Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present an overview of the Galician indirect evidential system, in particular, the inferential and reportative indirect sources. After discussing the previous studies on disque and seica forms, we analyze the two evidential meanings using examples of the set of markers, and we present cases in which the source is indistinct between the two previous canonical values, the so-called “indirect-indifferent meaning” We demonstrate that evidential expressions act as polyfunctional pragmatic units transmitting diverse social nuances related to negative politeness strategies (attenuation), epistemic authority and the establishment of a common information ground shared between speaker and listener.