Evidentiality and interrogativity

- We discuss formal, semantic, and pragmatic features of evidential interrogatives.
- Evidentials in interrogatives can 'flip' from speaker to addressee perspective.
- Addressee perspective in questions is less likely with indirect evidentials.
- Evidential use reflects attention to knowledge distribution among participants.

Understanding of evidentials is incomplete without consideration of their behaviour in interrogative contexts. We discuss key formal, semantic, and pragmatic features of cross-linguistic variation concerning the use of evidential markers in interrogative clauses. Cross-linguistic data suggest that an exclusively speaker-centric view of evidentiality is not sufficient to explain the semantics of information source marking, as in many languages it is typical for evidentials in questions to represent addressee perspective. Comparison of evidentiality and the related phenomenon of egophoricity emphasises how knowledge-based linguistic systems reflect attention to the way knowledge is distributed among participants in the speech situation.