Evidence / Source Signal
How does the speaker know?
Signification
A signal that marks whether information is seen, heard, inferred, assumed, reported, remembered, or generally known.
Comment le repérer
Ask whether the sentence shows the source of knowledge.
Exemples
apparently|I heard|it seems|they say
I heard that|apparently true|it looks like
Apparently, the train is late.
Visual guide
claim: the train is late
^
evidence layer:
how does speaker know?
I heard / it seems / apparently
Apparently, the train is late.
Evidence choices: seen -> direct I heard -> heard they say -> reported it seems -> inferred apparently -> indirect
Vue par langue
Dans votre langue
French does not have a broad obligatory evidential system, but source and certainty are expressed lexically.
Apparemment, le train est en retard.
Apparently, the train is late.
Dans la langue d’apprentissage
Japanese has useful hearsay and inference markers, though not a mandatory evidential system.
電車が遅れているそうです。
I hear that the train is late.
Learners may confuse そうだ for hearsay with そうだ for appearance.
Good transfer potential
This block behaves relatively similarly, so you can transfer intuition more safely between the two languages.