Evidence / Source Signal
Evidentiality
Reportative
Inferential
Quotative
How does the speaker know?
advanced
advanced
Speaker stance
Znaczenie
A signal that marks whether information is seen, heard, inferred, assumed, reported, remembered, or generally known.
Jak to rozpoznać
Ask whether the sentence shows the source of knowledge.
Przykłady
Słowa
apparently|I heard|it seems|they say
Zwroty
I heard that|apparently true|it looks like
Zdanie
Apparently, the train is late.
Visual guide
Basic shape
claim: the train is late
^
evidence layer:
how does speaker know?
I heard / it seems / apparently
Apparently, the train is late.
Compare shape
Evidence choices: seen -> direct I heard -> heard they say -> reported it seems -> inferred apparently -> indirect
Widok językowy
W języku ojczystym
Polish (standard)
Występowanie
medium
Znaczenie
Evidence source is mostly lexical, not an obligatory grammatical category.
Podobno on już wyjechał.
Reportedly he already left.
W języku docelowym
Japanese
Występowanie
medium
Trudność
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.
Typowa trudność uczących się
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.