Languages vary in whether evidentials—that is, linguistic markers of information source (Aikhenvald 2004)—can appear in clausal complements. Embedding of evidentials is possible in some languages, such as Turkish (Turkic: Turkey; Şener 2011) (evidence for treating such clauses as instances of genuine embedding is provided in section 3).1
In some other languages, such as Cuzco Quechua (Quechuan: Peru; Lefebvre and Muysken 1987), evidentials are banned from clausal complements.
The semantic literature often views the variation in embeddability of evidentials as evidence for the semantic heterogeneity of evidentiality as a category (Faller 2002, 2007, Garrett 2001, Matthewson, Davis, and Rullmann 2007, McCready and Ogata 2007, Peterson 2010). Specifically, embeddability, and the contrast between (1) and (2), has been regarded as a diagnostic of the semantic status of respective markers. Embeddable evidentials, such as Turkish miş...