Az erza-mordvin evidencialitás nyomában

Evidentiality in Erzya-Mordvin The paper discusses evidentiality in Erzya-Mordvin. Our starting points are, on the one hand, that the Mordvinic languages, unlikely other languages in the Volga-Kama linguistic area, lack grammatical evidentiality, on the other hand, the descriptions of Uralic evidentials fail to mention any strategies or lexemes that could be considered markers of evidence types. We primarily aim to contribute to the latter point through a questionnaire and consultations with a native speaker. Based on our results, we provide a functional analysis of five lexemes that can be considered evidential strategies in Erzya. The le- xemes are the following: inference based on visible evidence – ńejavi ‘looks, it looks like’; inference based on sensory evidence – maŕavi ‘it feels like, it seems’; reportative evidence – keľa ‘allegedly, reportedly’; epistemic- inferential markers – uľema ‘probably, supposedly, surely’ and nať ‘probab- ly, apparently, surely’. Moreover, the paper also explores different degrees of certainty expressed by the lexemes. Finally, in accordance with the results of previous research, no morphological markers or morphosyntactic strategies have been identified to mark the information source. Keywords: evidentiality, Erzya-mordvin, inference, reportative