The interaction between tense and evidentials of event perception and deduction in Brazilian Native languages

This chapter discusses the relationship between evidentiality and tense in order to determine how the semantic differences between deduction and event perception evidentials are reflected in their combination with tense markers. I analyse a sample of 34 Brazilian native languages with grammaticalized evidential systems. This analysis is supported by the classification of evidentiality proposed by Hengeveld and Dall’Aglio Hattnher (submitted) and the concept of ‘double tense’ proposed by Fleck (2007). The data shows that there are few absolute restrictions on the occurrence of evidentiality in a specific tense. Nevertheless, it can be said that, when evidentiality and tense are fused in the same system, it is the semantics of evidentiality that determines the tense options.