 
Ekan/eken expresses two primary meanings: evidentiality and admirativity/ emotivity.
As the following chapter will address the admirative/emotive meanings of these morphemes, 
only their evidential meaning will be discussed here. Although I gloss ekan/eken as 
EVID
and 
refer to it as the evidential marker, this term is somewhat misleading for two reasons. The first 
of these is that evidentiality as a phenomenon refers to a broad range of possible types of 
evidence, including the non-firsthand types actually expressed by ekan/eken (such as inference 
and hearsay), but also firsthand sensory evidence, which is not expressed by ekan/eken. The 
morphemes in question express only the most marked type of evidentiality, that is, non-firsthand 
information source, which is almost universally marked with respect to firsthand information 

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source (de Haan 1999; 2008). The second reason the glossing of ekan/eken is somewhat 
misleading is that these morphemes participate directly in the confirmativity paradigm described 
in the previous chapter. That is, a speaker is likely to employ a marker of non-firsthand 
information source if she or he is unwilling to confirm the statement made. Similarly, a speaker 
is not obligated to employ the evidential if he or she is willing to confirm that statement. The 
term evidential, then, is employed here to indicate a broad range of meanings that includes non-
firsthand information source and non-confirmativity. 
 
4.1.1 Ekan/Eken in Declarative Contexts 
Ekan/eken is found only in two of the major clause types: declarative and interrogative.
It is never found in imperative clauses. Because clause type affects both the semantics and 
morphosyntactic properties of ekan/eken, I consider them separately. 
The most notable purpose of ekan/eken in declarative clauses is the expression of non-
firsthand information source. In recent literature, information source has been divided into a 
number of categories, which appear to be more or less universal. Willett (1988) divides the 
possible semantic distinctions made by evidential morphemes into four basic categories of 
information source: 
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE 
>
DIRECT EVIDENCE 
>
INDIRECT EVIDENCE 
>
HEARSAY
 
These categories are arranged hierarchically and correspond to a speaker’s likely degree of 
confidence in the reliability of an information source. In much of the Eurasian evidentiality belt, 
the semantic domain of evidentiality is divided into two, with 
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
and 
DIRECT 
EVIDENCE
falling into a category often termed 
DIRECT
and 
INDIRECT EVIDENCE 
and 
HEARSAY
falling into an 
INDIRECT
category (see, for example, Johanson 2000; 2003). 

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The issue with proposing paradigmatic evidentiality in Uzbek and Kazakh, as well as in 
many of the other languages of the Eurasian evidentiality belt, is that while ekan/eken does 
express 
INDIRECT
evidentiality, no other morpheme expresses 
DIRECT 
evidentiality. That is, the 
absence of the marked evidential morphemes does not indicate firsthand experience. As 
discussed in the previous chapter, the various past tense morphemes in Uzbek and Kazakh may 
be marked for confirmativity, but the use of a confirmative marker does not imply that the 
speaker has any firsthand knowledge of the events described. Recall that it is possible to employ 
even confirmative forms (such as the simple past -di/-DI) to express events that the speaker 
could not possible have witnessed: 
(106) Huddi shu serial o'tgan oy-lar-da Turkiya kanal-i-da ham ber-il-di, lekin ko'r-