The Comparative Syntax of Evidential Markers in Korean and Japanese: A Cartographic Perspective

ABSTRACT The cartographic project, initiated by Rizzi (1997, 2004, 2013) and Cinque (1999, 2004, 2006), among others, aims to provide a detailed map of clause structure for human language. The core proposal is that the traditional TP and CP consist of a hierarchy of functional projections that is supposed to be universal across languages. Recently, building on Cinque (2004), An (2022a) shows that evidential markers in Korean and Italian, namely, pota and sembrare , manifest a significant parallelism despite the fact that the languages in question are typologically unrelated, which he argues provides support for the cartographic approach. In this paper, building on An (2022a), we turn to two typologically related languages, namely, Korean and Japanese, and investigate how their evidential markers, namely, pota, ‐tay, and two types of sooda , behave. We explore the similarities and differences among these elements and discuss the implications of their status as TP‐internal and TP‐external functional categories. We argue that comparing the elements in question not only allows us to better understand their properties but also helps us be more precise about the cartographic hierarchy of the languages in question.