evidentiality - LingoDigest

Walking Backwards into the Future: How the Aymara Language Redefines Time

6 min read

What if the past was in front of you and the future was behind you? This isn’t science fiction; it’s the conceptual reality for speakers of the Aymara language in the Andes. Their unique worldview, embedded in their grammar and gestures, reveals that the known, “seen” past is ahead, while the unknown, “unseen” future is at one’s back, challenging our most basic assumptions about the nature of time.

Syntax Morphology Linguistic Typology Linguistics

I Heard, I Saw, I Inferred: The Linguistic World of Evidentials

6 min read

In English, we use optional phrases like “I heard” or “I saw” to show how we know something. But in many languages, this information is mandatory and baked directly into the grammar. This fascinating linguistic feature, called evidentiality, forces speakers to specify whether they witnessed an event, heard it secondhand, or inferred it from evidence, changing the very nature of truth and responsibility in conversation.