Expressing evidence

Abstract

This paper forms the introductory article to the special issue ‘Expressing Evidence’. It lays out the background into the pragmatic and semantic research on evidence in language, and positions the collection of papers within this theoretical landscape. The collection stands out in its focus on conceptual issues involved, including the relation between ‘grammatical’ evidentiality and other constructions that signal evidence and the consequences of these connections for the semantic and pragmatic theory. The special issue aims to bring the work on evidentiality to the attention of a broad audience, including not only linguists, but also language scientists more generally, as well as philosophers of language and science.