The significance of R. Jakobson's concept for the study of the category of evidentiality

This paper analyzes the theoretical and linguistic substantiation of the status, semantics, and functions of the verbal category of evidentiality suggested by R. Jakobson in his famous work “Shifters, Verbal Categories and the Russian Verb.” When studying the linguistic-typological classification of verbal categories and their organization in the scientific paradigm of the general linguistic theory of speech activity, the scholar distinguished a separate grammatical category of evidentiality. Its special function in a speech communicative act was identified as “indicating the source of information about the reported fact”, with illustrations of the morphological expression of different variants of the speaker’s evidence of the reported event provided. Jakobson examined the data of the two South Slavic languages, Bulgarian and Macedonian, and also the published descriptions of the indigenous languages of North America. However, of concern is his identification of the “indicated source of information about the reported fact” with the “transmitted fact of the message”, suggesting the morphologically expressed indication of some source of information to indicate the preceding speech communicative act, a previously received message. Jakobson refers to the source of information as “a message from some other person.” However, no explanation is provided regarding the basis and logic of attributing all “sources of information about a reported fact” to a “citation” source. This paper argues the Jakobson’s concept to serve as a theoretical basis for modern studies of the grammatical category of evidentiality. The significance of the verbal category of evidentiality is traced by describing the evidential verbal forms in the Selkup language.