Seeing and knowing

Abstract The paper provides evidence against the claim that perceptual access is commonly encoded in direct evidentials. While visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory perception are conveyed by evidentials contexts where such interpretations appropriate, others it speaker’s involvement, affectedness established beliefs which conveyed. These may be exclusive to speaker or shared addressee. Instead of information source, argued some encode epistemic authority regarding an event based on their primary relation event. Epistemic concerns rights over knowledge therefore a relational concept captures dynamics between speech act participants terms representation attribution. Support for this argument comes from diachronic development evidentials, effects co-distribution person marking (egophoricity), patterns use. Data literature evidentiality frequently cited languages Tucanoan Quechuan feature well-described, rich evidential systems.