Evidentiality in Uzbek and Kazakh

LIST OF GLOSSING CONVENTIONS 
1 
first person 
2 
second person 
3 
third person 
ABL
 
ablative case 
ACC
 
accusative case 
AGT
 
agentive 
AOR
 
aorist 
APPROX
 
approximate 
ASP
 
aspect maker 
ATTR
 
attributive 
CAUS
 
causative voice 
CL
 
classifier 
COMP
 
complementizer 
COND
 
conditional 
COOP
 
cooperative voice 
COP
 
copula 
CPST
 
converbial past tense 
CVB
 
converb 
DAT
 
dative case 
DIM
 
diminutive 
DUAL
 
dual 
EMOT
 
emotive 
EVID
 
evidential 
EXCL
 
exclamative particle 
EXIST
 
existential 
FOC
 
focus particle 
FUT
 
future 
GEN
 
genitive case 
IMP
 
imperative 
INF
 
infinitive 
INTENS
 
intensifier 
IPFV
 
imperfective 
LOC
 
locative case 
MOD
 
modal particle 
NECESS
 
necessitative 
NEG
 
negative 
NMLZR
 
nominalizer 
PASS
 
passive voice 
PRF
 
perfect 
PFV
 
perfective 
PL
 
plural 
PRES
 
present tense 
PROG
 
progressive 
PST
 
past tense 
Q
 
question particle 
RECP
 
reciprocal voice 
REPORT
 
reportative 
SG
 
singular 
TOP
 
topic marker 
VIS
 
visual evidence 
 
In most of the Turkic languages there exists a special set of verbs that can occur 
as main verbs or as light verbs (i.e. converbs). In this capacity, these verbs usually 
indicate aspect, perfectivity, or status/modality. When used in this way, their meanings 
are glossed in small caps, e.g. Uzbek ol- ‘to take/
BE
.
ABLE
’, Kazakh žat- ‘to lie/
IPFV
’.
When citing material from other sources, the original glosses are preserved. 
 

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1 
PREFACE 
0.1 
General Considerations 
The purpose of this work is to examine and account for the broad range of phenomena that have 
been referred to as “evidentiality” in the linguistics literature on two Turkic languages of Central 
Asia: Uzbek and Kazakh. While the present work is based primarily in a functionalist-
typological framework, it does include some discussions of other relevant theories. 
The term evidentiality is problematic, as it may refer to two related yet distinct 
phenomena: 
EVIDENTIAL
meaning and an 
EVIDENTIAL
grammatical category. In the course of 
this work, I claim that while Uzbek and Kazakh have a number of grammatical means for 
expressing evidential meaning, none of these means can be said to fall into a verbal category of 
EVIDENTIALITY
of the type identified in classic works such as Boas (1911) and Jakobson 
(1957/1971), and elaborated on in more recent work such as de Haan (1999) and Aikhenvald 
(2003; 2004). Rather, evidential meaning is expressed via the verbal category of 
STATUS
or 
MODALITY
, specifically through the sub-category of (
NON
)
CONFIRMATIVITY
as developed in 
Aronson (1967) and Friedman (1978; 1980). The expression of non-confirmativity may be 
interpreted in a number of ways, and one of these is an evidential interpretation. Other possible 
results of the expression of non-confirmativity include 
NON
-
VOLITIONALITY
, 
RHETORICAL 
QUESTIONS
, and 
ADMIRATIVITY
, which is the linguistic expression of unexpected information.
This final result, admirativity, is sometimes called mirativity (see DeLancey 1997; 2001; Lazard 
1999) and is often considered a sub-variety of, or at least related to, evidentiality. By employing 
a sub-category of (
NON
)
CONFIRMATIVITY
, we are able to unify these various meanings.
Non-confirmativity in Uzbek and Kazakh, as well as in many other genetically and 
areally related languages, is expressed primarily by markers of past tense. These markers 

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2 
frequently evolve into markers whose sole purpose is to express non-confirmativity, rather than 
the combination of past tense and non-confirmativity.
In Uzbek and Kazakh, we are concerned with the modern reflexes of five morphemes.
Three of these are bound to the verbal root and express past tense: the 
SIMPLE PAST
tense *-DI 
(Uzbek -di, Kazakh -DI), which is confirmative; the 
PERFECT
*-GAn (Uzbek -gan, Kazakh 
-GAn), which is unmarked (in the modern languages) for confirmativity; and the 
CONVERBIAL
PAST
*-(I)p (Uzbek -(i)b, Kazakh -(I)b), which is non-confirmative. The other two morphemes 
that concern us are derived from combinations of verbal markers and the copula: *er-kan 
(<*er+GAn
1
) (Uzbek ekan, Kazakh eken), which is non-confirmative and may express either 
non-firsthand information source (i.e. evidentiality) or admirativity, and *er-miš (Uzbek: emish, 
Kazakh -mIs), which expresses either reportativity or admirativity. In reviewing these 
morphemes, we see that evidential meaning is not the primary meaning of any of them. Rather, 
because certain morphemes are marked as non-confirmative, they may express specific types of 
non-confirmativity, such as non-firsthand information source (i.e. non-firsthand evidentiality) or 
admirativity.