Evidentialität in autochthonen altgermanischen Schriftdenkmälern im Vergleich zur deutschen Gegenwartssprache

Abstract

The paper presents a diachronically based concept of the evidential function in the language. It is argued for a specific discourse evidentiality of the oldest autochthonic German poetry which encoded not epistemic interpretations of outer sources of information, but rather a strong guarantee for the truth of reported events. The origins of this kind of evidentiality can be found both in ontogenesis of a given language, e. g. language acquisition, and in its phylogenesis.