Evidentiality in Uzbek and Kazakh

4.1.5 On the Modern Reflexes of *er-miš 
While ekan/eken are the primary bearers of marked non-firsthand evidential meaning in 
Uzbek and Kazakh, reflexes of *-MIš, which bore similar meaning in Old Turkic, are found in 
both languages. This form is cognate with the well-known Turkish -mIş, as well as with forms in 
other non-Central Asian Turkic languages, such as Azerbaijani -mIş and Sakha -Bit. All of these 
forms bear some sort of non-confirmative meaning. The functions of *-MIš have been largely 
supplanted by *-GAn in much of Central Asia and Southern Siberia (Schönig 1999, 72), yet 
forms of *-MIš still survive in many of these languages, where it tends to function similarly to *-
GAn. In neither Kazakh nor Uzbek do the reflexes of -Miš attach directly to verb stems (despite 

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Johanson’s 2003 claims to the contrary); only in lexicalized items do we find traces of this older 
pattern, such as Uzbek kech-mish ‘past’. In Uzbek, only the copular form is employed (emish) 
and in Kazakh, a clitic form -mIs has developed. Traces of the full Kazakh copular form are 
found in the word emis-emis ‘gossip’; the Uzbek cognate emish-emish bears the same meaning. 
In both languages, reflexes of *er-miš bear reportative meaning, in contrast to ekan/eken, 
whose meanings may include any sort of non-firsthand information. In Uzbek, emish is still very 
much related to the rest of the confirmativity paradigm, although in Kazakh, -mIs appears to 
have lost much of its non-confirmative meaning as it has begun to change from a marker of non-
confirmativity to a quotative particle. Traces of both non-confirmativity and reportedness are 
still evident in the lexicalized emis-emis/emish-emish, as the logical combination of reported 
information and non-confirmativity is gossip.