Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2005 number

The paper provides evidence for the drastic specificity of the indicative witnessed in the languages possessing a highly developed verb category of evidentials. Using the Samoyedic language material, the paper analyses the following issues: 1) whether the meaning of objectively stating the reality of the fact irrespective of the source of information is universal or not, 2) whether the basic meaning of the verb category of evidentials is that of the Indicative or not. It is concluded that in the Samoyedic languages the opposition of direct and indirect evidentiality scopes over both past and present temporal spheres. It is required that the statements expressing real situations should, necessarily or typically, mark the information source. As a consequence, evidentials-neutral indicative is lacking or has not developed.