The Sinhala hearsay evidential

Abstract Colloquial Sinhala is unusual among Indo-Aryan languages in having an evidential system. By means of the hearsay particle lu , the system opposes reportative to evidentially unmarked utterances. Drawing on attested utterances from corpora and grammaticality/acceptability judgments, we describe the distribution of this particle with particular reference to its overlap with the most commonly occurring complementizer, kiyǝlaa . We show that the characteristics of the Sinhala evidential system generally conform to cross-linguistic trends, but the particle has a relatively wide distribution syntactically. From a discourse perspective, it acts as both a reportative and a quotative marker, marks both direct and indirect speech, and performs specific functions such as marking adages and indicating mention use. Unsurprisingly, it carries distinct semantic-pragmatic overtones of dubiousness, which affect clause interpretation. We set forth this basic description as a foundation for future detailed description and analysis of this evidential particle.