Part 4 · grammar — Chapter 16 · evidentiality

Evidentiality: knowing how we know

Epistemic humility as grammar

Most languages allow speakers to make claims without specifying how they know what they claim. "It's raining" commits to a fact but says nothing about whether the speaker looked out the window, heard rain on the roof, or simply assumed based on forecast.

Phi makes this explicit. The evidentiality system provides particles that mark the source of the speaker's knowledge. When you claim something in Phi, you can also signal how you came to know it.

It is a practice of epistemic humility, made grammatical. By marking your knowledge source, you acknowledge that what you know has limits, that your perspective is partial, and that others might know differently.

The four evidential particles

Phi provides four evidential particles; each marks a different relationship between speaker and knowledge:

hi — direct evidence (I witnessed it myself) ke — inferential evidence (I deduced it from evidence) ti — reportative evidence (someone told me) ho — assumptive evidence (I'm assuming or supposing)

These particles occupy Slot 1 and appear before the verb.

When to use evidentials

Evidential particles are optional. When no evidential appears, the sentence is a plain assertion: it claims the fact and names no source. Direct knowledge is the natural assumption for present, perceivable events, but the grammar claims nothing: that is hi's job.

Use evidentials when: - The knowledge source matters for interpretation - You want to be explicitly honest about uncertainty - You're reporting something secondhand and shouldn't claim firsthand authority - The listener might benefit from knowing how reliable your information is

The choice to include or omit evidentials is itself communicatively meaningful. Marking evidentiality signals care for accuracy; omitting it signals confidence or simplicity.

The four sections that follow take each particle in turn; the chapter closes with why this system exists at all: what marking your knowledge does to a disagreement, and to a mind.