Evidentiality in Uzbek and Kazakh

6.2.1.3 Turkmen 
Turkmen occupies a transitional space between the Central Asian and the Middle 
Eastern/Balkan regions, and is a member of the Oghuz branch of Turkish, along with Turkish, 

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Azerbaijani, and a number of minor languages. Due to contact with Central Asian Turkic, 
however, Turkmen can be placed within what Schönig (1999) calls the -GAn- Turkic interactive 
area, as it employs reflexes of -GAn rather than -mIš in both attributive and finite contexts and 
shares a number of lexical similarities with other Central Asian Turkic languages. 
Perhaps due to its intermediate position, Turkmen does not appear to exhibit either the 
Central Asian pattern outlined here nor the Middle Eastern/Balkan pattern outlined for Turkish 
or Azerbaijani (Friedman 1978; 1988). Unlike Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uyghur, Turkmen 
appears not to possess a strong finite/non-finite distinction. Clark (1998) describes the past tense 
-dI as indicating that the speaker has “witnessed or is certain of” what is described, which is in 
line with what has been described for cognate forms in Uzbek and Kazakh, as well as Turkish 
and Azerbaijani. The past tense in -(I)pdI (negative -mĀndI) is described as expressing distant 
past meaning, which indicates that it might possibly function like -gan/-GAn in Uzbek and 
Kazakh, and the ‘subjective past indefinite tense’ in -(I)pdIr (negative -mĀndIr) is described as 
indicating surprise, non-firsthand information source, and unintentionality, which indicates that it 
functions like Uzbek and Kazakh -(i)b/-(I)p. It appears that Turkmen has collapsed the past 
tenses in *–(I)p and *-GAn, employing the *-(I)p form for positive statements and the *-GAn for 
negative (-mĀn < *-mA-GAn), then further distinguishing the two forms on the basis of whether 
the affix *-DIr  is reduced or not. A form based on *-GAn appears to be preserved in the 
‘subjective present perfect’ -AndIr 
6
, which indicates that “the speaker did not witness or could 
not have witnessed the action, but he or she believes that it took place” (Clark 1998). A further 
6
A hallmark of the Oghuz languages is the loss of *G after consonants and as initial consonants 
in most suffixes. 

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past tense form that merits consideration is the negative present perfect -Anōk, which is of 
unclear etymology. 
Perhaps because Turkmen does not appear to possess a strong finite/non-finite 
distinction, there are no independent forms of the copula. In the case of non-verbal predicates, 
the past tense is simply affixed to the predicate (e.g. šol-dï: that-
PST
, ‘it was that’) or an 
independent verb bol- is employed (Blacher 1997). Turkmen does, however, possess a form 
eken, which may follow nouns and adjectives, and likely certain forms of the verb, and is used to 
indicate non-firsthand information source and admirativity. It is unclear whether this is a 
borrowing from some other Turkic language or a homologous development. Turkmen also 
possesses a form -mIš, which is “commonly added to verbs, and sometimes to nouns to indicate 
that a fact is asserted or reported rather than evident or witnessed,” but, as noted by Clark (1998), 
it “does not imply doubt.” Further work is necessary to see whether these various Turkmen 
forms can be said to express (non-)confirmativity in any sort of regular way.