IndEvid: A grammaticalized form exists to express indirect evidentials.
present tense | past tense (indet.) | past tense (det.) | passive | |
1Sg | tot-nē-m | tot-m-um | tot-um-l-um | tot-ima-m |
2Sg | tot-nē-n | tot-m-ǝn | tot-um-l-ǝn | tot-ima-n |
3Sg | tot-nē-te | tot-um | tot-um-te | tot-ima |
1. table. The Northern Mansi verb meaning ‘ take’ in its indirect evidential forms (based on Skribnik-Afanaseva 2007:48)
According to the grammars of Northern Mansi, indirect (inferential) evidentiality is coded by grammatical means in the language (Sz. Kispál 1966; Rombandeeva 1973; Kálmán 1976; Skribnik-Afanaseva 2007; Sipőcz 2014). The derivational suffixes of participles grammaticalized as tense markers, and the derivational suffix of the gerund became a modal marker (Csepregi 2014: 102). Indirect evidentiality is marked on the verb the following way:
- in the present tense, the present participle of the verb (-ne) takes a personal possessive suffix
- in the past tense, the past participle of the verb (-m) takes a personal suffix (both in the determinate and the indeterminate conjugation)
- in the passive voice, the adverbial participle (-ima) takes a personal suffix (see table 1.)
Most linguists (Sz. Kispál 1966; Rombandeeva 1973, Sipőcz 2014) agree that the above mentioned forms code inferential evidentiality, (Rombandeeva (1973: 137–145) even considers them as nonwitness modalities). Skribnik and Janda (2012), however, suggest that the function of these constructions is to express mirativity, which does not belong to the realm of evidentiality. As the phenomenon was only investigated in written texts, a survey study may dissolve the debate.