Simple Past Tense Markers in Turkish and Some American Indian Languages in Terms of Evidentiality

This descriptive study examines the term ‘evidentiality’ within the context of Turkish of Turkey and some American Indian languages. In the broadest sense, as a linguistic category evidentiality is the morphological indication of an event that takes place in the past and the relation of this event to the speaker. It is a kind of ‘verification system’ that languages mark with affixes, conveying the perspective of the speaker. The witnessed past tense marker –DI and the reported past tense marker –mIş in Turkish are two good examples of evidentiality. It is a cross-linguistic phenomenon that specifies whether the speaker has witnessed the event or learned it from somebody else. It can be seen at various levels in several languages. Starting from two the number of suffixes added to the verb stems indicating the position of the speaker with respect to the event may go up to as many as six. In this study, examples from some American Indian languages spoken in North America and Turkish of Turkey will be examined.