Evidentiality in Uzbek and Kazakh

6.2.1.2 Uyghur 
Uyghur, spoken mainly in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is Uzbek’s 
closest (major) relative and is spoken in near proximity to Kazakh and Kygryz. Due to the 
location of major Uyghur population centers on the Silk Road (e.g. Kashgar, Aksu), speakers of 
Uyghur have had prolonged and intensive contacts with speakers of Persian, as well as with 
speakers of other Central Asian Turkic languages. 

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Like Uzbek and Kazakh, Uyghur verb forms exhibit a strong finite/non-finite distinction 
that may be used to explain the distribution of copular forms (Nadzhip 1971). Uyghur likewise 
possesses three forms of the past tense: a ‘present-past tense’ in -DI, a ‘subjective past tense’ in 
-(I)p that “implies that the speaker’s words are based on hearsay, and/or that the speaker has 
become aware of something unexpected,” and a ‘perfect verbal adjective’ in -GAn (De Jong 
2007). The phonetic shape and described uses of these forms suggest that they play similar roles 
to their cognates in Uzbek and Kazakh. 
De Jong (2007) reports four copular forms of the verb: past idi, negative ämäs, inferential 
imiš, and ikän, which is “widely used to express discovery or indirect speech or information.” In 
Uyghur, as in Uzbek and Kazakh, older *-mIš is found only as a copular form imiš, where it 
“implies that the speaker has no direct knowledge of the statement” (De Jong 2007).
Interestingly, a compound form ikänmiš is reported for Uyghur, where it is described as the past 
tense of the inferential form. This sort of compound is not found in Uzbek, but it does resemble 
Kazakh ekan-mis, which indicates non-confirmativity and reportativity. While it is clear for the 
descriptions above that ikän and imiš may express non-firsthand information source and 
admirativity, it is not clear whether imiš is rarer than ikän or whether there is any sort of 
difference in the type of non-firsthand information source that these forms express. According to 
Johanson (2000; 2003), Uzbek utilizes ikän to produce rhetorical questions, but it is not clear 
whether imiš or ikänmiš may also function in this way.