An Investigation of Evidentiality in the Arabic Language

Abstract

This study investigates one of the semantic phenomena; namely, evidentiality in Arabic from a semantic and syntactic point of view. Specifically, it investigates the effect of the semantic content of evidential verbs in SA on the syntactic structure. The data of this study were generally collected from a supreme Standard Arabic (SA). The analysis of the data reveals that there are many linguistic mechanisms of indicating evidentiality in Arabic. These mechanisms are perfect verb forms and verbs of hearts (?afʕa:l ?alqulu:b) which are, in turn, subdivided into verbs indicating knowledge and complete truthfulness. Furthermore, changing the semantic content of evidentiality verbs in Arabic gave rise to changing the syntactic behavior of those verbs.