Markers of evidentiality in Lithuanian newspaper discourse: a corpus-based study

ENThe current study explores the distribution of evidential markers in Lithuanian newspaper discourse. It focuses on the non-agreeing present passive participles (e.g. manoma ‘thought’) and non-agreeing adjectives (e.g. akivaizdu ‘evident’) used as Complement-Taking-Predicates (CTPs) with a that-complement clause or parentheticals and adverbs (e.g. akivaizdžiai ‘evidently’) in two central Lithuanian newspapers, which represent different types of media (print vs online). The quantitative analysis of the evidential markers reveals that they are more frequent in the online newspaper in which they are used for interactional purposes. In both newspapers, the expressions under study function as reportives denoting communicative or cognitive evidence, inferentials or markers of shared knowledge. Depending on the source of evidence and mode of knowing available to the author, the evidential markers may express high, medium or low “evidentiary validity”, and thus they may help the reader assess the reliability of information and form an opinion on the issues reported.