Evidence / Source Signal
How does the speaker know?
Betydning
A signal that marks whether information is seen, heard, inferred, assumed, reported, remembered, or generally known.
Slik kjenner du det igjen
Ask whether the sentence shows the source of knowledge.
Eksempler
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
Språkoversikt
På morsmålet ditt
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
På språket du lærer
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.