Evidence / Source Signal
How does the speaker know?
Meaning
A signal that marks whether information is seen, heard, inferred, assumed, reported, remembered, or generally known.
How to spot it
Ask whether the sentence shows the source of knowledge.
Examples
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
Language View
In your native language
English has lexical evidential signals such as apparently, reportedly, I heard that, but no broad obligatory evidential system.
Apparently, he left early.
apparently = evidence/source signal
In your learning language
Spanish does not have a broad obligatory grammatical evidential system, but evidence/source can be expressed lexically.
Según Ana, va a llover.
According to Ana, it is going to rain.
Learners should not expect a mandatory evidential suffix, but should learn common source phrases.
Good transfer potential
This block behaves relatively similarly, so you can transfer intuition more safely between the two languages.