When you are the last one to know: Evidentiality in Khwarshi

One of the common features of the Nakh-Daghestanian languages is the evidential opposition between some of the past tense verb forms, which mark (in)direct access to the information. Khwarshi has two synthetic past forms that are traditionally considered to form this kind of opposition, but, according to our data, it may in fact not be based on the type of information source. We conclude that, firstly, it is privative, and, secondly, the meaning of the marked form can be described as the “late access” to the information and is used when there is a gap between the time of getting the information about the event and the event itself.