Defining evidentiality

This paper explores how evidentiality is defi ned in recent research. It was inspired by the recent publication of The Oxford Handbook of Evidentiality and several other volumes, which provide a rich body of new material. The defi nition (or rather demarcation) of evidentiality encompasses both morphosyntactic and semantic parameters. I will address criteria for the distinction of dedicated grammatical evidentials, and survey the values distinguished in evidentiality’s semantic domain. In addition, I discuss deictic views of evidentiality, which seem a fruitful approach to the study of evidentials in context.