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Article published In: Concentric
Vol. 51:1 (2025) ► pp.121–145

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Assessing hierarchical categories of evidentiality in Chinese in terms of readers’ certainty levels

ORCiD logo with link | National Chengchi University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 22 May 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/consl.24027.cha
Abstract
This study examines whether knowledge encoded in evidential categories is perceived differently by readers with varying levels of certainty. A questionnaire with a five-point scale was conducted to collect readers’ judgments about events introduced by evidential markers in Chinese. The evidential markers were manually categorized into categories, and inter-rater agreement was calculated. The findings reveal two hierarchies in terms of readers’ degree of certainty in judging the veracity of the knowledge: visual > hearsay and inference > quotative > hearsay. Additionally, three factors were observed to influence readers’ judgments about events: (a) whether a detailed event depiction is provided, (b) whether knowledge of an event is provided by more than one source, and (c) whether knowledge of an event has a close relationship with readers’ political standpoints or personal societal beliefs.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1The hierarchical categorization of evidentiality
    • 2.2The scale of certainty levels
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Annotation of evidential categories
    • 3.2Collection of readers’ judgments
    • 3.3Procedure for data analysis
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1The visual category
    • 5.2The inference category
    • 5.3The quotative category
    • 5.4The hearsay category
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (46)
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